Goofyish
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 10, 1999
- Messages
- 8,541
The Cast:
Me, Tim (Quite old)
DW, Julie (Not quite so old)
DD1, Nicola (16)
DD2, Jade (12)
DAY 0 - 14th December 2005
Weather Report: Cold
The Journey to Gatwick
We set of at 3:40pm, as soon as Julie and Jade had come home from school. Nicola and I had the day off
I was waiting all morning to try the on-line check-in. As soon as it was time I nervously entered all the information - I think I read everything I typed about 10 times LOL
The journey down the M40 was quite pleasent, not much traffic at all. We didn't hit any congestion until the M25 around the M4 / M3 junctions. It was fairly slow then right round to the Gatwick exit. We finally arrived at the Gatwick Hilton at 6:30pm; not too bad.
We decided to check into the hotel first before going over to dump our bags at twilight check-in. It was quite busy in the hotel and it took quite a while to get checked-in. We had a nice family room (1 double and 2 single beds) on the same floor as reception.
Once settled in the room, I went off to take the car round to the Summer Special car park near the North Terminal - that's quite a trek!
I was the only one on the shuttle bus back to the terminal.
I got back to the hotel room, picked up the baggage, and the cases, and set off to the terminal for twilight check-in.
I expected the terminal to be really busy with all the Christmas holiday flights, but it was pretty empty.
As we walked into the Virgin hall, there were some long lines of folks waiting to check-in. I thought we were going to be there all night until I realised that most of the lines were for another Virgin flight destination - Port Harcourt (I had to look up where that was! It's Nigeria).
After locating the much shorter twilight queue, we joined the end. Although there wasn't many in front of us the line seemed to take for ever to move!
About 40 minutes later we had got rid of our cases and picked up our green and white forms (with plenty of spares ) and were off to get some dinner.
Frankie and Benny's was the choice of venue. It wasn't busy, and we were shown to a table straight away.
Dinning Review:
I had the standard burger with fries. It was OK, nothing special.
Julie and Jade also had the burger, and Nicola went for a Pizza.
With 4 Cokes the bill came to £48!
After dinner we had a quick wander round the shops, but most were closing up for the evening, so we headed back to the room.
Me, Tim (Quite old)
DW, Julie (Not quite so old)
DD1, Nicola (16)
DD2, Jade (12)
DAY 0 - 14th December 2005
Weather Report: Cold
The Journey to Gatwick
We set of at 3:40pm, as soon as Julie and Jade had come home from school. Nicola and I had the day off
I was waiting all morning to try the on-line check-in. As soon as it was time I nervously entered all the information - I think I read everything I typed about 10 times LOL
The journey down the M40 was quite pleasent, not much traffic at all. We didn't hit any congestion until the M25 around the M4 / M3 junctions. It was fairly slow then right round to the Gatwick exit. We finally arrived at the Gatwick Hilton at 6:30pm; not too bad.
We decided to check into the hotel first before going over to dump our bags at twilight check-in. It was quite busy in the hotel and it took quite a while to get checked-in. We had a nice family room (1 double and 2 single beds) on the same floor as reception.
Once settled in the room, I went off to take the car round to the Summer Special car park near the North Terminal - that's quite a trek!
I was the only one on the shuttle bus back to the terminal.
I got back to the hotel room, picked up the baggage, and the cases, and set off to the terminal for twilight check-in.
I expected the terminal to be really busy with all the Christmas holiday flights, but it was pretty empty.
As we walked into the Virgin hall, there were some long lines of folks waiting to check-in. I thought we were going to be there all night until I realised that most of the lines were for another Virgin flight destination - Port Harcourt (I had to look up where that was! It's Nigeria).
After locating the much shorter twilight queue, we joined the end. Although there wasn't many in front of us the line seemed to take for ever to move!
About 40 minutes later we had got rid of our cases and picked up our green and white forms (with plenty of spares
) and were off to get some dinner.Frankie and Benny's was the choice of venue. It wasn't busy, and we were shown to a table straight away.
Dinning Review:
I had the standard burger with fries. It was OK, nothing special.
Julie and Jade also had the burger, and Nicola went for a Pizza.
With 4 Cokes the bill came to £48!
After dinner we had a quick wander round the shops, but most were closing up for the evening, so we headed back to the room.
- nice start by the way - and just wanted to check something. Do I understand correctly that you did on-line check-in and twilight check in? I thought you could only do one or the other? We fly out in May and would love to be able to both, like to have everything covered!
