Scottish-Helen
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2002
- Messages
- 726
The cast - Helen 33, has obsessive compulsive Disney planning disorder,
Ric 33, LSH or long suffering husband who would rather go skiing
Mum and Dad 68, persuaded to come along for week 2
Day 1 - Saturday April 22nd 2006
Woohoo!!! The countdown is finally at zero,
. I had booked this trip exactly a year ago and I seriously had my doubts that the day was ever going to arrive. I woke at 5am partly from being dehydrated with a hangover but mainly because I felt like a 5 year old on Christmas morning. 
We were staying at my Mums who lives a whole 10 minutes from Manchester Airport and had checked in online with Virgin the day before so I had to wait nearly four hours until it was time to leave the house at 8.50. We got to the airport at 9am and as our flight was at 10.25 it was only the bag drop desk that was open. There was no queue at all so we got our boarding passes, wandered through security and as we walked in the departures area we heard the first of many announcements for our flight (I've never heard so many) calling us to gate 210. We started boarding at 9.45 and this is when it was nice to be in Premium Economy as we were first to board with the Upper Class passengers. Our plane today was Jersey Girl and we were sat upstairs in seats 74A and C which were in front of the emergency exit door. These were good seats as we had nobody and no wall behind us and we still had full use of the overhead lockers (whereas across the aisle had emergency equipment in the overhead bins) as well as the little bins at the side. We had flown in PE in 2002 but I had forgotten how good it was, nice wide seats with foot rests and a decent recline.
The onboard service was good, I started off with a Bucks Fizz and Ric had an Orange Juice. The hostesses were round shortly after with drinks and I had a Baileys(yum!). Next they were round with wine for the meal and then the meal itself arrived. We had a pasta with pesto and mozzarella, bangers & mash with red onion chutney, bread roll , cheese and crackers and profiteroles. I was glad that I had decided against ordering a low fat meal as it was one of the better airline meals I have had in my time and was really tasty (and calorie laden). I had another glass of wine and then they came round with an after dinner baileys (hic). I now managed to make mistakes on both of the green forms, I wonder why
Rest of the flight was very good and we landed slightly early at 14.25 to a very respectable temperature of 30 degrees celcius. We were one of the first off and got our bags (the first time) and through immigration in record time. It was almost too good to be true...it was too good to be true. This is where the fun and games started.
We had handed our suitcases back in at the same time and when we got to the second baggage carrousel mine came off immediately. Then we waited and waited and waited for Rics. I'm pretty sure that they must check every second bag at this point and this is where I would seriously recommend that the person hiring the car goes down a level to sort that out while the other waits for the bags.
Eventually we got the bags and took the free shuttle to the Orlando Airport Marriott which we had booked on Priceline.
We checked in and the hotel was a nice 4 star, typical of a Marriott with a nice pool area (that I didn't get to use) We had hired a car through US Rentacar and Budget. Originally we were due to pick it up the following morning as we were staying at the airport hotel the first night before driving to the beach. We decided to try and get the car that evening so we could head our to a mall to get Ric some shoes and I rang Budget to see if this was ok. I had the voucher in front of me and gave them the confirmation number that was on it. They advised me that the booking was for a minivan on a completely different date under a different name. Not to worry, we'll just head back out to the airport, they can see the voucher and we can sort it out there...or so we thought. We got the shuttle back to the airport and went to queue for the Budget desk. The queue was fairly long and there were only 2 people on the desk. Not really very good for such a busy rental location. Ric waited and I went to get us our first Krispy Kremes and some Crocs for Rics feet (it didn't look like he had any choice in footwear now). The first set of Crocs were too small so I went back up and the nice lady gave me a bigger size in a different style for the same price. Hurrah for pixiedust
. We finally got to the front of the Budget queue after just over an hour. The guy on the desk took our voucher and looked puzzled. He couldn't find our booking on the computer. The voucher had a number for him to ring if there was a problem, a tour operator helpline. The helpline was no help whatsoever and we were getting nowhere, they told us we had to contact US Rentacar who we didn't have a number for onhand. They could clearly see that we had a voucher and working in the travel industry and from a customer service point of view I would have thought they could have honoured the car and sorted it out with US Rentacar behind the scenes. I was in tears at this point and was having my first meltdown of the holiday. I would never recommend Budget to anybody now and in fact I wished I had booked my car through my own work directly with Dollar (serves me right for being a penny pincher) We had no option but to go back to the hotel again so we could use the net to try and contact USRentacar or book an alternative. USRentacar were not open until Monday morning and we needed a car for Sunday morning to get us to the beach. We had booked a convertible but ended up booking the cheapest economy car with Dollar as we had already prepaid with US Rentacar and did not want to use up too much extra money.
We got back up to the room when Ric realised that he had left the paper part of his driving license at the Budget desk. So off we went again in the shuttle bus. We finally made it back to our room just after 8pm, six and a half hours after we had landed. Still the silver lining was that this had been discovered on our arrival day when we were staying at the airport anyway So much for me starting on the tan. We ordered room service, chicken spring rolls and a margherita pizza to share. It was now 9.15 so at least it meant we had not gone to sleep too early.
Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow when we do a flying visit to Epcot.
Ric 33, LSH or long suffering husband who would rather go skiing
Mum and Dad 68, persuaded to come along for week 2
Day 1 - Saturday April 22nd 2006
Woohoo!!! The countdown is finally at zero,
. I had booked this trip exactly a year ago and I seriously had my doubts that the day was ever going to arrive. I woke at 5am partly from being dehydrated with a hangover but mainly because I felt like a 5 year old on Christmas morning. We were staying at my Mums who lives a whole 10 minutes from Manchester Airport and had checked in online with Virgin the day before so I had to wait nearly four hours until it was time to leave the house at 8.50. We got to the airport at 9am and as our flight was at 10.25 it was only the bag drop desk that was open. There was no queue at all so we got our boarding passes, wandered through security and as we walked in the departures area we heard the first of many announcements for our flight (I've never heard so many) calling us to gate 210. We started boarding at 9.45 and this is when it was nice to be in Premium Economy as we were first to board with the Upper Class passengers. Our plane today was Jersey Girl and we were sat upstairs in seats 74A and C which were in front of the emergency exit door. These were good seats as we had nobody and no wall behind us and we still had full use of the overhead lockers (whereas across the aisle had emergency equipment in the overhead bins) as well as the little bins at the side. We had flown in PE in 2002 but I had forgotten how good it was, nice wide seats with foot rests and a decent recline.
The onboard service was good, I started off with a Bucks Fizz and Ric had an Orange Juice. The hostesses were round shortly after with drinks and I had a Baileys(yum!). Next they were round with wine for the meal and then the meal itself arrived. We had a pasta with pesto and mozzarella, bangers & mash with red onion chutney, bread roll , cheese and crackers and profiteroles. I was glad that I had decided against ordering a low fat meal as it was one of the better airline meals I have had in my time and was really tasty (and calorie laden). I had another glass of wine and then they came round with an after dinner baileys (hic). I now managed to make mistakes on both of the green forms, I wonder why
Rest of the flight was very good and we landed slightly early at 14.25 to a very respectable temperature of 30 degrees celcius. We were one of the first off and got our bags (the first time) and through immigration in record time. It was almost too good to be true...it was too good to be true. This is where the fun and games started.
We had handed our suitcases back in at the same time and when we got to the second baggage carrousel mine came off immediately. Then we waited and waited and waited for Rics. I'm pretty sure that they must check every second bag at this point and this is where I would seriously recommend that the person hiring the car goes down a level to sort that out while the other waits for the bags.
Eventually we got the bags and took the free shuttle to the Orlando Airport Marriott which we had booked on Priceline.
We checked in and the hotel was a nice 4 star, typical of a Marriott with a nice pool area (that I didn't get to use) We had hired a car through US Rentacar and Budget. Originally we were due to pick it up the following morning as we were staying at the airport hotel the first night before driving to the beach. We decided to try and get the car that evening so we could head our to a mall to get Ric some shoes and I rang Budget to see if this was ok. I had the voucher in front of me and gave them the confirmation number that was on it. They advised me that the booking was for a minivan on a completely different date under a different name. Not to worry, we'll just head back out to the airport, they can see the voucher and we can sort it out there...or so we thought. We got the shuttle back to the airport and went to queue for the Budget desk. The queue was fairly long and there were only 2 people on the desk. Not really very good for such a busy rental location. Ric waited and I went to get us our first Krispy Kremes and some Crocs for Rics feet (it didn't look like he had any choice in footwear now). The first set of Crocs were too small so I went back up and the nice lady gave me a bigger size in a different style for the same price. Hurrah for pixiedust
. We finally got to the front of the Budget queue after just over an hour. The guy on the desk took our voucher and looked puzzled. He couldn't find our booking on the computer. The voucher had a number for him to ring if there was a problem, a tour operator helpline. The helpline was no help whatsoever and we were getting nowhere, they told us we had to contact US Rentacar who we didn't have a number for onhand. They could clearly see that we had a voucher and working in the travel industry and from a customer service point of view I would have thought they could have honoured the car and sorted it out with US Rentacar behind the scenes. I was in tears at this point and was having my first meltdown of the holiday. I would never recommend Budget to anybody now and in fact I wished I had booked my car through my own work directly with Dollar (serves me right for being a penny pincher) We had no option but to go back to the hotel again so we could use the net to try and contact USRentacar or book an alternative. USRentacar were not open until Monday morning and we needed a car for Sunday morning to get us to the beach. We had booked a convertible but ended up booking the cheapest economy car with Dollar as we had already prepaid with US Rentacar and did not want to use up too much extra money.We got back up to the room when Ric realised that he had left the paper part of his driving license at the Budget desk. So off we went again in the shuttle bus. We finally made it back to our room just after 8pm, six and a half hours after we had landed. Still the silver lining was that this had been discovered on our arrival day when we were staying at the airport anyway So much for me starting on the tan. We ordered room service, chicken spring rolls and a margherita pizza to share. It was now 9.15 so at least it meant we had not gone to sleep too early.
Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow when we do a flying visit to Epcot.
