Well here goes. My first trip report on this site. Sorry its a bit late but had a lot of catching up to do back home. Trip consisted of me (George age 35) and my partner (Sharon age 36). This is my second trip to Disney (last time was in 1994) and my partners first. Drove down to gatwick Thurs lunchtime to do twilight check in with Virgin. Arrived at the check in desk approx 2:05pm with only 3 groups in front of us. Checked in at 2:30pm and managed to get the exit door seats (Good start!!). Then paid the £4 parking charge and headed to our hotel for the night, Copthorne Gatwick Airport. If you need to stay off site I would recommend this hotel. Very nice and only 10 mins to the airport. In the morning, checked out and caught the bus to the airport. You have to pre book the busses and note they only run every hour (I'm sure its every hour but I may be wrong). Arrived at the airport and walked past the normal check in queue for our flight. There was a massive queue there (Glad we done the twilight check in now). Headed for Garfunkels for breakfast only to find it has closed down and changed to something else. So had our breakfast in the village inn pub. It was very busy but the food arrived very quickly and it was suprisingly very good. Headed through passport control and stocked up on tobbaco in duty free. Note the smoking section in this area is upstairs near the Yates pub. Then headed for the departure gate which involves a short shuttle ride. The flight before ours to Antigua was delayed because of people blocking the departure gate. Even though they were boarding by seat numbers, everyone seemed to want to queue up anyway. Thus the people who should of boarded the plane couldn't. This then had a knock on effect and thus delayed our flight. On board: Even though we had exit seats I still thought the seats were awful. They are very narrow. I would say probably narrower that any charter flight I have been on. If i'd have had a non exit seat I would have really suffered all the way. Then you had the controls for the tv/radio in the armrest of the seat. Thus I had to keep getting up to change the channel/station. I did not watch one film all the way through on the flight. But the meal was good. One of the best i have had on a flight. And you had free soft drinks although you had to get them yourself. Arrival: we were one of the first off the plane (even before 1st class passengers which suprised me). Thus we were first through passport control. Picked up our bags after about 15 minutes and headed through customs which was also quite quick. Passed our bags over again and then caught the shuttle to the main airport building. I was very impressed with the airport itself. Much nicer than gatwick. Picked up our bags for the second time and headed over to pick up our car. This again was nice and quick especially as there are signs directing Virgin passengers to the car hire desks. Picked up our car which I thought would be smaller and handed over a $10 tip (smallest note I had so beware). Checked all the car controls and left the airport via the South Exit and caught the toll road to Disney. There are two tolls you pass through which are $1 each. Note that the toll road from the North Exit has cheaper tolls (.75cents and .50cents). The journey took about 30 minutes and we arrived at Buena Vista Drive and headed for Hotel Plaza and our hotel - Courtyard By marriott. So far so good. Noticed that the traffic around Downtown disney and hotel plaza blvd had increased significantly since I last visited.
Trip report - Day 1 to follow......
Trip report - Day 1 to follow......
