Hi all,
I have been home a week and thought it time to start the report otherwise it'll become old news.
The cast
Me - 35 year old lady (though not always
)
DH - 39
DD1 - 15
DD2 - 13
DD3 - 8
DGM - my mum (disney grandma)
DGD - my step dad (disney granda)
My family of 5 live in York while my DGM & DGD live in Newcastle. I had organised this holiday - 2 weeks in a villa, 2 cars and flights from Manchester. We flew out on Sat 7th of April and returned last Sun the 22 April.
My family spent the Friday night packing and unpacking. Having been way over the weight limit last year my aim was to pack very light. It took awhile to reduce things to very light. In the end we had about 3 outfits each (plus swimming gear). We stayed in our house in York and had arranged a 06.20am taxi to take us to the train station. My DGM & DGD stayed overnight at an airport hotel in Manchester.
DD1 & DD2 being teenagers are not too good at early starts so we left them to sleep in until 06.00am while DH and I got up about 05.30am. A quick shower, nothing to eat, grab documents and suitaces, wake up DDs and the taxi was here.
The taxi driver took one look at all of the suitcaes and assumed they would be heavy. He nearly threw the first one over the car as it was so light. In conversation he asked where we were off too. "FLORIDA" we all cried out
"Ah" was his reply, a knowing sound. Turns out he'd taken the family there recently and knew how much stuff you bring back. He recommended the Goldren Corral.
Journey to station is less than 15 mins and we made the train in good time. Everyone was tired but excited. The train trip took about 1.5hrs - give or take. We checked and doubled checked we had everything we needed.
Once we got to Manchester airport station we made our way to the terminal. I realied at this point I hadn't arranged a meeting place with my DGM & DGD and I didn't know which hotel they were at
. I had all the documents so we couldn't go through the check in until they were there...
After a stressful wait we finally spotted them and we queued up. Unlike last year we all had seats together - a row of 3 and a row of 4. We checked in and did a bit of shopping. Off we popped to get a breakfast, food was well erm airport food, hot and well erm hot. Can't say I enjoyed it, I ended up having a hash brown sandwich as the bacon and sausages looked yucky. Everyone had a full English.
We got onto the plane - I'm all at this point as I hate flying. I'm thinking why oh why did I do this. Everyone else is 
. I take some tablets my doctor gave me hoping I'd be 
. No effect 
The flight was uneventful, not much happened. I didn't like the way the movies on Virgins flight could not be paused or started whenever you wanted. I guess we must have been spoilt the year before. Also the place where we sat resulted in only one type of main meal available - the yucky one which everyone else had avoided. We all had a horrible mushroom and rice thing. No-one ate much.
We landed with no problems. I feel
now as the flight was over. DDs are we are here again! By this time it's about 6pm US time.
Queued up for the cars, Dollar had one desk open and there were 100s of us waiting. They also had on 2 people - one trainee who dealt with us very slowly... and another experienced member of staff watching the trainee . I felt sorry for the people towards the end of the queue, esp the young children.
Picked up the car and travelled to the Best Western on the 192. The management agency have a night box here were we needed to collect our directions for the villa from. Picked them up, went to the Publix on Sand Mine Road to pick up food, then headed to our villa on the Solana estate.
It would have been useful if we had been given A) the correct code to unlock the keypad and get the keys
and B) someone had left a light on so we could see the key pad to put in our wrong code .
After help from the guard we got the right code (my DH used the phone and called the management agency). My DD2 found her mobile phone and we used it's light to see the keys.
Finally we were inside the villa. I've already complained about our "upgrade" we got "free" on a different thread. To be short we paid for top of the range 4 bedroom villa and got a 5 bedroom bottom of the range villa. Hmm, I pay for quality not quantity.
Anyway all us adults were feeling stressed and disappointment, the children were tired so we unpacked the food and trooped off to bed. It must have been about midnight. My youngest DD is feeling scared and I fall asleep in the bed next to her holding her hand. Very uncomfortable bed.
At 1.30am the phone rings. I am such a light sleeper I am the only person to hear it. I drag myself to the phone thinking "not nice thoughts" and it's the management agency calling to see if we had got in. Well the fact that I picked up the phone should have told her that! I explained how unhappy I was at the villa. She said they'd be around in the morning to discuss it. I went back to bed.
Sunday morning. In our plan of events we had down to go out for breakfast but with the trip we were all so tired we just had some Eggo (I love that stuff) in the villa. My DDs and DH then went into the pool.
The pool had no toys so my DH quicky went and bought some so we had something to play with. The day progressed as we waited for the people to turn up. We found a cockroach in the kitchen
The management agency came we had a nice long chat and to them everything was fine to us it wasn't. In fact our games room was a double garage with a table tennis ball in the middle!!!! Hmmm They left and we all went in the pool.
My DH
said we'd put up with the villa and we did. It didn't spoil the holiday and I'm taking it up with our travel agent.
My next report will be far more fun, promise
Take care
Vicki
I have been home a week and thought it time to start the report otherwise it'll become old news.
The cast
Me - 35 year old lady (though not always
)DH - 39
DD1 - 15
DD2 - 13
DD3 - 8
DGM - my mum (disney grandma)
DGD - my step dad (disney granda)
My family of 5 live in York while my DGM & DGD live in Newcastle. I had organised this holiday - 2 weeks in a villa, 2 cars and flights from Manchester. We flew out on Sat 7th of April and returned last Sun the 22 April.
My family spent the Friday night packing and unpacking. Having been way over the weight limit last year my aim was to pack very light. It took awhile to reduce things to very light. In the end we had about 3 outfits each (plus swimming gear). We stayed in our house in York and had arranged a 06.20am taxi to take us to the train station. My DGM & DGD stayed overnight at an airport hotel in Manchester.
DD1 & DD2 being teenagers are not too good at early starts so we left them to sleep in until 06.00am while DH and I got up about 05.30am. A quick shower, nothing to eat, grab documents and suitaces, wake up DDs and the taxi was here.
The taxi driver took one look at all of the suitcaes and assumed they would be heavy. He nearly threw the first one over the car as it was so light. In conversation he asked where we were off too. "FLORIDA" we all cried out
"Ah" was his reply, a knowing sound. Turns out he'd taken the family there recently and knew how much stuff you bring back. He recommended the Goldren Corral.
Journey to station is less than 15 mins and we made the train in good time. Everyone was tired but excited. The train trip took about 1.5hrs - give or take. We checked and doubled checked we had everything we needed.
Once we got to Manchester airport station we made our way to the terminal. I realied at this point I hadn't arranged a meeting place with my DGM & DGD and I didn't know which hotel they were at
. I had all the documents so we couldn't go through the check in until they were there...After a stressful wait we finally spotted them and we queued up. Unlike last year we all had seats together - a row of 3 and a row of 4. We checked in and did a bit of shopping. Off we popped to get a breakfast, food was well erm airport food, hot and well erm hot. Can't say I enjoyed it, I ended up having a hash brown sandwich as the bacon and sausages looked yucky. Everyone had a full English.
We got onto the plane - I'm all
at this point as I hate flying. I'm thinking why oh why did I do this. Everyone else is . I take some tablets my doctor gave me hoping I'd be . No effect The flight was uneventful, not much happened. I didn't like the way the movies on Virgins flight could not be paused or started whenever you wanted. I guess we must have been spoilt the year before. Also the place where we sat resulted in only one type of main meal available - the yucky one which everyone else had avoided. We all had a horrible mushroom and rice thing. No-one ate much.
We landed with no problems. I feel
now as the flight was over. DDs are we are here again! By this time it's about 6pm US time.Queued up for the cars, Dollar had one desk open and there were 100s of us waiting. They also had on 2 people - one trainee who dealt with us very slowly... and another experienced member of staff watching the trainee
. I felt sorry for the people towards the end of the queue, esp the young children.Picked up the car and travelled to the Best Western on the 192. The management agency have a night box here were we needed to collect our directions for the villa from. Picked them up, went to the Publix on Sand Mine Road to pick up food, then headed to our villa on the Solana estate.
It would have been useful if we had been given A) the correct code to unlock the keypad and get the keys
and B) someone had left a light on so we could see the key pad to put in our wrong code .After help from the guard we got the right code (my DH used the phone and called the management agency). My DD2 found her mobile phone and we used it's light to see the keys.
Finally we were inside the villa. I've already complained about our "upgrade" we got "free" on a different thread. To be short we paid for top of the range 4 bedroom villa and got a 5 bedroom bottom of the range villa. Hmm, I pay for quality not quantity.
Anyway all us adults were feeling stressed and disappointment, the children were tired so we unpacked the food and trooped off to bed. It must have been about midnight. My youngest DD is feeling scared and I fall asleep in the bed next to her holding her hand. Very uncomfortable bed.
At 1.30am the phone rings. I am such a light sleeper I am the only person to hear it. I drag myself to the phone thinking "not nice thoughts" and it's the management agency calling to see if we had got in. Well the fact that I picked up the phone should have told her that! I explained how unhappy I was at the villa. She said they'd be around in the morning to discuss it. I went back to bed.
Sunday morning. In our plan of events we had down to go out for breakfast but with the trip we were all so tired we just had some Eggo (I love that stuff) in the villa. My DDs and DH then went into the pool.
The pool had no toys so my DH quicky went and bought some so we had something to play with. The day progressed as we waited for the people to turn up. We found a cockroach in the kitchen
The management agency came we had a nice long chat and to them everything was fine to us it wasn't. In fact our games room was a double garage with a table tennis ball in the middle!!!! Hmmm
They left and we all went in the pool.My DH
said we'd put up with the villa and we did. It didn't spoil the holiday and I'm taking it up with our travel agent.My next report will be far more fun, promise
Take care
Vicki
