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#923851 by Fuzzy14
12 Jul 2016, 13:00
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Family of 5 including three boys (age 10, 8, 4) on large mouse related adventures.

Once again off to the land of mouse. My littlest has been flying longhaul since 11 weeks old and it’s nice to look back on these trip reports, it’s so easy now they’re self-sufficient, makes me wonder how we managed.

You may have noticed this is a Manchester departure. Owing to the differences between the school holidays in Scotland (end June-start August) and England (mid July-end August) we were able to get a good deal flying from Manchester. It’s unfortunate because we live so close to Glasgow airport but the money saved was too good, with the additional benefit of not missing a connecting flight if we’re delayed (ref: BA, LGW 2014). So the day before the car was packed up and we drove the 3.5 hours down the M74/M6 to Manchester Airport and checked into the Clayton Hotel (formally Bewleys).

Nothing in the UK is built for a family of 5 and it’s normally quite a struggle getting a hotel room with sufficient beds, they’re too young for their own room and interconnecting rooms aren’t internet booking friendly. The Hilton were the only hotel that supported 5 to a room but a tip off from a friend and a phone call to the Clayton let me book in there for £146 including parking.

The procedure at the hotel is you park it in the hotel car park, leave them the keys (the next morning if you want to leave stuff in the car overnight) and they later move it to a long term car park. Keys are collected from hotel reception on your return and the car is back in the hotel car park. I thought the hotel was very suitable for kids, had space to run about, a kids play area (where everything cost £1) and the obligatory free wifi. The hotel charged airport prices and seemed to be trying to up their quality to suit but seemed to be caught in limbo between trying to cater for all. My main disappointment was the size of the room, it was a tight squeeze for 5 and so next time I would stay there again but upgrade (for £20) to a larger room.

The next morning we woke at 7am to the disastrous news about the EU vote and that my spending money was about to take a tanking, at this point the kids still didn’t know where we were going, they were getting a bit too used to jetting off to Florida every year so we told them we were off to a caravan park in Dorset and this was a stopover. We did the big reveal with the boys who were excited to say the least once they believed us! Out of the hotel at 7.45am and over to T2 in the minibus to the check-in which was brisk, bags dropped off, these days we only have to take the one booster car seat which fits inside the pram/stroller bag that went down to oversize. In the queue for security by 8am and through it 15 minutes later. Manchester check-in and security is noticeably busier than Glasgow. We would normally book into a lounge but we weren’t eligible for the V-Room and after reading reviews of the remaining lounges decided against it this time and found a suitable place for breakfast, a coffee shop that did rolls for me and cereal for the boys. That managed to kill an hour and then it was time to wander down to the gate and sit around for 30 minutes watching planes until it was time to board G-VROY Pretty Woman. Manchester Airport is certainly a lot busier than and not as modern as Glasgow, but it did the job.

Pretty Woman

UC and PE first followed by upstairs Bubble, thankfully the queuing system more rigorously enforced than the usual free-for-all at Glasgow. The kids packs were handed out before the flight was called while sitting about the gate area however they also had some spare for those who had been missed, bottles of water also handed out while walking down the jetway rather than on seat. I picked up a complimentary newspaper as well which was welcome as I’ve got out of the habit of buying one.

With the kids still young I find it better to book economy than PE as we’ve got plenty of space so instead I used my money to pay for 5x seat requests in the Bubble, 79JK and 80 HJK there and back. The random stranger on seat 79H turned out to be a friend of a friend. We proceeded upstairs, got the kids settled and as we waited on the remaining 300 people to load downstairs we asked and were granted access to meet the pilots in the cockpit which is always exciting. Flight pushed back on time at 10.30am, lumbered down to runway 23R and took off shortly afterwards.

Four rounds of drinks offered onboard, one round after takeoff with snacks, drinks with meal, a service later on then a round with the sandwich before landing. I was on the soft drinks, per the norm as I was doing the driving after we landed, Mrs Fuzzy having a couple of wines.

Full Menu
Tabbouleh salad
Chicken teriyaki or beef chilli melt or mushroom farfalle bake
Gu
My dinner
Kids meal
Sandwiches

We had ordered kids meals for the 4 and 8 year old and an adult meal for the 10 year old. The younger ones were served chicken nuggets with mushy peas which didn’t look the greatest, eldest and Mrs Fuzzy had the chicken teriyaki and I had the beef chilli which was ok. My kids aren’t particularly fussy but they didn’t eat very much, probably because of the large breakfast.

Late afternoon sandwiches were a choice of chicken Caesar or mozzarella and pesto wraps which didn’t go down well with the kids (who don’t get an alternative). Overall the kids food was uninspired.

The kids were straight into the IFE, they watched Star Wars Force Awakens plus a few other things. I actually managed to watch Hail Caesar which I thought was excellent although I still had frequent interruptions. The former baby now 4 year old is getting easier as the years advance! He’d still like to sit and watch YouTube or Netflix on his iPad though. I wrote to Virgin last year to ask them to commission some YouTube ‘stars’ like Stampy/Squid to make original content for them and they wrote back to say they couldn’t due to copywrite reasons (although this is exactly what Emirates do).

Cabin Crew once again were excellent and I really mean that, two did the meal service leaving one for the remainder of the flight. This is a slight change to last years operation, also noticed the FSM hanging around upstairs more often

Landed ten minutes early at 1850/1350 and was off the plane soon after, two Glasgow flights had beat us in but the immigration hall was relatively quiet. We were directed to a machine (despite the kids) and this gave us lots of trouble trying to get the machine down low enough to photograph the youngest, then it wouldn’t accept one of the passports but another machine did. The border agent finally sorted it out for us. Bags quickly collected, then returned to the carrousel and the correct bags collected. Didn’t use the baggage transfer service as the boys are now big enough to push their own cases and we were in the car park and hire car 1hr and 10 minutes after landing. There was a bit of a cock-up here, we’d loaded our bags into a Chevy SUV but they wouldn’t fit, so I moved everything across to a Hyundai SantaFe but in the process it looks like my eldest left his Bluetooth headphones on the back seat of the first car. I phoned Alamo later but they’ve disappeared.

By 1600 we were in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.


My star ratings

Ground 4* No issues
Crew 5* Great service in the Bubble, couldn’t ask for more
Food 3* Good for adults, usual comment about lower quality, uninspired kids meals
Seats 5* Great seats, PE for EC prices
Entertainment 5* Once again happy with the content
#923853 by buns
12 Jul 2016, 14:30
Fuzzy

Thanks for the detailed TR and well done on keeping the trip a secret from the kids :-D

I have to say the bubble seats seem well worth the outlay and to add the icing on the cake to have two super crew up in that cabin seems to be well worth the outlay. The food shots are particularly useful for many V Flyers who will be following you this summer!!

Enjoy the Mouse and hope you can manage the very high temperatures there are there at the moment.

Thanks for taking the time out of your holiday to post such a useful TR

buns
#923855 by hiljil
12 Jul 2016, 15:03
Thank you for an enjoyable & informative TR. So pleased you had a good flight. Hope you all had a wonderful time in Mouseland & that the flight back doesn't disappoint.
#923859 by ScoobySu
12 Jul 2016, 15:14
Thank you for a good TR - I can just imagine the little one's faces when you told them that morning! What a fantastic treat for them.
#923863 by Hev60
12 Jul 2016, 17:21
Fuzzy, enjoyable and interesting trip report.

That was some surprise for your boys. Caravan park or Disneyworld :-D Hope you recorded their little faces when you revealed your secret!

The bubble for economy is a really good product because you are away up in a special cabin and we loved it up there as a family many many times when travelling PE.

Enjoy the AKL, my faviourite Disney resort as its away from all the hustle and bustle of the Downtown busy resorts with all the traffic. So easy driving to & from when using the Osecola Parkway, if you are not on the Disney buses.

Hope you found your way around the Disney Springs area (old Marketplace or many previous names!) We hated parking in that horrid multi-story carpark area. We found it was best to follow signs for the Virgin checkin area and there were lots of open spaces to park and from there we walked around the lake to the ferries to get over to the shops.

Hope you had/are having a wonderful time and trust you have a supply of those famous plastic poncho's ;-)
#923874 by Florida White
13 Jul 2016, 00:58
Great trip report thank you for posting we did the bubble in May and had brilliant crew seems the upstairs is a bit less stressful and they are generally on the money - I sent a note to Crawley Towers on our return as the crew were brilliant and got a nice response and a promise to pass on our thanks.
#923876 by jfenney
13 Jul 2016, 04:31
Great TR and I don't envy you moving around with 5 in tow glad you had a great flight and well done to the crew to make it more memorable :-D
#924032 by Fuzzy14
18 Jul 2016, 12:33
Thanks for all the comments!

Hev60 wrote:Enjoy the AKL, my faviourite Disney resort as its away from all the hustle and bustle of the Downtown busy resorts with all the traffic. So easy driving to & from when using the Osecola Parkway, if you are not on the Disney buses.


Yes we liked it there although the rooms aren't as nice as OKW but the kids loved the animals out the windows.

Hev60 wrote:Hope you had/are having a wonderful time and trust you have a supply of those famous plastic poncho's ;-)


Had to buy new ones out there! Although they barely got any use, was unusually dry (for once).
#924147 by Concorde RIP
21 Jul 2016, 22:54
We love the AKL - we think it has a really great atmosphere, is the cheapest of the "deluxe" resorts probably due to no monorail. We always stay there now and absolutely love it!

Well done on surprising the young'ns - I tried this on my daughter one December and got told off! We arrived at Gatwick, and I told her at the check in desk. Her reaction - "Dad...I had plans for the xmas holidays, now you've runined them" - at age 9!

So, no more surprises for her!
#924280 by Kraken
27 Jul 2016, 18:25
Great TR & always good to hear of good experiences from "down the back" on the plane.

Love the meal pictures - particularly the Heineken included with the childrens meal :-D .
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