Doncaster is a small airport so we cleared security very quickly and found the bar and shopping area. We were gate 3 out of 6 gates!
The plane had been sat there longer than we had been at the airport, surprisingly, because planes don't make money whilst they're on the ground!
We boarded by ten past 9 and the doors were shut and the steps away by half past ten - just on time. The captain came on and told us we were to use the north runway so we taxied out, then ACC changed us to the south-west runway so we retaxied and moved around. We were the only plane taking off as far as I could tell.
The plane looked fairly old, the carpet and signs were wearing and you could tell it had been in service for a while. I'm not sure if TOM acquired this plane brand-new or not but it looked like it needed a retrofit.
Seats were economy seats, nothing special. They hadn't been changed to leather, so not all of the fleet has been retrofitted with those yet, this surprised me because you would have thought they'd retrofit the long-haul aircraft before the short-hauls? We were in the air by twenty to eleven with a flight time of 8hours 40. Whilst we were boarding there was an 'informational video' showing, basically advertising things you could buy from ThomsonFly.
Very soon after take-off seat belts were allowed to be taken off so I went to the loo, which was supposed to be just a few rows infront of me, however that loo was perminately 'occupied' So I had to go down the aircraft to use another. There was an announcement explaining that only premium pax may use the loo at row one and no other pax were allowed to, in addition there was only one cross over point and it was asked that pax did not cross a gally. At one point a girl sat behind me went to use the loo in premium, and she was told off but she said she had a kidney infection and the queue was too long for the other loos - I thought she should have got up sooner and got in the queue earlier.
Meals were soon being served - you had to pre buy meals, which we did for six pounds a head, there was some confusion though and only my brother in seat 18-C was given a meal from the trolley service, myself and my mum had to be asked 'did you guys order a meal' to which we replied yes and a couple were quickly rounded up for us. When mine arrived the ice-cream was melted, and my brother hadn't been given one, so we got new ones. The couple infront of us wanted tea but hadn't been given a mug on one of their trays, it took 4 cabin crew members to find one for them. There was no choice of food - unless you had previously booked a veggie meal etc, it was chicken carbonara with bacon and potatoes and greens. It tasted Ok but it was no great shakes. I don't understand why they couldn't cook enough meals for everyone. The airline knows exactly who wants a meal before hand so can't they just load the right number and cook all of them? It seemed very disorganised.
The IFE was dreadful, it consisted of a couple of TV screens in the roof and some monitors on bulk-heads, the movies shown were Ice Age 2 and Finding Nemo. I didn't watch either as it's not my cup of tea, so I read and listened to my iPod instead. In between movies there was a SkyMap, after the movies some BBC programmes were shown such as Top Gear.
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There were a couple of bar rounds and one duty-free round. It was a pound for a can of coke, I drank water from the water fountains onboard.
We did get served an 'afternoon tea' basically it was a pre-packaged box with a cheese sandwich, a scone with jam and cream and a carton of fresh orange juice. However you could tell the carts had been loaded into the hold and then brought up to galley level to serve because the orange carton was frozen when we were served and everything else was cold. I thought it would have been better if they had swapped the dinner service carts full of rubbish for the afternoon tea carts just after dinner service had been collected, giving time for the new carts to adjust and defrost!
Afternoon Tea was served about 2 hours before we landed, after that there was no more bar services or duty free rounds. We were given green visa waiver forms in the flight, and an informational video was shown twice about how to fill it all in - with the threat of fines and delayed entry to the U.S. if it was incorrectly done. The plane did run out of green forms, with numerous announcements made over the PA to inform pax not to make a mistake!
On the approach to Sanford we flew over cape canaveral - you could see everything, all the launch pads and buildings. We are visiting on saturday and we're really excited about it.
The landing looked as if it was going to be really bad - just a few moments before landing the plane was wobbling alot and the captain seemed to be fighting to keep us level but in actual fact the landing wasn't bad at all.
Being practically at the front of the plane we were one of the first people into immigration and so were processed quite quickly. I wasn't prepared for the random questions from the officer and I was taken by surprise - he also told me that he wouldn't let his son have hair like mine! I just had it dyed all black with blue streaks on the left hand side [:D]
Although we cleared immigration quickly our luggage was one of the last sets of bags to come out of the carousel and we waited ages for them.
This meant we were one of the last family groups onto the transfer coach to our resort which then took about an hour to get us to international drive seeing as we landed at Sanford rather than Orlando International.
Overall the flight was as expected, a short-haul carrier trying hard to tap into b&s routes, I'd much rather have flown Virgin, but it wasn't my choice because I didn't pay!
Just to update you on how the holiday is going - we did Magic Kingdom today and we're going to Animal Kingdom tomorrow. I can't wait to go back to Animal Kingdom - it was one of my favourite parks two years ago and it should be even better this year with the new Everest ride - which we saw being built last time we were there.
