A couple of observations, 1 which I forget to mention on the outbound. We normally take the south exit from MCO via the 417 (I think) the toll road that brings you out at the very bottom of idrive and straight on to WDW. These are now cash free. Either via sun pass or pay by plate. It will be interesting to see the admin costs on the 4 toll charges that will no doubt appear.
The second point which seems to get worse each visit is the prices. Especially the food prices. Food shopping and eating out just seems to be incredible. If you have a sweet tooth or your nephews and nieces do, be extremely careful when buying groceries and even more so for “candy”. I dread to think what I have spent on jelly beans, milk duds and M&M’s and I’m not joking when I say hundreds of dollars.
Anyways terminal b car hire return entrance has changed again, it’s slightly easier once you’ve done it as it’s now at the right hand side of the barriers for the multi-storey instead of that weird sharp left turn.
Hertz was mental and nobody was checking cars back in but telling you to leave the keys in the car and you’ll receive your receipt by email and true to their word, the invoice appeared by the time the Delta lounge welcomed us. No excess charges. Yet.
Checkin was its usual breeze and tsa precheck was very quick. It’s quite strange that the 3 airports this trip, EDI, LHR and MCO all have different requirements and strangely enough, Edinburgh (fast track) was by far and away the best, with virgins Heathrow a very close second.
Deltas lounge, which has just been extended was its usual self with the best bit of course, being escorted to the gate.
Upper was full, premium looked pretty full and didn’t venture into economy but the gate looked pretty busy.
Then it alls started to go a little pear shaped. I think the FSM was acting up from her usual CSM position, no black shirt and everything was read a little clonky from her iPad. Everything was wonderful, from the starter to the main to her instructions but it all didn’t seem to gel well. She was a little frazzled with seats not working, bells being rung, passengers not knowing what they were doing and to be honest, after the first half hour she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards and it looked like the crew were barely in control.
The seatbelt light was basically ignored throughout the whole flight with at one point 8 or 9 passengers wondering about the cabin and thats not even mentioning at the beginning of boarding when a group of passengers tried to have a game of Tetris by stuffing a very large stroller into the overhead bins while being watched by some crew.
We’ve all had those days at work when you barely feel in control, this was one of those for the crew.
It kinda calmed a bit after we eventually took off after being in a queue reminiscent of JFK, (Never ever seen that at MCO but there must have been 10 in front and the same behind us Weather was being blamed. ) when the food started to be served. The gloopy soup of yesteryear is back and very delicious but the preordered meal of a chicken burger was barely edible. Who thinks of putting a huge chicken breast of top of a slippy tomato is a great idea. The first bite of this mammoth bit of chicken and the bits of the sandwich flew in opposite directions. I gave up after that.
It was time for some sleep which actually went really well apart from again, probably over half the cabin not understanding how the seat worked. (The old A330-300 seat)
Must have slept a good few hours and woke up 2 hours before landing to a bacon roll, which you couldn’t chew, and a nice cup of tea.
Immigration and baggage reclaim were very quick and we were soon on the way to a very busy revivals lounge for a well needed shower and a proper breakfast.
What a strange flight. Rudderless is maybe a good description.
Now do I book another before Christmas or wait until the new year ?
Thanks again for reading
David
