This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
As usual however, my holiday desire took over and I soon realised with the way our holiday dates were falling this year, it just made sense to extend the trip, and in the end it was a 17 night holiday, with my parents tagging along for the last 11 and resulted in us buying annual passes for both Disney & Universal. Cheap would not be the word I use to describe the eventual cost of our trip.
Anyway, because of the initial cheap idea, I had been persuaded that we could fly out in Econ and back in PE, all in the name of saving money (and miles for one of next years trips). So flights booked, but with me constantly checking for rewards upgrades on both legs, I was eventually presented with the chance to upgrade out outbound from Y to UC, for around £400 and some miles, which I declined
.The day before the flight we finished work and headed over a very busy and slow moving M62 to MAN to stay at Bewleys for the night. The rooms are okay (although the pillows were awful), the alcohol expensive and the food average, but at least it meant we didn't have to get up at 4:30 the next morning.
Up at around 7am, and we decided to head straight to the airport, and have breakfast in the terminal. We arrived at T2, and the Virgin check in area was heaving, but thankfully due to our gold cards, we were seen to straight away at the UC desk. Fast track stickers and lounge invite provided we were through security in no time, to the nicely renovated T2. We decided to have breakfast at Frankie and Bennys, it was average and over priced, but better than the cold toast and cereal offering in the wonderfully equipped Escape Lounge. We spent only an hour or so in the lounge before the flight was called, and we made our way down to gate 202 for boarding.
I knew the flight was going to be busy, and the gate staff were constantly giving out new boarding cards to people they were moving around to try and get everyone seated together. We decided not to board straight away like we could have with our gold card, as we were at the front of the Y cabin, and held back until just before our section was called so we could grab decent overhead locker space. Got settled in our seat, and waited with wonder for our window seat neighbour, who was thankfully a very pleasant older gentlemen.
The seat and leg room were not as bad as I remembered from my previous Y experience, which was probably due to the fact I didn't have some young chav lad in front of my with their seat reclined the whole flight
. The one thing I failed to take in to account with my seat selection, which I based on being as near to the front as possible to help with immigration queues, was the row 29 is right opposite the front bulkhead with bassinet . I noticed it immediately on sitting down and my heart sank as not one, but two couples with babies/toddlers sat in the middle section of 4, and a family of 3 (2 adults, one toddler and one baby) sat in the row behind us, this was going to be fun! Well, in fact I couldn't have been more wrong, all the kids were brilliant, the little baby across the aisle was super cute (and obviously thought I was all the cute smiles it gave me 
)and they honestly didn't cause any problems what so ever.We took off pretty much on time, it was advised we would be taking a more southerly, direct route across the Atlantic due to bad weather up by Canada (I think). The flight was almost full with 448 pax on board. We had 3 different CC serve us throughout the flight and all were professional and polite, and I really couldn't fault them at all. The FSM helped clear away our aisle, after the meal, but wasn't seen in the Y cabin otherwise.
Drinks and pretzel snacks offered quickly after take off, and they were followed by the meal service. We both had sausage and mash, which was fine, I didn't like the little pasta starter thing, but the Gu raspberry chocolate desert was very yummy. Wine was offered with the meal and then tea and coffee.
The IFE was Odyseey, started up straight away, and worked the whole flight without any problem. Yes, it isn't on demand, but the choices were good and current and on a long flight, I managed to watch a film and then catch both of the tv shows I wanted to without problem. After the meal was cleared away, I watched another film on my iPad, which I must say was great for use on the flight, listened to some music and read my book. Yes, towards the end the time did drag, and I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, but nothing major.
Midway through the flight a choc ice was offered, and whilst no specific drinks run was done, it was not a problem to nip to the galley and get a drink, which being so close we so many people do. About an hour or so from Orlando an afternoon snack of a sandwich and cookie were offered, both of which were quite nice actually, along with tea/coffee or juice.
We touched down pretty much on time, and being held to let the PE/UC pax we were amongst the first Y pax off and on our way to the immigration hall. The queue system was different from our previous trips through MCO, and this time you all had to join just one queue, rather than pick a lane. We queued for about 10mins, were dealt with with hardly a word said to us, and by this time our bags were already said by the said of the UC/PE baggage belt waiting for us.
We got straight on to the monorail not using the second bag drop, headed to the Hertz gold desk to collect our beast of a car, which we booked at a stupidly cheap price thanks to the Expedia glitch earlier in the year, and we arrived at our villa a little under 90mins after touch down
We decided to shower and head to Epcot for a nice quiet and enjoyable evening at the Food and Wine festival, only for it to be ruined by a group of rowdy (and a little merry) Brits, who were playing to all stereotypes and drinking in the Rose and Crown
All in all, I couldn't fault the flight, crew or service offered and I think that Virgin still have a strong Y product that is perfectly suited for families or people who don't have or want to spend the amount of money that flying in the Premium cabins requires. Certainly the food we had on this flight was 1000 times better than the supposed enhanced offering we had in PE on the way back (but that is for another TR!).
Thanks,
Neil
