V-Flyer

Well I’m going to apologise in advance for the length of this report, it’s because a) it’s my first report so I’m keen and b) there’s quite a bit about travelling on Virgin with small children and infants so it might be of use to people who surf in via search engines.

Our flight was an Easter holiday special from Glasgow to Orlando, 2 adults, a 6 year old, a 4 year old and our 11 week old baby. Full flight, 315 on board! I live near Glasgow airport so we went to the airport the day before (Saturday) to see G-VSXY take off on time on the first flight of the Glasgow summer season. So everything going well.

Our flight was due to lift off 10.05 on the Sunday, so I woke at 6am and checked the Virgin website to find there was a delay until 12.15 however the website clearly stated that check-in will remain open until 2 hours before the revised departure time (and most of us had already checked-in online, see below). So I cancelled the taxi and let the kids sleep in a bit, no point hanging about the airport for 5 hours with tired kids. I woke the kids at 8am, breakfast and the taxi picked us up at 9am. Then my mobile rang - Glasgow ground crew wondering where I was. I said I was on our way, we arrived at “Terminal 2” aka the Portacabin which was deserted apart from 3 members of staff looking at their watches. They treated me with suspicion and said they had never heard of keeping the check-in open for a delayed flight. The Virgin staff on the flight (Gatwick crew, who were quite apologetic) confirmed my hunch - they are contract staff and only wear the uniform until they clock off hence they were waiting on me to go home!

Once in the airport I watched the incoming flight but rather than the expected G-VSXY Beauty Queen it was G-VKSS Mademoiselle Rouge. I later found out the Manchester and Gatwick flights had been diverted to Tampa due to thunderstorms, only the earlier outbound Glasgow flight had made it in to Orlando. So they had switched planes and sent G-VSXY back to Manchester and bumped the delayed G-VKSS onto the returning Glasgow flight. Great.

One of the other issues I had pre-flight was to do with online check-in with a baby and pre-booked basinet. I wasn’t quite sure how to do this (and raised the question here http://v-flyer.com/forum/index.php?f=4&t=273473&rb_v=viewtopic As you can expect we were rather keen to be guaranteed the bulkhead seats so went in the day before and attempted on-line check-in with mixed results - it would allow the 2 adults and 2 children to check in but not the infant, and it didn’t confirm seat numbers. However when we got the airport the check-in went smoothly, despite being the last to check in we got the bulkhead seats we wanted (30AC and 31AC). They took our pram without question despite it being a two-piece Jane “travel system” (the chassis folds separate from the infant car seat that we weren’t taking on board) but we were well under luggage allowance anyway.

I thought the free satchels for the kids were great, the bags themselves were decent quality although the hats felt a bit cheap (although the kids loved them). The activity books were a bit above their age range so went unused but the multi-colour pencil was good and the staff onboard gave out paper for a drawing competition. I also gave them two old livery model 747s that I found on Amazon otherwise I’d be £60 out of pocket if I bought onboard.

We were lucky to have the new touch screen IFE system, the video on demand was great but I was that busy trying to keep the boys happy I didn’t have much time to view (my newspaper and book also went untouched for 2 weeks). However the choice looked sufficient to keep me interested for 24 hours if given the chance. The two things they loved was the in-flight map and head-to-head Battleships. They kinda struggled with the other games due to their age, my middle one is used to playing the Wii so couldn’t grasp having to press buttons (he actually took a swing with the remote trying to play golf).

The basinet was perfect for our baby, he was a good fit for it. We were also adjacent to the central galley area which is unused for most of the flight so it gave us the extra room to pace up and down with him to get him off to sleep. It also gave us access to boiled and cooled water if we needed it for an emergency bottle (he’s b/f). I also went through the curtain a few times to Premium Economy and made use of the passageway behind row 26 at the doors as it was darker through there. All in all, the baby was the happiest passenger on the flight! If you want me to be picky (oh go on then) the only fault I could find with the flight, and it really is a minor one, was the basinet location is mounted on the toilet wall and he would occasionally jump when the toilet was flushed.

Food wise, I’m weird and quite like airline food however, my eldest was a bit picky over dinner, the kids meals promised on the Virgin website didn’t materialise and the choice of sandwiches before landing wasn’t suitable for kids so I marked it down for that.

The best thing about the flight was the Gatwick staff - they we all very friendly and most of them came up to see the baby. We had an incident towards the end of the flight where the baby’s finger had been jammed in the seat-rest cover for the IFE, caused an indentation and bruising. I went back to the rear of the cabin to get ice, by the time I got back there was a swarm of attendants helping out, provided an ice-pack, Calpol if required and general first aid. I’m first aid trained myself and they were better than me! Filled in an accident report form and they checked up with us every so often. The baby was ok, bruising went away in a couple of days.

Due to the delay, our flight arrived at MCO shortly after a Gatwick jumbo, however the PF did a pretty rapid taxi to the gate and told us to get off as soon as we could to beat the queue at immigration! Fortunately we were picked out of line by immigration staff due to the baby however we still had to wait as unfortunately the baggage carrousel packed in due to the amount of unclaimed baggage so we had to wait for the Glasgow folk to catch up before typically our pram was last off. The layout of MCO confused us too, taking the bags back off us then we couldn’t find them but we’ll know for future.

All in all, glad I went Virgin rather than the charter alternative!

Many thanks for the detailed TR, Fuzzy

It brings back memories of how travelling with young ones changes the whole dynamic of the trip.

Thanks for posting.

Nick

Fuzzy

Thanks for such a detailed TR

Your sense of excitement comes through loud and clear and thank you for sharing your experience with many V-Flyers who will be faced with similar challenges with taking young ones to Florida and do use this Site for tips.

I can confirm that there was some severe thunderstorms the day before in Orlando, which led to the diversions, but I think that there was a planned rotation of aircraft that day.

Hope the young ones lapped up all Orlando had to offer

buns

Fuzzy, excellent TR thank you for sharing and a very useful insight.

Hope you all enjoyed Florida

Jon

Hi Fuzzy thanks for the trip report hope you had a fantastic holiday! Always good to hear Glasgow reports too - must admit you echo my experience of many of the ground staff here.

Glenn

Good report, thanks. Brings back memories we flew to Orlando when our little girl was 10 months old and our boys were 10 and 6, glad they're a bit older now!!!

An epically, awesome detailed TR - great job Shame about the ground staff but, oh boy, sounds like the CC made up for that

Appreciate you taking the time to post the little things that V-Flyers thrive on - every aspect is useful to someone, so thanks

And don't worry about MCO, once you are used to it it's a breeze

buns wrote:I can confirm that there was some severe thunderstorms the day before in Orlando, which led to the diversions, but I think that there was a planned rotation of aircraft that day.

Apologies if I jumped to the wrong conclusion, the Glasgow contract ground staff did not provide a reason for the delay and being the 1st & 2nd flight out of the season there wasn't any history to work out when the A330s are switched.

I've got another comment about alternatives to soft drink for kids (mine aren't used to caffeine based drinks so they were hyper for the flight) but I'll raise that in a separate thread.

Otherwise the flight and holiday is fantastic and we've already started planning to go back. Myself and plenty of Scots (and quite a few people from Carlisle, Newcastle and Middlesbrough) appreciate Virgin operating these flights. It's a bit of a bummer to travel from Manchester when I live next to GLA!