This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
We went past the shoe scrum and headed to Dixons to collect my late birthday present a Nikon DSLR. We walked up to the Clubhouse at around 4.00 pm and went over to the brasserie to get a late lunch/early dinner.
The wife and I had leek & potato soup to start and my son and I ordered the Clubhouse Burger to follow. I can't remember what my wife had but I think they forgot our second courses because after a 20 minute wait I had to go and find out what was happening as the staff had all congregated down near the kitchen and were chatting amongst themselves. Not impressed, 10 minutes later our food arrived.
Anyway we found some seats near the window and settled down for a few hours. I tried a Mojito which was quite refreshing but as I'm not a great lover of spirits I followed up with a couple of Tiger's which was nice. The wife had a couple of Bellini's before she was called for her wash, cut and blow dry and my son kept himself entertained with the cokes and shortbread on offer by the pool table.
After a pleasant few hours relaxing we were called to the gate at around 7.30 and made our way down to the waiting plane. No queues when we got there so made our way to 9, 10 & 11a. Within a few minutes I realised that there was a problem with my seat as it wouldn't recline. After a quick look by some engineers it was concluded that it couldn't be fixed in the time available so a crew member manually reclined it for me. Drinks were served while this was being done and the FSM came over and apologised for the inconvenience.
We pushed back a little ahead of schedule and after a short taxi and wait for our turn to take off we were in the air. The seatbelt signs were off a little while later and I settled down to watch Indiana Jones. Dinner was served during the film and I had the leek & potato soup (not as good as the Clubhouse version) and then the beef pie which was OK.
Indiana Jones finished (what a strange ending, not a touch on the first 3 imo) and I elected to try and get some sleep. After several attempts to convert my seat it was obvious that it wasn't going to happen. Fortunately there were several empty seats in the middle row so one of these was made up for me and I got my head down.
Now I don't know about you but I find it really difficult to sleep while travelling but in UC I think I sort of cat nap interspersed by drinks of water, visits to the loo and checks on imap to see where we were. Being only around 7.5 hours though the flight went pretty quickly and so when the captain announced that we would shortly be landing I went back to my original seat to get my stuff together.
After quite a heavy landing and what seemed like a long taxi we were at the gate and getting off. We got down to the immigration hall at around midnight and it was obvious the there was a shift change as a number of immigration officers were closing their desks when we arrived which left 2 to deal with the non US arrivals. As we were only about fifth in line we only had to wait a few minutes but looking at the accumulating queue behind us I felt sorry for them as it looked as though they were going to be there some time.
We got down to the baggage hall and after a few minutes the bags started to arrive. Ours appeared shortly afterwards and so we went through customs and down to the bus stop to wait for a bus to the on site Marriott.
Some of you may recall that a while ago I asked if it was possible to walk to the hotel as it is only on the other side of the car park . Well after a few minutes waiting for the bus we decided to find out. Happily I can confirm that you can walk to it in about 2 minutes although as you would expect just as we were crossing the road to the entrance of the hotel the bus drove past us. Typical. 10 minutes later we were tucked up in bed.
All in all apart from the mentioned issues we had a good experience and from getting off the plane to getting in to bed was 40 minutes dead so pretty good I thought.
Miopyk[8D]
