VS074 MCO-MAN 10 AUG 12 (Premium Economy)

This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

Well it’s sadly that time again.

We checked in online bang on 24 hours and still only got seq 15, 16 and 17, never mind.

We were quite excited as the seat map a couple of days earlier became available and were were able to select our seats and the new refurbished aircraft seating plan was showing…….great…..new IFE we thought. Wrong, when we checked in our seats had been changed and we were back to the same old 747 as usual on this occasion Ruby Tuesday, although we still had PE seats in the bubble so that was a bonus. Sadly our friends who had managed to get flights with us at the same time had been shunted downstairs.

Spent the last night in the Hyattt Regency at MCO, checked out and went off to join the hoards queuing for security checking. Oh my goodness what a shock, only one of the two sides was open and the crowds were spilling way back into the terminal building there were hundreds of people. Looked like it was going to take some time to get through, Oh dear we had seriously left it too late.

Got through security, got off the shuttle train and literally ran full pelt to the gate. We were the last to board, and to be honest, the gate should have closed at 8:15, we arrived at 8:20 completely out of breath and barely able to even speak (note to self, join a gym). In the process of all this rush I managed to lose a very expensive necklace, that’ll teach us to take too long having the ‘last supper’ in the hemisphere (seen as McCoys is closed for refurbishment).

Pushed back on time, the usual Vic Reeves safety video launched then out went the lights and we taxied on to the runway in the dark. An extremely smooth take off, we were on our way.

As per usual we were given a questionnaire to complete (why do we always get given these I wonder?)

Shortly after take off, the dinner run began

Starter
Balmoral smoked salmon with cucumber, lemon and crème fraiche salad

Main Course
Braised beef and leek stew with herb dumplings
Stir-fried Chicken with chilli pepper sauce

Penne pasta with roasted tomato, butternut squash and Alfredo sauce with toasted crumb

Oven baked bread rolls

Dessert
Strawberry and rhubarb crumble tart

Lacey Jnr (who is actually a grown up) chose to have the Beef Stew and Dumplings, little piggy that she is after stuffing her face in the hemisphere. She announced that the smoked salmon was very tasty as was the stew. Nice thick gravy aldente carrots and two proper dumplings. The crumble was ‘strawberry jam pie’, not so good.

It was nice to see proper crockery and metal cutlery and a proper wine glass all served on a tray with a proper cotton cloth , unlike the economy experience on our outbound journey, ‘plastic city’ no less, slapped on a tray with a bit of paper as a cloth.

Anyway around they came with the offer of tea or hot chocolate, really…..why hot chocolate particularly, not a fan myself it’s the kind of thing I would offer the kids before bed maybe!! All the meal was served in one go on one tray, no waiting for dessert to be served separately.

The good old IFE sprung into action….just about….and we had no menu on the screen, so it was pot luck, couldn’t select directly and the ‘elapsed time’ message was in the middle of both mine and Lacey Jnr’s screens the whole time. My headphones only worked on one ear but that was soon remedied with a request to one of our two male crew members who were looking after us very efficiently and they were promptly replaced with fully functioning ones.

Meal run complete, I decided to sit back and watch Alvin and the Chipmunks, it was then I realised I had a dodgy and very uncomfortable seat which moved back and forth of it’s own accord and the leg rest wouldn’t stay up which was very annoying so I went for a wander to see my pals downstairs in PE. What a difference , their seats were much newer and way more comfortable, they had a pull down footrest underneath the seat in front in addition to the leg rest in their seats. Sort of wished we had been seated downstairs too.

8am came and breakfast was served

Scrambled eggs with bacon
Caramelised onion and ricotta frittata
Tea and Coffee

I chose the full English which comprised of Bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage and a cherry tomato. It was hot and perfectly edible and was followed by tea coffee or orange juice.

Sadly breakfast reduced us back into ‘plastic city’ with paper cups for our drinks.

Landed at Manchester, 40 minutes ahead of time . A very quick disembarkation, into a nice quiet Manchester passport control. Only our flight had come in. Baggage was quickly onto the conveyor and so that was it. We are home once again and looking as usual for our next adventure.

Apart from the sadly lacking aircraft which we all know will be rectified (we hope) in the near future, the overall experience was extremely good. The crew and ground staff were excellent, cheerful and helpful, a very enjoyable experience, thank you very much Virgin Atlantic, see you next time, hopefully on a better aircraft.

Thanks for an awesome trip report! I recently sat downstairs in PE on my MAN-MCO flight and I found it to be better than the bubble,for the fact that the seats were newer,and that the service recieved was much better-e.g.personal drink/food orders, frequent orders for drinks;simply because there are only 2 rows of 2-4-2 so for me,the service is much for personal and better.

I bet you were disappointed to see you'd got the old 747 & more so when your friends were seated apart from you. I'm glad that you were pleased with the flight overall though after your hurried entrance to the gate.
I hope I'm doing a favourable TR in a few months time.

Katie