This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
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We were up early and foolishly went into the Executive lounge for a spot of breakfast before heading over to the terminal. I had already checked in on line before leaving home so only had to do the bag drop and pick up boarding passes. I have previously had trouble with a boarding pass printed at home. There was no queue at the upper desk and we were quickly off to security. The priority door appeared to be closed up, but there was still a priority channel once we got to the main security area and we were able to go straight through.
We were in the Club House by about 8.30 and as we had had three drinks in the Executive lounge and shared a bottle of bubbly the night before we stuck to drinking tea until ten o'clock when I decided I would try a bellini. Mrs D wanted a sip and decided she would have one too. So I had another and a chicken avocado and bacon sandwich. It was absolutely delicious and at that point I wished I had not eaten any breakfast at the Hilton, even though I did only have a very light serving there. We were told at check in we would be called about 40 mins before the flight, but I like to board a bit earlier so we left the clubhouse about 10.50 for the ten minute walk to the gate.
We got to the gate and there was no queue and we boarded straight away. There were already six seated in the UC cabin. We were 6A and 6K and only had one piece of hand luggage. There was no one in 7A so I was able to stow the bag near my seat. We had a couple of glasses of Lanson before buckling up and pushing off on time at 11.40. There was just the one empty seat in Upper. PE downstairs only had 10 passengers and the total for the flight was 173.
We were told there may be a bit of turbulence about an hour into the flight.
Menus were brought round and I had already decided I was going to try the vegetarian option, which was Paneer musallam, chunks of homemade indian cheese in a rich cashew almond and coconut gravy. Mrs D decided on fillet steak for her main and we both chose the smoked salmon and crayfish tail starter. Before service ***** (CC in charge of our cabin) came up to Mrs D to say there was no smoked salmon but went on to explain they were just one serving short of what had been requested. "That's OK" says Mrs D, "He'll have the soup. He always has the soup when we go out." "Yes I do, but that's on the ground. Not in a plane that is about to hit turbulence." says I. Anyway, after a short and very friendly bit of banter my choice of starter has changed to Mushroom gnocchi. I am to be awarded some airmiles for the inconvenience. I don't know how many, but to be honest the whole conversation about eating soup in turbulence cheered me up and I didn't mind anyway.
Lunch was served and smoked salmon and crayfish was a very small serving. My mushroom gnocchi was very tasty. Mrs D really enjoyed her steak. My meal was nice, but the cubes of cheese didn't seem to have any flavour of their own. It reminded me of tofu. The sauce was delicious and I was happy with my choice. We both followed with the white chocolate and mango mousse which was again delicious. When offered cheese and port I asked for just a small piece of Stilton and a tiny glass of port just for the taste. **** served me this and brought half a tumbler full of port with an apology that her hand slipped. "You don't have to drink it all." Yeah right. I drank it all and loved it. The third member of our cabin crew was *****. They were all very attentive to the passengers. Happy and smiling and they really made it a very pleasant experience. I have already written to Virgin to say thank you.
After the meal a lot of passengers, including Mrs D, decided to go flat bed. Window blinds came down and it was pretty much like a night flight. I tried to watch a film but I always find the sound too muffled and I gave up. I tried to listen to music but the choice was very limited with no option to skip or choose tracks, so I gave up on that too.
I didn't really need anything to eat with afternoon tea but managed a piece of smoked salmon sandwich and scone.
We touched down in Orlando about 16.10 their time. Sadly the Manchester flight was already on the stand. They had 260 passengers disembark and head for immigration in front of us. Because there were only 10 in PE downstairs we were off quickly. The order of disembarking was PE and Upper from downstairs, the bubble, then the rest of economy.
We joined the long queue which snaked around about six times, but it was moving reasonably quickly. We had gone one lane up and back when we were pulled out to use the self service machines because we were on estas and had been before. Help was on hand which was good because I got a bit confused when it came to the finger printing bit. A picture of two hands appears on the screen. All you have to do is tap one of them to choose if you want your left or right hand printed. Then you put the chosen had on the scanner below. We then had to queue again to speak to a real person, but that went fairly quickly. We could see our bags were already on the carousel so picked them up and headed for customs. We were through the whole process in under 30 minutes which I thought was good.
I kept hold of our luggage for the sky train to the main terminal. I had the two larger cases which were about 22kg each and Mrs D had two smaller cases about 16kg. My hand luggage which can be worn as a back pack weighed in at 8 kg. We wheeled ourselves over to the Hyatt and were soon in our room. Hotels in the US don't seem to understand that some people like to drink tea. There was no kettle and no milk but there was one breakfast tea bag. We got ourselves sorted and went down to Starbucks.
Dick D
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Last edited by dickydotcom on 25 Feb 2015, 13:28, edited 3 times in total.
. UC for our September trip 
I was in Germany recently and no kettle in my hotel room there either! 
