Sorry it's taken so long - I just haven't had a spare minute to sit down and type this all up. I apologise if it's a bit longwinded, but I can't seem to condense mine as well as others do. Ah well, here goes
Thursday 6 January
After many months of planning and eager anticipation, the day of our departure had finally arrived. Having packed our luggage into the car the night before so we wouldn’t disturb our guests (we run a small guest house), we were up and on the road by 4am. The journey to Manchester airport only takes around 90 minutes from York, and check in was 6.30am, but we weren’t taking any chances! Plus, we had to pick up my stepdaughter and her boyfriend on the way to the airport, so had to allow extra time for trying to fit their cases into our already jam-packed boot – how we did it is still beyond me, and I remember thinking at the time that if we bought anything else while we were in Florida, we would have to buy a roof rack as well, or someone would be travelling home by train (more of that at the end of the trip reports!!)
This was it – we were finally on our way – we being my husband John, our son Andrew (8) and John’s daughter Amy and her boyfriend Jay. I was the only one who had been to the USA before, and I couldn’t wait to see their faces when we went to the Magic Kingdom. My last visit was in 1977, and at that time I think that this was the only Disney park, so I was particularly looking forward to seeing whether it had altered.
By 5.15am, we were almost at the junction with the M60 off the M62, so as we were making such good time we stopped for a coffee. Andrew was looking rather bemused – he hadn’t taken too kindly to being woken at 3am. He has special needs and can’t talk, so it’s difficult to know exactly how much he understands. We’d been telling him for weeks that he was going to see Mickey Mouse – he loves the Disney cartoons, so we’d been playing his favourite Christmas singalong Disney tape and telling him he’d soon be seeing all the characters. We are sure that he will be able to communicate with us someday, and I really hope he will be able to tell us whether he did understand what was happening at this age.
We pulled up outside the departure lounge around 6am and waited for the “meet and greet” service we had booked. It was fairly expensive, but we felt it was worth it as we could unload everything onto luggage trolleys, put Andrew into his wheelchair and then hand the keys to the driver and walk straight into the departure lounge – great!
There were a few people already waiting at the check-in desk (which didn’t open until 6.30am) so we joined the queue straightaway, as we had been advised by Virgin to check in as soon as possible to try and get the seats we had requested. I had asked if we could have bulkhead seats in view of Andrew’s disability, but they explained that it is not possible to reserve these seats in advance. They “allocated” five seats together (not bulkhead ones), but made a note that we would like bulkhead seats if any were available on the day. I think they are held back in case there are any young babies on board requiring sky cots. Anyway, I didn’t even have to ask – as soon as I handed our tickets over, the check in clerk told me we had all been given bulkhead seats in the same row – fantastic – 10 out of 10 Virgin! After all the anxieties I had had about Virgin after reading about the negative experiences some of the people on this forum had with them, I have to say Virgin looked after us extremely well before, during and after the flight.
Having checked in our luggage and got our boarding cards we went straight through to the departure lounge and headed to one of the cafes for breakfast.
We had a rather uninspiring and expensive cooked breakfast, including the strangest scrambled eggs I have ever tasted in my life. They didn’t particularly taste of egg, and had the consistency of small granules – I’m sure it was egg substitute.
While we were washing that down with coffee, I pulled out the maps and driving
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