Day 2 - Saturday 12th September
Our flight was not leaving until 1:30 in the afternoon so we had no worries about getting up early and rushing around. We'd arranged to meet everyone in the lobby to go down to the airport and drop off the bags. 7:30 and I was wide awake and so excited that I was jumping on the bed!!!!!
Ian was not so awake, was not jumping on the bed and was not impressed!!
I managed to play nice for a while, texting my friends and watching out of the window until Ian finally came around. I was really excited because I got to watch our plane land and at this point Ian started to show some interest in being awake. He wanted to know whether we were flying on the plane called "Jersey Girl". For all those of you that are confused, all of the Virgin Atlantic planes have names and Jersey Girl, for reasons that I cannot understand, is Ian's favourite - bless!
So we watched out of the window as our plane went passed but we couldn't tell yet whether it was Jersey Girl.
Everyone started to organise themseleves and we all met in the lobby at about 10am and we made our way down to the airport. Now Ian and I were flying in premium economy, Ian's Mum had checked in online and only needed to drop her bags off and Claire and Daniel couldn't check in online because it wouldn't let them
. So when we got to the check in hall it was very busy, we all joined our respective queues to check in. This took far loner than we expected, which we later found out was due to the lady at the desk checking in a party of 28 people when she shouldn't have!!! We were not impressed especially since premium economy should have priority and Ian's Mum was done first! I shouldn't complain as Claire and Daniel were still in the line when we finished too.
It was about 11:30 by the time we were all checked in so we went through the security checks and in the departure lounge. Now no one had eaten anything yet because we hadn't expected it to take so long to check-in. So we went and grabbed some lunch, mmmmmm sausage and chips! I swear food in an airport is way more expensive than the food at Disney World!
After we ate we had about 45 mins before we could board the plane so we split up to go and get magazines/snacks and duty free!
I also went and snapped a pic of our plane, sorry Ian it's Virginia Plains
Boarding time finally came and Ian and I left evryone else in line to get on board as we had a priority line and where whisked upstairs. It was really exciting, we had never been upstairs before, it was so easy to forget that there were hundreds of people downstairs when there are only about 40 people around you.
Ian got some fake champagne and I had some orange juice as we relaxed whilst waiting for everyone else to get on.
It didn't take long before we were ready to go and we pulled away from the aiport 15 minutes early!!!!!!
The start of the flight was pretty uneventful until the drinks service started. We were right at the back of the cabin and the last to be served, as Claire (cabin crew) was pouring our drinks we started to chat.
Claire: How long are you away for?
David: 3 weeks, we're really excited as we are getting married.
Claire: Oh, congratulations how exciting. Where is everyone else?
David: laughs, downstairs
Claire: laughs, I can't believe you've let the bride sit downstairs
Ian: No, i'm the Bride!!!!!
Claire turned red and was really embarased, we on the other hand found the whole thing very amusing. She apologised and we told her not to worry, we found the whole thing really funny and we chatted with her some more. We then heard her tellling the other crew member, Danny, what had happened.
About 5 minutes later Claire reappeared with some proper Champagne and some chocolates as a joint congratulations/apology.
The flight was pretty smooth overall and we chatted more with Claire and Danny and our friends took turns to come up to visit us.
We had a great flight, nice food and great service, we had to have a picture with Claire and Danny before we landed.
We landed about an hour earlier than scheduled and because of our seat location we were the second people of the plane!!!!
Our speed at getting off the plane was really an advantage as we got through immigration so fast and they were even nice to us!!!!!! That had to be a first, US border control is usually quite grumpy but we decided that this must be because we normally get off the plane last so they're grumpy by the time they get to us. Our bags were off quickly but we had to wait for everyone else. So we waited and waited and waited a bit longer but we were finally there and off we went.
Ian's Mum was catching the magical express to Pop Century whilst we went downstairs to the Budget car rental desk with Claire and Daniel to collect our car as we were all staying at Port Orleans French Quarter. This took quite a while, I never understand why most people stand and the desk for 10 minutes while it took us 2????? We finally got our car and then played the, get all the bags in to the car game. Ian and I had our two big cases and our two small cabin size ones, Claire and Daniel had three bags. We had to put one of the seats down but we managed to do it in the end and we were off to Disnet World!!!!!!!!