An Easter return to the Isle of Man COMPLETED 5/10 - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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That was an easy drive to the airport, and not bad once there, either!
How nice to have the luggage all taken care of the night before. Sort of like on DCL - putting your bags out the night before disembarkation.....but there's less sadness with this one, since your vacation is about the start rather than end.
I think it's a good start to the trip when you can say the worst thing about the day was not getting nachos for dinner.
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Tanya
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A fairly relaxed and smooth day before your flight! You've got the airport routine down so well and the traffic was cooperating. I guess you more than made up for this with the journey home, but at this point, all is well!
Yes, going out was completely different to getting back!
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That was an easy drive to the airport, and not bad once there, either!
How nice to have the luggage all taken care of the night before. Sort of like on DCL - putting your bags out the night before disembarkation.....but there's less sadness with this one, since your vacation is about the start rather than end.
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Friday 3 April – part one: “right, we’ve got cows and donkeys – any other animals?”
The day started early for us, when the alarm went off at 5:00am, although in truth, we were both awake before then – one of us a long time before, one thankfully only a few minutes before. Can you guess which was which? We didn’t sleep too badly, although let’s just say I could’ve done without the action movie Mark decided to put on when we went to bed… not exactly conducive to sleep, shall we say?
We headed downstairs to breakfast at around 5:30am, and the place was absolutely deserted, so I took the opportunity to get some photos of the reception area and the bar.
We grabbed a table for four, but Barb and Dave, who followed us down, ended up on a table of two next door to us, as a family of four rocked up, plonked themselves on the table behind us, and threw down their rucksacks on the floor, making it almost impossible to move the chairs back. The whole setup was very weird. It was a mum, dad and two kids, and then as soon as they arrived, the dad disappeared and we never saw him again…
It wasn’t the only weird sight. We had a couple roll up, him in shorts, and her in a skirt and thick tights. They were carrying what looked like skis, but we weren’t quite sure, given what he was wearing.
I had a couple of bowls of cereal, and some cheese, and there was also croissants, toast, pastries, cold meat, so there was a good selection. All filled up, we went to check up, settling up for dinner last night, which was only £54 for the four of us, which I thought was really good.
Dave and Barb set off, as they knew they’d be slower than us, and we found them just before security. We couldn’t believe how quiet bag drop was at EasyJet this morning. We’d seen it a lot busier on an ordinary Saturday morning, and considering they’d been carrying on about this would be the busiest Good Friday ever, we certainly weren’t seeing any sign of it yet.
We walked straight through the passport checks, and waited about five minutes for security. Both Barb and Dave got selected for a nice pat down, or as one of the security guys said, “they’re getting a massage!” My Eeyore case got tugged for a random check, and I said to the guy, “mine’s the one with the Eeyores”, then I commented that my cow’s tail was poking out, as I have a cow bookmark. He said to me “right, we’ve got cows and donkeys – any other animals?” I told him those were my two favourites!
I was soon cleared and we made our way through and headed for the special assistance area…
I was quite shocked at how far this was from security, as given that people coming here probably have mobility issues, I was expecting it to be right by security, but not a bit of it. It also wasn’t very close to the toilets either, which seemed like odd planning to me. Ironically, Dave got asked to take part in a survey later at the gate, and they asked him about the availability of toilets at the airport, and he made that very point to them.
We settled down to pass the time until our gate was called, and Barb would be taken over there in the motorised unit that runs out to the gate, with Dave getting himself an iPod while we waited. Apparently he got a good deal – trust me, that’s very important to him!
At around 7:15am, I heard a guy go up to another family and say that they were at gate 55. From that, I immediately knew they were flying somewhere in the UK, and there weren’t many UK flights heading out shortly, so I guessed rightly that they’d be on ours. Then the guy came over to see us. Barb asked if anyone could go with her, as if anyone could, I’d go with her as her carer, and he told me that there was space, so we hopped aboard.
The driver we had was really friendly and chatty, and turned out to be quite a keen photographer, after he saw me taking lots of photos as we drove along. I was horrified at the small areas they had to squeeze this thing through. I commented about the way the bins were placed, right in the middle of the floor, and he told us that regularly they come in to discover that they’ve added yet more advertising in the middle of the floor, and they can barely get round it, but as he said, advertising pays, and this is a loss leader. He explained that the airport provides this service for all passengers, as of course if you had one airline providing it, they’d only want to do it for their passengers. I guess they recoup it by airline taxes no doubt.
We were taken out to the gate, then he took our boarding passes and got those swiped, came back and in we went through two huge metal doors. We were joining the sloping walkway down to the gate, which was interesting, given people were also walking down it.
When we got there, we spotted Mark and Dave, already seated, with Dave doing his survey.
Sorry it’s a bit blurry!
Now here’s the weird bit, when we got out, Barb headed for the disabled access seats, and I went to sit with her. The other guy who’d needed help got off with his wife, and we didn’t see him again – well, except when the wheelchair came out for Barb, he was there to board early, but he seemed to have no problems with the fact that we waited about 10 minutes to board, and apparently he struggles with standing. Even better, when we got to the other end, which included getting down a flight of steps, he managed absolutely fine… hmmm….
Anyway, we were all allowed to go through together, which was good, given that we were just behind speedy boarding, which was made up of only about 10 people in the whole plane. We were soon on, and we had no problems getting our luggage stowed above our heads, although when we got to the other end, it was clear there were a lot of people who took up luggage space near us, but were at the back of the plane. That’s something I object to. Keep your luggage with you!
We had a bit of a long taxi out to the runway, which felt like it went on for about 10 minutes. The whole time, just about all we saw were EasyJet planes, no surprise really, given they’re now the biggest operator out of here. As you can see from the few photos I managed to scrape through the rain covered window, it was pretty bleak and horrible outside.
We finally made it on to the runway, and then we were immediately up into the air… and pretty much straight into this.
We did finally rise above the clouds for a while…
… but all in all, it was a pretty miserable flight, as far as the view went, so there really aren’t any photos from it.
We literally only saw water a couple of minutes before we were due to land…
… and the island itself came into view just as we were about to touch down at Ronaldsway Airport:
The whole issue there reminds me of why Disney had to change the GAC to the new DAS system. It just takes a few people to ruin it for the rest of those who really need it.
Interesting to see the airport relatively quiet though, especially with the holiday! Glad the flight was easy enough, even if you couldn't see anything.
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
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The whole issue there reminds me of why Disney had to change the GAC to the new DAS system. It just takes a few people to ruin it for the rest of those who really need it.
Very true.
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Interesting to see the airport relatively quiet though, especially with the holiday! Glad the flight was easy enough, even if you couldn't see anything.
I just couldn't get over how quiet it was, especially given all the panic stories in the news about how mobbed the place would be!
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The hotel room looks comfy. 
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We didn’t sleep too badly, although let’s just say I could’ve done without the action movie Mark decided to put on when we went to bed… not exactly conducive to sleep, shall we say? 
My Eeyore case got tugged for a random check, and I said to the guy, “mine’s the one with the Eeyores”, then I commented that my cow’s tail was poking out, as I have a cow bookmark. He said to me “right, we’ve got cows and donkeys – any other animals?” I told him 
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