Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising - the trip report! THIS SECTION COMPLETED 4/12 - Page 6 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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I hope you get better fast. I had that one year. I could feel the throat get sore and coughing and such and when I went home I was just whipped and needed to sleep for days.
I love the modern/futuristic vibe of The Bloc. So ! And so convenient as you walked right to security. Sending that the antibiotic has you right as rain very, very quickly.
Love the convenience to the BLOC but not so sure about the wet room. (Too many trips during the night.) I would have to do like Mark and shower in the AM. Hope the new meds get you back on your feet quickly.
So sorry to hear you are under the weather and that it actually hit you while on holiday. Get better soon because you know there are people here waiting for you to share your adventures!
Fortunately, that's not an issue, as I already have a number of instalments done from when we were away, so at least all I have to do now is post them.
Loved the pictures of the little hotel room. Don't like that you're not feeling well. DW and I just got over that stuff within the last week-10 days. Here's hoping you feel better soon.
I've caught up with the TR and look forward to reading/following along.
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Cute little hotel room! For one night stay it's just right!
Hope you continue to feel better!
I am feeling better this morning - although I had a couple of horrible coughing fits during the night, I managed to actually sleep/nap lying down properly for two and a half hours without an issue and the best I'd managed before was an hour, so that's a huge improvement!
I hope you get better fast. I had that one year. I could feel the throat get sore and coughing and such and when I went home I was just whipped and needed to sleep for days.
I know that feeling. It wouldn't have been so bad if I could've slept on Sunday night and I should've done, as I was completely exhausted, but I just couldn't lie down for long periods of time without coughing all the time.
I love the modern/futuristic vibe of The Bloc. So ! And so convenient as you walked right to security. Sending that the antibiotic has you right as rain very, very quickly.
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Friday 20 February – part two: there are how many of us on board?
We headed upstairs, and first tried the No. 1 lounge. I hadn’t made a booking here, as I have a membership card, which entitles you to two for the price of one in here. The only downside is that you can’t book in advance, you can only enquire on the day, and if they’re not full, and they can accommodate you, then you’re in for effectively half price, but if they can’t, then tough. The second we approached the entrance, I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would be, as it looked packed to me, and sure enough, as soon as I explained what I wanted to do, I was told they were full. Oh well, it was worth a try.
As we were on the top level now, and Frankie and Benny’s, a restaurant was on that level, we figured we’d go and have breakfast there, as we usually have good experiences there.
There was only one other couple waiting in front of us, and of course they lucked out and got a window table, whereas we didn’t, but heck, it wasn’t the end of the world, so long as the food and service were good. Sadly neither were. Our server did not get any tip from us, as the food turned up long before our drinks did, brought out by someone else. When she arrived with the drinks, she tried to hand me a pot of tea, and we had to remind her I’d ordered a pineapple juice. Generally, she was just never around when you needed her.
Mark went for the New England breakfast, made up of two rashers of bacon (poor Piglet! ) , two sausages, two fried eggs, Heinz baked beans, roasted tomato, herb potatoes and a grilled flat mushroom.
.... while I had the Frankie’s French toast, served with yoghurt and fresh fruit, and after checking on the fruit and discovering it was made up of blueberries, strawberries and bananas, I knew it was safe for me. I will be honest, I’ve had much better French toast before, mainly in America, and this was a real disappointment to me. All in all, I did not particularly enjoy our meal here.
Once we were done with breakfast, we headed out, and found some seats. Mark went and did some shopping, and I caught up on the trip report. At one point, we did think that we’d go and connect the laptops to a power supply, but the plugs wouldn’t actually fit into the sockets, which was impressive, given that both were British!
It was here that I couldn’t help but think that we could’ve stayed a lot longer in the room this morning. We had really breezed through security, and had got breakfast quickly enough, and now we had a whole two hours before our flight, and another hour before our gate would even be announced.
We took a wander around to see what shops there were both upstairs and downstairs. The most interesting shop we found was this one…
Inside, there was a Swarovski store, and look what I found.
We also found these…
Have a guess how much you think they were…
Got a figure in your mind?
Ok, good, let’s see if you were right or not.
I was a bit shocked, as they were £22 ($33) each! Mark guessed £20, so he wasn’t too far off.
We also found these – so cute!
Once we’d finished visiting the shops, we hadn’t killed much time. Honestly, I don’t know how Gatwick have managed to do this. They’ve changed the South Terminal from somewhere we could happily spend a couple of hours, enjoy some good shopping, and have a good time. Now there’s very little we’re interested in, as far as shopping goes. A lot of it is now very upmarket, and to be honest, out of a lot of people’s price range, and I find that so frustrating.
By now, it was about 10:00am, and we managed to snag seats downstairs, as that’s where the departure gates were, but there aren’t many seats down there now. See what I mean about poor planning? I played on my phone, which killed some time, and eventually it was 10:35am, so we wandered over to keep an eye on the display boards, as we were supposed to get our gate number at 10:40am. That time came and went, and I had a bad feeling, but I was wrong, as just a minute later, the details flashed up, and off we went.
We were straight through the boarding pass and passport control, and were told we could board the plane immediately. Result! Well, except it would’ve been, but I got singled out for a secondary security check, which meant body and everything I was carrying. It meant removal of my trainers (tennis shoes), which I was not prepared for, already having cleared security, and then I had to turn on every electronic device I had with me. Given I was carrying a laptop, two cameras (remember, one is a back-up), an iPod, and two cell phones, one British and one American, this took some time. Fortunately, most fired up quickly, although the American cell phone took a bit longer, for me just to turn it off again a moment later. Now don’t get me wrong, security is really important, but today it just seemed totally random, and that’s what I object to.
Finally, we were on our way, and my goodness, it is just so much easier to allow people to board the plane as they arrive in the gate area. There’s no line to board, you all just walk aboard. We made a point of saying to the crew that we much preferred this, and hoped that they’d do more of this in the future.
When we got into Premium Economy (we were downstairs this time), there was literally one other couple in there. They told us that they’d checked yesterday, and the four seats in the middle had been empty then, which was a promising sign. Then one of the cabin crew brought round our complimentary drinks, and we asked if it was a full flight. Far from it apparently! I think she said there were 14 people in Upper Class, a similar number in Premium Economy, about 115 in Economy. Now just to put this in perspective, I know Economy seats over 300 people, and I counted up the seats just in our part of Premium Economy (remember, there are more upstairs) and there were 48 seats, so it was pretty deserted. It’s been a heck of a long time since we’ve been in such an empty plane.
Mind you, as Mark said, they probably had to fly the plane out fully staffed, as this weekend is the end of the week long half term school holidays, so I guess the flights back to the UK will be insane. Thank goodness we’re going out, not coming home.
My goodness you are right! You guys should have stayed in the space room and finished downloading your shows! The wait to get on your plane sounded painful! Glad you made it aboard! We haven't flown a flight that empty in years either! You guys must"ve felt like Royalty!
Looks like it's going to be a great flight with so few people. Will be interested to see the food offerings, since we don't get much on domestic flights, or even international ones with US carriers.
You're on your way with plenty of space all around! It's been a long time since I have flown without every seat taken and every overhead bin filled to capacity. I hope the US has plans to follow that boarding procedure; how nice to just walk on and grab your seat.
Hope the meds are working and you are feeling better.
Disappointing breakfast!
Nice that you were able to walk right on to the plane. Well, right after your full security check. I love when a plane is that empty but it is so rare to see now. Airlines will claim mechanical issues to ground a flight that isn't full in order to combine with another flight. We had an near empty flight like that coming back from China in 2007. Each of us had a whole row to ourselves!
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Glad you were able to get some meds - hope they kick in quickly! 
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Pixie Dust
! And so convenient as you walked right to security. 
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PassPorter Guide Author
It wouldn't have been so bad if I could've slept on Sunday night and I should've done, as I was completely exhausted, but I just couldn't lie down for long periods of time without coughing all the time. 
) , two sausages, two fried eggs, Heinz baked beans, roasted tomato, herb potatoes and a grilled flat mushroom. 
I think she said there were 14 people in Upper Class, a similar number in Premium Economy, about 115 in Economy. Now just to put this in perspective, I know Economy seats over 300 people, and I counted up the seats just in our part of Premium Economy (remember, there are more upstairs) and there were 48 seats, so it was pretty deserted. It’s been a heck of a long time since we’ve been in such an empty plane. 
The wait to get on your plane sounded painful! Glad you made it aboard! We haven't flown a flight that empty in years either! You guys must"ve felt like Royalty! 
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