theDIBB - Here Now! first WDW family holiday

Travel to Manchester Airport / Bewleys overnight.

Boarded the train at 3:09pm from Glasgow Central direct to Manchester Airport. Yeah right.

We will come back to that later 😋

Hubby works for Network rail so we all have privilege passes that allow us free rail travel so many times a year. Kevin showed them to the guard who said we could sit in first class as a wee perk – result. Nice and quiet. At least it was until Kieran started snoring a couple of hours in. The old couple across from us were not amused! Bit of a cheek as there had not been a peep out of the kids until then as they were colouring in and playing with their tablets. He does snore like a bear my boy.

The journey was blissfully uneventful until an hour before we were due to arrive when they announced the train would be terminating at Manchester Piccadilly and we would have to change trains to carry on to the airport. No explanation as to why of course. We made our way off the train, lift up to the main station then all the way over to the other side and onto another train. We arrived at the airport station at 19:19 instead of the scheduled 18:47 so not too bad considering.

Very simple to find terminal 1 check in desks and the Thomas Cook sundown check-in at the far left side. Nobody else waiting so straight up to the desk and all checked in and suitcases gone within 10 minutes. 3 suitcases so £15 total. The Thomas Cook guy confirmed heading through security about 8:15am should be plenty of time for our 10:15am flight now that we had our boarding passes. He also gave us very simple directions to walk over to Bewleys, and after being stuck on a train for 4hours the fresh air was much appreciated!

You do have to cross a dual carriageway which I had read on another trip report and thought sounded well dodgy with 2 kids. But in actual fact, although it is a dual carriageway, it is a slip road into the airport, with a large staggered island in the centre with very little traffic so perfectly safe.

Checked in within 10 minutes and booked the shuttle bus over to the airport for 8am purely as its due to rain in the morning. If its dry we will walk as I think it would be quicker! We had booked Bewleys a good 9 or 10 months ago direct on the website at £89 for the family room including breakfast for the 4 of us. The room is spacious and clean so perfectly happy.

We headed down for dinner, and as someone else advised in a TR, avoided the more expensive Brasserie in favour of the bar lounge. I had Thai Chicken Curry, Kevin had a Chicken Burger, Hannah had a Southern Fried Chicken sub and Kieran had a pepperoni pizza. Now I can't promise this level of detail on food in future days as I think I will be rubbish at remembering photos and bills but I will try. Food was all really nice, a couple of drinks later and we came back up to the room to settle in for the night and recharge everything in readiness for the airport tomorrow.

Bewleys is supposed to have free wi-fi everywhere but although I could get it on my iphone I could not
get it on the ipad. So having typed this up tonight I will need to wait until morning to see if I can paste it into the reporter app to upload it.

All in bed at 11pm with alarms set for 6am.

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