Day 10
Today was our travel home day. We were up early and packed our cases very carefully, we realised that we had a little space left if we wanted to get any “small items”. We dropped our luggage at the bell hop and checked out of the hotel. It was still a little cooler today (not as cool as the day previously) so we wore hoodies and jeans.
We wanted to make sure we had a good sturdy breakfast as it would be a long day and there was only one place for it … Keke’s. We got an Uber over to Dr. Phillips and as we were early 8am it was pretty quiet.
DH ordered an Omelette and I ordered my Florida waffles (I just love these so much).
The food was fantastic as usual and by the time we had finished our food the restaurant had filled and there was a line outside.
Once we settled the bill, we ordered an Uber to take us to City walk. The driver turned up quickly but spoke very little English, he didn’t know the way even though the map was right in front of him and I ended up telling him to drop us at the Hard Rock Hotel as it would have took forever to get him to drive to the right place.
We went directly to the water taxi which took a little while and then walked over to Islands of Adventure for one last mooch around and see if we could get on any rides.
As we entered the park, we looked at the wait time boards and the wait times were really high, additional to this Spiderman, Kong and Hagrid’s had broken down so going on rides was a no go.
We decided to soak in the atmosphere and have a walk around enjoying the shops and scenery instead.
We came across the arcade in comic book land and bought a couple of tokens for one last go on the machines, with my last token I put it in one of the grabs the toy machines which had huge Nintendo and Marvel toys in. All of the 39 years I have lived on this planet I have never won on one of these machines …. Until now. It grabbed a huge super Mario we watched laughing that it would probably drop it any second now, but it didn’t it proceeded to drop it into the draw and that was it, I won a massive Mario toy.
Now how the heck were we going to get it home.
We watched the X-men drive through comic book land on their quad bikes and then looked in the shops in the comic book land
We watched the Jurassic park ride come down and splash the riders and because it was a little cool today we weren’t going to get wet today.
We went to Hogsmeade and stopped by the Hogs head for a final pint.
Once the pint was consumed, we caught the Hogwarts Express over to Universal Studios, we had one last look around and watched the beat box builders and bought a few bits in the shops.
We walked to the City walk garage to catch our Uber back to the hotel and with some magic and neat logistics squished Mario into the suitcase.
We waited in the Lobby for our Uber (The one we arranged yesterday) and he turned up on time which was fantastic. We saw an Apple Maps car on the way
We headed to the airport at around 3pm and our flight was at 6:30pm.
When we arrived, we dropped our bags and surprisingly we were both just under the 23kg weight limit – even with Mario.
We looked in the airport shops to kill some time before going through security but didn’t buy anything at this point. Security took around 30 minutes which is the longest we have waited.
Once through security we planned on booking a the lounge using our Revolut cards, we booked a lounge pass key via the Revolut app but when we went to the lounge they said there was an hour wait – we couldn’t wait an our as by that time our flight was in just under two hours and it was wasteful. We contacted Revolut for a refund and that was a bit of a faff. I have to say that the Revolut card was brilliant on this trip and worked fantastically, I cannot recommend enough (except the lounge faff)
I went into the airport shop and bought some sweets for our friends, and some doughnut holes and a snicker as a snack to share as we were peckish.
Our flight was ready to board on time, but they were using a new biometric system instead of looking at passports physically and it took a long time to get the full flight board – we were on the plane around 30 minutes after we should have taken off.
Now it’s time to explain the flight from hell. When we got to our seats they had bags all over them, we tried to find the owners so we could sit down and it transpired they belonged to two women who were sat central in a row of 4 seats in the row behind us, they made no effort to move them when we turned up and had to pass them over - in which they seemed disgruntled.
We got seated and set off about 45 minutes late and around an hour into the flight one of the women behind us started to act up. The women’s, sister’s daughter was seated around 5 rows away with a little girl and was shouting over to her. Not long after the women started to kick DH’s seat not just kick it gently but proper booting it, I asked if there was a problem and she said he had reclined and that she had bad legs – I explained that he had NOT reclined and his seat was upright.
She stopped for a while.
Food came around, and DH decided to eat on the plane which is unusual, we both had pulled pork and mash which was really tasty and it came with cheese and crackers with a chocolate caramel mousse.
The women argued with the flight attendant that she wanted 2 bottles of wine with her dinner, they refused as she already seemed intoxicated and offered to bring a cup of tea or coffee instead, this is when it all went to go downhill. As much as the biometric scanners are great (I am all for new technology, it didn't pick up that this woman was drunk/on drugs, whereas a human possibly would have)
She went over to her sister’s daughter and had a full one screaming match with her about her dad and why she won’t ever speak to him again, the little girl was crying her eyes out. The family was constantly arguing and people on the plane especially children were frightened and couldn't sleep.
Then the daughter went over to the mum/aunt and started arguing back but had left her daughter who proceeded to wonder off up the plane aisle.
Soon after the women became paranoid and said everyone hated her, wanted to get off the plane, threatened to open the doors and all sorts of worrying behaviour. The cabin crew were brilliant and asked if we wanted to move but we didn’t want to cause a scene and they spoke to the women and told her to pack it in or she would be restrained and arrested on landing.
I offered to knock her out if she carried on. After the longest flight And not one wink of sleep we’ve ever had the cabin crew came around and brought us a bottle of champagne for our patience and understanding – they didn’t need to do that as it wasn’t Virgins fault that she was unruly. We were glad to get off the plane though. In between all the chaos I watched Ma and Dora the Explorer and DH tried to do some coding but couldn’t concentrate too good.
If you were that women and you’re reading this I really hope you’ve got some help.
We got our bags (they took ages) and went to meet our taxi – it was a brilliant holiday and has some amazing days and now we were now home to a very cold and miserable Manchester - time to start planning 2020