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Old 26 Oct 19, 09:53 PM  
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Fireworks
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Join Date: Jun 05
Celebrating Retirement Tour October 2019 - Day 1 Thur 3 Oct - Travel Day

Cast Members:
Julie (me) - planner, organiser, 3rd visit to California, newly retired
Brian (hubby) - driver, beer connoisseur, 3rd visit to California, newly retired

This trip should originally have started one week earlier, with direct Thomas Cook flights Manchester to San Francisco, but after the very sad collapse of Thomas Cook in the early hours of the Monday that we were due to fly on the Thursday we had to try to decide at very last minute what to do. After many sleepless hours on the Sunday night waiting for news we did consider ditching the trip completely and just getting a last minute package holiday somewhere but thought that we might struggle to arrange something as many other people would be trying to re-book holidays and a lot of existing package holidays would have used Thomas Cook flights meaning chaos all round. In the end we opted to try to rescue what we already had arranged as much as possible and managed to find indirect flights with Aer Lingus Manchester to Los Angeles via Dublin, leaving Manchester 1 week later. The flights had gone up by £400 each between Sunday night and Monday morning 😔

A full day was then spent trying to rebook everything. Luckily everything had been booked on cancellable rates so it is only the original flights we need to claim for. We could still do the same round trip that I had meticulously planned but starting in Los Angeles instead of San Francisco which meant that weeks 2 and 3 didn't change and we just needed to move week 1 to week 3 👍

There then followed a very anxious week of hubby Brian checking the status of the flights we had booked every day (he is a bit of a geek about airplanes and has some kind of tracking app on his ipad so he can tell me where every plane that flies over our house is going &#128580. For nearly every day that week there were major delays to the flight leaving Manchester meaning it would have been virtually impossible to make the connecting flight, and on one day it was cancelled completely. I always try to avoid indirect flights if I can so my stress levels were through the roof! I could only hope that this disruption had been because of all the rescue flights having to be slotted in to airport schedules to bring Thomas Cook passengers home and that things would settle down 🤞

Journey day finally arrived and off to the airport we go. It was very very sad to arrive to a deserted Terminal 1 at Manchester and see all the empty desks where Thomas Cook check in should have been 😔 Straight to the Aer Lingus check in desk, no queue at all at security it really was that deserted.

We had booked the 1903 lounge as a treat so went straight there (to make sure we got our moneys worth&#128523 only to find that in all the hassle of rebooking everything I had booked for yesterday by mistake 😭 They very kindly let us in anyway, which I am so grateful for, but as it turns out they were probably glad of something to do as we were the only ones in there. Chatting to the ladies there the collapse of Thomas Cook has had a huge knock on effect to Terminal 1 and a lot of the behind the scenes airport workers.

Flights turned out to be really good, and it's the first time we have experienced American security pre-clearance at Dublin Airport but it's brilliant, meaning you just need to grab your cases at the other end and go 👍

We had booked into the Holiday Inn Express at LAX tonight, so found the area for hotel shuttle buses and it turned up within 10 minutes. Due to our change of itinerary we decided to book the Amtrak train from Los Angeles to San Diego and only pick the car up on leaving there. We knew from past experience we could manage there without a car and it seemed silly to pay for 5 days car parking if we didn't need to.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you managed to get this far, and so excited to be off to our favourite place San Diego tomorrow.
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Old 29 Jun 20, 09:13 PM  
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hawki
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Join Date: May 10
Oh wow! reminds me of our holiday last year! We were due to fly Thomas Cook on the Friday Manchester to LA, after they went bust on Monday. We also stayed up all night Sunday & booked Aer Lingus as soon as we heard to get the best price. Unfortunately our flight did miss the connection & we arrived a day latre! This is why we never go indirect!
Looking forward to reading the rest now! Although immigration was great just wlking straight out at LA!
Julie
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Old 30 Jun 20, 08:48 PM  
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Fireworks
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We were so worried about those connecting flights, definitely wouldn't be my first choice of way to travel
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