Rolling in the Upside Downs. Jul 22- intro and pre travel day

[Rescuer]

Rolling in the Upside Downs

Index

Intro

Welcome to our Summer 2022 trip report.

For anyone who doesn’t know us there is me: the persuader and planner of the Florida trips. I spend way to much time on the dibb, other boards, Facebook groups and YouTube obsessively seeing what’s on offer in Orlando.

Dh, who pretends he’s not that interested in planning but secretly stares up from his computer screen of an evening to watch whatever YouTube video I have on in the background.

Ds, the typical teen who used to love planning and making mountains of lists for his holidays who in advance of the trip showed some enthusiasm for new coasters and discovery cove with a response of more than a grunt or just a lift of the head from his phone.

With all that being said we are a very Florida family and have had numerous trips since Ds was 5. Before that Orlando was the first ever holidays for Dh and I together in January 1999, January 2000 and our first ever time onsite at Disney in 2001 for our honeymoon.

It was always Disney but as Ds has got older and we’ve liked to fit in longer or more than one trip a year Universal has taken over and we’ve been annual pass holders there since 2018.

We introduced Ds to universal in 2013 where we got him to study early to be the map 😂

And traditions like soaking us on one fish two fish began.

Seaworld and a discovery Cove were introduced in 2014.

It wasn’t till Easter 2019 that Ds conquered the coasters

and that became his priority. The plan was to defeat the old and the new, count the inversions and beat some the records Dh and I had. Plus Ds was obsessed with fitting in all of the second part of stranger things before we left on holiday ( more on that later). Hence the trip report title was born 😂

Pre travel day - To BA or not to BA

I had been wary about any issues with the BA flight to Heathrow for months. It had starred showing up red the night before stating possible service disruption but with advise not to do anything. So I carried on as normal.

I’d had my nails, lashes and brows done on the Friday morning, essentials!

I had already done all our packing in the Friday afternoon as well other than hand luggage. I wanted to be ready to just jump on a train to London if there turned out to be problems. I thought I was well prepared for all eventualities 😂😂😂😂

Started the day with breakfast and a walk at the beach, nice and calming.

So far so good - flight still saying it was on time and going. A couple of the other domestic flights had been cancelled so we thought we were safe leaving ours and another 2 that day.

Pottered around finishing off some good research checking menus for low carb options. All very chilled. The flight after ours started showing as delayed then moved to cancelled. That left the first 2 Heathrow flights ok.

Got to late afternoon and we were starting to relax in between checking the flights every 5 minutes and had evening plans to watch the last chapter of Stranger Things with a nice tea.

No prizes for what happened next. You guessed it 5pm and Dh checked the flight, cancelled! We’d had a contingency plan of a train to Heathrow but that gave us less than an hour to catch one as a weekend is not the best time for lots of travel choices.

We started checking all our options of getting to Heathrow early enough the next morning for the flight. Overnight mega bus sold out, no Edinburgh trains, via York, via Newcastle… Dh was understandably not keen to drive all that way, parking was even showing up at over £300 and no Heathrow airport hotels if we did use public transport. No Scottish flights with availability,

A text appeared from BA about 10 minutes later. No reply on the phone and I’d already emailed the Duty Office asking them to contact us.

On here I’d saw that Disney 45 had got on an Aer Lingus flight from Manchester on Monday with a connection from her local airport so I looked at their website and tried to get on live chat to BA. There were seats in the Edinburgh to mco flight via Dublin in the morning.

We were number 68 on live chat but it went quite and the person who answered must have took pity on us and got someone on from the holidays dept.

In the meantime Stanley Camel suggested the Manchester Aer Lingus flight as an option and patiently answered my questions about what if for going via Dublin while we investigated the Manchester option and how we might get there. Thank you so much for your help. Got to love the Dibb.

Another lovely Dibber offered us a spare room outside Manchester if we needed it. Thanks for your lovely offer.

It was fraught, I’m not going to lie, even the dog went and hid upstairs as we all exchanged sweary words which were generally directed at the laptop.

The girl on live chat was lovely. Checked the Dublin flight, but economy had sold out. Asked about the Manchester flight and that was a go! She offered us the return via Manchester as well and we went for that as we still hadn’t figured out how to get there. I won’t lie I was relieved not to be going anywhere near Heathrow with BA now ( didn’t go well for us in February either).

Got ourselves organised with VeriFLY again and checked in. By this point it was clear driving was the only option. Decided we’d just leave at 3am to get there 3.5hrs before the flight.

All the hand luggage had to be redone as Aer Lingus limits are different and even ended up leaving my mini Jen Mia Tui at home, I shall be struck off from the dibb for that. 😂

Dh booked parking and I’ll be submitting a claim to BA for that but I’ll not be holding my breath for a quick response.

Managed a wee half hour of Stranger Things before bed and chucked the fire stick into the hand luggage so we could hopefully watch it there.

For all it was stressful, part of me was also a bit relieved and I actually felt excited for our holiday for the first time in ages and a bit more convinced it would actually happen now.

The most stressful pre travel day ever. Plus we are all a bit ≈≈≈≈ at having to know everything and now we were going to an airport we didn’t really know how to get to😂

As for BA and via Heathrow, it would need to be a cold day in hell before I’d choose that route unless of course it was that or no trip. 😂

[Lizzim]

I knew the stress would be there having seen previous threads and still felt the stress So glad you got there in the end.

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by Lizzim

I knew the stress would be there having seen previous threads and still felt the stress So glad you got there in the end.

See more...

😂yes I’d rather not repeat that pre travel night😂. Realise we were very lucky to get sorted quickly and away. We were so glad it worked out.

[shakil]

Bought back memories of my own BA disaster 3 years ago:

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1138437

Glad it worked out in the end for you!

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by shakil

Bought back memories of my own BA disaster 3 years ago:

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1138437

Glad it worked out in the end for you!

See more...

Omg. I think we missed your thread at the time as we would have been away. It makes my experience look super calm, I felt stressed just reading all the updates now. Can’t believe they only found out they had to cancel as you got to the desk and then had nobody available to help passengers. (Actually after Feb in Heathrow I don’t know why I’m still surprised at the lack of support on offer)

Did you ever get compensation from BA?

[shakil]

Originally Posted by Rescuer

Omg. I think we missed your thread at the time as we would have been away. It makes my experience look super calm, I felt stressed just reading all the updates now. Can’t believe they only found out they had to cancel as you got to the desk and then had nobody available to help passengers. (Actually after Feb in Heathrow I don’t know why I’m still surprised at the lack of support on offer)

Did you ever get compensation from BA?

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They only reimbursed me receipted travel expenses. Not a penny for any inconvenience of the whole thing. I even sent them a link to the Dibb post but no sympathy 🤣

[jothp]

Wow, what a stressful pre travel day for you. I'm glad it all worked out for you in the end.

[ILoveDaveLamb]

Originally Posted by shakil

Bought back memories of my own BA disaster 3 years ago:

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1138437

Glad it worked out in the end for you!

See more...

OMG…I remember your thread. We were all engrossed. One Dibber was loosing charge on her phone.

Resilience should be a key Dibb competence. (I would be rubbish in such circs myself.)

[twogoto]

Only just realised you had a full trip report for this trip. Excited to catch up on it all now. What a pre-travel day! There's nothing worse than everything going wrong last minute. So glad you managed to get sorted in the end and didn't have to make an awfully long drive to Heathrow and back (we swear we'll never do it again from Teesside!).

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by twogoto

Only just realised you had a full trip report for this trip. Excited to catch up on it all now. What a pre-travel day! There's nothing worse than everything going wrong last minute. So glad you managed to get sorted in the end and didn't have to make an awfully long drive to Heathrow and back (we swear we'll never do it again from Teesside!).

See more...

Yes not a good start but a great holiday. Just looking at flights for next year. Not BA😂

Wouldn’t envy you that drive to Heathrow at all, think Dh seems relatively ok with another Manchester drive.