Thomas Cook and The Beach Club

[prugone]

Just thought I'd put down a few lines about the start of our holiday last Thursday following our flight with TC and arrival at The Beach Club for a one night stay (our first time staying on Disney). We booked with TC (again for the first time) as Stansted is more convenient for us than Gatwick. After reading a few comments on The Dibb about TC we wondered whether we had done the right thing and a short while after booking fears were heightened when a change of plane was advised although it was still 'all economy'. The new plane was the lengthened A330 from their Scandinavian fleet with the 'odd' two seat front row. We needn't have worried, all went well with the API's and the checking in. The aircraft was excellent and looked new, with good seatback IFE (I did pay for the extra package), leg room was better than any other plane we have travelled economy on, the food was very good with tubs of Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream served between lunch and tea and last but not least the flight attendants were excellent. I guess we may have been lucky, the flight ran pretty much to time and on arrival at Orlando the immigration hall was empty! We found the Disney bus and arrived in good time at The Beach Club (must admit it was nice not having to drive that first evening). We walked into the resort to be met by a 'meet and greeter' who checked our reservation and then took us up to the 5th floor to be checked in. I thought this a little strange at the time but apparently we were booked into a room on their 'club' level which included free food and drink (incl beer and wine) served pretty much all day. The lift required a specially programmed wrist band to go to level 5. The food was excellent and quite frankly left us a little disappointed that we were only there for one night but I can't speak highly enough of the facilities, all done so professionally and courteously. The only fly in the ointment was our Alamo booking to pick up a car at The Dolphin. We booked for a 4 pm pick up only to arrive at 4.05 to find the desk closed... they closed at 4 pm! BE WARNED. A call to the Car Care Centre soon had us collected and our 'Tahoe size' SUV turned out to be a Ford Expedition strangely with Kentucky plates and 47k on the clock albeit in excellent 'nick'. All in all a great start to the holiday.