Virgin Atlantic Airways Review

Overall Rating

Virgin twilight check in at Gatwick, premium economy priority boarding at Gatwick and Orlando, priority baggage collection at Orlando, flight crew

9hr flight with young children kicking the back of our seats constantly whilst their parents sat behind them! Hotel not up to standard as expressed in virgin brochure. Brand new 'next' baggage damaged in flight on way to and from orlando. Priority baggage collection wasn't available at Gatwick on our return

We booked our holiday with virgin through Thomas Cook for October this year. We got down to Gatwick for their twilight check in which was excellant, absolutely no queue. Booked into the Ramada plaza for our overnight accomodation, which was also very professional. Arrived at Gatwick the following morning only to find our flight was delayed for 1hr35mins (luckily our flight wasn't the 12:45 as that was delayed 9hrs15mins).
The delay seemed to fly by and our flight was called. Virgin premium economy priority boarding was smooth and gave us chance to get comfortable before our flight. The meals were lovely and the service was brilliant. The only down side was the fact that some annoying family directly behind us kindly seated their irritating children behind us instead of behind themselves, our 9hr flight and rest time was interrupted constantly by their children kicking the back of our seats, whether our seats were reclined or not!!
When we got to Orlando we had priority disenbarkment and priority baggage collection - brilliant! (apart from our baggage coming off damaged)
Virgin/dollar car rental had changed location within the airport so trying to find it was a little challenging after a long flight, but once found we were swiftly in our car and on our way to our hotel.
We booked the Sheraton Safari Hotel in Lake Buena Vista and even paid for a room upgrade to a suite. We arrived at the hotel and reception staff dealt with us quite quickly and got us into our room. Although looking a little dated, the room was clean and tidy. We had a daily room maid who made our beds and changed our towel, and from the smell of the room she sprayed an air freshner. Our upgraded room included a kitchenette and out of the 14 nights we stayed, our suite was only hoovered once. We could tell this from the amass of bread crumbs on the carpet infront of the kitchenette. We paid for our room services in advance and found that each night our account was transfered to a holding account so had to call reception every night to access our account, so annoying!!
The hotel outdoor pool had a sign letting us know the temperature of the pool, but it was always freezing. We had to spend our time in the Jaccuzi instead. Our hotel was a virgin flag ship hotel so we had a rep available everyday from 8-8.30am. they were helpful, but seemed to always be in a rush.
Our holiday from then on was brilliant and ran like we were expecting it to. Then we had to come back to the uk on a night flight. Again the flight crew were very good, it was just the screaming children who kindly woke everyone in the cabin up about 4hrs into our sleep, quite annoying with a 4hr drive home when we landed.
We got priority disembarkment again but didn't received priority baggage collection and when our baggage eventually arrived on the carousel it was damaged again even more so than the flight out!! We feel that paying for premium economy was going to make our flight so much better, but we found that the atmosphere was only as good as economy, no offense to the cattle class but we paid an extra £1000 to our flights for the upgrade and still didn't enjoy the flight any more than when we travelled on virgin back in '01 and '02!! We have booked next years holiday through virgin but have no intension of upgrading to premium economy as the cost doesn't match the quality.