Darthlemsip sells his soul (aka goes on a package holiday) - LGW-GND-LGW in VS J
Welcome dear reader to what is only my third trip report of this year (although this trip report actually started months ago when I booked it and kept notes on what happened).
I’ll admit it, I’ve not kept to my word - at the end of last year I promised you a whole heap of TR’s and delivered but a meagre few. And one of those I never even finished. Although in my defence, my dad did have a stroke in the midst of me doing that report - obviously he was my priority for a bit and everything else fell beside the wayside. Who knows, I may get reinvigorated writing this one and actually finish it off. I’ll add the promised report about Eurovision here though, it doesn’t require many words:
IT WAS BLOODY BRILLIANT!
There aren’t that many VS reports on here (in fact I found 2 within the last 18 months, and I wrote one of those), and none on at the A330 that I could see, so it felt a suitable time to come back on and bore you all silly.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. I mentioned a while back that I hate dealing with travel agents - in the past they have royally messed me around and cost me an extortionate amount of money. And hair. I also know a TA, I see him at the football and he’s always the drunkest man on the planet. And he’s always damp - not someone I’d want to be handling my travel arrangements when he seems to struggle with stairs. I also have a similar dislike of package holidays, having been subjected to a number of them in my formative years with their, amongst other things, unnatural timings (I have always loved sleep, I do not like getting up when it’s dark - even for holiday), getting to the destination airport only to find you have the next 4 days on a coach, and their inability to leave me alone to read a book instead of dragging me off to some club or group (which promptly divide into cliques of kids that want to be there and get massively excited, and kids like me who wanted to be left alone). I realise that makes me sound ungrateful, but nothing could be further from the truth - I loved going on holiday, and I thank my family for fuelling my desire to travel, but I much prefer doing things of my own accord.
So when it was decided* (*I was told) that we would be doing a beach holiday this year, having only done city based holidays for the previous couple of years, I was faced with the perennial nightmare of FF redeemers - reward flights to a beach destination. Specifically, BA reward flights as at the time I only had enough Avios to do a WT+ to CW upgrade (the eagle eyed amongst you may be putting 2+2 together here).
Basically it never happened. Couldn’t get any reward availability for anything suitable no matter how many times I checked at some ungodly hour 355 days out (In the end, those Avios, in conjunction with a bunch from cancelling a NYC trip, were used for a J+F on CX trip to HKG which was fantastic, so every cloud and all that.)
We realised we were going to have to pay. My bank manager felt a chill.
We settled on Grenada in the end, on the basis it was pretty much the only island in the Caribbean that neither of us had been to (yes, I realise there are loads of them, but you know what I mean), we’d done the Indian ocean for our honeymoon, and my suggestion of the Middle East was kaboshed. So, having decided on where we were going, I set about getting us there. Oh, and suitable accommodation. BA were out as we wanted a 10 day trip and they only flew there once a week when we booked, which pretty much left Virgin Atlantic whose twice weekly flights allow for the 10 nights. At the time, I hadn’t flown with them for a while, so had no idea what they were like. Resort wise we were undecided, until we read about the Sandals opening there and decided it was time to accept we’re older than our physical years and embrace their ideology. Added bonus - no kids there. Some may take offence at that, none is intended, I promise - we were just looking forward to a quiet holiday. And, as it turned out, we experienced badly behaved adults instead, but more on that later.
I’ve said before that Mrs Lem has now reached F on the ‘never flying less than’ scale (cue finding flights that don’t have an F cabin) so I knew this would have to be in Upper Class. When it came to pricing it up however, it soon became clear that this was a no-goer when booking separately - unless we wanted to fly in Premium Economy. I submitted this to the committee and she gave me her ‘look’. Back to the drawing board. She did later admit she would be fine flying in Premium Economy, but it was actually me that put my foot down about not wanting to do an overnight flight in an upright seat (despite my inability to sleep on planes). Turns out this was a wise call, some time later a friend announced his stag do in Amsterdam, leaving on the afternoon that we arrived back.
While mulling over our options (which at the time were “Go somewhere else”, “Fly PE” or “Suck it up and pay it”), some ancient memory flickered in my brain about having a Virgin Flying Club account and that giving you a discount on anything booked through Virgin Holidays. A cursory check indicated I was correct and a 7% discount was given to those in the basic, Red, membership tier, plus one Flying Club mile for every pound you spend. Not too shabby. But it would mean booking through a TA and abandoning my principles regarding package holidays (that principle being “Shoot me if I ever agree to a package holiday”).
Principles that went out the window as soon as I priced up the trip on VH’s website that, before discount, was a touch over 25% cheaper than booking separately. This meant we could not only fly there in Upper Class, but also get a better room, all for less than our original budget. Woof woof, yes please. But I’d be darned if there was anywhere for me to put my Flying Club number and obtain this further discount. Another check on Virgin Atlantic’s site advised that you have to call in to do this. Despite my usual interactions with people on the phone normally resulting in me sighing and shaking my head a lot (a work thing I should add), I was not put off and gallantly jumped right in.
Do Virgin provide their call centre staff with a caffeine drip?
In the space of one phone call I was called “Delightful”, “My lovely” and “Mr. Fancy Pants” by a woman I’ve never met, and who sounded so relentlessly cheery and smiley that her mouth must physically hurt if she ever has to frown. She could also speak at a thousand words a minute without pausing for breath. I was bewildered and my brain was starting to hurt. Unfortunately the sigh had to be issued as Sandals have about three dozen different room types at the resort and Ms. Delightful was having trouble finding the one we wanted - there is only so many times you can say “Pink gin ocean… No, pink gin. No, gin, like the drink, which I now need.” In the end I had to jump onto the Sandals website and find the room code they used, which enabled her to find the room and get us booked in. Flying Club discount was applied, we were all booked in, and I hung up and went to spend some time in a darkened room to let my senses return to normal.
Before we departed for Grenada, I had cause to call Virgin Holidays three more about the booking - the first time was down to being somewhat concerned that no flights had yet appeared under our booking three months after we’d made it. Turns out they somehow hadn’t been booked automatically, but this was resolved in relatively short order. The second time was when I acquired Flying Club Gold status and wanted that added to the VH side of the booking as it meant I got double the FC points per pound spent. When the lady I spoke to thanked me for being such a frequent flyer with Virgin, she too sounded so relentlessly cheery and smiley that I had no wish to ruin her day by telling her I’d acquired said status via a status match from my BA Gold card. More on the third time shortly.
In the intervening period, I also flew VS in UC to JFK and back on an A340-600, which while I thoroughly enjoyed, I wouldn’t go out of my way to fly them again - but felt it would be perfectly fine for this trip. Then I found we would be flying on an A330-300 and saw some opinions of the new Upper Class Dream Suite. Decided to stop reading the reviews after that. Besides, even if it is cramped, it’s still better than being down the back right? Right?
And speaking of reviews, the Sandals wasn’t even open when we booked it, so had to wait a while for reviews to appear. Top tip - do not read the reviews of somewhere when it’s only just opened, they’re never good. Fortunately they massively improved over the following months. And I guess if we always relied on other peoples opinions, none of us would ever go anywhere…
At T-60, seats were selected. At T-30, there were still at least 8 reward seats available in the UC cabin on both flights - wondering why it seemed such a quiet period there given it’s got a fairly consistent climate year round, I took to Google. Ah, hurricane season. Probably should have looked at this before booking. Fortunately Grenada hasn’t had a hurricane hit since Ivan in 2004. Although to me that means one was due. And our wedding anniversary was while we’re there. Hmmmmm.
With it being an early morning departure from Gatwick, I blew some Hhonors points on a suite at the Gatwick Hilton for the night before, with absolutely no idea if that was a good use of points or not as I could find practically no information or pictures on that type of room. But I’d had the points for ages and never get the chance to use them, so why not.
Then all there was to do was wait
Oh, and for Sandals to do a 50% off sale that meant we could have got a butler suite and still been well under budget. While new Virgin Holiday bookings could access this pricing, it was not available when trying to upgrade an existing one. The woman on the phone still sounded relentlessly cheery and smiley as she told me that…
Coming up in the next part - A King Suite at the Gatwick Hilton, the Virgin Clubhouse at Gatwick and the VS UC experience on an A330
