#and now we have to be at the airport before 2am for a 6am departure

[reuptakeinhibitor]

can't wait to bitch out the guy at the american airlines check-in counter at my local airport who ended up costing my mom and me several hundreds of dollars (possibly $1k+) for fucking up our return flight because we were a few minutes too late to check in to our departing flight

[billinghamn]

2017 Nov - Phoenix TP Run: Day 3 - Sat 25 Nov 2017 - Helsinki to London Heathrow

Did I sleep well last night or what? After getting very little sleep the previous night, the light went out at about 11pm (or thereabouts), and although I briefly got up at about 2am, I went back to sleep straight away and then was woken rudely by the alarm at 5:10am. The Hilton beds at Helsinki airport are so comfy!

I didn't have a good feeling about today's flights. Two main reasons: (1) I couldn't get my AA boarding cards printed for some reason. Finnair couldn't print them out yesterday (and I checked again this morning at the airport) (2) I only have 45 mins connecting time at Heathrow, and without a boarding card, I'm not expecting that's going to play out well. I can but hope!

I was in the airport by about 6am at the Finnair check in desk. Although the agent expected to be able to print out my boarding card, she couldn't and couldn't explain why. She advised I just go to the gate for my flight when I reach Heathrow - that't not desparately reassuring.

I did some mitigation planning in case I missd my flight to Philadelphia. The next one I could go on would be a BA flight to Philly. Then there's a BA flight direct to Phoenix. Alternatively I could easily connect at JFK or at LAX. Lots of options.

Flight: AY1331 Equip: A350 Sched Depart: 08:00 Actual: 07:57 Sched Arrival: 09:10 Actual: 09:04 Takeoff: 08:14 Landing: 08:58

Premium security (upstairs) was fairly empty, so I was through there quickly. I was pleased to get through automated passport control and then in to Starbucks to get my normal drink. I missed out yesterday.

Boarding was very relaxed at Gate 54 this morning. I arrived about 45 mins before boarding, and once through the gate, there were separate pens for Business and Economy passengers, which is excellent. Nice to see they have got the design right – that forces the segregation, and enables priority boarding to commence ahead of the riff raff. 😊

The gate door was opened remotely and a boarding call was made (in Finnish) which effectively meant that business passengers could start boarding – I had no idea what they were saying, but I guessed and followed someone else on to the aircraft.

In to seat 5L – this is a great aircraft (A350). It looks sexy from the front, and with it being a wide-bodied aircraft, it just feels the business (pardon the pun).

Left on time, and looked like we were likely to arrive 25 mins earlier than scheduled. That, together with my AA flight being delayed by 55 mins, meant I now had a shed load of time between flights. From a connecting time of 45 mins, I now had 2 hrs and 15 mins! Piece of cake.

Watched My Cousin Rachel with Rachel Weisz. The film was decent, but no clear and unambiguous ending. Never happy with that. I had one bottle of champers on board. I thought about having more, but decided it was going to be a long day, with lots of “champers opportunities”, so thought I would take it easy. After all it’s still early, and the day is young.

Breakfast was a classically odd Finnish breakfast. Turkey frittata, a spinachy thing and potato. The only thing I really liked was the potato. The fruit was ok and the yoghurt quite nice too.

The rest of the flight was fine. We were well ahead of schedule until ATC decided we needed to hold for 10 mins, so we ended up arriving in to Gate 1 at Heathrow T3 at 9am. Vick texted me to advise of the new timings of arrival and departure, which verified I had extra time.

For a change we were fairly quick departing the aircraft – sometimes it can be really slow for a wide-bodied aircraft, and I’ve noticed it being slow with the A350 before now.

Anyway, headed towards T3 Flight Connections and the AA Ticket Desk to pick up my boarding card and get the third degree! More about that later…

[elstoleno]

Disneyland Paris' 25th - Day One

So, I have been putting off writing this for a while now! Mostly because I didn't write any notes for our first day for some reason! So, from what I can remember - We were up pretty early in the morning - around 2am I think! Our flight was just after 6am so we headed off to get to the airport by 4am. The baggage drop off queue was pretty long, but we got through security pretty quickly and were soon in departures getting something to eat before our flight. The journey was pretty uneventful, and we rushed through to the immigration desks - now, I know, you're on holiday, take it easy, but no! If you're flying into a major airport you should rush to these desks for a good place in the queue. We were one of the first from our flight to reach the queues, and, despite still being able to access the EU queue right now, we were stood in that line for around an hour! Once we were through we grabbed our cases and rushed off to the Magical Shuttle which was there ready and waiting to take us to the Disneyland Hotel. The reactions of everyone on the bus when we pulled into the DLH was amazing, I felt kind of awkward getting off because everyone was looking at us and the other couple who were getting off here.

The check in queue was pretty short and we were told our room would be ready in around 20min if we wanted to wait for it - well, it was ready now they just wanted to check if our medication fridge had been taken up before we went in - 50minutes later we went back to the desk to see if it was ready because we were getting pretty sick of waiting. The CM took us to our room, there was no fridge at this point (it was brought up later while we were in the parks), our room was the one right next to Princess for a day and we had a pretty good view of the park entrance. So we'd waited for the room so I could put my medication in the fridge - which obviously wasn't there, and maybe put on some shorts - but our luggage hadn't been brought up yet either. So after wasting a little over an hour we rushed out into the parks - there was a entrance point like, six steps from the hotel, it was amazing being so close! Our first point of call? Hakuna Matata! I really wish I was eating there right now. It's the only place we had our main meals at the entire time, I was just so happy it was open every day, it's been a while since I visited in high summer season. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some shopping, riding rides and taking all of the 25th anniversary decorations in. I think I still preferred the Main Street decorations from the 15th anniversary, but i'm so glad there wasn't another stage on Central Plaza!

I really didn't write any notes for this day so i'm not sure which rides we went on - i'm pretty sure the new Pirates of the Caribbean was our first ride.

Going through my Instagram posts, I know we definitely camped out on Main Street for the parade with a nice souvenir bucket of popcorn before we headed off to Hakuna Matata again for dinner and to take my medication before taking our space for Illuminations. We possibly rode Phantom Manor in between those and I know we were on our way to use our Hotel Fastpass at Buzz Lightyear's Laser Blast when we discovered half of the park had already sat down for illuminations three ours before the show!

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