Pants flight - great destination (Virgin Holidays)

Member Name: Coxy1974

Product:	Virgin Holidays
Date:	20/12/06 (505 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertainment and free drinks etc

Disadvantages: Cabin crew are really rude

I flew to Barbados in May of this year. I was really looking forward to it. I'd tacked onto my sisters family holiday and booked myself a premium room to really treat myself while I had the money to.

To say I am a nervous flyer is putting it mildly. We asked Virgin for a few things.

1. To all sit as near to each other as possible
2. To have rooms as close to each other in the hotel as possible (I am a single woman on my own!)
3. For a vegetarian inflight meal

Now you'd think that these things would be a possibility and the travel agent assured me that he'd spoken to Virgin customer care and that it was all being dealt with. We were issued with seat numbers and everything assuring us that we'd be near each other on the flight!

We checked in at Manchester airport and discovered that our seats hadn't actually been reserved. The customer care rep had 'forgotten' to reserve them and they had been reissued and reserved for someone else. The check in clerk was really helpful though and as my sister has 2 children they said that it really wasn't their policy to split families up. We were allocated seats close to each other if not together.

When we got on the plane the seats had been reallocated and someone was sat in my seat. We were rejigged and my niece and I sat further up the plane and my sister, brother in law and nephew sat together further down the plane. Not ideal but at least someone was covering both kids and someone was there to hold my hand when I burst into tears when we took off!

The planes are excellent - screen in the back of the seat in front of you and some of my fave shows were on. Free wine etc on the flight however, let down was there was no vegetarian meal - the air hostess suggested that I pick the meat out of my salad! They also 'forgot' to serve up lunch to my sister and brother in law. They were the only 2 people sat on the plane without lunch. And there wasn't any more. Something that Virgin refuse to believe is a possibility when we complained.

The destination was beautiful. The hotel had laid on a caribbean reception for us when we got there complete with their rum punch (drink at your peril because I've just recovered the lining for the back of my throat!) and handed out room keys. I had been put in the opposite wing of the hotel right next to a big wall with no view and the room was not what I'd paid for. I asked to be moved. Whilst doing this a couple who had been on our flight and were getting married wanted to swap their room so that they could be near the rest of their family who'd come with them! It turned out that they'd got my room and I'd got theirs!

After that was all sorted out the holiday turned out to be fantastic. The people there are so friendly and nothing is too much trouble. I even had to leave a note for the maid to make sure she took her tip every day! The bar and restaurant overlooked the beach and I sat and watched England play Jamaica just before the world cup at 9am, sitting on the beach drinking a bottle of banks beer. What could be better than that? Football, sun, sea, sand and beer???

We visited Harrisons Cave which was amazing but you can really drive around the island in half a day. We swam with Turtles and took a bus ride into Bridgetown - not for the fainthearted. The drivers over there do not understand the concept of 'when clear pull out of junction' they actually wait until there is traffic and then pull out!

We went out to a beach barbecue one evening just a little bit up from St Lawrence Gap - $20 barbados for all you can eat and drink all night! Limbo dancing and Salsa on the beach near a campfire. It was amazing.

The cooking is out of this world - we went all inclusive so it was completely just help yourself in the hotel. Everything you could want for breakfast, healthy lunches and beatiful roasts including gammon, pork, beef and fish in the evening. I'd recommend trying Flying fish and Butter Fish - they catch it fresh on the beach, fillet it and then toss it straight onto the skillet with spices - cooks in minutes and the taste is out of this world! The cocktails are wonderful too - recommend a Blue Bunny which is Baileys and Blue Carucco and something else I can't remember over Ice. Mid day and lying by the pool with one of those whilst everyone else is at work???

The sea was amazing if cloudy - it was just like getting into a warm bath and was protected by a natural reef so the surf was gentler than it would have been normally (the hotel lost half it's beach in a storm a few weeks before we got there!) so this provided a breaker for the larger waves. Even so my sister did get a drowning one day and couldn't get up for ages - I laughed til I cried.

I wouldn't recommend going for any longer than 1 week - I was ready to come home!

The flight home and we got split up - again. This time I got put at the back of the plane and had to board first - I was nervous but thinking 'I'll be ok, I'm a big girl now!' but as soon as my sister wondered down the plane to find me I sobbed like a baby convinced I was going to die because I couldn't see a door to get out of!

One of the cabin crew moved me to a seat nearer to my sister and that seemed to be ok until another member came over and moved me back again despite my distress! She said 'Oh get over it - it's nothing' be that as maybe to some people but to others it really is a complete phobia.

Again in flight meals were a disaster and service was appalling with the cabin crew not even bothering to serve drinks on the way back. It was not a night time flight!

The holiday was fantastic but Virgin were appalling - certainly not up to the standard that my sister had become used to (she has flown Virgin several times to America and highly recommended them!). Their customer care since has been the same - I didn't send in a letter of complaint I just filled in the questionnaire you get with your holiday pack and then they contacted me to discuss my comments. They flatly refused to believe that anything had gone wrong.

My friend is a cabin crew member for Virgin and he said that their training really isn't up to scratch and that staff regularly ignored complaints made by customers on the flight!

It may sound like I'm having a whinge - maybe I am - but I just felt that they had been bigged up so much that it was all a let down when I actually flew with them - especially with being a nervous flyer - something I had made expressly clear before I went and when I got on the plane to the cabin crew - they treated me like I was a stupid woman who should know better!

Summary: They promise everything to sell the holiday, deliver nothing & rely on destination to make up for it