MCO-MAN Club

I just discovered you genial folks, following a link over on FlyerTalk. I'm very impressed with the thoroughness of your site (pictures, etc.)and the tone of the forums I see. Very positive and helpful. I'm hoping you can help my wife and me gain some knowledge to help us make a decision about traveling to the UK next summer from MCO.

We are using Delta award miles for the trip but cannot find anything available in business class on any DL-Skyteam partners other than VS for the dates we want. (late July -early August) We made tentative reservations in UC for an MCO-MAN return but upon further reading have discoved that this route is not UC but something called Club Orlando with Premium + coach service and seats. According to Virgin Holidays the service (but no mention of the seats) will change to "full UC" at the end of April, 2005. However, when I check the flights we have reserved on the VS website it says that they will be only Premium + with no UC service even listed for those dates.

We do not want to give up 200K miles for Premium + seats and service. We could fly into LGW but a) that's a long way from Scotland where we will be spending most of our time, and b) the MCO-LGW UC reviews are not very good from what I've read. Sort of the bottom of the barrel of UC service. Does anyone have any info that would make one believe the MCO-MAN service would indeed be UC by late July and, if so, if that would include UC seats (old or new)? How bad/good is the MCO-LGW UC? Any other suggestions would be most appreciated. I apologize for the length of my questions and hope you will forgive a newcomer. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

You could always fly into LGW and take an internal flight to Scotland

The aircraft currently used between MAN-MCO are 747-200s which have a Club Orlando cabin. This has larger seats with extra legroom however the service is the same as the Economy cabin.

Around April/May 2005 the aircraft is due to change to a 747-400. This aircraft will have the Upper Class Suite (the latest product) and a full Upper Class service.

Not sure what you have heard or read about the service between LGW-MCO but here is my view. The main gripes on flights operating from LGW have been no bar, no Inflight Beauty Therapist and no Upper Class Suite (UCS).

However all of the LGW fleet are currently going through a refurbishment of the Upper Class cabin which is due to be completed in early 2005. All of the LGW fleet will then have an onboard bar and the UCS but alas no Beauty Therapist.

The onboard service on the LGW fleet is of a high standard as there is only a maximum of 16 (14 with the UCS) passengers in Upper Class.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the helpful info. Looks like we will stay with our current MCO-MAN reservations for late July and trust that the planned switch to 747-400s takes place as scheduled. We want to tour the lake country on the way to Scotland so it should be easy to make a MAN-EDI-GLA-MAN road tour route over the course of 8-9 days. The more I read on this site the more excited I get about the VS experience. I may become a convert for VS travel as the jumping off point for all our European travel. Now if we could just find a way during our travels to meet up with some of the many cheerful folks who seem to frequent your forums. I'm sure it would be a delight to share a few tales over a brew or two.

[Decker]

We'll keep our fingers crossed for you!

The Lake District is well worth a visit - there are some great places to stay there as well. The area around Loch Lomond in Scotland has not too long ago been named Scotland's first national park so again a lovely area to visit. We were there last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Couldn't play the Loch Lomond Golf Course though - something about "not having a handicap" and "divets the size of moon craters"... :>

Remind us nearer the time - I'm sure if we're not having a social up that way (they can't ALL be convenient for us southern dwellers) some people will be up for a scoop or two