Kremmen
Dec 19, 05, 7:06 pm
I thought a trip to Broadway would be a good idea sometime so, when a nice cheap fare on UA came up, I grabbed seats for FlyingPenguin and myself. It was only afterwards that I found out that NYC, unlike everywhere else in the US, is actually very expensive for accommodation in early December. ... Thank goodness for Starwood points to solve that problem.
The plan was to catch the red-eye over and catch up on sleep during the day we arrived. No point upgrading the flight over, since first doesn't have sufficient recline nor sufficient service to warrant doing so.
UA222 SEA-IAD 319 7A/C 13/12 2215-0555+1 (actual 2230-0559+1)
There were about 6 empty seats, all middle seats in E+. Luckily, 7B was one of those empty seats. We ate some snacks we'd brought with us and watched Little Manhattan, which wasn't bad. I even managed to get a couple of hours' sleep.
FlyingPenguin managed to get about an hour's sleep in the gate lounge at IAD before the door alarm went off. Passengers coming off the incoming flight set it off when they came through the totally unmanned door. The screeching and the flashing blue light kept going for 50 mins!
UA7198 IAD-JFK CRJ 3A/C 14/12 0815-0930 (actual 0841-0926)
Full plane. We were taken down to the tarmac in order to pre-board ... using the ramp that wasn't there. We got them to take us back up to the gate, rather than stand in 10 degrees below freezing! After the ramp truck still hadn't arrived 20 mins later and all other pax were on board, we boarded without it.
At JFK, we were accompanied directly to baggage claim which, conveniently, is on tarmac level. We ordered a Super Shuttle, which arrived in about an hour and then took hours to get into Manhattan through the awful traffic. However, the driver was a really nice guy and the others on the shuttle were interesting to talk to, so it was a good trip.
As NYC is frighteningly expensive to stay in (around US$360+/night for 3-4* this time of year), we used Starwood points. First 2 days were on Karen's points and next 2 days on mine. The Sheraton Towers provided a very mixed experience. The main entrance on 7th Ave is totally inaccessible to wheelchairs, but our room was excellent. Many staff were good, but some simply weren't. We received no paper Thu, but did Fri. Despite being told everything was taken care of for our whole stay at checkin, we had housekeeping waking us up by banging on our door at 8am Sat morning, believing that there was not supposed to be anyone in our room! When informed of this nasty wakeup call, an agent gave us free breakfasts and some Starpoints in compensation, which was a good gesture.
It would, however, have been even better if the Sheraton's breakfast buffet wasn't the worst major hotel buffet I've ever experienced. All the "hot" food arrived cold and gradually re-heated itself in the bain-marie! This not only made the potatoes and the scrambled egg quite horrible, but it's totally contrary to proper food handling standards. While the bread rolls and fruit were excellent, there was a total lack of many things I'd expect at a breakfast buffet: cheeses and cold meats, for example. There was no toast except French toast, which was soggy and almost cold. The steel-cut oats were insipid at best. On Sat, at least we had a good waitress, who brought us nice big glasses of juice and refilled them. On Sun, our waiter was hopeless. He put a couple of small glasses of orange juice on our table while we weren't there, never asking which juices we wanted and he never returned to refill them. To top things off, he was slow bringing the bill.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the Sheraton's awful (and disgracefully overpriced) breakfast was the 7th Avenue Deli a few doors up. The falafel platter, including pita bread, hot chips and Greek salad, at about $7, was excellent nosh and great value. Service was friendly, too!
The main point of our stay was to see a couple of shows, Avenue Q and Spamalot. Both were excellent, in quite different ways. Avenue Q was very clever in a unique, quirky way. Spamalot was much more of the traditional big musical with lots of massive set changes and costume changes. The lovely SeeYa joined us for Avenue Q, having managed to grab a ticket only a few rows behind us at the last minute.
On Sat morning, we phoned Super Shuttle and were told that they only have 2 accessible vans and neither would be available for Sun morning. After spending about an hour on the phone to other shuttle companies, who all had nothing either, or wanted to charge between $143 and $200, we decided we would catch a cab or the subway. Imagine our surprise when, at 9:20am (the original time I'd requested) Sun morning, we got a call in our room to say our shuttle was downstairs! It was the same driver who'd brought us in, too. As we weren't ready, he went off and collected another passenger before returning for us.
UA Express checkin was horribly slow and inefficient. TSA were hopeless, sending us up a level to the gates, when there are stairs to get from there to gate 11. Once back at TSA screening, they escorted us to gate 11 ... which also had only stair access to the tarmac. So, we ended up being escorted back to the checkin area, while TSA and other security staff stood about wondering who was responsible for getting us to the plane. It certainly was odd being back out in the insecure area twice before eventually going to the plane.
UA7346 JFK-IAD CRJ 2A/C 18/12 1228-1354 (actual 1317-1407)
Baggage loading was amazingly slow, resulting in a very late departure.
On arrival into IAD, heaps of people waited for gate-checked baggage to appear. Once we were ready to go, the nearest security guy told us there was nobody to escort us into the terminal, so we could just walk down to gate C30 to get into the terminal. It was a lovely day for a walk on the tarmac, so we wandered, totally unaccompanied, from C22 to C30, dodging the baggage trucks that came by every so often.
Once inside, it was obvious that Mesa (UA Express) seemed to have quite a few delays which they were trying to deal with. I particularly liked the announcement over the PA to passengers waiting for the 3:11pm arrival of the captain for their supposedly 2:45pm departure to Newark:
"The Captain, he doesn't know where he's going to have the flight attendant."
We found a good place to sit (where "good" = "near 2 power outlets, so we could both use our laptops") at a gate and the woman next to us was waiting for that delayed Newark flight. We told her we were going to Seattle from JFK and she immediately told us that she'd just seen a CNN piece on people who fly just to get miles and only stay at a place for a few days before flying back! (*gasp*) She asked if we were some of those people. I suggested that actually staying a few days was not a proper mileage run and that a same-day turn-around was entirely possible. :) ... and, no, that wasn't our main purpose. ... this time.
UA903 IAD-DEN 772 11D/E 18/12 1725-1920 (actual 1755-1920)
The 3-class is such a delight on a domestic service, especially when upgrades come through. Real nuts, real food, real seat recline, multiple movies. One of the movies wasn't playing properly, so they put on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in addition. I had dinner and watched some of it, before falling asleep. Lovely.
UA1229 DEN-SEA 752 3C/D 18/12 2105-2254 (actual 2131-2301)
Drinks and crappy snack packet, along with a "short feature" which seemed to be some awful NBC show interspersed with NBC advertising.
The plan was to catch the red-eye over and catch up on sleep during the day we arrived. No point upgrading the flight over, since first doesn't have sufficient recline nor sufficient service to warrant doing so.
UA222 SEA-IAD 319 7A/C 13/12 2215-0555+1 (actual 2230-0559+1)
There were about 6 empty seats, all middle seats in E+. Luckily, 7B was one of those empty seats. We ate some snacks we'd brought with us and watched Little Manhattan, which wasn't bad. I even managed to get a couple of hours' sleep.
FlyingPenguin managed to get about an hour's sleep in the gate lounge at IAD before the door alarm went off. Passengers coming off the incoming flight set it off when they came through the totally unmanned door. The screeching and the flashing blue light kept going for 50 mins!
UA7198 IAD-JFK CRJ 3A/C 14/12 0815-0930 (actual 0841-0926)
Full plane. We were taken down to the tarmac in order to pre-board ... using the ramp that wasn't there. We got them to take us back up to the gate, rather than stand in 10 degrees below freezing! After the ramp truck still hadn't arrived 20 mins later and all other pax were on board, we boarded without it.
At JFK, we were accompanied directly to baggage claim which, conveniently, is on tarmac level. We ordered a Super Shuttle, which arrived in about an hour and then took hours to get into Manhattan through the awful traffic. However, the driver was a really nice guy and the others on the shuttle were interesting to talk to, so it was a good trip.
As NYC is frighteningly expensive to stay in (around US$360+/night for 3-4* this time of year), we used Starwood points. First 2 days were on Karen's points and next 2 days on mine. The Sheraton Towers provided a very mixed experience. The main entrance on 7th Ave is totally inaccessible to wheelchairs, but our room was excellent. Many staff were good, but some simply weren't. We received no paper Thu, but did Fri. Despite being told everything was taken care of for our whole stay at checkin, we had housekeeping waking us up by banging on our door at 8am Sat morning, believing that there was not supposed to be anyone in our room! When informed of this nasty wakeup call, an agent gave us free breakfasts and some Starpoints in compensation, which was a good gesture.
It would, however, have been even better if the Sheraton's breakfast buffet wasn't the worst major hotel buffet I've ever experienced. All the "hot" food arrived cold and gradually re-heated itself in the bain-marie! This not only made the potatoes and the scrambled egg quite horrible, but it's totally contrary to proper food handling standards. While the bread rolls and fruit were excellent, there was a total lack of many things I'd expect at a breakfast buffet: cheeses and cold meats, for example. There was no toast except French toast, which was soggy and almost cold. The steel-cut oats were insipid at best. On Sat, at least we had a good waitress, who brought us nice big glasses of juice and refilled them. On Sun, our waiter was hopeless. He put a couple of small glasses of orange juice on our table while we weren't there, never asking which juices we wanted and he never returned to refill them. To top things off, he was slow bringing the bill.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the Sheraton's awful (and disgracefully overpriced) breakfast was the 7th Avenue Deli a few doors up. The falafel platter, including pita bread, hot chips and Greek salad, at about $7, was excellent nosh and great value. Service was friendly, too!
The main point of our stay was to see a couple of shows, Avenue Q and Spamalot. Both were excellent, in quite different ways. Avenue Q was very clever in a unique, quirky way. Spamalot was much more of the traditional big musical with lots of massive set changes and costume changes. The lovely SeeYa joined us for Avenue Q, having managed to grab a ticket only a few rows behind us at the last minute.
On Sat morning, we phoned Super Shuttle and were told that they only have 2 accessible vans and neither would be available for Sun morning. After spending about an hour on the phone to other shuttle companies, who all had nothing either, or wanted to charge between $143 and $200, we decided we would catch a cab or the subway. Imagine our surprise when, at 9:20am (the original time I'd requested) Sun morning, we got a call in our room to say our shuttle was downstairs! It was the same driver who'd brought us in, too. As we weren't ready, he went off and collected another passenger before returning for us.
UA Express checkin was horribly slow and inefficient. TSA were hopeless, sending us up a level to the gates, when there are stairs to get from there to gate 11. Once back at TSA screening, they escorted us to gate 11 ... which also had only stair access to the tarmac. So, we ended up being escorted back to the checkin area, while TSA and other security staff stood about wondering who was responsible for getting us to the plane. It certainly was odd being back out in the insecure area twice before eventually going to the plane.
UA7346 JFK-IAD CRJ 2A/C 18/12 1228-1354 (actual 1317-1407)
Baggage loading was amazingly slow, resulting in a very late departure.
On arrival into IAD, heaps of people waited for gate-checked baggage to appear. Once we were ready to go, the nearest security guy told us there was nobody to escort us into the terminal, so we could just walk down to gate C30 to get into the terminal. It was a lovely day for a walk on the tarmac, so we wandered, totally unaccompanied, from C22 to C30, dodging the baggage trucks that came by every so often.
Once inside, it was obvious that Mesa (UA Express) seemed to have quite a few delays which they were trying to deal with. I particularly liked the announcement over the PA to passengers waiting for the 3:11pm arrival of the captain for their supposedly 2:45pm departure to Newark:
"The Captain, he doesn't know where he's going to have the flight attendant."
We found a good place to sit (where "good" = "near 2 power outlets, so we could both use our laptops") at a gate and the woman next to us was waiting for that delayed Newark flight. We told her we were going to Seattle from JFK and she immediately told us that she'd just seen a CNN piece on people who fly just to get miles and only stay at a place for a few days before flying back! (*gasp*) She asked if we were some of those people. I suggested that actually staying a few days was not a proper mileage run and that a same-day turn-around was entirely possible. :) ... and, no, that wasn't our main purpose. ... this time.
UA903 IAD-DEN 772 11D/E 18/12 1725-1920 (actual 1755-1920)
The 3-class is such a delight on a domestic service, especially when upgrades come through. Real nuts, real food, real seat recline, multiple movies. One of the movies wasn't playing properly, so they put on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in addition. I had dinner and watched some of it, before falling asleep. Lovely.
UA1229 DEN-SEA 752 3C/D 18/12 2105-2254 (actual 2131-2301)
Drinks and crappy snack packet, along with a "short feature" which seemed to be some awful NBC show interspersed with NBC advertising.