We have to hand it to Cunard (BTW – it is pronounced
Cue-Nard, not Coo-Nard), as disembarkation was amazing. The planned arrival
time was 6:30am, but due to traffic in the port, we were delayed until about
7:00am. We were supposed to vacate our room by 8am and meet in the Royal Court
Theatre to disembark around 8:30am and take the Cunard provided bus to Heathrow,
Terminal 3. Both the trough and the dining room were available for breakfast
from 6:30 to 8:00, so we went to the dining room and had a lovely breakfast.
Our disembarkation took a bit longer because of the slightly
delayed docking, but ultimately we left the port in the bus right on time at
9:30am. We arrived without incidence at the airport, checked in, turned in our
luggage and headed through security. Security was reasonably efficient. Because
we are both Delta Gold Medallion status, we were allowed free entrance into
Lounge 1 in the F set of lounges. It was fairly crowded, but had free WIFI (the
rest of the airport had it as well), a nice lunch, and drinks.
Our Virgin Atlantic plane was scheduled to depart at 3:25pm,
so we left at about 3:10 to do some walking exercise and then head to the gate.
They do things a bit differently and don’t assign the gate until an hour before
you are scheduled to depart. Weirdly as we were walking, we went right by the
gate. We walked a bit more and then went through the check-in process to the
holding area. We sat there for a while and suddenly, people were boarding
without any announcements. We got up and had to push our way through to board
with the premium economy class.
The flight was great and we arrived home safely.