Rob Coasters
Hyper Poster
Day 1: Travel
Well my new biggest solo trip has been slightly overdue for a while, with the last one being that 2.5 day Denmark trip. I needed to go bigger, and I picked Spain. This originally was meant to be a 5 day trip that involved both Madrid parks & Barcelona parks, but something about it was... putting me off? I don't know. Perhaps jumping from 2.5 days solo and doubling that up to 5 days solo? So I cut it down to two separate trips, one for Madrid and the other for Barcelona, but what would that achieve? I shelved it, then looked at other options. Twenty minutes later, I was confident in booking a three park four day trip to Belgium. I've been dying to ride Revolution at Bobbejaanland anyway, so choice made. Had two main options of getting to my base in Brussels, either a seven hour coach from London Victoria for £20 or a British Airways flight from Heathrow for quadruple price. Latter.
Unfortunately first impressions of Heathrow weren't great, as going into security I was warned that the flight would be so full that I may have to check in my cabin bag which would be done free of charge. Not quite understanding what he meant, I told him I was allowed to bring both bags onto the plane with me as I was flying with BA. Breezed through security and had three hours to kill, before I went to the gate.
At the gate the BA guy said that the flight was indeed going to be so full that anyone with a wheeled suitcase needed to check in their bag. So a queue of people formed up to do this, including me who had a wheeled suitcase. So I checked in my bag for free, got a receipt, and got that little slip of paper wrapped around my case. I put the case where all the other checked bags were before boarding the plane, and flight was smooth and short.
The queue at Brussels Airport passport control took forever, but when it got to my turn, I got a man who said "one minute". Gave him my passport, a couple minutes of dead silent, until he stamped my passport and let me through without one second of conversation or wanting to know a single thing about my trip. Cool, I guess.
Had difficulty locating my flight's baggage reclaim conveyor belt before finally finding it, and after making several loops of the belt, came to the haunting realisation that my case was not there. It's gone. A similar but not identical case to mine was making loops, and I came to terms with the fact that my case must have been taken by accident. Oh s**t. Called parents, went to lost property, "wrong lost property stall mate", went to the other lost property which had nobody manning the desk. Called someone over, who asked for my receipt, which they scanned and said your case is still in London. A sigh of relief as it wasn't either stolen or taken by accident, but why the f**k is it still in London??? Filled out all the information on how to identify the bag on a self service kiosk, gave the address of my hotel for it to be delivered to, and a deadline date for when I'm leaving the hotel and going back home to my permanent address.
Two hours after landing, after they scanned my receipt barcode and I filled in the self service kiosk, they said alright, you've done your part, now it's time for us at BA to play ours. I was incredibly relieved to find that my other smaller carry-on bag had my charger & charger wire in it, but I was missing the adaptor, which was only 30 euros at the airport shop... I was also missing a change of clothes which was in the case, but for that I held hope in the suitcase arriving into my arms.
Checked into the hotel. Let them know about the situation. They said okay.
So hopefully it's here by the next morning before Bobbejaanland, I guess.
Well my new biggest solo trip has been slightly overdue for a while, with the last one being that 2.5 day Denmark trip. I needed to go bigger, and I picked Spain. This originally was meant to be a 5 day trip that involved both Madrid parks & Barcelona parks, but something about it was... putting me off? I don't know. Perhaps jumping from 2.5 days solo and doubling that up to 5 days solo? So I cut it down to two separate trips, one for Madrid and the other for Barcelona, but what would that achieve? I shelved it, then looked at other options. Twenty minutes later, I was confident in booking a three park four day trip to Belgium. I've been dying to ride Revolution at Bobbejaanland anyway, so choice made. Had two main options of getting to my base in Brussels, either a seven hour coach from London Victoria for £20 or a British Airways flight from Heathrow for quadruple price. Latter.
Unfortunately first impressions of Heathrow weren't great, as going into security I was warned that the flight would be so full that I may have to check in my cabin bag which would be done free of charge. Not quite understanding what he meant, I told him I was allowed to bring both bags onto the plane with me as I was flying with BA. Breezed through security and had three hours to kill, before I went to the gate.
At the gate the BA guy said that the flight was indeed going to be so full that anyone with a wheeled suitcase needed to check in their bag. So a queue of people formed up to do this, including me who had a wheeled suitcase. So I checked in my bag for free, got a receipt, and got that little slip of paper wrapped around my case. I put the case where all the other checked bags were before boarding the plane, and flight was smooth and short.
The queue at Brussels Airport passport control took forever, but when it got to my turn, I got a man who said "one minute". Gave him my passport, a couple minutes of dead silent, until he stamped my passport and let me through without one second of conversation or wanting to know a single thing about my trip. Cool, I guess.
Had difficulty locating my flight's baggage reclaim conveyor belt before finally finding it, and after making several loops of the belt, came to the haunting realisation that my case was not there. It's gone. A similar but not identical case to mine was making loops, and I came to terms with the fact that my case must have been taken by accident. Oh s**t. Called parents, went to lost property, "wrong lost property stall mate", went to the other lost property which had nobody manning the desk. Called someone over, who asked for my receipt, which they scanned and said your case is still in London. A sigh of relief as it wasn't either stolen or taken by accident, but why the f**k is it still in London??? Filled out all the information on how to identify the bag on a self service kiosk, gave the address of my hotel for it to be delivered to, and a deadline date for when I'm leaving the hotel and going back home to my permanent address.
Two hours after landing, after they scanned my receipt barcode and I filled in the self service kiosk, they said alright, you've done your part, now it's time for us at BA to play ours. I was incredibly relieved to find that my other smaller carry-on bag had my charger & charger wire in it, but I was missing the adaptor, which was only 30 euros at the airport shop... I was also missing a change of clothes which was in the case, but for that I held hope in the suitcase arriving into my arms.
Checked into the hotel. Let them know about the situation. They said okay.
So hopefully it's here by the next morning before Bobbejaanland, I guess.