Flying Virgin Atlantic: A Budget-Friendly Trip to Tampa

We flew Virgin Atlantic from London Heathrow to Tampa, Florida to save costs on flights. Tampa isn’t the main international airport for Florida or the closest to Orlando but we saved over £1000 on flights by arriving at Tampa (but it is about an hour further out from Orlando International Airport).

The flight with Virgin was pretty basic and the staff didn’t come round very often with drinks. We flew economy and had seats near the rear of the plane in the middle row (2 rows of 3) so the kids would always have an option of which toilet they could get to, The flight left and arrived on schedule and it was all fairly smooth and uneventful. The older kids (of which Mr FFT is included) seemed happy with the on-screen entertainment, the toddler just seemed happy with his goody bag they handed out at the airport and the hustle and bustle of other passengers/staff walking up and down and me and my sister were just elated to be on our way to Disney World.

We had booked and paid for round-trip private transfers with Lanier Transport well in advance of the holiday as we needed an infant car seat and wanted to all travel together. I had read many stories about rideshares and taxis not wanting to do the trip as it is so far out and as we needed an infant car seat we’d already be restricted to which ride-shares we would be offered so a private transfer seemed like the safest option BUT the day before we flew I got an email to say they were cancelling and refunding our booking.

Luckily, I found a replacement transfer last minute (on booking.com) and although it did cost us an extra £80 in total they did turn up and the driver kept in good communication with us, the car was nice and spacious and clean and he met us where he said he would so all in all it was worth the extra.

We had an afternoon flight out of London so it was abut 10pm by the time we arrived in Tampa. We were last off the plane and hadn’t downloaded or set up the Mobile Passport Control (MPC) app on our mobile phones we had to wait in line for passport control. Considering we were at the back on the line we weren’t waiting long, less than half an hour but others who had the MPC app were able to skip the line and walk straight through. Lesson learnt!

We met our driver at the arrivals pick up point and rejoiced in the cool air of the aircon as we travelled to Pop Century Resort.