Is Flying Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy Worth it for Kids?
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Flying with children can be stressful, so you might be wondering whether upgrading to Premium Economy on Virgin is worth it and what you get for your money. Paying for premium seats on a flight can add a lot more expense to a trip – so if you are considering whether flying Premium Economy is worth it when going away as a family, here’s what we thought when we flew from the UK to Orlando Florida with two children on Virgin Atlantic.
Once you’ve booked, the first perk is that you don’t have to pay for seat selection, so you can ensure you are seated with your children. (Although it does annoy me that you don’t get this free on all flights!) but at least it takes away that add on charge. You also have the option to check in two bags per person. This is great if you’re going for a longer period of time and handy with kids, if they are like mine and seem to get an entire outfit dirty in minutes!
Another bonus of Virgin Premium Economy is a quicker check in and priority boarding. In all honestly though, this didn’t really make much of a difference to either our outward or return journey to Florida. If anything the priority check in desk seemed longer at Orlando airport than the normal one and in terms of calling out the groups to board the plane, once we were at the gate, we pretty much all boarded together. That said this may have just been our personal experience – I can imagine if the queues were really long in economy to begin with, it would have been nice to have the option to skip those. But in our experience using premium Economy tickets, we didn’t see a big difference in timings, that would warrant paying more for.
What’s the Difference on the Plane between Virgin Economy and Premium Economy?
Once boarded, premium economy are the seats in between upper class and economy on Virgin planes and essentially you are paying to get more space all round. The seats are bigger, there’s more leg room in front of you and you can also recline a few cm further.
My kids are of an age now (eight & ten) where flights feel easy in comparison to when they were tots. They mostly just watch the on flight entertainment, but as with all long journeys we came onto the flight laden down with stuff we’d accumulated, so that extra space really helped. The inflight entertainment systems on Virgin are great, no different to the ones in economy but absolutely crammed with films, TV and games to keep everyone entertained.
Moving onto food. As part of premium economy everyone is offered a welcome drink once seated. There was either juice or water for the children and also the option of sparkling wine for adults.
I was actually really impressed with the food quality in Premium Economy. For adults there’s an antipasto to begin and then the choice of three different hot main meals. We were then offered afternoon tea later in our day flight, and also breakfast on our night flight on our return home. These secondary meals especially were very nice, fresh sandwiches, scones and sweet little cakes. I’m never overly keen on the hot choice ready meals served up, but all the little extras were good quality and tasted far fresher than other airplane meals I’ve had previously in economy.
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Unfortunately on the way out to Florida I did mess up by not booking my kids their own children’s meals. You have to do this in the flight booking before travelling. This was annoying as they barely ate anything in the normal meal, but I had a whole rucksack of snacks to keep them going anyway. A hangover from doing long haul flights when my two were little, is I always cram my carry on with as many snacks as possible. (dry ones that don’t make a mess and the longer they take to eat the better)
On the return home they had a children’s meal and it did make a difference. It was all pretty plain with not a lot of sauce which is perfect for my two. There were also lots of opportunities to order complementary drinks throughout the flight.
What is the Virgin Atlantic Snack Wonder Wall Like?
On Virgin Premium Economy they also have what they call the Wonder Wall which is essentially an array of snacks and drinks that you can help yourself to at the front of the premium economy seats. This was great for kids, as it gave them a reason to get up every couple of hours, where they could help themselves to a drink – there’s little cans and cartons or juice, water etc. that you can pour out and different bags of snacks. The snacks were not what I’d call a normal crisp and sweet treat selection, not necessarily all that much fancier, but more unusual than I expected! There were packs of flavoured corn kernels, pretzels or olives and but also some crisps, little biscuit balls and fruit bars too. So, it meant the food was more intriguing and fun for the kids to go and sample rather than necessarily filling them up.
All in all I found the premium economy flight worth the price for the space and extras it gave us. I also think it would be even more valuable with younger children. When you are at that stage where kids are climbing about on the seats or need to be held, if you’ve got the budget, that extra space I think would make all the difference.
Some great Disney products I’ve found online, perfect for a Disney holiday…
You can also find out lots more about our Disney holiday over on my other UK family Disney blogs:
Our Disney Diary – a day at Epcot Eating our way around the World
Our Mini Disney Diary – Visiting the Animal Kingdom Park at Night
