We know travel experiences can be 'luck of the drawer' but our experience with your company has been great.
Great trip.
Sally as always delivered our holiday plans perfectly. Can’t imagine doing what we did and booking with anyone else!
Very flexible in helping us make last minute changes - and always available to speak to.
I have used DialAFlight for many stateside visits. Stuart was fantastic at organising my bespoke itinerary
Will always use your service
Had a few issues with car hire firm which caused some inconvenience. We fed this back to car hire firm.
Once again Nathan Sparks and his team sorted out our flights and car hire to the USA. I’ve been using them for a number of years and they never let me down. They are very professional and nothing is a problem for them.
Excellent service as usual - as we have learned from the many years we have been booking with you.
Amy as always is a delight! Wouldn’t book our flights with anyone else.
Our original flight was cancelled after a 4 hour delay sitting on a hot plane. Calvin Ali was on the phone directly to me to make sure that alternative flights and hotel had been arranged for us. As usual, flawless service. And yes, I’ve made 2 further referrals to friends following our recent trip.
Requested a last minute flight change which was accommodated by your helpful colleagues. Many thanks to Mason and his team. 10 out of 10
Excellent advice and service - Tristan in particular was brilliant
Fantastic trip, excellent price. I’ve passed on your details to friends and family and would highly recommend
We have used DialAFlight for many years and have always had great service.
Fantastic service from Niall and his team, yet again. Would recommend them for flights. Best prices, no hidden fees and excellent customer service and attention to detail.
Have been using Sadie for 10 years - would never use anyone else.
The only major issue was the hotel in New York - The Manhattan at Time Square. The hotel was extremely poor and if we had been staying longer we would have asked you to change our hotel. Staff were extremely unhelpful and a promise of a refund of local taxes did not materialise.
Our holiday was lovely - we got married in West Virginia and honeymooned in Nashville. Just a small hiccup in the airport coming home but a good holiday, thank you
Very helpful when I contacted them and nothing a bother
Amazing holiday in great part due to the help and guidance given by your excellent Travel Manager, Gary Patel. We would not hesitate to use your services again - especially if Gary is there to help out! We will happily recommend you to friends and family.
We would strongly recommend using DialAFlight. Our itinerary to Canada and USA was complicated by our choice. But it was handled professionally and with attention to detail. Nothing we asked of Ethan and Conrad was too much trouble. Out of 5 stars l would give six
Special thanks to Hayley Hawtin who did the bookings for me. It was the third trip I’ve booked with her and she is the reason why I’ll come back to DialAFlight next time.
Great communication and support during our holiday.
Trevor Henderson came up trumps. Sofitel New York was superb - great room, excellent food, helpful staff and so very conveniently located. Our flights went like clockwork. All through the booking process and right before we left Trevor was in contact to make sure we had what we needed. DialAFlight don't just sell you a holiday, they usher you through an experience.
Sebastian is very helpful, my flights and stops were great and I’ve recommended him to family who also found him very helpful.
Thanks again to Jordan and Claire for a problem free holiday.
Superb service. Definitely would and have used again - take a few minutes to ring them you won’t be disappointed
Lucy was amazing organising our holiday. I will certainly use DialAFlight again
Very helpful when I needed to check stuff
Some of this flight might be intense, but trust your guide and be brave.' The words of warning came from Dr Jackie Ogden as our group gathered in the Link Chamber of the Pandora Conservation Initiative. We had already been through the Genetic Matching Room and been decontaminated for micro-parasites, and were being given the final sequence of instructions before being let loose on the alien planet.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
With the final motivational message of 'Rise to the challenge!' we were swooping off across the otherworldly terrain and lush foliage of Pandora on the back of a Mountain Banshee, the gigantic dragon-like beast from Alpha Centauri that eats people for breakfast.
Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your level of bravery - all this excitement was purely man-made. Or, we should say more accurately, Disneymade. Because we were in the Animal Kingdom theme park in the heart of Walt Disney World, Orlando.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
Pandora: The World Of Avatar is the latest attraction built by the House of Mouse - with the help of film-maker James Cameron - in its vast Florida resort. It has taken seven years to complete.
While some Disney die-hards doubted the wisdom of such an obvious film franchise being successfully shoe-horned into this most naturalistic of parks, the end result is a 12-acre immersive environment that is so packed with features and special effects it would take a small book rather than one article to list them all.
It starts with the Floating Mountains that seemingly hover over the area - gigantic, 156ft-tall rockworks that are complete creatures and waterfalls – and continues through a junglelike panorama of immense complexity, studded with the bioluminescent plants from the 2009 movie that are all recreated in amazingly painstaking detail. They include some examples that react to touch and movement using specially developed sensors.
Cleverly hidden among the alien terrain - which mixes artificial plants with real ones from Hawaii and Africa - are two contrasting rides that take the story of Avatar into the future, 100 years after the war between Earth's Resource Development Administration and the indigenous Na'vi people.
RIDE OF YOUR LIFE
The Na'vi River Journey is a meandering boat ride through the Pandoran jungle, usingwith vegetation, a mix of animatronics and screen projections to create a stunningly realistic series of encounters with the flora, fauna and people. It takes an ecofriendly approach, highlighting conservation principles and real-world issues such as habitat destruction.
After this the action intensifies - Avatar Flight Of Passage kicks things up several notches with the aforementioned simulator ride in the company of Dr Ogden. Sitting astride a kind of stationary bike (and equipped with 3-D glasses), riders seemingly dive, twist and turn in through a long whirl over Pandora, taking in the sights and sounds that made the film such a visual extravaganza.
There also ought to be a special award for the Blueberry Cream Cheese Mousse with its neon blue a there is such a thing as alien looking food, this is it.
Even James Cameron was apparently initially surprised at the huge scale of Disney's plans when they approached him with the idea of Avatar Lane. He said: 'I thought we were going to be talking about creating an attraction. Disney’s vision when they came to me was to create a land.'
ART & ENGINEERING
It has been reported that the area cost up to 500-million dollars to complete. It features music composed by the late James Horner and Simon Franglen, based on the original score from Avatar.
The final word, though, deserves to come from Disney's Zsolt Hormay: 'We had to use a lot of experts to help us with the technology. It needed a lot of different skills. It melds art and engineering. It is like finishing a painting, only in three dimensions - and with a lot of engineering.'
First published in the Mail on Sunday - January 2018
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