When I booked I priced it all up with Virgin, then with Travel City, it was about 10% cheaper with travel city but as they're owned by Virgin now it was the same holiday as far as I could tell, same flight, same hotel, car hire etc
Our last holiday was with TravelCity, they completely arsed up the booking of our cars and accomodation, and are basically lying to Virgin about the problems that we had. We are out-of-pocket as we had to purchase the car-hire there (neither the two car companies that Virgin/Travelcity had any record of the bookings, and neither could the local Virgin rep [who was extremely helpful] find any record). So it is coming down to US Virgin stating there was no booking, against TravelCity claiming they made the booking.
The accomodation, was booked, but for a completely wrong set of dates. Luckily, the hotel clerk was very helpful, and changed the dates for us without added expense.
Virgin UK have gone half-way to re-imbursing our expenses on car hire, but claim that this is out of good-will, there were no mistakes made.
I would book Virgin, but steer clear of TravelCity.
Going indirect might be cheaper, but it will add a minimum of 5-6 hours on travel time as well as increase your blood pressure as you traverse from the international arrivals terminal to the internal flight terminal. We tried it in 2005 and flew to Chicago. From landing @ Chicago to departure to Orlando we had 3 hours - it is tight timewise as the airport is incredibly busy!
At the end of the day, We prefer to pay a bit more, fly with Virigin and arrive mid afternoon and be in the pool by 5pm!
Going indirect is possible, I have found it to be relatively stress-free in the past. Immigration has always been quicker at Chicago than it is at Sanford/Orlando. I have been sat in immigration in Florida for 3+ hours before, as they never seem to have many non-US gates open. Chicago seems to have more open.
In laws have an apartment in florida and only fly with Virgin. When I went over a few years ago the plane was packed, and they were offering £350 per person and a night in a good hotel to fly the bext day. I would have as the flights had only cost £300, but the in laws didn't want to hang around gatwick for a day.
They get upgraded fairly regularly, all the way to first class on occasion and have also had flights that are about a quarter full, so have been able to sleep on a row of seats each.
Virgin do look after them and if there are any issues are pretty good at sorting them out as well.
Never had an upgrade
not even when I flew on honeymoon.
However, the seats seem to be much much more comfortable (I am not tall, at 5'10, but on TravelCity chartered flights I have endured in the past, I couldn't get my upper leg [knee to hip] between my seat-back and the seat-back of the chair in front without bending it.).
Never managed to sleep on a Virgin flight though, as instead of a single-drop-down video shared between 20 passengers, they have had videos on demand on the back of the seat in front
