 Poster: A snowHead
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To be expected, yes! But in any event we have moved 5 car lengths in the last hour! And the place is grid-locked. Let's have some fun! Any SH in the queue why don't you sound your horns? Also if anyone has a barby handy I have a dozen spare sausages in the boot!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Ok, no barby offers - shame. How about a fondue set? We have about 6 mixed cheeses in the cool box too 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Sorry to hear this. We arrived at 3.30 pm today and got bumped forward to the 5.06pm train from our scheduled 6.50 return and have to say it was all running seamlessly. Hope you get through soon!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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No party spirit eh? If you don't mind swigging it from the bottles we'll throw in 2 bottles of beer and a pint of sloe gin 'hic!!'
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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How about a rowsing chorus of Land of Hope And Glory as loud as we can fellow queuing SH's?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Hooray, just loaded!
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We arrived at 4 and got put on the 5.20 we were booked on the 5.50.
The main problem remains checking of passports and at half term with kids in each car and up to 7 or 8 in the people carriers it was taking ages to match faces to passports and then scan each one.
Sat there discussing what we would do there doesn't seem to be an answer......given that we are broke we can't afford more staff just for a few weekends.
I understand the Doverferries all had delays as well
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We arrived at calais at 18.00 for a 23.00 ferry and got put on the next ferry at no charge. 18.50 we were starting the main course in the Brasserie.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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All lanes and all booths in operation when we arrived at 23:00 hrs. Weight of numbers seem to be the issue.
Once past the UK passport booths we were straight on the next train.
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Finally got home about 2am - which wasn't bad considering the unmitigated chaos and the fact that we were booked on the 02:20 at Calais, once we got to the booths they put us on the next one which was around 1am local time!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Megamum, ah, so it was all your fault! Weight of numbers caused by people arriving more than 2 hours before their booked slot. 
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Bet there was no queue on the ferry where the plebs and underclass go
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I understand the Doverferries all had delays as well
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from post above.
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You know it makes sense.
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q from the motorway exit.. looked like it was gonna be a shocker.. but once over the bridge and a quick lap of some car park it was business as usual.. reckon it cost us half an hour.. i think it looked a lot worse than it was and after a long drive with kids I'm sure some people were worried .. i thought they handled it all quite well and everyone managed to stay calm
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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The last 2 years I booked a Sunday train and rooms at the Novotel in Reims ... then when we made good time to Reims I phoned and got us on a Saturday afternoon train for no charge, cancelled the rooms and got home on Saturday night. This year I phoned from Reims but they had no availabilty .. we phoned 5 times hoping they'd have a space but no luck so we booked a P&O ferry. Got there early and they put us on the earlier boat at 4pm for £105 .. cheaper than the hotel rooms +dinner for me and the 4 kids .. back to Kingston by 6.30 .. the ferry isn't a such bad option ..
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Poster: A snowHead
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We were there too, arrived at 19.30 finally left at 21.36, originally booked on the 22.06 with a flexiplus ticket. Gave us a laugh with the 'allo allo' style "bonsoir Monsieur, we are just searching for explosives!". Never again!!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Same here for us - we arrived at about 8:45pm on Saturday for our 9:50pm booked train, and eventually got past the customs and onto the 11:20pm train. Actually, when we got our hanger from the automated booth we were allocated onto the 11:06pm train, but getting through the passport control took so long that we missed the 11:06pm train!!
I blame the tories for not signing up to the Schengen agreement, but that's jsut me... 
Is it always that bad? It does stand to reason that most Brits will leave the Alps around 8am - 10am and arrive in Calais at around 8pm to 10pm, so high volume is to be expected; but because Eurotunnel is so flexible I suppose they don't make a real effort to sort out the speculative arrivals from the booked arrivals - even if there had been a system for trying to make sure that booked passengers got on their trains, we couldn't have made it to it as we were stuck in the two lane exit from the autoroute and couldn't have got past the queues.
Had 4hrs15 post-Folkestone to do too, so arrived home at 3:15am rather than our hoped for 1:45am! Never mind, back home safe and well. Only one strained medial collateral ligament (1st day injury!) left to heal now...
Matt
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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the carpark, and the staff they post in the carpark to stop people using the overflow carpark when it's more than totally full is the biggest problem. complete carnage and can't cope when it's busy.
I abandoned mine on the pedestrian crossing after 3 laps (at 15mins+ per lap). Sod 'em. They won't tow/clamp because ti would block further, and if they gave a ticket, there's a bin nearby.
Not all ET customers would be returning skiers. Suspect most would be half term tourists to Eurodisney etc.
My experience of peak time travel is that a queue at the Dover check in booths is 3 cars, and even that is because I choose one with a kiosk on the left side to save leaning thru car. And a delay? I had one of about half an hour once on the ferry. Took me longer than that to reach a checkin booth at Folkestone ET.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Arrived around 215pm yesterday for 320pm crossing. Autoroute had been completely clear but waited around 45 mins to get through passport control/customs (as usual I picked the wrong queue). Got bumped back to 335pm train. About as bad as I've seen it on a Sunday but sounds like it could have been much worse. Very glad we skied Saturday in Les Gets with fresh powder, mainly sunshine and hardly a queue 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Quote: |
Is it always that bad?
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Nope - couple of real peak weekends when it is chocker and can get bad if there is a mechanical problem leading to delays. Personally I would always choose it over ferry option, but then others are the exact opposite
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I travel regularly, although rarely at peak times. Christmas horror stories of massive delays, queues onto the M20 and two hour train delays just didn't happen, although I think earlier trains had problems due to ferry cancellations being redirected to the tunnel. Return trip we cleared passport control in record time, and were boarded onto a train an hour earlier than booked.
andy, I appreciate you don't like Eurotunnel for whatever reason, but for many of us, it is a convenient way to cross the channel. For us, it does make a difference as we are much later arriving at our overnight stop, and much later arriving home again in the evening.
I have noted that many above were early for their trains, and still departed before their booked time despite the queues.
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I travelled back on the Saturday at the end of Christmas week this season. Took about 10 minutes to get through, with a short queue for the ticket booth and a short queue for the passport control and no queue for security.
Only once had a long queue, on the return Saturday of a New Year week, and I believe that after that the UK Border Agency put in several more checkpoints to process more cars at the same time. Seems like they still fail to cope with the absolute peak of demand. Must be frustrating for Eurotunnel as the delays seem to be entirely with UKBA.
Ferry service not an option for us as Jane gets bad seasickness.
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Not so much that I don't like it, it's just the layout and system as a whole can't cope with peak travel. Just changing the layout of the carpark would half solve the issue. Just something really simple like diagonal parking drive in forwards, drive out forwards, with alternate lanes of arriving/departing would help. Or just lin e up straight away like you do on ferries.
They know how many booking they have, and can estimate the number of ticket purchases at the booths, and know exactly how many car spaces there are on the trains, and how many parking spaces there are (or aren't cos they refused to let us use the half empty overflow carpark). No big deal to make them match.
UKBA no issue on my trip. Getting to the booths, then the carpark, then out of the carpark to requeue was the issue. Call it 4 hours from M20 to train. I arrived at the turn off 5 minutes after the window for my train was open. Is that "early" ?
I'll happily use them again, if someone else (Tesco) pays, but not at peak time.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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andy, UKBA is at the French side so wouldn't cause you any problems at Folkestone.
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We returned on Saturday evening (22nd) and it took 2 hours to negotiate the 3 queues (check-in, French passports, UK passports). It seemed to me at the time that my kids could have organized it better. There were different numbers of booths at each point, and so much lane-changing, and people queuing only to find that there was no booth in front of them.
Also, at certain points some lanes would be moving very quickly, and others not moving at all. The worst offenders were UK passport control who, whilst making a great play of checking our passports, really did nothing of any practical value to prevent us importing any number of guns, bombs, or illegal immigrants.
Same time next year, oh hell yes
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Also, at certain points some lanes would be moving very quickly, and others not moving at all
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usually as a queue of cars has been stopped while they are swabbed and then let through once results known
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really did nothing of any practical value to prevent us importing any number of guns, bombs, or illegal immigrants.
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That you could see - all that kit before the UK passport controls will have been zapping your car every which way you can think of to check for lots of things
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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that's why there are lines you can't cross until the box is empty etc etc.
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Left Bourg St Maurice 5.45
To FERRY 2.10 (5 min UK passport queue)
In club lounge with glass of champagne @ 2.50
Home (Stansted) 5.30 UK time
God I love being a "pleb" sometimes!!
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You know it makes sense.
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The biggest problem was that the, say, 12 (I didn't count) booth queues for the check-in ultimately filtered down into 6 queues for the passport control - this despite the fact that there were 12 passport control offices working. Each queue had 2 passport offices in it (a left hand side and a right hand side), so if one of the offices was slower than the other (or had more people to check etc), everyone else was affected. We were a party of 5 stopped at passport office 2, whilst in front of us at passport office 1 was a 2 person car. They were done and off in a fraction of the time it took for us, so the whole of the queue behind us was held up.
Once we were through there, the roads were clear!
(Though road closures on the M6 were still to come...)
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FAQ
