‘Two full days of travelling for nothing’: flight cancellations ruin family’s Disneyland Paris trip

A family was left disappointed a planned trip to Disneyland Paris turned into a “nightmare”.

Chelsea McMillan had booked trip to the theme park as a surprise for her six-year-old daughter’s birthday, with flights from Glasgow-Paris with easyJet on Monday 12 December.

But an hour before they were due to fly, Ms McMillan received a text to say the easyJet flight was cancelled due to severe weather, Glasgow Live reports.

EasyJet offered to fly the family from Bristol the same day instead, on the condition that they could travel there themselves.

They accepted, and embarked on the seven-hour journey to Bristol. But once at the airport, they found there was another three-hour delay - before their flight was cancelled again.

The McMillans were forced to pay for a hotel for the night, before travelling back to Scotland the next day, completely missing their trip in the process.

Ms McMillan told Glasgow Live: "We had planned the whole trip as a surprise for Aria. On the morning of, we showed her a video from Elsa telling her she was coming to Disneyland to meet all the other princesses. She was so excited.”

But the trip turned into a “nightmare”, she explained, after both flights were cancelled and easyJet reps “wouldn’t help us at all” with accommodation. “We were essentially just left to sort it out ourselves,” she said.

She added: “It was just a horrible experience. Aria was so upset having just been told she was going to Disneyland but not actually getting to go.”

The family tried to claim back funds for expenses on what they had spent on flights, accommodation and food, but were told there would be no payout as the flights were cancelled due to bad weather.

Ms McMillan said: “It was basically two full days of travelling for nothing. We’ve been told that we can’t get any money back because it was due to weather, but the flight from Bristol to Paris wasn’t impacted by the weather.”

“Dealing with their customer service has been awful,” she continued. “One person even hung up on me when I tried to explain our situation. We had only flown to Bristol because they told us we could get to Paris from there and now we’re expected to pay for it ourselves.”

The family also claims easyJet won’t refund them for the flight back from Paris, which they were unable to take because they never made it to the French capital.

A spokesperson for easyJet said: “We are very sorry for Ms McMillan’s experience as a result of the severe weather conditions last week, which resulted in disruption to airline flying programmes.

“While this was outside of control, we did all possible to help impacted customers and provided the option to transfer to an alternative flight for free or receive a refund, as well as providing hotel accommodation and meals for those who required them and advised any customers who booked their own that they would be reimbursed.

“Due to the weather impacting all airlines, we are aware that options on some routes were limited at this time and so Ms McMillian transferred her flight to fly from Bristol, which was also unable to operate as a result of the weather.

“As there were no seats available on flights from Bristol to Glasgow, they then transferred to a flight from Bristol to Edinburgh. The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and while the weather was outside of our control we fully understand the difficulty this will have caused, for which we are sorry.

“We take our consumer responsibilities seriously and we have refunded Ms McMillan for her return flight from Paris to Glasgow that she wasn’t able to take and are reimbursing them for their onward travel to Glasgow, as well as their fuel and hotel accommodation in Bristol.

“As Ms McMillan transferred her cancelled flights for free and then travelled with us from Bristol to Edinburgh, in line with regulations she is not due a refund for her outbound flight.”