The point of a journey is not to arrive.

"Are we there yet?"  14 hours of this was sure to be a very torturous beginning to a very long vacation.  But it is my belief that if you change your view of where "there" is, then the question disappears.  Instead of viewing 14 hours of being trapped in an airplane as an ends to a means, we viewed it as a part of a journey.  The prince was key in making this transition of mentality from the destination becoming the prize to the journey itself being the objective.  So while the Queen and I were bogged down in the logistics of travel, the Prince handled the journey itself.  This began with internet searches on what plane we would be on, including size, capacity, speed, and specs.  It continued with maps showing what continents and countries we would be passing over.  He also studied what food was to be offered and what movies.  Thus we where very excited about the whole affair.

Doha Airport view of skyline

You can tell a lot about travel attitudes from seat selection.  An aisle person seems to be more concerned with comfort, bathroom access, and just getting to his destination.  A window person seems to be more focused on the trip itself and being in the now, be it over Africa, or the Amazon, or the Indian ocean.  We are window people to the 10th.  The Prince did his research well and booked us online seats which afforded us the best view with no wing in sight.

The Boeing Triple Seven is an amazing plane.  The 777-200lr is the worlds longest-range Airliner, a fact that the Prince gathered and excited him greatly.

There are 3 things on which I grade a flight.  First is price.  Second is comfort, and third is service.  For our journey to Bangkok, Qatar Airways gave us the best price deal.  Plus their airplanes where amazing.  From the moment we saw our plane pulling up to the gate we were blown away.  Being on board only enhanced our joy.  Pillows, blankets, and private TVs were exciting.  Thumbing through the viewing options and putting numbers to how many movies we could see gave us a moment of panic as there seemed too much to see in too little time.  We also had our camera out to take pictures of places we traveled over coupled with pictures of our individual flight map which showed us speed, trajectory, and the names of places we were seeing below us.  It would have been fun if the airplane had links to the cities, giving information on populations, and other trivia.  We viewed our airplane rides as being on a theme park ride or a high speed tour bus.  Exciting to say the least.

View of  in seat navigation screen.

Service and personal can make or break an experience.  We were blown away with both on Qatar Airways.  The Flight Attendants were on a first name basis with our children, and made sure to bring them their food and drinks first.  Food was abundant and amazing, as were the selections of French and Spanish wines and other drink choices.  It was a blast and we enjoyed every minute.  I regret to say that I didn't write down the names of the flight attendants to write a letter of gratitude to their bosses, as I thought that this level of service was the norm and not the exception.  On our subsequent legs of the journey we found this not to be the case. The flight attendants here seemed to be somewhat bothered by their work and seemed to only grudgingly do what was required of them and performed these duties with a coldness and distance which conveyed the feeling that we the passengers were more of a hindrance to their real motive, receiving a paycheck, then a way to show their pride in service or even  basic amiability.  Still this level of no service is what we are used to. So with the bar on standard airline customer service set so low,  and all things considered, we would definitively have nothing but excitement in travelling with Qatar Airways again in the future.