[Amethyst]

Originally Posted by Puxlut

As some of you may know, I'm off to Africa in 2 weeks. After flying to San Fran on Westjet, we fly on an Emirates A380 for 15 hours and 40 minutes (yuk) and then have a 14 hour layover in Dubai (double yuk) and then an 8.5 hour flight on an Emirates 777 to Durban. Seeing as this has turned into an all around flying experience question thread:
a) How do you deal with one of the top ten longest flights in the world? I bought compression socks, a good neck pillow, have a book, ipad, my kids Nintendo DS and melatonin. I can't pre-select an exit row with Emirates.. the boarding agents are the ones that make that call is what I heard?
b)jet lag? I looked at Jet lag rooster and I'm not sure how I can prep my sleep cycles. Do I just set my goal as Dubai because it's only an hour time zone difference from Durban. Do I sleep in Durban on my layover? I get there at 7:30 pm. I heard there are night tours you can do in Dubai with all the connecting flights that go through there.... do I try and stay awake all the way through?
c)Any other hints/tips? I have Nexus, so it will (kind of) help me through the new terminal, but is useless everywhere else, right?

That sounds like an awful itinerary. How did you end up with that?