.. from a wonderful 10 days in Bali :-) I will post a full JBR when I have time but I just wanted to say that the best Rp240,000 each we spent was on arrival!! I really hummed & harred about whether this extra cost was justified as we hadn't had to wait long to get through immigration for our 8 previous trips however I was convinced to give it a try after checking out flight stats and hearing of others arriving on our Pacific Blue 2.55pm flight in the previous weeks and having to waits up to 3hrs.
So I went ahead and made a pre-booking for the express service and thanks goodness I did because the queues were HUGE! I wish I had taken a photo to show everyone just how huge they were but of course no photography is allowed but the whole arrivals lobby was full with hundreds of people - you couldn't even get to the VOA counters - and had the queues been just a little longer people would have been lining up on the tarmac - and that's no exaggeration! Looking to the head of the queues we could see that those almost at the front of the lines looked to be off a flight that was scheduled to arrive about 2hrs before us and this was confirmed when we got to the luggage collection areas as there were huge piles of luggage waiting from about 4 different flights.
I have to admit that I worried the whole way over that paying the RP240,000 each was going to be a waste of money but I can't even describe the relief I felt when I saw that queue! The express service was fantastic - as soon as stepped off the airport bus we were met by a guy with a sign with my name on it and he took us right around the side of the queue. From the time we met him it was about 30mins till we were outside meeting our driver. In comparison others on our flight arrived at our hotel 3 1/2 hrs after us!
Anyway that was our experience and I will certainly be using the service again if our flight is arriving at a similar time of the day :-)
Sheryl (NZ)
PS The queues leaving were just as bad .. we had considered using one of the departure lounges this time - but despite arriving at the airport 2 1/2 hrs before our flight by the time we got past the point where they collect your departure card we only had 30mins to spare and so didn't bother and just as well as the queue at the gate took us another 20mins!