WHEN I was sent out to cover the re-opening of McDonald’s in Basildon, I didn’t expect to pick up my Chicken Nugget meal quicker than I ever have.

Having seen what was happening in Southend on Wednesday, I was braced for a long wait.

Harwich and Manningtree Standard:

Flew through - Pitsea McDonald's

But I was wrong.

I arrived at Pitsea McDonald’s at 12.10pm. The honest truth is it was one of the quickest ever trips I’ve had. I waited for five minutes. I was shocked it was so quick.

When KFC opened, it was crazy in Pitsea.

The staff handled the situation so well, it must have been so hard to re-adjust to having all these customers through the day.

Next up was Mayflower. I arrived 12.30pm.

By the time we’d got there I’d had a taste of the good stuff and was excited for more.

But we were greeted by massive queues. There was a 40-minute wait.

Drivers arriving there were directed to the left-hand side by McDonald’s staff before looping around the restaurant not once, but twice before collecting the Holy Grail of their food.

At first, it moved quickly, but the further we got in the queue, the longer it seemed to take - it was half an hour before we could even order.

At one stage there were about 50 cars in the queue. But despite the rush, staff were again polite and very helpful, pointing us in right direction and each staff member had a mask on.

Our final stop was Festival Leisure. We got there at 1.20pm and joined the queue which backed out onto the roundabout.

Staff acted quickly to resolve the issue and began sending cars into the Pizza Express car park where they waited until the queue died down, which was quite confusing.

In all, it was a 25-minute wait.

Overall, this was not at all what I expected given what happened on Wednesday in Southend.