Two questions about Access Needs on Eurostar between London and Brussels

[HappilyUrbanTrimmer]

Thankyou in advance to all you wise and experienced mumsnetters who I am sure include someoe who can help with these questions.

Never been on the Eurostar before - we are now in Europe having travelled a couple of days ago and are returning home next week.

Naively, thought it would be basically like any other train journey. We are normally fine with trains and need no assistance, but we do usually book assistance with airports as there are some access needs in our family mainly around difficulty with very long queues (mix of physical capacity for standing, and neurodiversity issues) and the enormous crowds and long queues at St Pancras were completely overwhelming and we realised we should have registered in advance for help in the same way as we would with an airport. Fortunately the Accessibility Needs team helped us despite the fact that we didn't pre-book assistance, and we were all OK in the end.

I want to make sure we are prepared for the journey home next week and want to make contact with the Accessibility Needs team.

(1) I tried to complete the request form at https://help.eurostar.com/email?lang=en which is where you get directed to for requesting assistance. I submitted the form and got to the point where it said "Case created" and had a little icon of dots going around and around in circles which is normal for if something is still processing so I left the computer waiting on that page for a while but nothing further seemed to happen, so eventually pressed the "Exit and proceed" button and shut the laptop down. I haven't had any kind of auto-acknowlegedment email from the site and I am not sure if my request has been properly submitted. Does anyone know if there is normally an auto-acknowledgement email? If not, how long should I wait before perhaps trying again?

(2) When we are returning to London from Brussels, will the queues and chaotic crowds be on the same kind of scale as it was in London? Some members of the family reckon I don't need to bother with all this because the only reason London was so awful was because it's a bottleneck with lots of different routes and multiple trains all leaving relatively close together, whereas Brussels only has one train per hour. If you have done Brussels by Eurostar any experience you have of the check-in on the return half of the journey would be useful.

(we are no longer in Brussels so I can't just go to the information kiosk to ask, unfortunately)

\thank you!

I travelled Eurostar London to Paris in October last year and queues were massive at the St Pancras side. On return it was busy but not to the same degree.

London is the shittiest of all Eurostar stations and experiences. Its an embarrassment how small and basic the holding area is: you've got this "glamorous" station (st pancras) full of posh shops and then this tiny windowless waiting zone. I think you will have a much better experience on your way back

I’ve had long queues in London and Paris but never in Brussels. Do email Eurostar to book help if you might need it.

I went to Brussels for a Day Trip earlier this year. They are rebuilding the terminal there. I came back in the evening. Whilst the main station is busy and noisy as expected, the Eurostar terminal was in comparison very calm and ordered.

Brussels is much much better than London. I went through visibly pregnant at 7 months last year. In Brussels I used the queue jump and sat in the priority boarding reserved seating area with no booking. In London I had to argue even to skip the queue and wasn't allowed through the priority security line or to sit in the reserved seats. It hadn't occurred to me to book assistance because I didn't need help and wasn't disabled, I just couldn't stand in line for that long! London were real arseholes about it.