Review of Vueling Airlines flight from Paris to Barcelona in Economy

BCN - BRU SN3696 Y / AIRBUS A319-100 - 21/08/2015: http://flight-report.com/en/report-11517.html
BRU - JFK SN501 Y / AIRBUS A330-300 - 22/08/2015: http://flight-report.com/en/report-11519.html
YUL - CDG AC870 Y / BOEING 777-300ER - 06/09/2015: http://flight-report.com/en/report-11525.html
CDG - BCN VY8247 Y / AIRBUS A320-200 - 07/09/2014: HERE
Preface: We decided to take a trip to the US as we wanted to visit some relatives in Connecticut and the city of Boston. We then found a nice one-week one-way Canada & New England cruise from Boston to Montreal and decided to add the cruise to the trip to CT and Boston to make the most of our trip to America.
I started looking for flight good deals from Barcelona but prices were extremely expensive and decided to look for flights out of other European cities. It turned out that Brussels was one of the cities where the cheapest flights departed from so I looked for BRU-JFK/BOS and YUL-BRU. BRU-BOS required a layover and coming from BCN, two layovers would be too much so decided to fly to New York and book a transfer to Connecticut. It all came down then to BRU-JFK and YUL-BRU, the cheapest option was to layover in Paris returning from Montreal and I looked for the same flights in a multi-flight ticket, it turned out to be as cheap as with the layover in Brussels and the CDG-BRU leg was not the day after we landed in Paris. We then would not have to go stop in Paris and Brussels on our way back to Barcelona as the CDG-YUL leg would not be used. After finding and booking the two long-haul legs (BRU-JFK YUL-CDG) I then started looking into options to get to Brussels and return from Paris. Getting to Brussels was pretty easy on Brussels Airlines as they were the cheapest option available, even cheaper than Vueling or Ryanair so it was a no-brainer for us even if flying them required us to overnight in Brussels. On our way back from Paris, we could fly Air France, EasyJet, Vueling or take the train, we decided to fly back from CDG as it was the airport from which our flight from YUL arrived, Air France was too expensive and not worth it in my opinion for a 1:30 flight and by booking with Vueling I could reduce the fare using some Avios I had.
Finally we had our routing done (BCN-BRU-JFK YUL-CDG-BCN).
I booked this leg of our routing separately through Iberia's website and discounted 80 euros of the whole fare by using some Avios I had. This was the best option to get to Barcelona after being scheduled to arrive at CDG at 09:35 AM. Even though we had to go from Terminal 2A to Terminal 3, I thought we'd have more than enough with 5 hours between the arrival of AC870 and the departure of this flight VY8247.
At about 10 AM we had our suitcases and were on our way to Terminal 3. We walked towards the end of the Terminal through many different airline check-in counters, most of them were of airlines belonging to Skyteam. I spotted a MEA Airbus A330-200 probably for Beirut.

We then used an elevator to go down to the driverless train platform.

We were at Terminal 2 and we had to go to Terminal 3 so there was one stop on our way to T3 which was the Parking.

We were then at the TGV area at CDG and followed the instructions for Terminal 3.

We still had to walk for 5 minutes which was surprising taking into consideration CDG is such a big and international airport, not a good start.

Terminal 3 was a huge disappointment, tiny and dirty terminal with nothing to do.

We went to the departures screen and found out we still had to wait to check our bags as the check-in counters were closed because it was still too early. There were 3 Vueling flights within an hour, one to Madrid, ours to Barcelona and another one to Santiago.

Finally after waiting for an hour in a seating area next to the Vueling check-in counters, they were finally opened. We queued for 10 minutes and checked our bags, it was quite easy.

Security controls were very crowded which resulted in a half an hour wait. I couldn't understand it because there were so few flights departing from T3, terribly bad organised. I hoped to find some restaurants and shops after clearing security controls but no, there was only a tiny duty-free shop. What a nightmare of Terminal, it felt more like a bus terminal than an airport terminal.

I slept for a while because I didn't get too much sleep on my flight from Montréal to Paris and I was quite tired. It was then time to start boarding, our flight was delayed by 45 minutes so we started boarding at around 2:40 PM when we were supposed to leave CDG at 2:35 PM.

We used a bus to get to our airplane. Our airplane today was going to be EC-MAH, a practically new Airbus A320-200 (1.5 years old) equipped with sharklets.

I sat in my window seat 09F and took some pictures of the sharklet. View of another Vueling Airbus A320-200 heading to Madrid.

We left our parking spot at around 3:10 PM and taxied to the runway. Smartwings Boeing 737-800 for Prague.

CDG's airport traffic control tower.

Pics of some planes taxiing to the gate. Qatar Airbus A380-800 for Doha, Egyptair Airbus A330-200 for Cairo and Air Austral Boeing 777-300ER for Saint Denis.

Cabin crew seats for take off.

V1, rotate. Positive climb, gear up. Flying through the French countryside.

Cruising at 37000 feet.

View of Vueling's Airbus A320-200 new cabin interior. It looks modern and clean but the legroom is tight.

We were offered some drinks or snacks but everything was pretty expensive and for such a short flight I thought it wasn't worth to order anything.
After about an hour of flight, the captain announced we would be landing in about 25 minutes so we started our descent into Barcelona Airport.

Descending around the area of Sitges.

Last views of the wing and the beautiful sharklet.

Flaps full, landing gear down.

Views of Barcelona Airport's Terminal 1 shortly before touching down.

Landed in Barcelona at 16:42 PM. 22 minutes of delay.

Taxiing to our gate. Another Vueling Airbus A320-200 for Mahon (Menorca).

The airport was very crowded.

Walking towards the baggage drop-off area.

We then walked to the parking and drove back home.