This trip was marked by some not so brilliant ideas!!
Friday, November 25
We are traveling to Florida over Thanksgiving Day weekend - the day after Thanksgiving to be exact. Our flight to Orlando is scheduled for 7:30 pm.
We hired town car service to drive us to the airport. In our experience town car services in the general area are usually late to arrive so we allow for that with our requested pickup time. It's also Black Friday and we need to pass by several busy shopping areas to get to airport so we allow for that and instruct driver to pick us up at 2:30 pm. (The last time we used a car service to get to the airport from home, the driver went to a different street [which happens often so we are very careful with our instructions], kept insisting she was at our house, even while my husband was standing in the middle of our dead end street stating she was not only NOT at our house, she was nowhere on our street. He needed to provide her specific instructions on how to get from where she was to where she was supposed to be and didn't even follow those - taking a left where my husband told her to take a right which meant she was driving further away from us. We finally got her to our house and then needed to provide her with specific instructions all the way to the airport. Needless to say, we did not call that company again for this trip.)
This time, the driver on time. The traffic was not so bad. The car was decent. However, we now get to airport 4 hours before flight (but would definitely use this company again).
We go to gab check for JetBlue and the person checking bags person says we can get on earlier flight. We point out we paid paid for upgraded seats. She says the earlier flight wide open and we should have no problem getting our extra more room seats. We can secure those seats on the earlier flight by paying for them second time but she's sure it should be no problem and we should just tell person at gate we had upgraded seats on our original flight. Not so brilliant idea number 1 - we let her reissue standby tickets for the earlier flight. We should have just kept our boarding passes for the original flight.
As we go through security, I get randomly selected for extra screening. All is well - one or both of us were "randomly" selected multiple times while at Disney for additional screening to the point that it stopped feeling very random. Once past security, we stop for early dinner/late lunch. Burgers for both of us.
We head to the gate of earlier flight and, as instructed, tell the person at gate we have upgraded tickets and person checking bags said it would be no problem to keep those upgraded seats. The gate person responds that the person checking the bags probably didn't tell us they needed to clear all standby passengers before we can be seated. This does not bode well.
The plane starts boarding. We wait and wait some more. All the others traveling "standby" are cleared to board. We are the last to be called. The gate person says they have no more extra room seats to seat us together - here you can have row 13. No thanks. It appears any others have agreed to pay twice for the earlier flight or have upgraded into the "wide open seats" that will be no problem.
We can wait to get boarding passes for our original flight or go to guest services to get them. We go to guest services. Gene is understandably irate. We get our third set of boarding passes - second set to our original seats on original flight.
We wait an additional hour for our flight to board. Only a few folks needing additional assistance board first. We are in row three. Row one on both sides is empty. Row 2 on our side has 2 people and on the other, 1 person. Row 3 has 2 (us on one side) and 2 on the other. Row 4 is not full either. Don't know about the other even more seats in middle of plane. Since we have the row to ourselves, Gene settles in window seat and I take aisle. As we start to taxi, a mouse runs out from between seats in front of us and goes racing up aisle - have no idea whatever happened to the little critter. The movies are free so watch Ghostbusters during the flight.
We taxi a long way upon landing. Our bags arrived with the earlier flight so we are able to collect them straight away - only plus to our travel plans (I thought they no longer allowed luggage to go on different flight from passengers associated with them?). We're staying the night at the Sheraton Suites Orlando. We were instructed to call for instructions on where to be picked up by the hotel shuttle. I call - they tell us to go to A44 station. We were headed in the wrong direction so turn. A44 is the very last stall. By time shuttle picks us up, one other couple is waiting for it as well. We arrive at hotel in a few minutes and are quickly checked in. It's after 11 pm. The front desk wants to know if we want to reserve a shuttle time back to the airport for the morning as there shuttle is not very large. The problem with this is that, since it is so late, we have no idea what time we will be up and ready to leave. It's after midnight before we get into bed.
