I thought this trip would be different. We would be flying instead of driving-a lot quicker and easier. If you don't remember my last trip, it was a lot of puking and a lot of driving. Was I ever wrong! Here is the play by play:
3:30pm: Left our house
5:00pm: Got to my sisters house
6:00pm: Grabbed dinner and left for Grand Rapids aiport.
7:00pm: Got to the airport.
8:30pm: Plane was supposed to depart.
9:00pm: They announced there is a mechanical problem, and they are working on fixing it.
9:30pm: They start serving us free pop, not good sign that we are leaving soon.
10:00pm: The kids fall asleep on the floor.
11:00pm: They announce they are bringing in a different plane from Las Vegas. It will be here at 2:00am.
2:00am: They announce the plane is here, BUT the pilots have reached the 8 hour limit they can fly. This is the part that really ticks me off. The airline KNEW that the pilots would not be able to fly by the time they reached Grand Rapids, but they still made us wait 6 hours at the airport.
2:30am: We wait in a really long line down at the baggage claim, to get put on a list for a hotel room, with 4 tired kids. We have to get all our bags including 1 heavy car seat and 3 booster seats.
3:00am: More waiting while they find a hotel to fit all the passengers and taxi's to take us there.
3:30am: We lug all the luggage, car seats, ect. to the hotel, wait in another line to get checked in.
Go to sleep. Finally.
You would think by this point we would be offered free tickets to fly again, which I would have been thrilled with, considering we are going to Florida in April, but no. They gave us $50.00 towards another flight. Wow- that will get us to.....Ohio. Thanks Allegiant! (Please note the sarcasm).
I'm not going to bore you with the next day, let's just say it was alot of waiting in lines, and more waiting. We were scheduled to depart at 11:00, and left at 12:15 instead.
3 comments:
I'm so sorry!! Sounds like a complete nightmare!! I hope you have a great vacation, and hopefully the ride home will go smoothly!!
I learned a very important lesson having this very same experience once when trying to fly to Vegas for the weekend. Never EVER take the last flight out for the night. The earlier the better, more chance to get on a plane that is going somewhere.
That's the worst story...It would be bad enough for adults but with 4 kids - ow. Of course you have realized that you could have driven to Arizona in that amount of time....Hope coming home will be easy....
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