Want to hear a funny story?
I was supposed to go to Orlando this weekend. Husbands college roommate lives there. We planned for a long weekend, flying out Friday evening, arriving super late, and be there until Tuesday.
Arrangements were made with one of my lovely book friends to meet up and she and I were going to, first and foremost, finally meet (!!!), and then spend the day at Universal, enjoying all of the nerdiness that is associated with fangirling over Harry Potter, comic book heros, The Simpsons, and Minions. For the rest of the weekend, we would chill at Roomates apartment complex pool and trek to a beach for a day, and then, reluctantly, return to Pennsylvania late Tuesday night.
My story starts Thursday night. 8:09pm to be exact. We went on Delta Airlines website to check in and print our boarding passes. Something looked odd. There were no seat assignments on our boarding passes. Wtf? “Seats will be assigned at the gate or when you check your luggage.” Since we weren’t planning on checking any bags, we felt blindsided. We travel quite frequently and this was the first time we’d never had a seat assignment.
Phone call to customer service (on hold for over 40 minutes, somuchfun!) informed us that we were on a standby list. Uh, what the what??? How does this happen? How did our normal ticket transform into a standby ticket? The lady informed me that we bought “economy basic fare” which essentially translates to “lower than the cargo area” as far as priority level is concerned, and that the airlines continue to sell tickets at full “market value.” So, the people that paid more money for their tickets got to choose all of the seats on the plane, even though I bought my tickets from the Delta website in March.
Memory is a fickle thing, but I really don’t remember the website offering any explanation or warning about the plane tickets being low grade, you’ll be bumped to standby, and we’ll treat you like worthless garbage guarantees. Which, you know, would’ve been nice.
By the end of the call, the lady pretty much assured me that we were removed from the standby list and would be issued a ticket immediately upon our arrival at the airport at the gate. She wouldn’t even let me upgrade to comfort cabin or first class! I guess Delta didn’t want my money.
Husband got out of work early, and we made it to the airport by 4:00 for the 8:09pm flight. No bags to check, so we went straight through security and to the gate. The guy working at the gate looked frazzled, the waiting area at the gate was packed (apparently, it was the permenant gate for all Delta flights going to Atlanta, which was where we’d have a short layover). The flight before ours was still there and delayed. People were worried about missing connections.
I talked with the guy at the gate, explained our story, and I optimistically asked if we’d be able to bump onto the 6:30 flight since we were there earlier than expected. He laughed at me, saying the earlier flight was overbooked and delayed, there was no way we’d be getting on the earlier flight.
Long shot, I knew. So then I asked if we could get our seats assigned for our flight. He looked at our tickets and winced–actually winced! “Today has been crazy;” he said, his voice offering no reassurance, “let me get these people put of here before we even think about your flight, okay?”
This immediately angered my husband. He stalked away, tossing his bag into a chair and he went for a walk to cool down. A little while later, our flight was posted as a delay. And then another delay. And then another delay. The third delay had us arriving in Atlanta just a few minutes before our connecting flight would take off, which is impossible in Atlanta… The reason for the delays? A mechanical malfunction on the plane that was flying into Pittsburgh that would be our plane to Atlanta. Workers received word that they needed to completely change planes, unload/reload cargo and passengers. Another delay was not posted but would be coming, so we were going to miss our connecting flight.
Email ding on my phone; from Delta. “Sorry to inconvenience you, but your flight arrangements must be changed; please look at this list of options for tomorrow.” None of the options for flying Saturday got us into Orlando before 4pm…if we’d even get seats in the plane because of our apparent “stand by” status.
Because of this delay and needing to reschedule a flight, my plans for Saturday were ruined with Book Friend, and we’d only have Sunday and Monday there. Husband was on the phone with Roommate, asking him what we should do, just reschedule for another time or still go?
As I waited in line to speak with Delta rep about rescheduling our flight (and the line was long and moving incredibly slow), Husband approached me with sheer excitement in his eyes. “Want to say screw you to Delta, get a refund from them, and just go to Cancun instead? We can get on tomorrow mornings flight. We’d land at 10:30am.”
So, I ended up in Cancun this weekend instead of Orlando. Bummed that I didn’t get to meet Book Friend, and she didn’t have a passport to be able to join us. Husband and I both called our work to ask for an extra day off, because of the hoopla and basically lost a day anyway–request granted. Roommate was able to book a flight from Orlando to Cancun, we arrived at the airport at basically the same time. Called up our vacation club to make reservations at one of their newest hotels (Dreams Playa Mujeres, which was totally phenomenal!), got a special “three in a room” rate, and it was all arranged.
Spontaneous? Yes.
A little crazy? Very.
Worth it? You betcha.
The stress and anguish and frustration from Friday seemed to melt away Saturday AM as we drove back to the airport at 3:45am. And by 10:30, what stress? We were in a wonderful paradise.
So while this weekend didn’t exactly turn out as planned, our weekend was far from ruined. We were handed some pretty sour lemons. But that’s life, right? It all depends on what you do with those lemons. Sure, we could’ve sucked on that sourness until we cried, griped about how our plans were ruined and that we hated flight delays and everything they stood for. Instead, we turned those lemons into some of the sweetest lemonade on the planet and ended up having one of the best unexpected weekends I can remember.
Don’t wait for the storm to pass–adjust your sails.
titsay
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
dededos
2087
andulkaphoto