Flight to Flordia

Fly early if you can.
We arrived at the airport about two and a half hours before our flight. We normally try for three, but I had gotten off of work at 0700hrs and I was not moving as fast as I might have. We had packed well in advance so we where fine there.

We fly United. Tim flies with them all of the time for work. He travels a lot for his job so he is a premier member and gets perks and miles to fly with them. We went to their self check in section and attempted to check ourselves in. The first terminal did not work. We slid over to another terminal but then we wound up stuck between two high maintainance groups.

The people to our left wanted to change everything about their flight. Instead of going to the check in line for buying and changing flight details, they stood in the self check in line and occupied one of the people. Each of the airline people are assigned to two terminals. They are there to check your ID, put on your baggage tags, and load your baggage. They did not have the time to do any of this thanks to this group.

To our right, was a British couple and three teen age girls. They where upset becuase however they had booked their tickets, it caused the girls not to sit together. One of the three is sobbing becuase she will have to sit by herself. The father is snarling at the guy about how they keep getting the run around. The girls are now all crying. Their luggage is pink but I don’t think that had anything to do with the entire situation.

All told, it took us forty five minutes to get our bags checked in.

Then we had to wade through security. The high maintenance couple to our left appeared near us in the security line. We got out of that line and moved to another. I’m glad we did because they caused another incident over at the security point.

By the time we made it to our flight we had fifteen minutes until boarding. We had not eaten all day, our plan being to eat in the terminal. Instead, we ran through the airport and passed a sign that said ‘Last place to stop for food here’ and reached our terminal. Wheezing and out of breath I ran back to the last stop for food and bagged chips and some apples. As I headed back Tim called and told me that our flight was delayed for an hour due to technical problems with the plane.
So much for running around. We went and got dinner. It was a nice meal that reminded me that you only get plastic utensals inside of hte airport. Unless you are in one of the airline clubs. There, you can get real utensals.

Another flight came in. It was a bigger plane and I assume it was either scheduled to sit for a while or head to Florida. It was our plane now. and we where on our way with an hour and a half delay. This is the type of reason why we had decided to fly the day before. I would not want to live with the stress of trying to fly in the same day as the cruise and having the flight delayed.

When we selected our hotel, we selected one that was close to an airport. We looked into it and they said that they had a shuttle to the cruise line. This seemed to be the easiest option. We flew into Orlando and rented a car from Hertz. We would then drop the car off at the airport by the hotel and take the shuttle provided by the airport to the dock.

The Hertz rental itself was a bit of a mess. My husband has been a Gold Member of Hertz in the past. He signed up for it. However, he has said that it often does not work. Therefore, he went to the desk to pick up the rental car. There he was told he was a gold member and he could just go and pick out a car. So, when we went to the pickup there was a sign board and his name was not on it. We went into the next office where we were told we were not gold members and given our rental car. Our rental, of course, was located all the way to the back of the lot. It was a little Toyota Corolla. I was hoping for the Nissan Versa we had originally asked for.

The Toyota Corolla has no trunk space. We fit our two large cases in the trunk and it was done. There was not enough room for anything else. Not even a backpack. The third case and the backpacks went onto the back seat.

It was about an hour’s drive from Orlando to Melborne airport. It was a smooth ride with little traffic. We went to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and went back out, our goal to get something for dinner. The highway sign said that there was an IHOP nearby. However, it seems that the sign lied to us. There was no IHOP.
We wound up at Steak a Shake. This was a very nice experience. Nice enough that we wrote a review. There was also a massive fraternity meeting going on and everyone was dressed in purple. They took up about a quarter of the restaurant. The staff managed to keep them corralled. ‘Thank you.

Back at the Hotel we decide to ask the front desk about the shuttle. She says, “We can help you arrange transportation.” This is where things start to go downhill. “We don’t have a shuttle ourselves” she said. “I can help arrange transportation to the cruise line but it will probably cost a lot. Can’t you just drive? They have parking at the pier.”

“We have a rental car,” we remind her.

“Oh. You sure wanted to the last minute to plan this.” I can’t say what comes after that becuase my head exploded for a moment. We accepted contact information for the airport shuttle and for a private company called Black Ice or something else shady and went to our room.

There we said “WTF” to each other and pulled out our laptops to look up transportation. This is when we learned that the free WiFi that the hotel had bragged about was slow. If you wanted their fast internet you had to pay to play. Also, the bed was rock hard. I flopped down on it, stomach first and almost vomited because it felt like someone punched me in the gut. I was not expecting that and I apologize to my stomach. It didn’t deserve that.

We made some phone calls but no one was open. Frustrated, we decided that we would call in the morning. Worst case scenario, we’d get a cab.