FINALLY! Departure day is here!! I was awake at 4, too excited to sleep, and mentally counting out how many individual servings of dog food we had to bring to the kennel with us. Eventually, I got up, threw the last few items in the suitcase, and, past glaring dogs, headed off to work for the morning. 2 speech sessions, and 1 IEP meeting stood between me and vacation.
The work got done, the meeting was uneventful, and I was home about 11:15. It was then a flurry of activity, as I realized Nick hadn’t understood what “20 servings of food per dog” on the post-it note on the counter meant, so we set to work filling baggies with dog food, for the 10 days Gizmo and Quinn would be at the “pet resort”. With food bags filling, the dogs were losing their minds with excitement. Gizmo, sometimes the more logical of the two, eventually settled, choosing a spot in front of the door. He knew we were taking that dog food somewhere, and wanted to make sure he was going with it.
Task completed, we loaded the dogs and their food in the car, and made the short drive to our friendly local “pet resort”. Gizmo, our separation anxiety dog, was surprisingly excited to be there. We have kenneled them here a couple of times in the last year, but we had a really traumatic experience with the kennel we used for last year’s cruise vacation, so we are never quite sure what to expect from the dogs. Considering Gizmo always tried biting the people at the previous kennel upon arrival, we took his excitement as a good sign.
Once the dogs were dropped off, it was back to the house to pick up our luggage (luggage for 9 days, plus a 60 pound dog won’t fit in the back of an HR-V!). We were ready!!
As we were leaving, I got a text that our flight was delayed by about half an hour. No big deal, and no real surprise in light of the weather in Orlando. I had spent enough time on Flight Aware to know that our plane was coming from Orlando.
We made the 35 minute drive to my in-laws’ house, transferred luggage to Kim’s car, visited for a few minutes, and then she drove us to the airport. We made it there by 1:30. In light of us being delayed until 3:30, this was totally no big deal.
Check in was a breeze, and so was security. We found a spot to call ours at gate 14, and settled in.
To make a long story VERY short, our plane was originally supposed to depart from MCO to fly to MHT about 11 am. They were delayed because of the wild and crazy weather. After awhile sitting on the tarmac, they all deplaned at MCO. They finally reboarded the plane sometime after 4:30, and got in the air about 5:40, arriving in Manchester about 2 hours later. We spent 7 hours sitting around Manchester Airport, and several of those hours were spent grappling with the fact that if our flight got canceled, we were likely out of options for getting to the cruise ship in time. In this weather, and at this hour, we couldn’t just load up the car and drive to FL in time. Everything the next day out of Manchester was sold out. The few flights out of Boston or Providence not sold out were on planes also stuck at MCO that evening, so the likelihood of those flights flying was questionable. I read our trip insurance policy, and then started researching other ideas for vacations, if we were perhaps able to get out of Manchester Monday or Tuesday. After all, the dogs are kenneled, and we are both off for the week for the last time for quite some time.
We eventually got word that our plane was being boarded at MCO, and that whenever it got to Manchester, they would turn it and get us out of there. We were assured by the gate team that they were “in it for the long haul”. Our crew was in Manchester waiting with us, so we were good to fly. Once we got word that the flight was being boarded, I settled down enough to be able to eat, and we had dinner, about 1300 miles north of where we had expected to. But, the food was good, and thanks to a “get the second shot for half price” deal, the beverages were strong.
While eating, I got a text from a reliable friend that our plane was actually in the air. Woohoo! Pretty soon I heard a deafening cheer from our gate, leading me to think that they had announced that same news.
The rest of the evening was spent doing laps around the airport, and watching the baggage handlers play basketball on the tarmac below our gate. It’s a quiet airport to begin with, but there were only 3 flights left going out that night that hadn’t been canceled, and one was on a regional jet. You could have heard a pin drop in some parts of the airport. I explored areas I had never seen before.
Eventually, they announced that our plane was in range, and that it was likely there would be no snack service on the flight, and no opportunity to get out of our seats for the duration of the flight, due to the weather. Sounds like we are making up for not doing any theme parks this trip with a roller coaster flight!
When the plane arrived, it was greeted with applause and cheering.
The flight deplaned, with everyone looking worn out, but no worse for the wear, overall. In true Manchester form, they turned the plane quickly, and we were fully boarded by 8:40. But then we had to wait for a bit of paperwork, since some people bailed from the flight. They also shared we might have to fly as far west as Louisville to avoid the weather, but they would be getting us to MCO safely.
We pushed back from the gate a little before 9, and it was a straight shot to the runway, since we were the last plane to leave that night. Once airborne, we took the most unique flight path I’ve ever seen, but we did, indeed, make it safely to Orlando, approximately 4 hours later. The flight definitely had some exceptionally bumpy points, but overall it wasn’t horrible, and they even managed to get through beverage services (with unexpected free grown up beverages for anyone who ordered them), and even turned off the seatbelt sign for about 20 minutes.
We arrived at our gate at MCO shortly before 1 am. Deplaning was extremely quick, even for those of us halfway back in the emergency row, and pretty soon we were at baggage claim, mouths wide open, staring, mind boggled, at the sheer quantity of luggage everywhere. LOTS of flights had been canceled. The result was mountains of luggage, next to every carousel, sorted by destination airport. Add in all the delayed arrivals, and it was pure barely organized chaos.
Our luggage arrived eventually, though, and I picked up the phone to call the hotel for the shuttle. They directed me to the first floor, and we easily found the pick up spot. The shuttle arrived about 10 minutes later, about the same time a pack of 6 adults with roughly 40 pieces of luggage arrived at the same pick up spot. Somehow they, and the driver, managed to get all the luggage stacked in the back of the Ford Transit van, and we were off. The driver kindly had put our luggage at the very top of the pile, so he dropped us off first at the Homewood, before continuing with that crew, to be reunited with their gaggle of children that they had apparently sent on ahead of them, at the Hampton Inn across the street.
Check in was quick, we reserved spots on the 10 am shuttle back to the airport, and soon we were in our room, a one bedroom suite. At this point, it was 2 am, and I had been up since 4. Running on pure adrenaline, we quickly crawled into bed, hoping to crash, after taking a few pictures of the room.
Unfortunately, our room was home to the world’s loudest air conditioner. At home, we have a window unit that we use in our bedroom in the summer, so we are used to loud AC. This blew that volume out of the water. Nick slept with his noise canceling headphones on. I slept in fits, until about 6:30. This is a good start…
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