I was awake EARLY. Holy anxiety. There were a lot of variables in this departure day and with the timeframe we were working with in getting to Florida, not a lot of room for error. As an added bonus, I’m still a bit traumatized from the last time we tried flying in the night before a cruise. But, here we go!
I headed off to work with my luggage in the car. Nick dropped the dogs off at the pet resort and then continued to work with his own luggage. We both worked until about 2 and then headed for his parents. Well..ok, I sort of worked, but I also seriously stalked flight and airport parking statuses.
At 2, I quite literally (ok…the people that really needed to know knew) snuck out the side door before the buses could block my escape route and headed to my in-laws. Thanks to traffic around the toll booth, where they’re upgrading the high speed toll lanes and have those closed for close to two months, I pulled into my in-laws’ house right at 3, which actually was perfect timing. Nick was already there, thankfully. Although he looked pretty grumpy. My mind immediately went all kinds of negative places, so I was relieved when he started spouting off about the seat he’d bought for his motorcycle not fitting the bike. Because apparently trying to install motorcycle seats is what men do immediately before leaving on vacation. Who knew?!
Kim and John emerged quickly with their luggage. The men played luggage tetris in the back of my Rav-4, with Kim and me watching and Kim stressing about how we’re going to find vehicles big enough to hold 4 people and luggage in FL, her memory still clearly stuck on trying to do that last spring when they had cruised the Mississippi River with friends of theirs. Seems they hadn’t done such a great job of selecting the right sized Ubers and such. No worries, guys, I rented the 3 row crossover for our time after the cruise! And I know about Uber XL!
We were on the road a little after 3:15, all of us very excited, and very ready for vacation!
I headed off to work with my luggage in the car. Nick dropped the dogs off at the pet resort and then continued to work with his own luggage. We both worked until about 2 and then headed for his parents. Well..ok, I sort of worked, but I also seriously stalked flight and airport parking statuses.
At 2, I quite literally (ok…the people that really needed to know knew) snuck out the side door before the buses could block my escape route and headed to my in-laws. Thanks to traffic around the toll booth, where they’re upgrading the high speed toll lanes and have those closed for close to two months, I pulled into my in-laws’ house right at 3, which actually was perfect timing. Nick was already there, thankfully. Although he looked pretty grumpy. My mind immediately went all kinds of negative places, so I was relieved when he started spouting off about the seat he’d bought for his motorcycle not fitting the bike. Because apparently trying to install motorcycle seats is what men do immediately before leaving on vacation. Who knew?!
Kim and John emerged quickly with their luggage. The men played luggage tetris in the back of my Rav-4, with Kim and me watching and Kim stressing about how we’re going to find vehicles big enough to hold 4 people and luggage in FL, her memory still clearly stuck on trying to do that last spring when they had cruised the Mississippi River with friends of theirs. Seems they hadn’t done such a great job of selecting the right sized Ubers and such. No worries, guys, I rented the 3 row crossover for our time after the cruise! And I know about Uber XL!
We were on the road a little after 3:15, all of us very excited, and very ready for vacation!
The drive to Boston went shockingly smoothly. For those familiar with Boston, I didn’t hit legitimate traffic until the double decker bridge just before the tunnel near the Garden. Basically unheard of. From the bridge we crawled all the way to Central Parking at the airport (which was not only open, but had open parking spaces…PHEW), but that’s par for the course. My reservation QR code worked perfectly and we found a parking space easily enough, right on the end of a row to make finding the car upon return easier. While I organized my stuff and took a picture of our parking row sign, the guys unloaded the car (this is kinda nice traveling with 2 men…) and pretty soon those suitcase wheels were rolling across the parking garage and into the airport.
We were on level 2 and apparently the crossover to the terminal is on level 4, so we had to navigate a series of elevators and escalators, but we made it to Terminal C and we were immediately shocked as we came down the escalator overlooking JetBlue check in by just how empty it was.
We had our choice of dozens of check in kiosks. Everything went smoothly, until it didn’t. We got all checked in (re checked in?), boarding passes printed for all 4 of us, and luggage tags printed for 2 of us. Say what?! All of us are checking luggage.
So, we headed for the help desk, which is becoming an all too familiar spot for me when checking in for a JetBlue flight out of Logan, and after explaining to the agent about 3 times what had happened and what we needed, our bags all got tagged and checked, and Nick and I headed for the pre-check lane while his parents headed to the regular security lane. Sorry guys, see you at the gate.
Surprisingly we made it through security without either of us getting a pat down or an extra bag search, and we made it through security before Kim and John did, so that’s a plus in the pre-check vs not competition!
We headed for the gate, which was ALL the way at the end of the terminal…gate C31. Nick’s parents appeared a solid 10 minutes later. We regrouped, and then headed halfway back to security to the pseudo food court to grab some dinner. I think Nick got a bagel, I had a turkey and avocado bagel sandwich (that was surprisingly good), Kim had some sort of pastrami sandwich and John had a burger and beer. We ate and then headed back to the gate area, where we had just enough time for Nick to discover he had left his headphones AND his airfly at home before we boarded the plane. Good thing I travel with spare headphones!
Boarding was efficient, and pretty soon we were settled in row 14, surprised by how empty this flight was. Like it was empty enough that they announced multiple times that no one could switch seats to empty spaces because the plane needed to be balanced.
Needless to say, we departed a few minutes early. The flight had a few bumpy patches, but overall it was pretty good, on a clearly new plane (with some really noisy hydraulics) and we arrived in Fort Lauderdale nearly 40 minutes early, just after 9:30 pm! YES!
With most of the upcharge seats ahead of us being empty, deplaning was pretty quick, and soon enough we were at baggage claim, where…the 90s called and they want their roller skating rink decor back!
Luggage emerged surprisingly quickly, and for the first time in the history of baggage claim, we actually saw someone claim the very first bag to emerge. Our suitcases emerged fairly quickly too, and we started rolling towards the Palm garage for the Rideshare pick up area. I had obviously thoroughly investigated where we would be going for this, but even I was surprised and impressed with how well laid out Rideshare pickup is here. There’s an area on the ground floor of the parking garage laid out with parking spaces for rideshare drivers to pull into so that luggage can be loaded. Signage is excellent. A+ to FLL for this set-up.
I had some technical difficulties with my Lyft app (which I was hoping to use, because I now get a $10 discount once a month on Lyft rides thanks to credit card perks, and we don’t really have rideshare in my area), so after several minutes of confusion, I switched to Uber, and about 10 minutes later we were loading luggage into the back of an Acura MDX. It was a quick and pleasant ride over to the Residence Inn Fort Lauderdale Airport Cruiseport, where Kim expressed relief that we’d gotten an Uber big enough for all of us and our stuff. Then we headed inside.
We got there right after the airport shuttle did (which I had opted to not use due to poor reviews), so we had to wait a few minutes, but once we were at the front desk, check in was efficient, even with us asking them to split the room cost across two cards. So within a few minutes of arrival (and only about an hour after touch down), we were making our way into room 420, a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite.
Side note, Fort Lauderdale has to have some of the most inconsistent hotel reviews of any place I’ve been. It was a true challenge to decide on hotels in this city. Also, hotel prices here are WILD. The Residence Inn seemed to strike the best balance of reviews and cost. And the fact that we could all be essentially in the same room, but with space was definitely an added bonus, especially for cruise morning.
This room was great. I could absolutely see some wear and tear on some of the hard furniture (especially cabinet bases), but the soft goods were all fairly new and CLEAN. The layout worked very well for our group, and thanks to watching for price drops, I was able to get the room for $396 including taxes, in a town where a standard hotel room with reasonable reviews was generally going for $250+ a night before taxes. Proximity to the airport was nice for a late night arrival too. This hotel is absolutely on our list if we cruise out of Fort Lauderdale again in the near-ish future or just need a hotel by that airport for some reason.
After Clorox wiping the room, because norovirus is STILL running wild and taking pictures around the room, at least some of us showered and crashed for the night. I think John stayed up for awhile reading in the living room.
This room was great. I could absolutely see some wear and tear on some of the hard furniture (especially cabinet bases), but the soft goods were all fairly new and CLEAN. The layout worked very well for our group, and thanks to watching for price drops, I was able to get the room for $396 including taxes, in a town where a standard hotel room with reasonable reviews was generally going for $250+ a night before taxes. Proximity to the airport was nice for a late night arrival too. This hotel is absolutely on our list if we cruise out of Fort Lauderdale again in the near-ish future or just need a hotel by that airport for some reason.
After Clorox wiping the room, because norovirus is STILL running wild and taking pictures around the room, at least some of us showered and crashed for the night. I think John stayed up for awhile reading in the living room.
No comments:
Post a Comment