While the following story may seem like we made it up, I promise it is 100% true! Keep in mind that we were supposed to be home in Scottsbluff Saturday morning at 11:00am.
FRIDAY:
While trying to check in online for our flight, we discovered that our flight out of Honolulu to San Francisco was delayed. The problem with that was that we would then miss our connection flight to Denver. After many hours on the phone, we were able to get rebooked on a later flight out of Honolulu with a different connecting flight to Denver, and therefore a different connecting flight to Scottsbluff getting us home at 5:30pm. (6 hours later than expected) We get to the airport and try to check in using their self check-in stations. It comes up with an error. We call a lady over to help us and she says there is a probem with our flight to Scottsbluff, it has been cancelled, she takes our tickets and goes to fix it. She is gone about 45 minutes, comes back and tells us that another lady will be taking over trying to find us different flights. After another 30 minutes or so, the other lady has us all checked in, on the exact same flights we had when we got to the airport. Lucky for us, they didn't charge us for our baggage! Because of the flight changes, we lost our good seats and ended up on really crappy ones for the longest leg of our trip. At this point, we didn't care. We were just excited to be headed home. We board the flight and get ready to go home.
SATURDAY:
Around 6 am we land in San Francisco. I am exhausted so I laid down on the seats to take a little nap. Chad gets up to find something drink. After he was gone a while, I got nervous and tried to call him. He didn't have his phone with him. I get up to see what gate our flight to Denver is out and find out it is cancelled. Are you kidding me? Cancelled??? I wander around and finally find Chad in the Customer Service line trying to get a new flight. At this point, there is NOTHING they can do to get us home today. The best they can do is get us to LA later that evening, then to Denver around midnight, and to Scottsbluff that next afternoon. To say the least, I was not happy! After many phone calls home to my parents and my dad looking online for different flights, we find out that we are pretty much out of luck. So here we are in Scottsbluff until at least 5:30 that night. Lucky for us, my best friend from high school, Stacey lives in San Francisco. Again lucky for us, she was available that day and came and got us. She drove us around, we went to In and Out for lunch and then to the Golden Gate Park. Chad had never been to San Fran before so he was able to see the bridge and Alcatraz. Thank you so much Stacey!!! We stopped at a nice coffee shop before we headed back to the airport around 3 or so. After she dropped us at the airport and we headed to check in. We went to find out gate and found out that THIS flight was also delayed and we would miss our connection from LA to Denver. Once again, we headed to the customer service line. This time, we had a good guy trying to help us. He tried to get us flights directly into Alliance, but couldn't. Finally, he was able to get us on a flight to LA with a short layover before a midnight flight into Denver. The airline would put us in a hotel and give us food vouchers. It was the best we could get so we took it. We hightailed it to our flight to LA.
We got to LA and found our flight to Denver, this one amazingly enough was not cancelled or delayed! The gate we were at had a flight coming in from Honolulu. All I could think was that we could have waited, spent the night with Gwen, and came in on this flight. Oh well. We got some dinner in LA and then headed out to denver.
SUNDAY EARLY MORNING:
Around midnight, we made into Denver. In LA we were told to go to customer service and they would get us into a hotel There was nobody in the airport. We helped a poor single mom with a very tired toddler get her luggage down to her sister, then headed off to find out where we could stay tonight. Down in baggage claim, we found the guy to hook us up! He was able to get us a hotel, the DoubleTree, and $30 in food vouchers for the airport. Then he told us that the shuttle would be back around 1:45. At this time it was 12:50. I did NOT want to wait another 55 minutes to get to a hotel. The guy at the desk called to double check the where the shuttle was and it was right outside. We ran and caught it. Whew! It was about a 20 minute ride to the hotel, but I did not care! We made it to the hotel and were checking in and realized that we had nothing. I asked the girl if she had a toothbrush and toothpaste, she did. Then I asked if she had deodorant, she did. Finally, she gave us both warm chocolate chip cookies because we looked like we needed it. Keep in mind that we had not showered since Friday morning and it was not very early Sunday morning.
SUNDAY LATE MORNING:
After a few hours sleep, we caught the shuttle back to the airport. We headed to the Great Lakes desk to get checked in and get to Scottsbluff. We get to the desk and it is a short line. We try to check in and there is no record of our tickets. Are you KIDDING ME? The lady was so super nice too...or not. She claimed she couldn't do anything and we needed to call United. So once again, we got on the phone. They gave us some information to give the lady at the desk. We got back in line and tried again. This time, she could see my ticket but not Chad's. Then she could finally see Chad's, but couldn't release it or something. This time, we headed over to the United desk to see if they could help. The lady pulled up exactly what we needed and had no problem finding it. She called over to the other desk (not sure why the other lady couldn't call, these desks were not exactly close to each other!) and gave her the information. When she hung up the phone she mentioned what an unpleasant person she was to work with...we agreed! We headed back to the Great Lakes desk and were able to get checked in. Now for the matter of the food vouchers. Pizza Hut and KFC it was. We ordered so much food, way more than we could eat but we were determined to use every cent the airline gave us. I think we used all but 13 cents or something, but we did end up throwing away a lot of food.
Finally, we headed down to our gate. The lady at the gate told us we were at gate 60 and boarding at 3:15. As we were sitting at the gate, Chad got up to look at the board to see when we were boarding. The board said, SCOTTSBLUFF....CANCELLED. Once again, are you KIDDING ME? Then he noticed it was for a 6:15 flight, and our gate was actually 68. Thanks a lot desk lady. Chad had me go look at the gate without telling me what was going on, just to give me a little bit of a heart attack. It did!
We headed to gate 68, and other than a slight delay to fuel the plane, we headed out (walking on the tarmac by the way!) to board our tiny plane. Finally, we were in the air and on our way. I have never been more excited to see the state of Nebraska again. AT LAST we landed and the kids were so excited to see us, but probably not as excited as we were to see them.
MONDAY:
We headed home (driving....6 hours to Lincoln) finally. I could not wait to get back to my bed and my house.
Supposed to be home: Saturday at 11am, actually home, Sunday at 4:30pm. A difference of 29.5 hours. AUGH!
We had a great time, but it will probably be a long time before I fly United again!
I am alive!
8 months ago
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