Are We There Yet?

During Christmas vacation, as we were all sitting around at Chris' house, Mom and Dad announced that they were planning a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth, and we were all invited! Since the drive from Mesa to Anaheim is only about 6 hours, the AZ crew drove, while Brett's and my family flew in. Brett and I worked out travel times, and planned to arrive in the late afternoon -- plenty of time in the morning to finish last-minute packing and errands, and also plenty of time in the evening if we wanted to go to the park for a few hours. Ah, the best laid plans.

I'm usually very careful about details, but the trip out was going to be so relaxed, I didn't pay quite as close attention as I should have. After a nice slow morning, I worked with the boys to finish packing while Jennifer took care of some errands. We had a nice leisurely lunch and finally piled in the car around 1:40 pm, for our 3:55 flight. Or so I thought it was 3:55. Brett called just as we were heading out to say he was running a little late, and wondered where we were. I casually commented that we also had a late start, but not to worry, we had until almost 4 o'clock. That's when Brett brought me to reality -- 3:55 was the arrival time; the plane was departing at 3:00! The last time I checked the ticket I had looked at the wrong time, and because of the time difference, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

All of a sudden our casual drive to the airport was a mad dash up I-15 as fast as I thought I could go without getting pulled over. Since we were checking bags, we had to be at the counter no later than 2:30, when the close the flight. Brett called as they arrived at the airport to say they were going to park in short-term parking because they didn't think they would make it otherwise. I still felt like we would be OK, so we went to long term and tried (in vain, it felt like) to find a parking place. Finally we found one and ran towards the bus stop, just in time to see a bus pulling away. The five minutes between buses was almost physically painful. I kept checking the time trying to convince myself we would still make it.

We got to the terminal and ran to a kiosk to check in. Denied. Since we were checking bags and it was now 2:31 the computer had cut us off. We stood in line until the man behind the counter said, "Oh, I'm not open, you'll have to go down there." and pointed to the First Class counter. Now, you would think that since Salt Lake is a Delta hub, they would have more than 1 1/2 people working the vast number of check-in counters. Not at 2:30 on a Tuesday, apparently. By the time it was our turn, it was 2:37, and we were just too late. Worse still, there was not enough room on the 4:45 flight, so we would have to wait until the 8:40 flight.


I should pause here and admit that this was totally and completely my fault. We had plenty of chances for this to work out well for us -- I could have actually read the ticket correctly, we could have left earlier, I could have checked us all in online before we left, I could have driven faster (maybe), we could have parked in the short-term lot, we could have made the first bus, and on and on. So, it just wasn't meant to be. On the bright side, since we didn't make our flight, there were two extra rows that Brett and Stephanie were able to use, giving them plenty of room for their two lap children. I hope they enjoyed the flight. :)


We passed the next several hours at the play area, eating dinner, and waiting by the 4:45 gate to see if perhaps there would be enough room for us. To the boys' credit, they were very well behaved during our unexpected "layover". I got standby tickets for all of us on the 4:45 flight, even though the gate agent said there was no way we could get on. As they began boarding, I kept listening to all the names they called over the PA system. It seemed like quite a few people had still not boarded and I started to get hopeful. At one point I even called Jennifer and had her bring the boys down to the gate just in case. In the end, there were four seats open on the flight. Yes, we really were just one seat short. I even asked if we could put Joshua on our lap or ride in the cockpit! I suppose I could have gone on with the boys and left Jennifer to catch the next flight, but we decided to stick together.


So, a little downtrodden, we made our way to the 8:40 gate and waited patiently for several more hours. The boys talked, colored, watched for planes, and Nathan and I got in several games of Banqi. To add insult to injury, just about the time we expected them to start boarding, we looked up and saw the flight time was changed from 8:40 to 9:10. By the end of the day we realized that we had spent more time in the airport than the AZ crew spent in the car driving! Not the greatest start to our trip to the Magic Kingdom, but we eventually arrived at the hotel, welcomed by Mom and Dad and a goodie basket for the week -- just the "spoonful of sugar" we needed!