I just wanted to say "thank you " to the wonderful people we met because of this thread. That was one of the great things about the trip. We all loved the cruise and thank goodness we have such wonderful memories of the cruise to look back on because the flights were a nightmare. As many of you know we didn't get our luggage until the 3rd day of the cruise (and we were some of the lucky ones). However, the some of the wonderful Disboarders stepped up and gave clothes to my DD to get by. My DH and I were fine to get by but it is a little harder for a 12 year old. Then we had the awesome cruise and after is when our nightmare began. When we arrived into JFK at 7:00 p.m. (US time) on Wed. eve there was a terrible storm. We weren't allowed to leave baggage claims and US cutoms until almost 11:30 p.m. because they wouldn't take the bags off the planes during a lightning storm. Once we finally got through customs we had to swtich from Iberia to Delta. When we arrived at the Delta terminal it looked like something from a refugee camp. We got in line at midnight to try to book another flight because our connecting flight had been cancelled due to the storm. We were in line from midnight to 4 a.m. It took us an hour at the counter to finally find a flight to Greenville, SC (at 6:30 p.m. on Thurs) where we would have to spend the night and then the next morning (Fri) get connecting flight to Columbus. The other kicker was that we were at JFK and the flight left out of LaGuardia. So at 5:00 a.m. we took a cab to LaGuardia. We were not able to check our bags in until 12:40 p.m. on Thurs so we had to wait in the chairs in the departure area (no food).
Now the worst part of all of this is that my sister and I were throwing a big retirement party for my parents on Sat. so by now I am starting to get panicked. At 12:45 p.m. on Thurs. we were able to get a boarding pass and head back to our gate to await our 6:40 p.m. flight. At 6:00 the flight was put on a two hour delay and at 6:15 the flight was cancelled. We hurried up and got in line to try to get on another flight. Because we live in Cincinnati, we tried to fly into to either Cinn, Dayton, Columbus, Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, we didn't care as long as we could get close. There was nothing until late Sat. We decided to chuck it and rent a car and drive home. After we were able to retrieve our bags we went to get a rental car there was only one place that would be willing to give us a car to drive one way and it would be over $1500!!! Needless to say by this point we were exhausted and all I could think of was we were stranded and wouldn't be home in time for the party for my parents. In the end my brother-in-law drove to NY and picked us up. It wound up being a 14 hour drive home because there was a wreck on the Penn. turnpike but we finally made it home at 2 a.m. on Sat. We were able to make it to my parents retirement party (which was held about 2 hours from our house-yeah more driving).
All in all we are trying to focus onthe great cruise and the awesome people we met. We have our health, we made it home safely and in the end that's what is important.
So again, thanks for making our cruise memorable.
We were all exhausted but trying to get back on cincy time.
