Hi, I really don't want to be a killjoy, but we've just got back having flown US Airways via Philly, and it was a nightmare! Probably we were just unlucky, but we arrived at Gatwick to be told that we had been removed from our connecting flight (which was a 5 hour wait at Philly) and changed to a flight the following day
Luckily, we had booked in online the previous eve, and had the boarding passes to prove it! After about a half hour wait, the girl came back and said they had managed to book us on the earlier connecting flight, which would've meant about 2hrs between connections. However, she had already told us our flight out of Gatwick was delayed, so I was concerned we would miss the connection. She assured me that if we did arrive late, there would be someone waiting for us to ensure we got through immigration quickly, and to our connecting flight.
Unfortunately that wasn't so. We arrived about the same time the connecting flight was supposed to leave. No-one was there to meet us, we missed the flight,and then just by chance as we were following the crowd(because we didn't know where to go), my DH heard his name mentioned, and went over to query it. We were just given a food voucher, and told to go to the front desk to organise a hotel, as our flight wasn't untill the following afternoon
She wasn't interested in helping us, and told us to sort it with the front desk.
Anyway, we decided to not do as she told us,(I'm such a rebel!
) and as I still had our original boarding passes, we went to checkin instead. The girl there looked at them and after I had explained, she just said "that's your flight, you just go get it girl!!" Probably she was passing the buck, but we checked in our luggage and went for it!
That flight was also delayed, our boarding passes didn't work, and though we tried to explain, no-one wanted to know. Eventually when everyone had boarded, there were some spare seats, so we were allowed on the plane, but had to all sit separately. It arrived at MCO about 3 hrs late, but at least we were there!
Anyway, the first thing is as someone has already said you could miss the connection, the second thing, immigration was a nightmare and took over an hour (obviously I don't know if that is normal), and there is an awful lot of walking between leaving the plane, getting through immigration, and then getting to the next checkin and on to the departure lounge. So less than 2 hours could be cutting it fine.
Finally, I had checked on the US Airways website, and they give information on how often their flights leave late. The plane we were booked on from Philly to MCO left late over 50% of the time. When I queried it, I was told it was usually minutes, and the time was made up before they reached MCO, but in our case that wasn't true; so that may be worth looking into aswell.
Anyway, once we got to Disney we had a great time, so we didn't let it spoil our vacation
Hope this helps,
Jules x