Slight Change of Plans!

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to Maryland to visit B1, S1, and my niece and nephew before my mom and I left for our trip, since our flight this morning was out of BWI. I spent the night at my mom's and were all set for an early start to the day.

At 12:55am, I received this text:

not the notification
I wanted to receive

What followed was a restless night and a panicky morning.

We tried to rebook the flights, but the Southwest site was clearly inundated with traffic. It was incredibly frustrating to see "UNAVAILABLE" on flight after flight after flight. This was the third day of flight cancellations for Southwest due to technical issues, and this is obviously wreaking havoc on their entire system.

I abandoned the flight issue temporarily and decided to call Walt Disney World when they opened at 7am. This is how long I was on the phone with them:

two hours and four minutes!

In the end, the Disney folks were incredibly kind and accommodating. We ended up modifying our reservation so that now we are checking in on Friday and staying through next Friday. The resort is going to hold on to all of my mom's medical equipment that is being delivered today and everything else with the reservation remains intact. The only not-so-great thing is that the resort - Art of Animation - does not have any availability next Wednesday and Thursday night (the two nights we added on to the original plans), so we have to move over to Pop Century on Wednesday. We were assured that the cast members will assist us in moving things over to our new room, so we were more than fine with that change! I honestly cannot say enough good things about the two cast members I spoke with today...they really took care of everything and I am very grateful to them to sorting out the details for us!

Back to the flights. I called Southwest THREE times. The first time, the call immediately failed. The second time, I was disconnected after a 12-minute wait. The third time, I was disconnected after a 55-MINUTE WAIT. As you might imagine, I was NOT happy. I understand they're dealing with countless grounded flights and disgruntled customers, but that doesn't make the experience any less frustrating for me. In the end, we just booked completely new flights for this Friday and next Friday, and whenever I do get them on the phone, I expect they will make things right. If you've ever bought last minute flights, you know they are not cheap, so that will be the next battle.

What a day! But for now, things are back on track and that's what matters! I drove back home this afternoon and we'll start all of this again tomorrow! Fingers crossed that our Friday morning flight takes off as planned!

Happy Tails to you!