Until Next Time - Bye Sunshine State

4/21/19 -

#pool_day #chilling #delayed_flight

The Easter bunny paid us a visit on this lovely morning, and left us a our very own Hogwarts journals with a quill and ink. How cool! Now Elaina will really feel like Tom Riddle since she is in the slytherin house(she even bought a souvenir robe). At this point, we could barely roll out of bed in time to pack our stuff and get checked out by noon since we were tired from the previous night of adventures. My mom had to pull the curtains open and even then we slowly inched out of the hotel beds. No worries tho because just in the nick of time, we snuck out of hotel room and dragged our heavy luggage to the check out.

We didn’t exactly pick the best time to to go for a Sunday brunch, and we forgot to make reservations. The place we went to was a popular buffet and had about 30 minute wait, but it ended up being over an hour… at least it felt like it. On the bright side, we had some extra time to blog about our wonderful vacation. The annoying part is that we were seated in a spot that was open the whole time. We originally figured it was just being reserved or something, but we were so hungry we didn’t even care. Luckily, it was totally worth the wait, the food was so amazing we went back the the buffet multiple times. It had every food you could imagine.

This day, we did not not have any park passes, so we decided to chill by the pool until it was time to leave the beautiful Florida weather(back to the cold). They had a live DJ, and pretty good entertainment. It was hard not to sing every song that came on while the both of us were laying on the lawn chairs trying to get the gorgeous Florida tan that we didn’t get all week. As exhausted as we were, we just stayed there until our bus to the airport came. On our transportation to the airport they were playing the Harry Potter on the screen in the front which was nice compared to the one when we arrived here.

We had finally arrived, and had passed a McDonalds which is Elaina’s favorite because she was used to eating it when she worked there. That’s was our plan for dinner, and Elaina deserved it because she managed to carry the old vintage 40 pound suitcase that I couldn’t. It took us f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get our bags checked in because it was Easter and they were short on staff. Finally, we got them checked and headed to our gate and the security check. We forgot to take the sunscreen bottle out of bag, so we got busted for that and had to throw it away.

Here’s where the CrAzY part happened, our flight got delayed twice. Yep twice. And our arrival time was pushed forward until 4:30 am, when it was supposed to be 10 pm. RIP, not to mention that we had to take the shuttle back to the main and take a different one due to the fact that our gate changed to the other end of the airport.

Anyways, before we found this out we needed something to eat, but unfortunately there was no McDonalds on on our terminal. Sorry Elaina. Trust me we asked. We settled for Burger King whoppers instead(not the same). Perfect Easter dinner if you ask me. Then after our fully balanced meal we found out about the very bad news. We had plenty of time to get to the other gate since we did the 2 hours before your flight rule not included the unexpected delay. It was not close tho, we had to hike about 5 miles to get to it.

We were there for like another 4 hours until the expected departure time of our flight. For some strange reason it was 5 minutes after the time our flight was supposed to take off and no one had even gotten in the plane yet. Someone came over the intercom and said, “We are looking for two volunteers to go on a flight on Tuesday which is our next available flight because we are currently in an overbooking situation, and we will be giving a 500 dollar voucher per person, and we will pay for hotel accommodations.”

Elaina and I perked up, this was the perfect opportunity. Think of the the positives, two more days in Florida, another vacation with our vouchers, missing school, and…… a great blog topic, “Stranded at Florida Airport.” To bad both of our parents strongly disagreed and said no. At this point, we were waiting for a volunteer, for nearly an hour until someone volunteered. Thanks to those angels because we wouldn't of been going anywhere without them. Everyone waiting to board clapped and cheered gratefully for them as they left. Eventually we boarded the plane, but that’s not it. They were still one seat short after boarding the plane. We guess they didn't do a head count before starting this process.

Another 40 minutes passed. Now, It's been a very long night, but it was looking fine until about 7 pm. Luckily someone else volunteered with them begging. We were finally ready to leave, but we thought this prior in the past. While on the plane they offered a free drink because of the inconvenience. Of course I took it, I mean it was free. Nonachocolic beverages only, no sweat. Running on little to no sleep, we got out of the plane and waited in the freezing cold(a little different from the Florida weather, lol)for my brother to pull up the car. We were able to snatch Elaina's warm hoodie out of our tightly packed suitcase before he pulled up. After a stressful airport adventure we made it home to the warmth of our own beds, sleeping most of the next day.