Honeymoon - Day 1

I was WRONG. There…I said it.

I asked Pretty Carol if she could take Mike and I to the airport Monday morning for our flight to Hawaii. I made the reservations over 2 months ago, and hadn’t looked at the paperwork since. I have a dang good memory for the stupidest of details, numbers, dates, etc. I remember that our flight left Phoenix at 11:45 am…so I asked Carol to pick us up at about 9am.

We left a few minutes lat (sorry Carol) and needed to stop by the bank (again…sorry Carol). While Mike was in the bank, for whatever reason, I decided to look at my paperwork. I don’t remember what made me look at it, but I pulled it out of my legal sized envelope that had all our necessary documents in it…and the first thing I see is 11:45am...arrival in Honolulu, Hawaii. OMG!! WHAT!!

I didn’t want to panic per se, but I was FREAKING out inside…and trying my best to stay calm on the outside and not freak Pretty Carol out. Our flight LEFT Phoenix at 8:15 am, and was supposed to arrive in Honolulu at 11:45am. For whatever reason, I got 11:45 stuck in my stupid head and that’s the only time I could remember.

I immediately got on the phone with Hawaiian Airlines. Of course I get the oldest Hawaiian working the customer service telephone line in the WORLD. I still don’t know what her name was…even though I asked her at least 5 times for it. She had NO emotion what-so-ever as she informed me that Hawaiian only has ONE flight per day from Phoenix to Oahu. Are you kidding me? There are like a dozen flights to Fargo, North Dakota…and only ONE to stinkin’ Honolulu, Hawaii?!

I asked if there was a flight we could still catch from LA to Honolulu…she looked around FOREVER and then informed me there was a flight leaving LA to Honolulu at 4:55pm. I figured it would be easy to grab one of the 100 flights per day that US Airways has from Phoenix to LA…not so freakin’ much!!

Carol got on the phone with Jared, who got on the computer…there were no available US Airways flights (so much for the miles), but he was able to locate us a flight from Phoenix to LA that got us to LA in plenty of time to check in for out flight to Oahu.

Whew…**sigh**…divorce avoided…honeymoon saved, just a bit later than expected. No problems…right?

Well…the flight situation was nearly cleared up when the unknown old lady from Hawaiian tried to charge to $800 dollars in change fees for the flight problems. Their change fee policy is $200 per change. She told me that since we missed our original flight and were now “changing” it to the LA flight…it was $200 per person. Ok…I think it’s a bunch of BS, but every airline has some load of crap like that, so whatever…I’ll pay it. My bad. Well…she also said that since we missed our original flight…the ENTIRE reservation was canceled…so to reinstate our return flight would now ALSO be a “change.”

This is where I stop pretending to be nice. That is a bunch of crap!! I NEVER touched my return flight…luckily for the old woman who was going to be meeting my shoe to her butt…she “asked her supervisor” and they agreed to wave the second set of $400 charges.

Jared was able to get us booked on the Southwest flight and we were at the airport in plenty of time…we checked in, got our luggage checked and in order and headed to the gate.

We arrived at LAX a few minutes ahead of schedule…we found our way to baggage claim…but our baggage some how never found it’s way onto our plane. In ALL the traveling I have done over the years, I have been lucky enough to have NEVER lost luggage, been without luggage, had a problem with my luggage… I have heard horror stories about peoples luggage woes, but have always been blesses with perfect luggage situations.

Once we realized our luggage was NOT on the conveyor belt…and the next flight’s luggage was nearly gone…we went to figure out what to do. We were told that our luggage SHOULD be on the next flight from Phoenix to LAX…arriving at 3:10pm. If we could be there to get out luggage and then run with it next door to another terminal…we should still have time to get it on our Hawaiian flight to Oahu. And if not, we weren’t sure what to do…

Luckily for us, all the timing worked perfectly. And "funny" enough, after Mike sprinted from one terminal to the next, re-waited in security lines, and somehow located me in the kabillions of people milling around LAX…our flight was delayed!!

We FINALLY got on the plane, the plane finally took off…we rented a movie watching device of some sort from the airline and watched an edited version of “Sex and the City”, ate some food, and tried to be as patient as possible for that stupid plane to land.

We got to our hotel after a $40 cab ride (YEP….$45 with tip!!)…and laughed the entire way to our room. We ran down the street to grab some water and a few snacks/food for our room and then both passed out for about 8 hours. It was the best sleep I’ve had in memory…