Day 1 of our Carnival Glory Experience
Thursday, January 25
The alarm rang at 3:30 am. It didn't matter, we were already up and packed and ready to go. Nothing to do but bicker with each other, and we did. The temperature was a balmy -3 with a windchill of -12. Seriously, why do we need to get away, when it practically spring here. Finally, our pre-ordered cab came at 4:00 am and we entered wearing only a sweater. We are experienced travellers and only took two carry-on pieces of luggage which makes no waiting for luggage, etc.
Unfortunately, we had a little blip. My passport name didn't match my flight reservation name. (I keep forgetting if my passport only has my first name and I keep reserving flights with my first and middle name.) But, I didn't realize it at the time. All I got on the boarding pass machine was that there was an issue and I needed to see an agent. Deep sigh. An issue. Is this how things are going to go? The worst thing was that there was no agent to see. They weren't open yet. 20 minutes to wait. This is why you go to the airport early. Andrew and I are trying not to get on each other nerves but 20 minutes is seemingly like forever. Finally, no issue. Just the middle name.
20 minutes to get through customs. Not bad. We are at our gate by 5:00 am. We have a light breakfast at Timmie's from a gift card that I had won on New Year's Eve. Feel pretty special about this and think this is a wonderful start.
We board a few minutes after 6:00 am. First time flying United. Takes a long time to de-ice the plane, which is fine for everyone. Better safe than sorry. We wave good-bye to Winnipeg. We are offered a choice of pretzels or cookies. An ordinary choice, however, the cookies appeared to be the poorer option. Just judge by appearances. The cookies were AWESOME. Like, perfect. Like, I can't tell you how much I loved these cookies. Pretty darn happy. We spend the rest of our flight doing our crossword and sudoku puzzles.
Until we start the descent into Chicago. The sun is up and the sky is clear. We fly in over Lake Mighigan to an extraordinary view of Chicago. We are close enough to have a fabulous view of the Sears Tower. We seem to be going in slow motion over the Chicago Sky Line. Major wow. It is a sign from above that we are going to have an amazing trip.
We get to beautiful O'Hare airport and enjoy a wonderful and step-filled walk to our connecting gate to Newark. It is a long walk but the vibrancy in the airport makes you jubilant. We have adequate time but we can't dilly-dally. We arrive at our gate with not enough time to go on-line but good time. Unfortunately, the flight is over-booked. We look at the option of volunteering our seats. By volunteering our seats, we will have two hours in Chicago rather than two hours in Newark. Uh. Yes, we will. By volunteering our seats, we earned $1400 US in travel certificates. You read that right. So, basically we are being paid to go on vacation. And, if that wasn't enough, we got meal vouchers for our lunch in Chicago. It was like a "start the plane" moment. We dined on some sort of Mexican dish that we couldn't pronounce like we were Meaghan and Harry. We would take a bite, look at our certificates, take a bite, look at our certificates, take a bit, look, well you know where I am going with this. I texted my best friend and my daughter. My best friend got this and knew the significance of this for the rest of the trip. My daughter replies that that is nice. Nice?? It is friggin awesome !! After an amazing meal, we walk back to our new gate.
We sit down and a Pilot joins us. Not the Pilot of our flight, but a Pilot, none-the-less. The crew of any flight for any airline words incredibly hard so we didn't want to bother this man. However, he kindly initiated the conversation and told us all about his life, his positive experience with United, etc. It was another hi-light of our trip. And, then. Our plane rolled into the gate. We were going to travelling to Newark on the biggest plane in their fleet. Wow. Not that was a bird !! Our pilot kept talking about our plane, giving us inside information. We continued to feel like royalty. Our flight was amazing and we would take a sip of our water, and look at our certificates, etc.
Short wait in Newark and we are flying to Miami. Our first time in Miami. We have been to a lot of airports all over the world and Miami airport is the least inviting. It is so uninviting that we can't wait to get out.
Now, to check into hotel. My amazing sweetie had one job on this trip to book the Miami hotel. In fairness, he showed me before he booked. A two star hotel with a good rate. I approved and we knew that we would be getting a two star hotel but who cared. It turns out we should have. \Our first clue that this was not going to be a dream come true was when we couldn't get an airport shuttle to go there. We finally got an uber and headed there arriving in line at 11:15 pm. We were third in line behind two disgruntled customers. The first couple wanted to get out of their reservation for the next three days but the hotel had already charged their credit card for four nights. That couple argued for about 15 minutes to a desk agent who just said there was nothing she could do. No empathy. Another guest kept coming to get a new key saying his card wasn't magnetized. After the fourth time, the desk agent called security but then remembered that security didn't have his radio with him. Comforting. After the first disgruntled couple left, the second group before us took to the counter. There were 6 in their party and their reservation had been lost but the woman had her email confirmation. This issue was that the hotel wanted to charge them their regular rate rather than their booked rate. I don't know why this was an issue. After standing there for 15 minutes, I was quite positive that they were not full and the woman had an email confirmation. It seemed like this group of 6 were mom, dad, two daughters and their partners. The remarkable thing was the amount of luggage. Two full racks. Suitcases, bags, of all sizes. I stopped counting at 30. I also had this feeling. This group was going to be on our cruise. As we stood and waited, I felt this was a bad sign for our trip. At 11:43 pm, we were checked in. No issues. Well, no issues checking in. The room was disgusting. The carpet was grossly stained. The only chair in the room was badly stained with cigarette burns. The tub didn't have a plug making it unusable for a bath. But, it didn't matter, we weren't going to shower in there for cleanliness reasons. We went to get ice so we could have some cold water through the night. Surprisingly, the ice machine was broken on our floor. There was only three ice machines in the hotel on 3, 5, and 7. We went to 5 and it wasn't working either. We didn't go down to 3 to confirm that it wasn't working, but felt it was very likely that it was also not working. We were exhausted so changed into our night clothes and wanted to quickly message our family. No wifi password. Phoned down to the lobby. No one answered. Again, not comforting. My sweetie got dressed and went down to the desk. There were two desk clerks sitting there. I guess they just don't answer the lobby phone. Back with the password and now way after midnight, we were so physically exhausted we were magnetized to our bed yet our minds were still going. We tried to convince ourselves that overall we had an amazing day and that this hotel experience was not going to be indicative our Glory experience.
#CarnivalGloryExperience
Comments
Post a Comment