Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Friday was another travel day. We needed to return the MacPhees van to the Miami airport for them then head to Fort Lauderdale to catch our flight to Buffalo. When we were looking for our flights home we found really great tickets to Buffalo that would allow us to catch a hockey game and see our friends before flying home out of Toronto. Sounded like a great way to end the trip.

We set out on Friday and everything was going just about perfectly. We stopped in Wellington to see Liz and Harry. The kids had a great time riding around, playing with Lizs dogs and the duck. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to see Liz so it was great to catch up. We grabbed some lunch and kept going.

We arrived in Miami and returned the van without any issues. We grabbed the Tri-rail and shuttle and headed back to Fort Lauderdale. We got checked in for our flight exactly on time. We went through security and as we were sitting down to eat we got a notification that our 9:40 flight was delayed to 10:30. No big deal. Flights are delayed all the time. By the time our meal was ordered the flight was pushed to 2:15. We finished eating and headed to our gate. At around 12:30 they announced that our bags would be available at carousel 1 and our flight was cancelled. So was every other JetBlue flight for that night.

We headed for the ticket counter, along with just about everybody else in the airport. Thankfully ours was one of the first flights cancelled so we only had to wait 2 hours to get rebooked. Unfortunately though, they couldn’t rebook us until Monday night. Which was after the hockey game and our flight home out of Toronto. There was however a flight out of Orlando to Buffalo the next day if we wanted that. We said yes and headed to the rental car Center.

At around 3:00 we started driving BACK to Orlando. We made it about an hour outside Orlando before we grabbed a couple of hours sleep at a rest plaza. The car was returned to Orlando airport by 8:30.

We had a full day to kill before our 3:30 flight but since we hadn’t had any sleep we were in no shape to go anywhere or do anything so we just hung out in the airport. Thankfully we were able to get in to a lounge around noon because we were in for a hell of a day. Quite literally.

The 3:30 flight quickly became a 5:30 flight. And then an 8:30 flight. And then a 9:55 flight. The lounge was full of people in similar situations. We spent the afternoon and evening with the loveliest couple from New York. As the departures board began to show more and more cancellations we became more and more thankful for our lounge pass.

The lounge closed at 9:00 and we had to go back out and join the rest of the airport. What we found was chaos. Turns out Southwest Airlines had cancelled ALL of their flights out of Florida because their systems went down. JetBlue had no crew or pilots. There was problems with fog and thunder throughout the day that affected all the other airlines. We would later find out that over 3500 flights would be cancelled and 6000 delayed.

By 11:00 with no indication that our flight was going to leave we decided to just abandon it. I had our bags pulled and we made the ridiculous, but only, decision to drive home. The kids and I headed to baggage claim while Jacob headed to the car rental Center. Two hours later we had our bags back, after they officially canceled the flight, and Jacob had made very little progress with the car.

The kids and I headed down to join him to find the most chaos I have ever seen. By this time there are no hotels left within an hour or Orlando, there are no rental cars left, people are being automatically rebooked on flights 4-5 days from now, there are no available flights to purchase for at least that long out of any Florida airport, the buses are full, the train is sold out. An Uber drive to any destination within 10km is now over $100. People have actual tents set up in the rental car Center. The cops have been called in to do crowd control.

Finally at 6:30am after waiting over 7 hours for a rental car – they were giving them out one by one as people returned them we left the airport. We made it about half an hour outside of Orlando before we stopped to sleep in a Walmart parking lot. For the second night in a row. The kids are now seriously questioning if they will ever get to sleep in a bed again. After a Power Nap we headed to Daytona where we checked in to the nicest hotel with the nicest bed and shower I have ever seen in my life. We crashed hard. I showered three times. We will now spend the next week driving north and hopefully actually going home this time.