As I write this, a week from now we will already be underway with the first travel day, setup in our hotel in Kansas City. In typical “me” style, I will be working right up to the minute we depart, our daughter driving us to KC (where she will pick up up late night November 13th).
That is, provided that the flight happens as scheduled. We’ve already had an instance of flight rescheduling, which is why we’re going to KC on Thrusday night before the Sunday sailing rather than Friday night.
We are fans of Alaska Airlines. We had first class tickets booked for the first flight of the day Saturday, Oct 14, bringing us into Seattle by 9am that day so we could spend a day with friends before hoteling just up the street from the dock and get on the ship the next morning.
However, Alaska Air canceled that flight a few months ago. They rescheduled us on the last flight of the day Saturday, also a direct flight. But considering the state of air travel in recent months, I was not comfortable with that arrangement. If the flight was delayed or canceled it gave them only one opportunity — the first flight Sunday — to get us to the ship on time.
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NEVER leave yourself with only one out, I say….so I took the availability of going the other direction with the flight — we could move it up to 24 hours either direction without penalty. So now we’re out on the first flight Friday. Now, between direct flights and combinations with American Airlines, they have ten (10) opportunities to delay us over two days, without pushing us to another airline.
Of course, that meant arranging two nights of hotel in Kansas City to cover departure possibilities between 7am Friday and 7am Sunday, and two nights in Seattle to cover arrival possibilities from 9am Friday to 9-ish PM Saturday.
As I said at the time, “better half an hour of work now than two days of frustration to start the trip….”
On the other hand,
The vast majority of things that could go right with the changes in the cruise and getting the last minute planning done, have gone right. I know I updated the itenerary briefly last week, I’ll post a more detailed update over the weekend — I think we’re going to have a lot of fun!
And look what arrived Tuesday! The first foreign currency I’ve ever purchased (not counting the times I have been in Canada and got Canadian change for US money).
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and then