Why I hate O'Hare

I think I can safely say this was the worst start to a trip EVER.  Although I kind of think flying with kids is like child birth, in that you forget the severity of the trauma or you’d never do it again, I am pretty sure these memories will never be erased.  This was a colossal case of bad karma for thinking I’d gotten the better of the airlines.  When I booked this trip back in June I cheaped out and got a flight that arrived in Puerto Rico at 3:30am.  I can only justify the travel we do by sacrificing some comfort for savings.  We booked so far in advance that of course our flight changed, and United was going to leave us with a 5+ hour layover in Washington DC.  I called and complained and they switched us to a flight that gave us an extra day in Puerto Rico and a normal arrival time.  The only hitch was we had to go through O’Hare aka HELL.  Despite our last unpleasant experience I decided I really wanted that extra day.  Apparently the fates of travel wanted otherwise.  We dragged our kids out of bed at 4:30 am to make out flight in Dayton.  We ended up slightly delayed in Dayton, which lead to us sprinting with crying children to our flight in Chicago.  There is no better way to start a trip than crying kids running through an airport tripping over their own luggage and dropping things while strangers judge you for screaming at them to run faster. 

Luckily we made it just in time.  Just in time to sit on a plane at the gate for about 2 hours.  When they start telling you you can leave the plane for food and reboard that’s a bad sign.  When an hour later they force you to get off the plane to wait out a winter storm in Chicago that’s a really bad sign.  When all the flights at O’Hare are grounded and they then start canceling everything you are a news story.  I now have an incredible amount of sympathy for people stranded in airports.  I hate them to begin with but when there’s no hope of leaving it is the stuff of nightmares. 

Our flight was cancelled 6.5 hours after it was supposed to take off.  Had we taken off on time there wouldn’t have been any problems.  It was as if Chicago O’Hare has never had to deal with a winter storm before.  The line of people waiting to reschedule filled the entire terminal.  Luckily I called and got a representative on the phone to switch our flights to a different airline.  Other people waited out the lines.  We were rebooked on a different flight which finally took off about 5 hours after it was scheduled to.  Flight cancellations and delays give people a lot of time to drink in airports which was starting to make me a little nervous.  There were mobs of people at the gate we were supposed to leave from because apparently the airlines aren’t capable of providing any sort of accurate or updated information to people once something goes wrong.  It was truly amazing how completely disorganized everything was.  In general the gate agents were very nice despite everything.

We had the privilege of escaping O’Hare on the first flight to leave for Philadelphia that day (per our captain’s announcement).  We got to Philly around 12:00am, which was 10 hours after we should’ve been in sunny San Juan.  Luckily we got in at the airport Marriott for the night.  The VERY nice front desk person gave us a good rate.  The EXTREMELY nice restaurant manager convinced the chef, who is now my personal hero, to make us food since we hadn’t eaten since lunch.  Never has a club sandwich tasted sooooooo good.  After about 4 hours of sleep we went to stand in a ridiculously long security line with cranky TSA workers, so we could catch our morning flight to San Juan.  We arrived close to 24 hours later than expected.  The man who own our AirBNB said he watched the news and wasn’t expecting us until Wednesday.  He luckily brought some joy back to our travels by being an amazing host.  We made it to the grocery store.  After loading up all our luggage and food on the ferry we made it to our private island condo in one piece.  Here end the complaints of a person who gets to go sunny warm places in the winter. 

We were okay with the delay when we got free direct TV and food.

Once we had to leave the plane and the ice storm started it was a different story.