Written last Friday, Sept 15, 2017 >>>>>;
The sad story of: A Well-Planned and Untaken European Vacation
brought to you by @AirCanada
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Yesterday, we were supposed to fly to England for my first ever trip to Europe. I was so excited to get my first stamps in my passport. We had B&B reservations in Paris and the English countryside. We had train tickets across the chunnel. We had three children packed for 8 days and 3 different babysitters were coordinated. We had palaces and jewels and landmarks and friends to see. It was going to be the trip of a lifetime.
Enter #AirCanada . 24 hours before our plane was set to take off, I got online to check in. Strangely, the website told me (repeatedly) that check in for our flight was closed. So I tried on my phone. No luck there either. So I called customer service only to have an agent tell me it was not possible for the website to say that. (Did he think I was lying?) He took my information and tried it himself and was unable to get it to work. He told me that because I bought my ticket through a booking agency that sometimes it didn't work to check in online and I'd have to do it at the airport.
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The next morning, we were up at 5:15, the airport only a 45 minute drive from our house. Even if it took us an hour to get ready, we should have been at the airport by 7, which was not the recommended 2 hours before, but still plenty of time for 2 able-bodied adults to get through security. .
Unfortunately, Steve couldn't remember where he put his passport, so we spent 20 minutes searching for it, only to realize it had been in a small pocket of his bag the whole time. 😩
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So we didn't leave until 6:15. We were still okay, right? Well...somehow, at 6:15, we got stuck in accident traffic, flat-tire-guy-who-changed-his-tire-in-the-middle-of-two-lane-construction traffic, and five-lanes-of-people-going-the-speed-limit-because-it's-raining traffic. So we didn't pull into the airport until 7:20.
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If I had any inclination that there would be no one at the @AirCanada ticket counter, I would have had the hubs drop me off at the doors to check in while he parked. But we had no idea that our entire trip would be ruined by getting to the ticket counter at 7:40.
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We parked the car in long term parking and took the shuttle to the terminal, heading directly to the Air Canada desk. There was no one there and no kiosk. Steve yelled hello for a minute until a passerby airport employee yelled back that Air Canada doesn't staff the ticket counter after an hour prior to take off. There was literally no way to print a boarding pass because we got there 10 minutes after they all left. .
We tried to go through security, hoping they could print is a pass at the gate but security wouldn't let us through without a boarding pass. They told us to go to the United counter and United told us to call #AirCanada.
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After waiting on hold for 10 minutes, the agent, though sounding sympathetic, said he basically couldn't help us. We could either wait until the next day for the next @AirCanada flight and pay a $300 change fee plus the difference between current fares and what we paid (which was $1800 per ticket) OR cancel the first leg of our flight and purchase another ticket to Toronto through another airline at another terminal. Making our way over there, the only tickets available that late in the game were First Class tickets for $1497 a piece--triple what we paid for our entire round trip two months ago.
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We couldn't afford any of those options, so we ended up cancelling everything and cutting our losses. Now we're out the trip of a lifetime and $1000 because #AirCanada couldn't be bothered to help us out or at least make it very clear that if we arrived even 59 minutes prior to take off we were out of luck.
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Admittedly, we could have gotten up earlier; we could have double-checked our passports the night before; but I honestly never thought 10 minutes could be the difference between an amazing European vacation and *nothing*. I felt like because we got our tickets for a good price, @AirCanada saw us as expendable.
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As my British friend expressed (who I won't get to see now), I am gutted over this.
Now that it's all been done for over a week, I'm actually feeling really good about all that's happened. Looking back at it, I wasn't as gutted over not going (or even over the money lost) as I was over all my hours and hours of preparation being flushed down the toilet. I'm sure that says something about me, but I'm not sure what.
Also, in thinking about it, there were too many "coincidences."
1-- Steve is a very careful planner and is always early for things when we travel. But that day, he wanted to sleep a little longer and couldn't find his passport.
2-- We hit a TON of traffic at 6am. At one point, the interstate was split because they were doing construction in the middle. We chose the right fork. The left fork was going at freeway speeds, but our fork had a guy whose tire went flat, and instead of pulling into the three lanes of completely usable, but blocked off construction lanes, he stopped in the middle of his lane, causing everyone to merge into one lane behind him. So we were delayed by 15 minutes because we chose the wrong fork in the road.
3-- We talked to at least 6 people who regularly travel internationally. We talked to at least two people who have recently traveled internationally. I put up a post on Facebook asking for advice on traveling internationally. In all that, not one person mentioned the 1-hour before take-off check in rule or that it was non-negotiable. We truly had no idea that we could get rejected from the flight if we did not arrive before that deadline. Sure, we should have anyway, but neither of us were even panicked about it until everything blew up in our faces.
4-- We I found out the next morning that there were bombings and terrorist threats on the London tube at almost the exact same time we were supposed to be riding it and the London Bridge was evacuated at about the time we would have been walking it and all of England was on the highest possible terror alert all that day, so I don't know if we would have been able to take the chunnel as planned anyway.
I took these pictures when we dropped the girls off at Grandma and Grandpa's house the night before we were supposed to leave. I wanted pictures of my girls on my phone to show people, or to look at when I missed them. Aren't they adorable? They make me melt.
I showered that night, too, which I never do because my hair does crazy things when I sleep on it wet. Case in point:
So we spent almost half of the day Friday first sitting on hold trying to still get ourselves to Europe for a decent price, and then when we finally conceded that we couldn't, cancelling everything and trying to get as much money back as possible. The one good thing Air Canada did do was inform me that even though our plane tickets were non-refundable, if I contacted the company I bought them through, they might refund some of my taxes and fees. Turns out, our chunnel train tickets were the only truly non-refundable part of our trip. Our AirBnB was gracious enough to refund us half our payment plus our fees, and the travel company is refunding us everything but the actual ticket price (I think--they don't speak English well, so I could have understood their email wrong and we're only getting the taxes back, but that's still over 2/3 of the price we paid) and the tickets for the round trip to England and back were only like $70 a piece minus taxes and fees!
Once we got all that done, we needed something else to give us bright spot, so we decided since Steve already had the time off and it was the perfect time to go to Disneyland, that we would take the girls on a surprise trip to So Cal after a 2-day stay in Park City for just the two of us. The Park City stay was a little bit rough with both of us still mourning our Europe trip and beating ourselves up over such a stupid mistake, but it was pretty and relaxing, so for the most part, it was good.
Friday evening up in the mountains was gorgeous:
And I loved the old architecture in downtown Park City.
On Sunday, we drove home, packed the other things we would need for a Disney/California vacation and then drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house to surprise the kids with it. They were excited, I guess: :)
Sunday night, we headed to St. George to stay with Cindy and Joe and break up the driving a bit. The sun gave us a grand send off.
We left the Coombs' around 10 am and drove all the way to Anaheim, only stopping for lunch and gas. After we checked in, Steve took the girls swimming in the motel pool while I decompressed and did some more Disneyland research. I joined them in the pool for a little while, too. The kids all slept like logs that night and we were up bright and early, rearing to head out to the Happiest Place On Earth.
Steve had looked up park hours the night before and said they were open from 9am - 10pm, with Magic Hour starting at 8am (Magic Hour is when you get into the park an hour early by buying a three-day pass. We didn't have that). The parking lot was supposed to open 90 minutes before the park opened. So we got to the parking lot at around 8:15 and it was closed! We could not figure out what was happening. Finally a passerby said the lot we went to was closed until 9am, but the other lot opened earlier. So we turned around and headed to the other lot. But it turned out that one was closed, too. The second lot had a long line of people waiting to get into the park, so we just waited. It turned out, when the line started moving about 10 minutes later, that Steve had read the hours wrong. The park was open 10am - 9pm, not the other way around. The parking lot had opened right on time, we were just off!
We waited in line for the turnstyles to open about 20 minutes, and then waited inside main street for the ropes to drop for another 25 minutes, my anxiety rising the whole time. There were SO many people there and I just knew we'd have to wait for an hour to do everything. But I shouldn't have worried (I need to remember that. It should be my mantra or something.) We got to do everything we wanted to do and never waited in line longer than 20 minutes or so. It was truly perfect.
This is on the tram from parking to the actual park.
Cecily was scared in the line to our first ride, Star Tours.
After you get out of Star Tours, they have an enormous Star Wars store you have to walk through to get back out to the park. They have two areas in there, one for building your own lightsaber and one for building your own droid. The girls LOVED building droids. They did it every time we got off the ride (which was three times).
Written on Tuesday, Sept 19, 2017 >>>>>
Day 1 of our Not-European California Adventure: Disneyland. We spent 12.5 hours in the park, met Jasmine and Moana, watched the Tangled show, went on Star Tours three times, ate ice cream that dripped down our arms and made us sick from the heat+sugar, rode as many rides as we could, and bought exclusively Star Wars souvenirs. All the kids cried once, but we're otherwise troopers and we all had a blast.
When we couldn't get on our flight, Steve and I drove to my parents' house since they only live about 20 minutes from the airport. When my mom found out we were taking the girls to Disneyland, she immediately got on her tablet and started finding advice for us. She is the one who discovered that Disneyland has a Jedi Training Academy. We signed the girls up as soon as we entered the park, and it was one of our favorite parts of the day. They got to dress up in Jedi robes, get trained in using a lightsaber by Jedi Masters, use the force to raise the Jedi Temple out of the ground, and then use their training to fight the embodiment of Darth Vader that came out of the Jedi Temple. They each got a souvenir pin at the end of the training. It was so cute to watch Mira really get into it and a neat experience all around.
Steve and I traded off going on Space Mountain. We both enjoyed it, but we knew it would terrify the girls. This was my picture they snapped at the end.
Cecily has always been our bravest. She REALLY wanted to go on the Astro Orbiter, but her sisters refused, so just the two of us went. I love this kid.
The teacups and Pirates of the Caribbean were the two favorite rides after Star Tours.
We let each girl pick one souvenir for the day, and they each picked a Star Wars toy. Proud mom moment right there.
Written Wednesday, Sept 20, 2017 >>>>>
Day 2 of our Non-European California Adventure: Relaxing, Beach and Tide Pools.
I wasn't very wordy that day, I guess. :) Steve wanted to body surf, but I guess body surfing and tide pooling are mutually exclusive. You don't want to bash yourself against the rocks.
The weather was perfect while we were there--low 70s and overcast in the mornings. The girls were annoyed that it was overcast and cool while we were at the beach, but we all enjoyed seeing crabs, anemones, sea slugs, muscles, and finding sea glass.
That tiny thing is a crab.
Written Thursday, Sept 21, 2017 >>>>>
Day 3 of our California Adventure: Sea World. The girls loved the shows and the rides and feeding the rays. Emilia rode her first roller coaster and I was so proud of her. For Emilia, that was incredibly brave. About 2/3 of the way through, she started yelling, "Get me off this thing! I hate this! Get me off now! I'm gonna puke. I need to get off now!" but as soon as we stopped she was fine. It made me giggle a lot but thankfully she wasn't offended that I thought she was humorous. We almost doubled our commute on the way back because of traffic, but were lucky enough to stop and chat with my cousin for a few hours. On the way to the hotel from my cousin's house, the girls passed out hard.
We had Sea World to ourselves mostly, because it was chilly and drizzled on us for most of the morning. No waits for anything and the shows weren't crowded, so we could show up 15 minutes beforehand and get whatever seat we wanted. We went on the river rapids ride and Emilia was super annoyed that she got soaked. We had to go to the car and get towels to pacify her. We saw the orcas on the way, so this is soaked Emilia watching the orcas. :)
Both parks had started their Halloween celebrations already, so the girls got to go to a candy-themed dance party while we were there.
No sharks wanted to swim by the entire time we were on the conveyor belt, so Steve took this snapshot anyway while I was commenting about the lack of sharks.
One little penguin.
Two little penguins.
Three little penguins, Yay!
We had to do the Sea World teacup ride, too, since it was so fun at Disneyland. We didn't even have to get off to ride again.
Sea World was only open from 10am to 5pm, so we got to sit in rush-hour traffic both ways. Which meant we got to Bill and Carolina's house late, which meant we didn't eat until 9pm, which meant the girls had a full day at Sea World and then were up until 10pm. And yet they were SO GOOD all that night and the next day. I truly felt like Heavenly Father was blessing this trip and smoothing out all the possible edges for us.
We were supposed to check out of our hotel room the next morning at 11am, but I was feeling like we needed one more adventure in California before we left. We debated going back to Disneyland, but the expense was so high, especially since we'd have to rent a hotel room for another night, pay Disneyland food prices, and we didn't decide until that morning, so we weren't taking advantage of getting there early. The beach sounded good except for driving 6 hours to St. George with sand in all our cracks. If we'd thought of it the night before, we might have been able to arrange to shower off at Bill and Caro's, but we didn't, so we were stuck. We finally decided on the beach and making the best of public showers. It turned out so perfect. (See, blessed again.) The weather was gorgeous--79 degrees and sunny. Huntington Beach was practically deserted. And the body surfing and sand-castle building were top notch.
Written Friday, Sept 22, 2017 >>>>>
Day 4 of our California Adventure: Huntington Beach and Rush Hour Traffic. We wanted to get in one more adventures before we headed home, but we had to check out of the hotel before lunch. After much deliberation, we decided to go to the beach and use public showers to clean up as well as possible before getting on the road. Huntington Beach was quiet, warm, and had excellent body surfing, which is essential for Steve's enjoyment. The girls and I even got in the water and built a sandcastle complete with seashell adornments. Everything was perfect except getting on the road at 4:30 in the middle of infamous Southern California rush-hour traffic. The drive was long, but we made it to St. George without incident.
I couldn't actually see the screen on my phone when taking this picture, so I missed part of the sandcastle. :D
We all loved see the palm trees. Such a fun difference between here and there.
All publicly showered and ready to go.
And then we hit traffic. Again. It only extended our 6-hour trip to 7 1/2 though. I hear that's a godsend. Joe's brother has had stop and go traffic for 176 miles or more. We only had it for about 40.
Written Saturday, Sept 23, 2017 >>>>>
Day 5 of our California Adventure: (technically not California) St. George. We stayed overnight in St. George at Steve's sister's house. In the morning we decided to go to Dixie Rock to explore a bit. Cecily refused to go for a good ten minutes until I let her put on her cousin Flo's Elsa costume and take a picture. It took all of four minutes and then she was excited to go. 😂 When we arrived, the temperature was perfect for exploring and there were a ton of neat photo opportunities that made my photographer heart happy. 💙 Then we drove the rest of the way home in the rain.
This was taken just before Cecily decided swinging her feet out under the bar would be a good idea. I almost died of a heart attack.
You probably didn't need three photos of Cecily, but I loved how each one caught a different part of her personality.
I also love that she wears headbands like this. It either makes her look like a wild savage or an 80s workout guru.
And last but not least, today, back in the real world at Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner, Cecily was upset that Steve would not let her play the Wii U and was wailing pathetically on the floor while all the adults ignored her. Mira kindly went to her, offered to let her wear her necklace, and after putting in on Cecily, just stood and hugged her for a while. You can't see it in this picture, but my Momma heart was puddled on the floor.
