Hi all, this is the first time I have written a trip report so please bear with me.
We travelled on Saturday 18th by mini bus, what should have only taken just over 3 hours turned into a 5 hour trip. We had booked into the Hilton at Heathrow terminal 4 for the night as our flight (should have) took off at 8.40am the next day. We booked an early morning wake up call and after phoning Continental to check our flight, checked out of the hotel. When we got to terminal 4 the place was heaving, there was no one around at the Continental check ins so we wandered around looking for someone to ask. Suddenly an announcment was made " BAA were cancelling all inbound and outbound flights for the day due to bad weather, we were advised to contact our airlines to rebook[msneek], we were also told that we had to vacate the airport!! Bear in mind that Continental had not known that BAA had cancelled the flights!!
Now we were going out to Orlando for our daughter Zoe's wedding on the 22nd, there were 6 of us booked on the flight, myself, husband David, son Carl,daughters Kirsty and Zoe and son in law Andy.
We immediately phoned Continental's 0845 number trying to get alternative flights. We were horrified to discover that there were no flights available that would get us there in time for the wedding!! The only thing we were offered was flights to Orlando via Lisbon which they said they would hold for us while we tried to arrange flights to Lisbon!! As you can imagine, Zoe was in floods of tears, I was frantic. Andy phoned his sister who searched online and managed to get us flights to Lisbon but we had to go via Madeira!! We decided to take them and then proceeded to try and contact Continental once again so we could confirm our seats. Between us we must have been on the phone for 4 hours. By now our phones were losing their charges! In the end I contacted my friend and asked her to phone Continental to confirm our seats ( I owe her big time)
We got the flight to Madeira but were late taking off so missed our connecting flight,luckily there were some good staff on duty and they rushed us through and got us on the next flight for Lisbon.
We landed at 11.00pm and spent the night at the airport, we were due to fly out at 10.15am the next morning. After a cold and uncomfortable night we queued to check in for the flight to Newark only to be told there was a problem with the booking [msncry]
We spent the best part of an hour with a very kind lady who worked for Continental, she explained that whoever had swapped our flights over had not done things correctly and our flights home had been cancalled!! On top of that, they wanted us to pay extra for the change of flights!!! Can you imagine the stress levals? Anyway eventually this lady sorted us out and sent us on our way.
Cue flight number 3 to Newark where we had to run like mad to get onto flight number 4 to Orlando. After an aborted landing [msnscared] we landed at Orlando at just before 7.00pm on the Monday over 24 hours late!! We collected our bags ( which all survived) and went to pick up the cars, thanks to Roger for contacting Alamo on our behalf and explaining things.
We then set off to find the villa and get to bed.
That's enough for now, I'll tell you how the wedding went soon, I hope I haven't bored you all with our experience.
Happy Christmas!!
Margaret
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