…for over 33 hours!! Yeah…it was NOT fun let me tell you.
We left our house around 6:45am on Wednesday morning…we arrived at the airport around 8:30am. We stood in line to check in and watched as flight after flight was listed as “canceled” on the departure monitors…but ours still showed “on time” status. We finally got our boarding passes and checked our luggage in around 9:15 or so…and made our way through the myriad of people to the security check to make our 10:25 flight, Upon arriving at our concourse we checked the monitors again…our flight was now listed as “canceled”. So we made our way to the line for Customer Service to have our new tickets issued. After standing in that line for what seemed like hours…we were told that the line in the terminal was moving faster and we should go there…so we did.
All in all…we wound up standing in line for over 6 hours to get new tickets issued. Our flight now leaves tomorrow evening around 7pm and arrives in Atlanta around 11:50pm…so we’ve basically lost 4 days of our originally planned trip. Disappointing yes…but at least it’s not a total loss.
I tried to make good use of my time while standing in line making calls to the car rental place and the hotel that we’d made reservations at …canceling our reservations and trying to get refunds. I accomplished it all…but not without a great deal of effort on my part. I had to literally beg for my money back on the hotel reservation in Savannah…and wanted to hurt the person on the other line a bit…but I kept my composure and just told them that I was not going to be punished for something that was beyond my control and I feel that a blizzard coming and flights being canceled because of it was well in that category!
We were then told to try to get home or get a hotel room. We did try…but all of the cars had been rented and none of the buses were going out as far as we needed them to in order to get close to our home. We can’t afford to spend a lot of money on hotel fair…so after learning that all of the “discounted” hotel rooms had been taken…we decided we had no choice but to stay put at DIA and wait out the storm.
I suppose it could’ve been worse…but we were in a gigantic tent (basically) that had the air-conditioning running 24/7 and had no place to lay down and sleep but the cold floor (your choice of thin carpet over concrete OR marble flooring). People over the age of 65 or physically handicapped people were given cots to sleep on…the rest of us (if we were lucky) either found a chair or a place on the floor.
Any way you look at it…when you have over 4000 people trapped in one location w/ minimal food and no real place to sleep and not enough seating…it’s not a good situation. The concessions stayed open in the “terminal” for most of the time and the airport finally opened some concessions on a couple of the concourses by the second day…mainly because the terminal concessions started to run out of food. However, anyone going to the concourses still had to go through security and you couldn’t bring anything through that’s normally restricted. So those people who were lucky enough to still have their baggage with them, couldn’t take it through to the concourse and was also told that they couldn’t leave it at the terminal unattended…so they were stuck. Staff finally allowed people to securely check some baggage in a “holding area” so that they could find food on the concourses…but that wasn’t until last night. We, of course, had already checked our baggage and were told that we could NOT reclaim our baggage and that it would go to our final destination…long before we get there. Frontier airlines actually let their passengers reclaim checked baggage off of canceled flights…but we’re flying United and they flat out told us that wouldn’t happen. I called their main baggage services center and learned that our baggage will arrive in Atlanta on the first flight out to that location and will be “locked up” for 3 days and then if it’s unclaimed it will be flown back to Denver. So hopefully it will be there when we get there.
The Red Cross did show up but not until earlier today. Walmart & Sam’s Club donated food, water, and baby necessities to the stranded passengers. Safeway also donated water. However, many people are still stranded there and will be for days on end…including until after Christmas. There just isn’t enough seats on outgoing flights to accommodate all of the canceled seats. Tempers started to flair before we left…but from what I’ve heard it’s gotten worse since then. United is bringing in jumbo jets to help with extra seating…but Frontier has now told their passengers that if they don’t have a confirmed ticket that they need to leave the airport…but some just can’t afford to stay in hotels and have nowhere else to go. It’s a sad situation…especially for this time of year.
We finally were able to get out of the airport around 6 or 7 last night…thanks to a very kind man (George) and his brother (Jim). Jim lives only a couple of miles from us here and offered us a ride home! I tell ya…there are still a few good people left in this world.
We did meet some really nice people while stranded and I wish them all the best of luck and safe trips. Especially Gene and Jeff…who sat with us for the majority of our time there. It wasn’t such a horrible experience thanks to them…and that’s something that you just can’t buy.
I hope that you all are home safe and sound and not stranded anywhere.
Have a wonderful holiday and stay safe.
