My son and I were booked on a 4 night DCL cruise last month leaving on a Monday and so I scheduled for us to fly into Florida on the Friday before so we could have a couple of days to go to Disney World before we set sail but our plans did not go as we planned and here is our story:
I booked us on a late Friday night SW flight arriving into TPA around 1120pm and we were going to be staying a few nights at a timeshare before our cruise. We left our house with plenty of time to arrive at the airport and as we neared the machines to print our luggage tags I received a text stating our flight was cancelled. WHAT the heck, so we go to the counter and the SW CS tells us, Yes you are correct your flight was cancelled, and she started looking for a new flight for us to change to and they only thing available she said was the next day at 330pm arriving into TPA around 930pm-connecting thru Chicago so we took it and left the airport and went back to our car and back home. When I got home I decided to check the SW website to see if there was any other flights that would get us to Florida earlier and I didn't find any but I did find a flight that was a better option in the fact that it left 1 hr later but arrived in TPA only 5 mins later(which in my mind was a way better option but we decided not to switch to it). And as I was looking on the website I decided to look up the status of my cancelled flight(who knows why) and you know what I found, my original flight left MHT 25mins late and was going to arrive in TPA 25 mins late. And as I'm looking at this I'm thinking this can't be right can it. So I decide to call SW and after being on hold for 20mins I get this Rep that tells me "yes my flight did leave 25 mins late and yes a text was sent out stating it was cancelled but that was a mistake and so they sent a new text out telling everyone that they opps and please head to the gate" but since I had already got moved to another flight I wasn't notified. I was really pissed and so he told me he would have me talk to a supervisor for which I was then on hold for another 30mins. I stayed on the phone thinking this person would either help me switch to a better flight option or something but the very nice person couldn't help but did tell me to call on Monday and talk to the dept that helped out customers in this instance because he admitted that there was an issue that sent out that first text telling me that our flight was cancelled and if I wasn't ontime getting to the airport I would of gotten the cancellation text telling me that our flight was uncancelled 20 mins after they cancelled it...
So what did I learn form this: 1. try not to book the last flight out if your cruise is the next day because if our cruise was a Saturday cruise we would of never made it since it was the last flight out and a holiday weekend too. 2. when your flight is cancelled take the time to look on your phone app or have the rep tell you all the flights available and not take the 1st one they give you because they are rushing you and telling you "if you don't take it someone else will ", because the connecting flight they put us on was horrible and reinforced why I hate taking connecting flights if possible 3. if you can maybe arrive a few days early so if any issue happen you can recover from it and arrive in plenty of time to make your cruise.
I booked us on a late Friday night SW flight arriving into TPA around 1120pm and we were going to be staying a few nights at a timeshare before our cruise. We left our house with plenty of time to arrive at the airport and as we neared the machines to print our luggage tags I received a text stating our flight was cancelled. WHAT the heck, so we go to the counter and the SW CS tells us, Yes you are correct your flight was cancelled, and she started looking for a new flight for us to change to and they only thing available she said was the next day at 330pm arriving into TPA around 930pm-connecting thru Chicago so we took it and left the airport and went back to our car and back home. When I got home I decided to check the SW website to see if there was any other flights that would get us to Florida earlier and I didn't find any but I did find a flight that was a better option in the fact that it left 1 hr later but arrived in TPA only 5 mins later(which in my mind was a way better option but we decided not to switch to it). And as I was looking on the website I decided to look up the status of my cancelled flight(who knows why) and you know what I found, my original flight left MHT 25mins late and was going to arrive in TPA 25 mins late. And as I'm looking at this I'm thinking this can't be right can it. So I decide to call SW and after being on hold for 20mins I get this Rep that tells me "yes my flight did leave 25 mins late and yes a text was sent out stating it was cancelled but that was a mistake and so they sent a new text out telling everyone that they opps and please head to the gate" but since I had already got moved to another flight I wasn't notified. I was really pissed and so he told me he would have me talk to a supervisor for which I was then on hold for another 30mins. I stayed on the phone thinking this person would either help me switch to a better flight option or something but the very nice person couldn't help but did tell me to call on Monday and talk to the dept that helped out customers in this instance because he admitted that there was an issue that sent out that first text telling me that our flight was cancelled and if I wasn't ontime getting to the airport I would of gotten the cancellation text telling me that our flight was uncancelled 20 mins after they cancelled it...
So what did I learn form this: 1. try not to book the last flight out if your cruise is the next day because if our cruise was a Saturday cruise we would of never made it since it was the last flight out and a holiday weekend too. 2. when your flight is cancelled take the time to look on your phone app or have the rep tell you all the flights available and not take the 1st one they give you because they are rushing you and telling you "if you don't take it someone else will ", because the connecting flight they put us on was horrible and reinforced why I hate taking connecting flights if possible 3. if you can maybe arrive a few days early so if any issue happen you can recover from it and arrive in plenty of time to make your cruise.