Well, the day to go home had finally arrived but little did we know what was going to unfold later on (just as well really!). So, we merrily set off in the morning to a shopping mall (having managed nearly two weeks in the USA without shopping... amazing!). We did not need to check in to Orlando airport until about 4:30pm as we were due to catch a short connecting flight to Atlanta for our long haul home at about 6:30pm. 

All these are taken with my iPhone as my Fuji was nice and tightly packed away in my hand luggage and I couldn't face battling to get it out! Not great shots but they do tell a story... even if it wasn't a very good one!

Kitty and I had been really keen to visit a 'Bath and Body Works' shop whilst in Florida as we wanted to buy some of their small and highly scented anti-bac hand gels (!!) Some people like to head to designer stores to buy piles of cut price designer clothes when in the USA, so arguably we're easily pleased... but they do smell incredibly good!! As soon as the taxi dropped us off at the (huge!) designer mall, that's exactly where we headed!

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Target achieved, we were then able to have a leisurely wander around the rest of the rather lovely shopping mall. There were lots of temptations there and we did come out armed with assorted Converse, Vans and designer clothes for everyone... well, except me sadly! :(   20150410-IMG_1871 20150410-IMG_1872 20150410-IMG_1873

A visit to this sweet shop was inevitable really!  20150410-IMG_1874

Before long it was time to get back to our hotel, pick up our bags and wend our way through Orlando to the airport...

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...where initially things seemed to go really smoothly. We checked in on time, the flight appeared to be on schedule and we sat in the departure lounge and watched our bags being loaded on to the plane, so all good!  20150410-IMG_1883 20150410-IMG_1884

There's my purple case... always good to see that luggage has made it on to the correct plane!  20150410-IMG_1885

So, we boarded the plane on time at about 6pm and all looked good for departure. We sat in our seats, buckled up and prepared for take off. We shouldn't have bothered though... from then on in it all went utterly pear shaped!

As were we preparing to taxi off to the runway for our take off slot, the captain announced over the speakers that he'd had some bad news. Our destination, Atlanta, was experiencing severe storms and we would be unable to land, therefore take off was going to be delayed by about an hour. So we sat and waited. Little did we know at that time, just how much sitting and waiting we were going to have to do over the next several hours!

To cut a long story short the next few updates went from bad to worse:-

After one hour, an announcement from the captain that Atlanta had closed and would not be accepting any more flights until the storm had passed.

After a couple more hours, an announcement that (yay!), the storm had passed and all was looking good for take off and that we'd shortly be taxiing.

Very shortly after that, still waiting for a take off slot, the captain announced he was not permitted, by Federal Law to keep people detained on a stationary plane for more than 3 hours, therefore we could all get off and stretch our legs for 10 minutes and then get back on! (unbelievable!)

So we got off the plane... and as we did so one of our fellow passengers watched the captain get back on the plane with a Burger King Meal. The rest of us had been kept on the plane for over three hours with absolutely nothing to eat or drink... the time was, by now, just after 9:00pm and we were beginning to panic about our connecting flight, which according to the Atlanta website pictured below, was now boarding!!

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A few enquiries however and we were told that the connecting flight was going to wait for us as there were so many of its passengers on our flight (over 80 if my memory serves me well!) Phew!

So, we got back on the plane finally ready to go... or so we thought!

Cue another announcement from the captain, now presumably replete after his meal! (this one beggars belief!) He had just been informed that if he took off with us at that time, he and his flight crew would have gone over their permitted flight times, therefore he would no longer be able to fly us and had just called for a new pilot who would be with us in about 45minutes to an hour!! He pretty much ended that bombshell with 'Thank you and Goodnight' before disembarking! How was he not aware of this before and why was a new pilot not summoned as soon as they knew his time was running out?

So, we sat and waited again... over an hour (at which point I swore I would never fly with Delta Airlines again as long as I live!) Finally our new pilot arrived and greeted us by saying he was as pi**ed off about all of this as we were likely to have been as he wasn't due to be working that night. Marvellous! Not only that, but the delay in getting a new pilot meant that we had missed our allocated take off slot and we'd have to wait (again!) to be given a new one!! Wow... we'd been sitting on that plane for well over 4 hours by this point! Soul destroying! As it was due to be a short haul flight we couldn't even be entertained with videos or anything to stop the intense boredom kicking in.

Eventually, after more waiting, we took off for Atlanta and we all remained ever hopeful that our connecting flight would be waiting or us and all would be good. Things are never that simple though are they?

When we touched down at Atlanta an hour or so later (after midnight by this point!) we then had to endure an unbelievable 45 minute wait for a landing bay to be allocated to us. 

We raced off the plane, thankful that at least we didn't have to collect our luggage as the transfer to the connecting flight would be automatic, and headed as fast as we could to Departure Gate E10 to get on our plane home. 

Imagine our joy when we got there to find our flight home had had to leave about 20 minutes earlier as it was unable to wait beyond 1:10am (or thereabouts). At that moment, for all us passengers, it felt like the world had caved in. We were all exhausted, hungry, angry, frustrated and all the other emotions that kick in in these circumstances. 

All we could do now was wait in the extraordinarily long line to speak to one of about three representatives that Delta had kindly (?!) put on to deal with us. Bearing in mind over 80 people had to rebook flights home, this was a painfully long process. We sat in that queue for hours not knowing what on earth we were going to do. Kitty's face said it all!!

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It is worth noting that Delta did virtually nothing to help us, no food vouchers (nowhere was open anyway!), no apologies, nothing. The best they came up with was the trolley that you can see behind Kitty with fizzy drinks, Ritz crackers, raisins and jelly sweets. Bearing in mind we'd been stuck on a plane since 6pm the previous evening with nothing to eat (it was now 3:00am) this was small comfort! They did manage to find us a wash bag though, and some very thin plane blankets... marvellous!

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After a long, long wait,  Richard finally managed to speak to a Delta representative over the phone and get us booked onto a new flight home... but the earliest available was not until the Sunday night and wouldn't get to Gatwick until Monday lunchtime (we were currently on Friday night and were all due back at work and school on Monday!). We had no option but to accept. Next problem was to try and find some accommodation.... but we needed to find Kitty and Henry somewhere to crash too as it was now 4:30am. This was the best we could do (the man on the seats behind was snoring so loudly I could quite happily have smothered him by this point in time!)... poor kids!

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We then had to start phoning hotels around Atlanta Airport to find somewhere that could put us up. It was no great surprise though to find that, due to the fact that Atlanta Airport had been closed for a few hours due to the storm, all hotels in the immediate vicinity were full. By this point, totally losing the will to live, we booked hotel on the outskirts of Atlanta City, about 33 miles away. So, at long last, at 5:10am we started to wend our way out of the almost deserted airport! 

20150411-IMG_1895 We made our way to the Delta Baggage reclaim area and asked if we could have our luggage back. We were told that they had over 8,000 bags being held and it would take approximately 8 hours to find ours... if they found them at all. Needless to say we declined the kind offer and decided that we would just have to cope without our stuff for another couple of days. Enough was enough, we just wanted to get out of the place! 20150411-IMG_1898

So, off we headed in the taxi from Hell (I think our tolerance levels were pretty low anyway by this point, but the heaters weren't working and the windows were so steamed up the driver couldn't even see out properly!). When we finally arrived at 'The Staybridge Suites' in a suburb of Atlanta called Sandy Springs, they couldn't have done more to help us. They gave us breakfast and a room to crash in whilst they prepared another for us and we were finally able to get some much needed rest! 

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So after a hideous experience, we had a couple of extra holiday days exploring Atlanta... we decided we may as well make the most of it!