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Published: October 23rd 2009
Today’s blog has a special guest appearance: Chris, a fellow Canadian, and my current work partner in crime. He’s been doing his new hire training on the Conquest for the last few weeks and is moving with me to the Ecstasy where he will be running the younger teen program (Circle “C”). This blog is epic, so sit back . . .
Bright and early yesterday morning, I signed off the Carnival Conquest to transfer to the Carnival Ecstasy. Chris and I knew it was going to be a long day - we were signing off at 6:30am, being shuttled to Houston to fly to Dallas to fly to Miami to fly to Freeport and based on the flight times we figured we would reach the ship around 10pm. The Ecstasy is currently in dry dock (renovations), so even when we got to the ship, who knew what sort of a state it would be in. All this after a big night in the crew bar with lots of gummi shooters (pictures of that are in the last blog entry).
Of course, the early morning sign offs are never as prompt as we’re required to be. I was already
so tired I was seriously tempted to lie right down on the floor by the gangway - except I likely would have been run over by the laundry carts coming and going. Eventually we were off and through customs and onto our shuttle to Houston. I did some journalling and then passed right out for the last hour of the drive.
At the check-in desk at the airport in Houston, the man at the counter told me he had some good news for me - he would be able to change our flights so we’d have a direct flight to Miami, make an earlier flight to Freeport - we’d be to the ship by dinnertime! Except that our company booked ticket did not allow for changes. What?!?!? No matter what he did, it couldn’t be changed. He didn’t know why we were booked the way we were, but that’s the way it had to stay. Later on throughout our whole ordeal, we kept looking back at all of this and laying the entire blame on that unchangeable ticket!
Moving on, we waited for our first flight and got on the plane for our quick flight to Dallas. We
arrived there incident-free. We had about 2 hours before the next flight. We used the internet at a free internet station and grabbed some lunch. The first photos here were taken during that lunch, when all was still good. Our next flight was at 3:35pm with boarding started at 3:05pm. At 3:05pm, we walked the two gates over from where we had lunch to where we were to board the plane. There was nobody cued up to board, so we sat on the two chairs closest to the gate where we had prime views of the desk and gate. Nothing was happening - no announcements, no movement of people and the sign still had our flight info up. Our first flight in Houston didn’t actually start boarding until about 5-10 minutes before the flight, so we weren’t concerned - at first. But we sat there and sat there and nothing was happening. So we decided to go up to the desk and ask what was happening with the flight to Miami. We were told it was gone! My watch (which is always set fast to begin with) only said 3:30. How was this possible? I asked the agent. Who then
asked me how it was possible that a full plane was boarded and we missed it. Exactly what we wanted to know! How could we have been there at boarding time, watching the gate and listening for announcements and yet the flight is missed? We didn’t get an answer and we didn’t ever figure out what went wrong where . . . but something sketchy was definitely going on because there were 5 of us at the desk at that time all for the flight to Miami, all who’d been at the gate on time waiting and yet we’d missed the flight. We were put on standby - and learned that the standby list had 38 people on it - something else that made us certain something sketchy was going on.
In all of the traveling I have done, I have never missed a flight, never had to be on standby. This began a race through the airport to another terminal to another gate, which then had a gate change, so more racing. Sitting on the floor, directly in front of the gate for our standby flight, this is when my anxiety started kicking up. Thank goodness I had
Chris traveling with me, I told him (and this would be the first of MANY times), because had I been on my own, I would have been flipping out. Talking about ways to stay calm, I talked about yoga, which turned into us sitting crossed legged on the floor in front of the gate doing some deep breathing and “Om” meditations! The flight began boarding. We anxiously watched the standby list. First we were numbers 10 and 11, then 7 and 8 - oh! and then we were 2 and 3!!! Except we were bumped back down again . . . It was pure drama.
I told Chris that this drama of trying to get on the first available flight made me think of The Amazing Race . . . and that’s when we decided all of this needed to be game. How could we be anxious if it was a game? Chris decided our relationship status on the bottom of the screen would be something like Divorced Business Associates - I think, it was rather complicated our relationship. And in an added twist, we had to be our own camera crew - thus all of the accompanying photos
through the rest of this epic adventure. We had two days to get to the ship (when it was scheduled to set sail from Freeport to Galveston, according to our transfer letters) and the prize? To keep our jobs!!!
Suddenly, our names were called. We were getting on the flight to Miami! I literally ran to the desk, leaving Chris still on the floor behind me. “I’m Hedley!” I said to the agent. “And he’s coming behind me!” She said she’d noticed we had another connecting flight to make so she bumped us up on the list. Bless. We were printed new tickets and we joined the line. “Yeah team!” we said and high fived each other. The man behind us in line laughed out loud at us. Anything to keep the situation humourous!
Of course we didn’t have seats together, but whatever, we were on the plane. Insert some reading and sleeping time here.
We land in Miami and we will have just barely enough time to run through the terminal to make the flight to Freeport - I was hoping that the gate wouldn’t be too far away. Except that we landed and then sat
and sat and sat . . . We waited 30 minutes 5 feet away from the gate for the grounds crew to arrive! The flight crew made an announcement that it would be great if people staying in Miami could allow those with connecting flights off the plane first. Nice thought. I was in the last row of the plane and I was one of the last people off the plane. No need to rush though, we’d missed the flight to Freeport.
Chris and I went to the airline service desk. There were no more flights that night to Freeport. And the one in the morning was booked solid. The earliest flight we’d get on would be 1:30pm. She asked what happened to make us miss our flight - we said we wish we could have answer . . . She was only going to give us a discount for a hotel because we couldn’t explain why we’d missed our flight - but we turned her down and said we’d call the company.
Yet again, thank goodness for Chris being there. He still had the company’s emergency travel number from when he came down from home - something
I don’t think I’ve EVER had any of the times I’ve joined or transferred ships. The emergency line instructed us to go to a hotel for the night.
We finally get to our hotel and are given our rooms. We’re both sharing rooms with crew members coming/going to other ships. I’ve stayed in a number of hotels booked by the company and they’ve all been really nice. This one, was not. Three of the lights in the room didn’t work, the television didn’t work, it was questionably clean and there was no air conditioning. Now I’m not a fan of air conditioning, but this is Miami and the windows don’t open. Me, the girl who is always freezing, slept in as little as I could while having a stranger for a roommate, with only a sheet. It was a rough night’s sleep.
However, there was wireless internet. Which lead to the great highlight of this adventure - a surprise reunion! (In The Amazing Race, this would be like a family reunion we decided.) Dan, a former fellow Club O2 Director, happened to see facebook that I’d be at Miami airport the next morning - and he would be
too! So the next morning, he and I were texting back and forth as Chris and I made our way back to the Miami International Airport. Dan met us on the curb. Then we went inside to a food court with a Starbucks and had a little reunion. Dan and I always meet in the most random places - last time was a Starbucks in Nassau and the time before that was the airport in Tampa. We had some nice reminiscing about the old days in our jobs . . . Then Chris and I were back off on our journey.
Waiting for the flight to Freeport, we were so jumpy. Every announcement we were jumping up ready to board the plane. We nearly got on a plane to Nassau we were so eager to get on a plane to the Bahamas! But we got on our flight and made it to the airport in Freeport incident free.
Before we’d left eh Conquest, I’d asked the staff admin how we were to get to Ecstasy from the airport. I was told to take and expense a taxi. So after we located our luggage (which had beat us to
Freeport) and got a taxi driver. Except that this was no ordinary taxi - it was a limo! It was an old limo, but it was still a limo! We laughed and commented on how we were arriving to the ship late but in style.
As we drove up to the dry dock, I could see a couple of ships - a Celebrity and a Disney ship. Our driver let us out and we started wheeling our suitcases through the mud and gravel and potholes to the security gate. The guard there told us to go in, around a corner, then straight ahead and we’d “see the ship right there”. So we wheel our luggage through more mud, more gravel, more potholes and under the glaringly hot Bahamas sun. Except we can’t see the ship. I tell Chris to wait with the bags and I’ll walk to the other end of this warehouse thing to see if it’s on the other side. A security guard drives up and asks what I’m doing. I say that we’re looking for the Carnival Ecstasy. “It’s gone. It sailed this morning.” WHAT?!?!?!?
Back at the security gate, the guard there knew nothing
about the ship sailing. I get out my cell phone and make a long distance roaming call to the company’s emergency line in Miami. No answer. I call one of our bosses in the Miami office. No answer. I call the only other number we have and thankfully reached somebody. Who told me the ship was in the dry dock. I said I was standing at the dry dock and it wasn’t there. I was put on hold - long distance international roaming!!! - for the next 12 minutes. I dread my bill - and hope the company will pay for it, but we’ll see about that. During which one of the security guys reached the port agent who said that the ship was doing test runs but that we could meet it at the wet dock. Transport was on the way.
So we waited in the scorching heat until the taxi arrived. And that driver took the info about the first driver who “should have known better”. About 10 minutes later, we pulled up in front of the Ecstasy. We wheeled our stuff up the gangway, went through security and to the staff admin. “We were expecting you
yesterday”, we kept being told . . .
After we were all checked in and were waiting for our supervisors to come meet us, we turned to each other. We did. We made it to the ship. We won the race. We got to keep our jobs.
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swills82
Sarah Willett
AMAZING race!
lol. Congrats for surviving all of that! I, too, would have lost in many times during that situation. We used to see all the dry docked ships in Freeport when we were there. I always thought Freeport was boring and ugly. lol. Welcome to your new ship!