Chicago to Los Angeles
I haven't posted an entry lately, so this one is going to be really long. We were originally on the 3:10 p.m. flight to LAX out of ORD. The airline switched us to the 1:55 p.m. flight. The 1:55 flight then had a delay until 3:45 p.m. This would have put our arrival time into LAX at 6:10, but our scheduled departure out of LAX to Honolulu was 6:00 p.m. So, the airline decided to switch us back to the 3:10 flight. So, it had a 10 minute delay and we were on the runway. A seat on the plane broke so we had to go back and let a passenger off the plane. They had someone from coach give up their seat so that the first class passenger could have a place to sit. Then we were on the runway. A lady on the plane became ill and we had to go back to the gate to let her off the plane. Meanwhile, a passenger in first class became irate about the delays and they had to call the cops to remove him from the plane. He finally left without police intervention. Then we thought that we were ready to leave ORD, there was a mechanical problem with the trash can...it was filling with water. So we had to wait on a maintenance person to empty the water. At this point I told Gabe that I would volunteer to empty the trash can. We finally left Chicago two hours after our scheduled departure time. Once we arrived Gabe called in an attempt to get us on the 8:30 p.m. flight out of LAX. We were 14 and 15 on the waiting list (this list was over 30 long). They made it to us, but there was only one seat left so we didn't go. Gabe did manage to get us confirmed tickets on the 8:00 a.m. flight. This was a really good thing, since the waiting list for our 8:00 a.m. flight was at least 47 people long. The airline wasn't sure if they were going to pay for our hotel and they tried to put us in a Best Western. I have nothing against the Best Western hotel chain, but our hotel in Hawaii, the one that we couldn't stay in because we were stuck in LA, was much nicer and quite a bit more expensive. So they ended up placing us in the Hilton on a technicality. The customer service representative was unsure if the Best Western had a shuttle and if we accepted it as our hotel choice we were responsible for the cab fare. So, we ended up at the Hilton. Once we arrived the line had about 12 people in line and there was one person checking everyone in. We finally arrived at our room and we had to call housekeeping (three times) for a toothbrush and toothpaste. At this point we had no luggage and we weren't sure if it was in ORD, LAX, or Honolulu. I will continue my entry at a later time. We are going to do stuff this morning...it is currently 7:05 a.m.