Unorganized Travelers

On Sunday we travelled home from the Animal Kingdom Lodge at Disney World, to home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Our check-out was at 11 a.m., our shuttle left at noon, and our flight left around 3 p.m. With the suitcases packed, we went down to the lobby to check our luggage for our flights and then wait for the shuttle. Small problem, my suitcase was 4.5 lbs. too heavy. So I had to pull out 4.5 lbs. worth and disperse it amongst my husband’s and my daughter’s suitcases. For some reason, I grabbed my cuddle pillow and put it in my carry on.

Once my luggage met the weight requirements the next problem was that the computers were having problems connecting with United Airlines computers and finally, after trying for what seemed like forever, we were told that we’d have to check our luggage at the airport. But then we had to wait in line (forever) again at the airport, and we had to pay $15 a bag too.

With all this waiting, and unpacking, repacking, waiting, and paying, by the time we got to the security checkpoint we were a bit punchy. The officer took our boarding passes and our id cards and asked something like “are you expert travelers?” To which my husband said: “more like unorganized travelers.”

And I wouldn’t ever recommend saying that to a security checkpoint officer at the airport. Because do you know what he did? Do you? He smiled at us, and we thought awwwwww look, he’s so nice, and he feels for our pain today. And so he called over a lady officer and told us that she’d take extra special care of us. And we smiled back and all took a big sigh of relief. But then we followed this lady officer past all the other security lanes, to the far wall with all the huge x-ray machines and the x-ray wands and do you know what they did? They actually patted down my 7 year old daughter. Like Zoe’s a big threat, with her backpack filled with stuffed animals and magic markers.

We all were given the pat-down actually. And they rifled through all of our bags with their x-ray wands. Jeez.

But we were released to continue on to our flight, where we were delayed, and then delayed again, and we had to run through O’Hare Airport in Chicago to make our connection to Milwaukee. We landed in Concourse A and had only 12 minutes to get to Concourse F. We made it! (barely)

Our luggage did not. Which is where I was thankful that I had to repack my suitcase and I stuffed my cuddle pillow into my carry on bag.