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Originally Posted by braxiss
it's so lonely without holodoc to tease
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Awww! braxiss missing playing with this little bear I see.
I am back home now, but not by choice. I should already be on my cruise and be enroute to St Petersburg Russia. A lot has happened since Wednesday afternoon when my original flight was due to take off from here to eventually land over in Copenhagen Denmark to board the cruise ship.
Below is something I wrote up about all that my parents & I went through just trying to get to the cruise ship:
This has been a disaster on us trying to get to where we could meet up with everyone for this cruise this year. First the flight out on Wednesday for us was delayed well over 2 hours and we couldn't get on the flight up to Dullas Airport due to the Dullas Airport being shut down to weather issues. We were told the weather issues in Dullas Airport were high winds & funnel storms being created. Even if we had still gotten a flight out Wednesday to Dullas, we would have missed the only flight that day to Copenhagen Denmark.
The airline booked us on another flight for Thursday morning where we would fly to Newark, then Stockholm, then onto Estonia to meet up with the cruise. When we went to check in with the airline for the Stockholm leg of the flight, they put us on Standby due to the flight being overbooked. The flight from Newark to Stockholm was scheduled to take off at 5:20pm East Coast time & it was delayed until an 8:30pm take off time. We also got the run around from both United Airlines & Sakandinavion Airlines on why we had Standby tickets instead of confirmed seating on the flight as we had been told we had when we flew out of GSP Int'l Airport. Turns out the airline gave us Bogas confirmation tickets for the Stockholm leg of the trip. The only reason we found out that our tickets to Stockholm were bogas was that the supervisor at the SAS customer assistance counter told us that the tickets were given for the Stockholm trip were valid tickets. United Airlines had forced us into the system for the flight to Stockholm by making it look as though we had business class tickets & we had bought economy tickets. United Airlines didn't tell us this and that there was also a difference of $3000 more for the upgrade in the tickets for the flight. We also found out that all flights to Stockholm were completely booked all the way through July 5th. After all day of going all over the Newark Airport trying to get a flight out, we ended up having to find a hotel room for Thursday night.
Friday morning, we go back to the airport to deal more with the airline. We got a flight to come home that was to take off at 3:05pm. Sometime between 1:30pm & 2pm we found out that our flight had been cancelled. Since the flight got cancelled, we then had to see about getting on another flight home. We were unable to get a straight flight from Newark to GSP like the earlier flight had been. The new flight that we were then put on went to the Charlotte Airport. The flight to Charlotte was due to take off at 7:28pm. The flight was delayed to 8:24pm due to having to deal with thunderstorms there in Newark. Then there was another delay until 10:15pm. That delay we had to wait on the flight crew to come in from the Raleigh/Durham NC Airport. The flight finally didn't take off until 11pm and we landed in Charlotte at 12:30am. Then there was the issue of getting from the Charlotte Airport home to GSP. We ended up having to get a rental car & drive the rest of the way home.
We ended up just calling Holland American to cancel us coming on the cruise, since we couldn't get there to join everyone. We tried to get to Estonia to board the ship there & only miss the first 2 days of the cruise. Since we could get flight there, the next port would of been St Petersburg Russia. We didn't have visa's in order to flight straight to St Petersburg Russia & board the ship there to be with everyone. The shore escursion book stated that visa's were needed for any trips in St Petersburg Russia that was not booked through the cruise ship.
My parents & I were so looking forward to this cruise since we would be making stops in places that we had yet to visit on a trip. Now that is ruined due to either the weather problems & the screw ups with the Airlines. During all of this mess, our luggage sat at the Dullas Airport supposedly the whole time since the first flight out we were booked on for Wednesday June 29th. Paper work was filled out to get our luggage sent back home to GSP from the Dullas Airport. We were told that it would be back at the GSP Airport within 24 hours. At least that was what we were told yesterday by the United Airlines people up in the Newark Airport. If you know of anyone considering flying with United Airlines in the future, I would suggest having them seriously reconsider it.
While we were stranded up in the Newark Airport yesterday, we were in touch with some family here at home. There were bad thunderstorms here yesterday & a small tornado touched down in the pasture behind our house. We have a huge pecan tree in the pasture that my grandfather on my dad's side had planted back in 1934 was pulled up out of the ground & is now laying on its side over a portion of the fence that we had seperating the pasture from our back yard. The root system for the pecan tree is now standing about 7 feet up in the air. We also had a walnut tree that was further down in the pasture that is gone as well.
