The adventurous rides and our own adventures - Grand Finale

Day 3: Thursday - IRMA & EPCOT

The news of IRMA devastating Cuba and Puerto-Rico islands welcomed Aloha army  on Thursday morning.

We had to make a plan and move out of Orlando as early as possible. Another hour long plea from CCH Geetha with Spirit airlines did not yield any positive result. So we were left with the only option of driving up ~1350 miles!!!

The next challenge was getting an 8 seater vehicle that could take us back. I called up at the airport rental and they said they could confirm only on the day of pickup. Parthi meanwhile booked a 15 seater ( yes..15 seater) in case if we did not get any 8 seater vehicles.

With mentally prepared to tale the long haul, Aloha army reached EPCOT - the last part of the Disney tour. We had to go through the same "Truck - Bridge -Truck" game with Arnav before reaching Epcot. To our surprise, the wait times for each ride @ Epcot was less than 15 mins - and when we got to the gate - it became 40 mins. blame it on Karma...

We covered a good deal of rides including taking pictures with lot of Disney characters. one of our objective was to fully utilize the money we paid for the memory maker option :).  One of the best rides in EPCOT was the "Frozen forever". We were headed towards that ride is when we got a notification that it was "Temporarily closed". We had to be content with Anna and Elsa  - the 50 year old. As we were leaving the place, Sponsor Siva noticed a bunch of people running towards the Frozen ride -- yes it was open and we all rushed to the ride. It was a fun ride through the Ice castles and ended with a "Let it go". 

As we were coming out of the ride, we got notified from the airlines that our flights were all cancelled as the Orlando airport was shutting down its operations from Saturday 5 PM. This meant we are left with our only option of driving 1350 miles!!  We covered a few more rides and walked a lot more distance..

With great satisfaction and 23K steps in our Fitbit, we left Epcot and reached hotel. The plan was to head to airport in person and talk to each rental office for any 8 seater vehicle availability. To our surprise, Enterprise had more than one vehicle available and we took the same "Beast" that we were driving for the prior three days.  We dropped off the other rental car on our way back to hotel. Meanwhile the ladies had finished laundry and other preparations for the long drive and CCG Geetha spoke to spirit airlines and got our refund for the cancelled ticket.

Friday: The aloha army planned to leave early on Friday (around 5 AM) but ended up leaving the hotel only by 9:30 AM.  The plan was simple.. 22 hours of drive  - 11 hours on Friday - stay at Richmond Virginia - Drive another 11 hours  - Reach Boston - Take the bus back to Dover NH  (last bus @ 1 AM). And we had three drivers  - ~3 to 4 hours each.

With a clear plan in sight, we started. As we entered I-95 NB, we realized that we are joining the millions of people who were evacuating Florida through the same route. The traffic was free was 10 miles and bumper to bumper for the next 10 miles. We drove and drove and after about 8 hours, we realized that we would not be making it to Richmond on time. So we had to cancel the hotel booking and do some research on where we could stay for the night. After some math/science, we decided that the best option would be to stay in Fayetville, NC.

Booked a hotel there while on the road, drove for another 6 hours or so...ultimately reaching hotel at 12:30 AM (Saturday). 

Saturday:  After a short rest at Days inn, Aloha army continued their drive towards Boston. we had to cover 760 miles in a day to get to Boston and Sponsor Siva did his best in covering 200 miles in less than 3 hours. We crossed the state of NC and got into Virginia. It was around 12 and the team decided to go to Bawarchi Indian restaurant - mainly to get food for the kids. 

We finished lunch and continued our journey. Around 5 PM is when we realized that we would not be reaching Boston before 1 AM and our deal was to drop off the vehicle at Boston airport.. once again, our CCH Geetha spoke to Enterprise and got us a waiver that we could drop the vehicle at Dover with no excess charge!! yeah.. one more feather in her cap!!.

We took couple of breaks in NJ and our ETA to reach Dover was 2:50 AM.  By this time, all of us were exhausted so we swapped drivers in lesser intervals. As we headed to exit 53 in I495 towards I95.. the most unexpected happened... one more dramatic twist to our ever long trip... the fuel indicator which was showing a range of 60 miles suddenly dropped to 40 miles and the indicated started buzzing. So we took exit 53 and went to two gas stations only to figure our that both of them were closed. The range had dropped now to 21 miles..it was close to 2:30 AM and we were almost stranded.. we took the next exit with the help of google to get to a 24 hrs gas station - only to find that pump locked. Then we did the most unexpected. There were 3 cop cars on the street and we parked next to them. The vehicle was showing 4 miles range and we figured it would be better to stay near cops than any deserted place. We parked and as we approached the cops, they got startled and shouted at us to stay where we were.  They took precautions ( with one hand on the weapon) and asked us what our problem was. we explained that we ran out of fuel and they guided us to a nearby Gas station. 


We ran to our car and approached the Gas station and god... it was open and working... we filled the  tank and as we were heading out, one of the cop cars came by to check us.. we thanked them and headed to Dover. we picked up our cars, dropped the rental at enterprise and finally reached home.. sweet home..

Multiple flight cancellations...20 hours at airport... 3 days of fun... 40 hours of driving across 14 states.. hour long calls to customer care.. pending list of refunds.. fury of IRMA.. path of evacuation .. tired legs.. weakened body... But in all these, there was one thing that stood apart... The Unity of Aloha Army  - no one complained and every one was together in getting through this... Hats off to you Aloha Army.... and Once more Polama???  

The Aloha Army

P.S. Although this story was all about the adventures of Aloha Army, we would not have survived without the help of our Gangsters.. Aloha army is a subgroup of Gangsters.. rest of the Gangsters were always with us (not physically) .. wishing us from the beginning, encouraging us at each hurdle we faced, supporting us throughout the long drive.. some of them even called us multiple times to check on us.. some tried to find flights options for us.. some offered to talk to their friends in the near-by states to help us.. some prepared food for us when we reached... Thank you Gangsters and we are happy and proud to be part of this group.. this is more than a group...this is Family... always looking out for each other..near or far..doesn't matter...

The adventurous rides and our own adventures - Part 2

Day 2: Wednesday - IRMA & Disney Magic Kingdom

Day 2 dawned to a thrilling situation when the speculative news on IRMA had become concrete that it was going to hit Florida for sure.

We had our return flight booked on Saturday evening and the forecast indicated that the hurricane will hit Orlando only on Sunday evening.

Aloha army did not want to take a chance so we decided to advance our tickets to Friday and head home. Geetha had become a CCH ( Customer Care Handler) - an expert negotiator with the customer care reps by then ( spending long hours with customer care with Allegiant, Spirit, booking.com, etc etc).

Our CCH Geetha started making calls to Spirit airlines to check for an earlier flight to Boston on Friday. There were no direct flights available so we looked for the next option of flying out via atlanta or any other city which connects to boston. The answer was still no such connection. we went to the extent of looking at the Spirit service map and asking them to find flights from all their cities closer to florida - no availability..

since the weather forecast indicated that the storm is hitting us only on Sunday evening, we thought we can wait out and take the flight on saturday evening. Meanwhile as a third option, i booked a rental car with 7 seater ( we were 8 people) in case we had to drive up..

with these initial assessment and set-ups complete, we headed out to Magic kingdom.. you could never guess what could impress a 3 year old.. from the moment we got into the car, Arnav started shouting "Trucks".." yenakku truck pakkanum".. "Truck yenga poguthu"... he was so excited to see trucks that he never slept in the car. and when we took the exit to get to the park, he wanted us to drive over the bridge always.. "Bridge mela poganum".. it was either trucks or bridges..

We reached the magic kingdom parking and were about to get into the monorail service to reach the parks. As karma would have it, the monorails stopped working and all the crowd was redirected to the ferry line. after waiting for close to 45 mins, we finally took the ferry line to reach the park.

The magic kingdom was really a dream come true place. A fantasy land.. we covered a few rides like pirates of Caribbean, Aladdin and finally got into the jungle ride in a boat.. as luck would have it, it started raining heavily and the place where we were sitting in the boat did not have any roof.. we all got completely drenched while having to look at toy animals..

Then we had our lunch at a mexican shop, witnessed the amazing characters through disney parade , took the mine train going in loop( seriously - the train never stopped). 




Took a few snaps, covered a few more rides and around 8:30, we assembled in front of the castle to witness the all amazing shows displayed over the castle.. that was followed by 18 minutes of fireworks display - worth every penny. All we could say was Awesome..

with heavy heart and weak legs, we bid adieu to magic kingdom and reached our hotel. By then we started receiving advisory email from the airlines stating that our return itinerary might be in trouble.

CCH Geetha started calling the customer care team for flight options while Sponsor Saravanan also booked a large SUV to be picked up on Thursday evening.

While we were struggling to get our return plan finalized, IRMA was inching closer to south Florida gearing up speed and becoming a CAT5 hurricane. Mandatory evacuations were in place for Florida Keys and Miami and the traffic in I95 NB and I75 were increasing steadily.

Aloha army retired to bed unaware of what was coming the next day...

The adventurous rides and our own adventures - Part 1

After all the initial minor ( seriously??) adventure, the Aloha army landed at Orlando airport and headed towards the rental cars to pickup " The Beast" vehicle that will accommodate all 8 of us. It was a few minute ride in a shuttle car to the Fox rental office and Parthiban started the paperwork.
Once again the "cheap " deal came back to haunt us.. addditonal cost for insurance , $15 for additional driver per day etc etc.. since our planned usage of the car was limited, we took the least best option and headed towards picking it.. Aloha- the vehicle was not ready.. they had to take it for cleaning and finally we got the vehicle around 8 PM.

We headed to our hotel and checked in .. got a wonderful 3rd floor room with two bedrooms but with a twist.. there was no elevator.. yes.. modern world.. our sponsor Siva immediately approached the front desk and got us a better room at 2nd floor. We got settled and after a few minutes went out to grab some dinner and most importantly the entry tickets to Disney parks. It was 11:45 PM when we got back and all of retired to bed loooking forward to visiting "the place where dream comes true".

Day1: Disney Animal kingdom - Tuesday

Aloha army was all enthusiastic and ready to experience the most awaited adventure - The Avatar ride at Pandora. Even though it had wait times to the tune of 120+ minutes, our brilliant idea was to get there early in the morning and reduce wait time. And everyone who visited also had the same idea. So we had to stand in hot sun for about 90 minutes to get to the entrance from where we had another 120 minutes to get to the ride.. and by the time we came out of the ride, half a day was gone.
But the adventure was worth the wait!!  And when we came out, there was no longer any queue for Avatar.. yeah...We continued to walk around the park from one end to another end under the hot sun covering multiple rides .. all our Fitbit steps were hitting 2k steps an hour.. some of the rides such as the Navi river ride, Kilimanjaro safari and Kali river rapids were awesome while the other rides were good.. others might feel different but we had our benchmark set with he avatar ride...

By the time we finished most of the rides, we were exhausted and tired.. decided the head back to hotel. Did some shopping at a nearby supermarket, ordered our dinner at Dakshin Indian restaurant and got ready for bed..

News flash on IRMA: became a category 5 storm and May hit south Florida over the weekend

All of us thought about that for a few mins and decided to discuss further next day when we had more  definite news..

Disney .. we finally came.. Part 4

After booking tickets for the families of Siva and Parthi successfully, I could not find any tickets for my family. There were no tickets available online for that same flight and itinerary and I had to find a different flight combo- and everything was expensive, twice/thrice the amount from what I booked for the others.. and no flights during the same time which means we would reach at different times in Orlando..i kind of gave up and wondering what to do....there was a continued silence for few mins..

Sponsor Siva couldn't let this go easily so he called up the customer care for Spirit airlines and got hold of a representative who had some challenges in understanding what he spoke.. he  valiantly explained the situation and somehow managed to find two more seats for the same flight and asked me to book the return separately so that it will come cheaper..

I started to book my return tickets and wanted to take advantage of the $9 club discount using Siva's account-  twist again - if we use the club membership then the member had to be one of the passengers.... so I was forced to take that membership and still came out cheaper. I had finished my booking for the return while siva was trying to explain his billing address for the nth time to the customer care rep.. and after struggling for about 45 minutes with her the call got redirected to another guy who was able to confirm all we needed in just few minutes. Meanwhile Parthi found a rental car that can fit the aloha army.

By this time it was 9:30 am ( remember we started the conference all at 6 am) and all bookings were done. We had to get to Boston by 1:30 which meant we needed to take the 11:30 bus from Dover. With just about an hour to go, we had to do unpack repack , add dresses for couple of days but still keep it with 40 lbs..

Aloha army got into the bus on time and reached airport, cleared security and entered the gate.. boarded the flight and when everything looked like going well.. the captain made an announcement... yes .. then came the announcement that we were ready to take off!!!

Disney.. here we come.. Part 3

It was 12:45 am and we were slowly gathering near the boarding gate anticipating call to board soon.. and that's when the dreaded announcement came in..

The manager announced that they could not take the flight because one of the attendants is "fatigued" and the flight has been rescheduled to 11am the following morning.. 10 hours of waiting and with so much of frustration we stormed the counter guy for an explanation .. Was he not aware that the attendant coming from Baltimore would be exhausted? Or if the attendant was going to be exhausted why did he/she even start from Baltimore?  And to add to the customer's woes they were still not ready to refund the ticket..

We were asked to contact the customer care which was open only from 4 am. There were lots of stranded passengers and they could not even find hotel accommodations for them. Simply they mentioned to get it reimbursed to the tune of $300.

We stood there thinking.. tired from the whole experience.. and expenses.. our hotel booking at Orlando already cost us $200 without us being there.. lost out rental car booking.. and to top it all.we had taken 3 day pass at Orlando Disney parks and we had lost a day already.. kids had gone to sleep with excitement of seeing Disney the next day.. that would be the biggest disappointment.. we could see some of the kids weeping while their parents frantically trying to find a hotel to pass the night..

We deliberated on canceling the whole trip as news on the hurricane irma hitting Florida was looming all over the news..

After few minutes of silence, the Aloha army started putting their heads together.. devised the next action plan and were determined to visit Disney .. some to keep their promises and others to see their kids happy again.

As we collected the baggage and were leaving the airport, here were few passengers struggling to get cabs to reach their hotels.. we offered them a ride but they already had the cabs booked and was on its way.. yet they appreciated our gesture towards helping them..

Our immediate plan was to call customer care and get our tickets fully reimbursed- for all the agony and frustration the Allegiant airlines caused, we were not willing to take another risk of flying through them the following day. The plan was to do a conf call at 4 in the morning and then call customer care.. but as we reached around 2 am, getting up at 4 was near to impossible. 

It was 6 am on Sep 4th. Aloha army got into a conf call and whole conversation was spearheaded by Geetha.. detailing out the pain that we suffered and the loss we had already encountered.. it didn't take much long for the customer rep to agree to refund the full amount for all our tickets.. a silent victory amidst 15 hours of non stop anxiety..

Next plan was to book flights from Boston and a change of itinerary as we had to shift the trip by one more day .. which meant one more day off from work.. 

Aloha army found a suitable itinerary with Spirit airlines and with a $9 club membership, the prices turned out to be economical. Sponsor Siva once again took the lead in becoming a $9 club member.. 

Meanwhile Geetha called up the hotel guys to extend our stay to accommodate the extra two days..

Since all the prior bookings were in his credit card and was running close to its limit, I came forward to take it this time. With a restriction of only 6 tickets at a time , I booked it for Siva and Parthi family including the kids.. with all going well, I was about to book tickets for myself and my better half... and there came another twist...

Disney.. here we come.. Part 2

For those who missed part 1 - read it on http://alohaarmytriptoorlando.blogspot.com/2017/09/disney-here-we-come-part-1.html

And the announcement was from the pilot mentioning some issues with one of the engines and they would have to call mechanic to take a look. We had to deplane and wait.. the manager at the counter ( poor guy) had to face the customer's ire as it was frustrating for most of us.. the wierd thing was that the mechanic was to reach the airport after 45 minutes and then only we would know if the flight can be repaired.

It was 5:45 and the next update was at 6:30 PM. This did not go well with our sponsor Siva. He immediately took out his mobile and started looking out for alternate options..

JetBlue from Boston at 9:55 pm
Option 1 -Get out of Portsmouth - take the C&J bus at 7 pm - reach airport at 8:15
Option 2 - get out of airport- drive to Boston airport- catch the flight at 9:55

Both option looked good until the manager at the counter mentioned that he would not refund the tickets as it was only a 2 hrs delay.. "if you want you can go at your own cost.". they also offered another interesting choice- use the same ticket and travel on the following Thursday (5 days from present day).. who in the world would do that? Why is that even offered??

Time was ticking and we had to make a call.. everyone was anxious about the next announcement and it came at around 6:30.. " the mechanic has arrived".. the mechanic wouldn't have received such a welcome in his lifetime as all the eyes were on him.. the wait continued and all looking at the gate for the mechanic to get back.. he came after a few mins and his discussion with the manager did not look promising..

It was 7:15 already..and we were running out of time.. the next announcement generated mixed emotions... good and bad - bad news was that the flight could not be repaired in few mins while the good news was they are sending a recovery flight from a different place - the status of which we  would know after sometime.. we did not know how to react to this.. but we had lost time and our best option was to wait for the recovery flight..

It was 8 PM already and we had to decide on our dinner plans.. Siva and Parthi decided to go out of the airport to get us dinner while we waited for the all important answer.. and we heard it.. the recovery flight was coming from Baltimore and will reach by 11:00 pm.. we should be all set to fly by 11:45.. this would still give us a couple of hours of sleep and we can still manage to get to the rides by 9 am.

The airlines also ordered pizzas due to the delay and that pacified some of the eager passengers. We got our food from qdoba and was happily scanned and delivered by our security friends ( u tend to make friends when u spend considerable time).

It was 9:30 - 2 hours to go before we could fly out..dinner finished and kids were getting cranky.. Geetha's and Abi rocked ( for real) the strollers and got the kids to sleep. Sponsor Siva found a corner for himself and retired for a bit..pizzas arrived after thorough scanning and all passengers scrambled to get their slices..



It was 11:30 and we could see a plane getting near the gate.. all priority boarding passengers strolled down to the gate followed by zone 2 passengers.. we got all excited and waited for the gate to open.. got an encouraging update that our baggages and food were being transferred to the new plane.. gathering all the left out energy, we were gearing up to get into the flight around  12:30 am.... then came the dreaded announcement...

Disney.. here we come.. Part 1

It was an interesting trip to Disney parks that our Aloha Army( will explain the name later) planned. The whole trip was completely orchestrated by our Sponsor Mr.Siva ( yes.. we haven't paid him yet) with a lot of planning and schedules arranged upfront.. days and nights were spent in blocking the rides, getting the fast pass and deciding the dates and timings.. hats off to Siva for that..

And it was the day that we were supposed to start this wonderful trip.. bags packed.. repacked.. weighed multiple times and still exceeded the allowed limit... wait..wondering why we talk about baggage weights?? Yep..that's right.. this whole trip started on the premise of a "cheap air" ticket to Florida on a flight that leaves 15 mins from home .. who would want to miss that anyway..

Let me tell you something about these cheap flight tickets.. they are not cheap.. and those airlines are not seriously reliable.. but for the ticket, everything needs to be bought.. that too at an astonishing price.. from water bottles to food or whatever they call that..

Getting back to the baggage limit.. the cheaper ticket had the extreme limitation on the baggage.. so a pound more could cost us $50... which is more that 40% of the ticket price. And for an airline like this one, that's probably their way of doing business.

With a slight fear of coming over the limit, aloha army reached the infamous Pease international ( Seriously??) airport.. flight was at 5 pm and we reached around 2 pm well in advance only to find out the checking counter opens by 3 PM.. the wait started..

So it was 3 PM and we started checking in.. we got through without any hiccups even though we breached the baggage limit by a very small %. All went well with us clearing security and getting ready to board the flight.. and the army was jubilant and looking forward to a well planned trip to Disney parks for the next three days... all depending on us reaching Orlando in the next few hours..

We got the clearance .. boarded the flight and found we had seats at different rows.. we somehow managed to sit together- thanks to fellow passengers. Everything was set.. went through the safety procedures.. seat belts on... taxi-ing the flight to runway.... and then came the announcement...