April 1999 -Old Key West
Day 0- Friday
Our April 1999 DVC trip at Old Key West began on a Friday night. We had planned to fly down into Orlando late after working so as to get a full day on Saturday. Our flight was scheduled to leave Connecticut at 7:20pm, putting us through Philadelphia and then into Orlando at midnight. We had booked the rental car through Dollar on the Internet some time before booking the flight and had gotten a really good rate. Originally we had planned to fly down on Saturday morning. After booking the trip for Friday night changing the rental car pick-up would have jumped the price almost $70. We decided to leave the car reservations with a Saturday pickup and then just stay in an airport hotel.
We arrived at our airport at 6:10pm and checked our luggage. We grabbed two seats in the waiting area and began talking to a lady next to us. Turns out she is a travel agent and was traveling to Tampa for a golf weekend. At just about 30 minutes before flight time we sauntered down to the gate area. There was another flight scheduled to leave for Washington DC just 15 minutes prior to ours so the gate area was packed. It had rained most of the day and was still somewhat foggy. The Washington flight boarded, the plane’s engines started, ran for about 10 minutes, then stopped. All of the passengers began coming back into the terminal. An announcement made that the flight would be delayed due to poor weather in the DC area. Of course this made everyone happy! About 10 or so minutes later, another announcement was made that the plane arriving from Philly would be delayed and that our flight to Philly would be even more delayed leaving. We returned to the ticket counter to rebooking our connecting flights, as we would be unable to make these. SO, we all trucked on up to the counter. Luckily it is only about 50 feet (this is a REALLY small airport). We were re-booked onto the 6:00am flight out of Philly and would be put up in the Holiday Inn at the airport. Ok, sounds good. Back to the gate to wait! Another 30 minutes goes by, another announcement. The Philly plane would be arriving shortly but would NOT be returning to Philly that night due to poor weather (two tornadoes had touched down in the area). So, back to the ticket counter. Now there were a bunch of REALLY unhappy people. We had actually gotten 1st class seats on that early morning flight. There would not be another flight out of our airport until Monday to Orlando. The other choice would be LaGuardia at 12:00pm Saturday. Amtrak was offered as a choice, refund our money and get us transportation to the station. The train was scheduled to depart at 11:30pm and arrive in Philly at 3:30am! URGH! Not a safe idea, traipsing around Philly at 3:30 am. The travel agent lady and us put our heads together. We quickly added up the amount of money we would be getting as a refund for this leg of the journey. I ran over to the Hertz rent-a-car and found out a one-way rental to Philly would be less than what we would get as a refund! So, away we went! Given the fact that we had 1st class seats and no other option was very good, this seemed the best! We thought our luck might be changing when the rental car was parked in spot #13, lucky #13! Well, it did as the rest of our trip went incredibly smoothly. We got onto I-95 and arrived at Philly at 1:30am. Just enough time to put our heads down and sleep for a few hours before leaving to return the car and check in at Philly Airport.