Flight cancellations…

Last year we got stuck in Oslo, this year it was Orlando’s turn. What’s up with these snowstorms hitting NYC in January!

Our flight was supposed to take off from Orlando just before 7:00PM (on Super Bowl Sunday) but it got cancelled due to a storm that was supposed to hit the NYC area that evening.

I understand that it’s better to be cautious, but it also would’ve been nice to receive an alert or message of some sort from American about the cancellation. I just so happened to call American Airlines to check on my flight status never really expecting to hear this news.

AA was so busy that the estimated wait time was an hour and a half or more. I decided to select the call back feature and an AA rep did in fact call me back at just around the stated time.

During the call I immediately found out that our flight home was cancelled. We were then rebooked on a flight home the following morning at 11:00AM.

All seemed good with this new flight (as long as that wasn’t cancelled too) but I still had to deal with our car rental and find a hotel for the night.

Here is what we did:

Car Rental: I had paid for a 3 day car rental but only really needed it for 2.5 days. When I called Hertz to inform them of the change, I was happy to hear that there was no extra charge since the extra time was within our 3 days we were already paying for!

Hotel/ Lodging: We figured it was best to stay close to the airport so we wouldn’t have to rush in the morning. We also didn’t want to spend any money to book a room. I looked into all of my options using points,  deciding to book the SpringHill Suites by Marriott Orlando Airport.

We really liked the hotel and it seemed like a bargain at 15,000 Marriott points, reduced from 20,0000. (I believe if we wanted to pay for our stay, the room went for something like $130)

After finishing up our bookings, we now had to figure out what to do with our extra time in Orlando.

If we had received some sort of message from American about the flight cancellation, I think we would’ve bought tickets to go check out Epcot. However, we didn’t find out about the cancellation until around noon so we couldn’t see spending over $200 on tickets to the park for a half-day visit.

We wanted to make the most of our extra time in the area and we ended up finding another really fun (and much cheaper) park to check out for a few hours. Kim, Lucas and I all had a good time so it was definitely worth visiting.

Oh, and I also got to watch most of the second half of the Super Bowl since I wasn’t flying during game time!

So in the end, besides losing a day’s work our flight cancellation cost 15,000 Marriott points and the entry fee of around $50 for the park we visited.

If you’re flight has been cancelled due to the weather, how did you go about making the most out of your extended vacation?