Anchorage to Seattle
Our early evening flight from Anchorage to Seattle was perfect. Everything was on time...no last minute delays....nice touchdown in Seattle 3 1/2 hours after takeoff. It still amazes me by the way how far it really is between Anchorage and Seattle. Seems to me that it should be much closer but it's not! So by the time we landed in Seattle it was 9:20 PM and it was a fabulous view of Mount Rainier that met us on the runway:
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| Mount Rainier was "out" in it's full glory when we landed at Sea-Tac |
Here is another huge mountain that is sometimes just totally hidden by clouds. It seems so hard to believe that these monsters could actually go missing but they do!!! This was the best view we had of the mountain the whole time that we were in the Seattle/Portland area!
So here we were...had a great last day in Alaska exploring the scenic Seward Highway area area, a great flight, and a mountain to greet us upon landing....what could go wrong? Well.....
Let me just preface this by saying that no matter how much planning ahead that you do, no matter how much research you do, no matter how well you know an area....things do go wrong!! Travel is not perfect and you have to be flexible....however there comes a time in every family vacation (well at least ours) that the meltdown happens!! This was the night of our meltdown......
Sea-Tac Airport
I am not a fan of Sea-Tac.....it's an ok airport but is undergoing quite a few renovations so it's a bit confusing to get around (and that's being nice!) My husband and I did a "couples trip" to the Seattle/Portland in October of 2011 so it hadn't been that long since we had been there! When we landed there during the October trip, we had a heck of a time trying to find the rental car area. We could see it was in a garage just across the street from the baggage claim area but darned if we could find our way there! After about 30 minutes of walking around with our luggage, we figured out that you had to go upstairs through construction areas and cross over a pedestrian bridge to the 4th level in order to get to the executive level of National Rental Car. Ok....so after that experience this time I was prepared! I knew where the rental car was located and there was nothing going to get in my way!
The baggage claim/ground transportation portion of the airport is still all under construction with temporary walls all over the place.....but I had this.....or NOT.... The area that we ended up walking upstairs and getting to the garage in October was no longer there. Ok....so we head outside and see shuttle buses coming up to pick people up to take them to their various rental car companies. I was insistent that National....at the least the executive elite part of National was still on the 4th floor of the garage across the street. I was trying to pull out my confirmation information and in the meantime my husband and son decided to ask someone where we were to go. The airport employee tells us to get on the shuttle bus. I am totally convinced that we should not be on the shuttle bus and am getting pretty agitated at this point. I have found my confirmation which I printed when we booked the vehicle back on April 14th. It tells me that we have to go across the pedestrian bridge and go to the 4th floor of the garage....same thing I thought. So by this time we have loaded onto the shuttle and I am convinced that we are not supposed to be on there. I'm tired and I just want to go to the hotel.....last thing I want to do is be driven to where ever this shuttle is headed just to have to take it back to go across the street.
Meltdown #1 Alert: I start panicking on the shuttle, stand up and tell my family as well as everyone else on the bus that I am not supposed to be on the bus because we are executive elite and our car isn't where ever this bus is going! The other passengers try to tell me that I am in the right place. This just agitates me even more. I show them the confirmation and continue to spin around in the aisle way yelling that I need off the shuttle (ok...I admit it was a bit dramatic but I was sure I was right!) Wrong.....someone finally tells me that they just changed the location of the vehicles. Huh??? But I was here in October! Nope....they had changed it! My family is rolling on the seats by this point and had tears running down their faces (which did not help my mood I must say!). They couldn't even speak they were laughing so hard. Finally my husband manages to tell me that he had received an email from National notifying him that they had changed the location and it was in a central rental car facility and you had to take a shuttle...yes this same shuttle that we were on...to get there!!! Nice time to pull that out of his phone!!!! He and my son are still cackling and crying from laughing so hard and now I'm just ticked!! I mean really....they built a whole freaking facility since October??? Needless to say it was bad enough that I had just embarrassed myself completely on a shuttle bus let alone having the "fam" rolling in their seats! I believe that I may have had smoke coming out of my ears at this point!
Lesson learned: Don't trust what the information that you get when you book your travel or your past experiences. Check the latest information BEFORE you go in order to get to what you are trying to find!
Homewood Suites Tukwila
So we finally find our rental vehicle and find our way out of the rental facility. I'm still not speaking to anyone and they are still laughing. By this time it is around 10:00 PM. We have booked a room at the Homewood Suites in Tukwila, WA which was very close to the Airport. Again, my husband and I had stayed at this hotel in October of 2011 and LOVED it! Personally, I thought it was one of the best Homewood Suites that I had ever stayed at....gave it 5 stars on TripAdvisor after our last stay! So what could go wrong here???? Well.....
We get to the hotel in about 10 minutes from the rental facility and notice that the entire parking lot of the hotel is packed. Not just full.....packed! So here's where things really start to go downhill....my husband, who is a bit high-strung when driving in parking lots as it is, is driving around and around trying to find a spot to park. As he is driving around, he makes a left on a small roadway.....well we thought it was a roadway!! Turns out is was a bike path!!!! Luckily there were no bikes on it. Now why he didn't back up as soon as we realized that we were on a bike path I don't know but he didn't and just kept driving around curves in the path. Finally we come to a dead end with two wooden posts at the end of the path!
Meltdown Alert #2: Now I should tell you at this point that the vehicle that we rented was a Chevy Traverse....not a small vehicle by any means!! Now we are stuck on this bike path....train tracks to our right, large ditch to our left. My husband stops the vehicle and throws up his hands and waves them around yelling...."now what are we going to do?? We are stuck!!" I'm still ticked and finding this rather humorous since he was laughing at my meltdown on the shuttle bus so I am not offering any help. Luckily our son had his wits about him and realized that we could back up, do a three point turn and head back out on the bike path the way we came. He is trying to tell my husband this but he is in full meltdown mode at this point! He is still waving his arms and yelling. Finally our son is able to talk some sense into him and we were able to maneuver our way off of the bike path!!
We drive around the whole hotel again (avoiding the bike path this time!) and finally my husband pulls over and parks in the middle of the lot just to hop out and check in. Again, for those who haven't read prior posts, my husband travels a lot for business and is a Diamond Member of Hilton's HHonors Reward program because he stays exclusively at Hilton hotels whenever he travels for business and we are equally loyal on our personal vacations. One of the perks of being a Diamond Member is that they won't bump you from a room and should hold the room that you requested. Should being the operative word here.
So hubby, gets out, goes in to check in....son and I are now rolling and crying because we are laughing so hard about hubby's meltdown on the bike path and how he got on the bike path in the first place! Hubby comes out with an odd look on his face. He says he has good news and bad news.....good news is that we have a room.....bad news is that it is a SMOKING room! We are all non-smokers and have a real problem with stale smoke. He tells me that he has complained about it but they have no other rooms available (where the room that we reserved that was NON-SMOKING went...I have no clue). They also have told him that they put an ozone machine in the room to air it out for 2 hours. So hubby says he is going to park the vehicle, son and I were taking the bags and heading to the room.
Meltdown Alert #3: We open the door to the room and out pours the smokey stench! I mean this is not a room that has been aired out and if it was I would have hate to have smelled it before it was aired out! Now it's son's turn to meltdown. He flat out refuses to stay in this stinky room! Hubby is still parking the car. By the time he gets to the room son has put all the bags outside and has said he is not putting anything in this room it smells so badly! Hubby and son head over to the front desk to see if there isn't something that they can do about giving us a better room. I proceed to open all the windows that will open and try to air it out a little bit more. Son marches back in the room about 5 minutes later and asks me for the confirmation for our Saturday night stay (Day 8) since we booked a split stay here. Turns out the front desk employee can't even locate our reservation for the next night. Thing was both reservations were advanced paid!!!!! We had made these reservations in April and paid for them!! They finally found our reservation and guaranteed that we would not be in a smoking room and "we would be in a room that wasn't near the train." (Train?.....what Train?....Oh yeah the railroad tracks by the bike path!) This was the best they could do.....for tonight we were stuck in the smokey room! We tried calling other Hilton's in the area but there were no rooms available. This was a WEDNESDAY! Turns out that there was a big soccer tournament in the area and hotel rooms were at a premium. Since our flight arrived late....we were moved to the most undesirable room in the hotel! The room was terrible, our clothes stunk, the room was smaller than the room we had stayed in in October even though both were 1 bedroom suites and every time the train went by, I sat up in the bed! I ended up tweeting at Homewood Suites and Hilton who promised to help me with the situation if they had our confirmation number. Gave them that but didn't hear anything back till the following morning. At that time they had assigned the problem to someone who was supposed to contact us. (Remember this part!) Hubby went to check out the following morning because the bill that we had shoved under our door indicated that they were billing us a second time for the room!!!! This room wasn't worth paying for once....let alone twice. He asked to speak with the manager but were told that she was supposed to be there but hadn't shown up. They did finally adjust the bill so we were not charged twice for the room. We went to the breakfast buffet (or I should say we tried to go to the breakfast buffet) in the morning. It was packed and you couldn't even walk in the eating area. Needless to say we were happy to leave this hotel and it really was a shame because our previous experience was so good. We were very worried about our second stay in a few nights.
Lessons Learned: It doesn't matter if you are a Diamond Member with Hilton, or if you have pre-paid for your room or not, if you are arriving late, call ahead and make sure they don't give away the room that you requested! You can't always know what events are in the area when you book something but things happen that can alter your experience.
The End of a Long Day
A day that started out so smoothly ended pretty much in disarray. When we woke up in the morning, we were all ready to put the previous night behind us and spent much of the day laughing about the events of the night before!
Lesson Learned: There are things that are just out of your control when you travel. Don't let things that don't go perfectly upset the rest of your time. Vacation is too short to let it be ruined by little things.
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