Travelers beware

stay provieded by my Godmother's condo :)

Before I begin with all the wonderful stories about our trip I want to start with the WORST part of it. I want to make sure everyone is aware how awful this airline is. Seriously, you want cheap you get cheap; our fault I guess. We unfortunately traveled with SPIRIT AIRLINES, first and last time.

At first their rates look great but:

1) You pay for any piece of luggage ($19 if is ahead or $25 at he airport)
2) You will ALSO pay for any carry on as of August 2010
3) They charge for everything including refreshments on the flight (not even water) most things where about $3 each, can of soda, M&M's, water, etc. Drinks are $8 plus.
4) No entertainment at all during flights. Yeah.
5) horrible service and customer service

This was an international flight so I guess these days Airlines think you should just travel with the clothes on your back. But none the less, these are things I could overlooked if I had another experience.

Our adventure starting early Sunday Morning (12:30 am to be exact since our flight was leaving at 3am) when we get to the airport for our flight. The counter girl checks us in and walks away without telling us what is going on or what the problem is. She comes back half and hour later to tell us there is a problem with my check in, Hubs and oldest kid are ok. Then it results that they are having trouble with my reservation which makes no sense since all of them where done under mine name.

Off she walks again and leaves us waiting again, the other girl tell us is ok, that we wont miss the flight. At this point everyone is at the gate except for us and another family.

They told us that their system had an upgrade that deleted the baby and wont allow him to be added, so our oldest and the Hubs could fly but I had to wait till next day. Not an option to take a layover flight with baby in tow, bags, strollers, etc.

Hubs would have told her to take a flying leap but I gave a much more diplomatic answer. (the other family had the same issue) so we where all set up for the next day @ 3am AGAIN. They claim they would compensate us $100 in vouchers for each of us.

The next day we show up and get checked in. There is a small delay on the flight which causes us to get too late to catch our connecting flight . BTW, during the flight while we are on the plane I noticed that the oldest got booked to a different flight than ours without us being told anything.

AWESOME.

Well when we go to recheck our bags the counter girl who looks horrified at this point tells us that our 2nd plane has left, to stand to the side but to leave our bags with her.

We waited a while and finally another girl comes in and ask where we are going, then told us ALL flights where booked and the best she could do was to put us on stand by. Is already 8am and we have been up and around since 12am so I said fine. Then she asks for our bags, we tell her the other girl took them, the other girl gets a horrified look. While we where waiting, the baggage handler placed the bags on the conveyor belt without any tickets to destinations being in placed.

So they had to hurry up and call people to track our bags. Again, AWESOME.

After they realized they sent our bags to lala land and chased them around to tag them we where placed on stand by ( stand by was for 1:30pm) so we hang in the airport with our poor baby so restless. At 1:30pm they told us the plane was full; I had to go to the so call Customer service and use all my charm to get us re-booked for Tuesday at 7am. At this point I though the hubs was going to jump over the counter and hurt someone. we where not the only ones having issues and everyone was cursing, so I opted the classy way and got them to give us a hotel room. We arrived at the Hotel after 4pm. Are you counting hours? We had been in airports for 2 days!!! That day alone was16 hours. We all crashed at the hotel, the voucher for food was for $9 p/p and the menu had nothing under $12 so that was another added expense to us.

We where finally able to leave Tuesday on a 7am flight, arriving at 9:30am and then the drive home. The kicker is that I got written up at work for not being here on Monday as I was supposed to, even though I had emailed the Managers all along. Fabulous.

This was just not the kind of experience we want to remember…our poor kids where exhausted. I was tired and overwhelmed, husband was beyond frustrated. I have yet to see those vouchers by the way. We will be sending them a letter along with complaints to the BBB.

So glad to be back.The pictures and story about our trip will be posted tomorrow.

Over & out