We flew Southwest across America and have little to write about!
We were stressed about the check in process. 2 adults, 2 children, 2 car seats, 3 checked bags, 3 carry on bags, 2 prams… A true nightmare! The night before I discovered that Orlando offers curb side check in. Problems solved! We literally pulled up the the curb in the rental car on the departures level, gave our bags to the employee who tagged them and boom, done! I left Hanika with the carry on and prams and returned the rental car without issue.
We chose Southwest because they’re cheap and they give 2 bags free, plus car seats are free extras. What I realised the day before flying is how they keep their costs down. There is no food on the plane. No worries, I’ll buy some. Nope, they don’t SELL food either! Lucky I did some research so we stocked up on overpriced provisions once we got through security.
Boarding is unique with no allocated seating. We were in the second group to get on (young kids, pulling through) and had no trouble finding a row of 3.
We flew out on time, landed in Nashville to let some people off/on. I can’t remember the last domestic flight I was on that wasn’t direct. It wasn’t the worst, Ollie was able to crawl around the floor and eat left over snacks. The next stop was Denver where we deplaned and had dinner. We boarded our new plane to San Fran without issue.
Finally we made it to SFO. No tears. No bleeding. No vomiting. Winning!
We pulled our embarrassing load of bags off the conveyer belt and I nipped across to get the new rental car (me leaving poor Hanika with the kids is a recurring theme). Well that’s not how it works! I had to get on a train and ride for 10 minutes to get to the car rental office. It was probably 40 minutes by the time I came to rescue Hanika. By that time Ollie had a code brown and was brought to the car pantsless!
We had a quick drive to our AirBnB and unpacked uneventfully. With the time zone change it was well past midnight Florida time before the kids were in bed.
Would I fly Southwest again? Yes. Would I use curb side check in again? EVERY TIME!