Booked: using airline credit from Amex card mixed with DL platinum companion ticket.
Between me, wife and infant, brought three people to Maine for price of one, upgraded to first on the way back. A value of about 5 cents per cent..
From getting to the airport to being past security was all of about 10 minutes. Lines were empty even though it was 11am. We had clear and pre check but clear ended up taking longer than precheck because we had to scan our eyes…
Delta lounge was empty and we enjoyed our kosher meals from the lounge overlooking the planes take off.
Flight was easy hour, I asked the lounge agent to move us into the bulkhead comfort plus seat which was officially blocked off and there was more legroom than first class. A plus for the baby. Uneventful hour flight there, but we had a blast watching the guy in front of us milk his first class ticket as much as he can in a 30 minute window of service. I never saw a guy drink more in a half hour. And he was excited to be doing so.
Views of Maine landing from plane are beautiful. It’s like upstate but x5. Really stunning. When we landed we had about an hour walk to luggage, had to wait 20 minutes for it to come out and then take a 20 minute shuttle to rental car were out with our rental car and luggage in 15 minutes. BGR Is tiny! Literally everything is 10 feet from each other, and even more impressive was that despite literally taking 2 minutes to get from gate to luggage, it was all there already waiting. Very efficient. Rental car is about 5 feet from luggage carousel.
We drove straight to residence inn which was about 8 minutes away. Something to note, we stayed in Bangor and not bar harbour so there is about an hour drive to Acadia so if you’re really looking to spend a ton of time in Acadia may be worth spending the night somewhere closer. However we were using a free night certificate and got great value in this room Especially since it had a kitchen and we were upgraded to a suite with fully closed bedroom (great for baby). There are hotels closer but everything there seems to be very expensive for not much that you’re getting besides a bed. So YMMV in terms of what you’re looking for. There was no closer Marriott that we found to the park. We ate dinner which we cooked at home and brought with us to hotel to heat up in kitchen. We made it really quick and bounced back out to Acadia. We got there around 6:30 and the park was empty. I thought it was because it was the middle of the week but seems that closer to night is always much more empty. We went to Jordan pond which is about a half hour down the park road and spent a good hour or more there. Beautiful water and empty all to ourselves. When it got dark we went back to hotel where our Walmart order was waiting for us by the door with our breakfast for the morning.
Packed up and went back out to the park. Got there around 12 expecting to spend 4 hours before heading back to BGR. but the park was packed like anything so we skipped that and drove around the island until we found a nice park, azalea gardens, to eat our lunch, it’s a nice little park with flowers and water that was man made and maintained very nicely (they have someone mowing the lawn with a muffled lawnmower as to not disturb the peace).
Continued driving and found a place called sergeant cove which was a nice little coast of the island with gorgeous views of the next island and such blue water. Spent some time driving and stopping to soak in the views and walked around some of the rocky coast.
Continued driving around the island until it was time to go back. I wanted to aim for as least time in the airport as possible as it took us all of 10 minutes to be by our gate.
In contrast to other posts here there IS TSA precheck lanes and it was empty and there was nothing different about it here than Jfk. Even if you don’t have precheck you’ll have less than 5 minutes wait unless maybe earlier in the day there is more lines. Which may be the case because even though there were 4 flights to nyc after 5, the gift shop was closed. So it could be the heavier traffic is during the day.
As we were in first class we were actually offered pre departure beverages (unlike the flight to bgr where they went around preflight taking orders for after takeoff). They serve beverages to first in glssses with more premium snacks which actually are mostly kosher and pareve and taste fantastic.
Landed in Jfk and enjoyed dinner from delta in lounge (it was late and didn’t have food at home) but we mixed and matched a few dishes to get the good parts of all of them.
All in all great trip. I would leave two nights to enjoy Acadia more past hours with a lot more quiet.