I just want to point out that this trip was taken in 2014 and I am writing this to the best of my memory.
Let me start by saying there was a lot of speed bumps when it came to planning this trip, so if you aren’t interested in reading through all of the troubles that I had to go through prior to the trip, I suggest you skip to the part where the actual trip starts.
A little bit of a background. For our honeymoon we went to Atlantis in the Bahamas. We paid through the nose, but had the time of our lives. After the trip I settled on 2 things. 1. I love tropical destinations; I must go as often as I can to tropical places. 2. I am never paying so much money for a trip ever again. It was after this trip that I decided to find extremely cheap deals, or start playing the miles game (or a mix of both). Upon returning to New York, before I started applying for credit cards, I decided to find a nice destination for a low price. My research led me to Cancun. It was settled, we were going to go to Cancun summer 2014. (Winter we were going to Israel and London).
So it was a cold February day, I was visiting a friend in the hospital, the psych ward no less (no joke). I get a text message from @dansdeals: $7.77 a night for the Barcelona tower Suites in Cancun through Orbitz. I said, yes please. I immediately tried to book. The security guard walked over to me and said “you can’t use your phone in here.” So I asked him where the bathroom was. He escorted me to the bathroom and in there I booked 4 nights in May, awesome!
All of the people that booked were afraid that the hotel wasn’t going to honor it. People that got this deal have different stories of the hotel refusing to honor it prior to their arrival and Orbitz not helping out, some people said Orbitz fully refunded them after their trip, some people showed up to the Hotel and weren’t given a room, etc. I didn’t want to have to deal with any of this. I didn’t even call up the hotel. As soon as I could I called Orbitz and told them that the hotel wasn’t going to honor it. Their response after a long conversation was I can choose any hotel in Cancun that I wanted, pay for it up front, then they would refund me the difference of the two hotels, then refund me what I paid for the Barcelona Tower Suites. Amazing! So as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t too keen on using credit cards yet, so I had about $400 in my checking account at the time of that phone call, so I told them to book me at this hotel called the Flamingo Resort, I’m not sure why I chose that place, but hey, it was a free hotel in Cancun. Problem 1 solved.
At the time that I booked, I had a job where I was getting paid hourly, so I was able to take off whenever I wanted for a long period of time, so the trip was going to be no problem. Right after I booked the deal, I was actually promoted, but with that promotion came 4 weeks of paid time off, but the job was lousy. Regardless of the job being lousy, I was still able to take the time off to go away. Come a month and a half later, I was offered a job somewhere else. I took the job and began in the beginning of April. I had a problem; I was on a 3 month probation which means I wasn’t able to take off in May for this trip. Not a problem, a few phone calls to Orbitz, and I changed the dates. We were officially booked to go the 2nd to last Sunday in August, great. Problem 2 solved.
Summer came along, and my wife got a job in a nursery. She was allowed 2 off days the entire summer. Her last two days of work were Monday, Tuesday, the two days after we were supposed to be in Cancun. Not a problem, just save the two off days for the 2 last days. Alas she told her bosses her plans of taking off on the last two days. They said no! We need all staff to be here! It’s the end of the summer and we need to pack up the place! What was I to do? Call up Orbitz yet again? That’s exactly what I did. I called up Orbitz and explained to them that I will need to change my check in day from Sunday to Wednesday. They said not a problem; we will send a FAX to the hotel. I said great, not realizing they said they will fax the hotel of the change in reservation. Problem 3 solved.
So since we changed our travel plans and we were supposed to be in Cancun for the weekend, I decided to extend our trip without telling my wife. I had a nice amount of JetBlue miles, and I booked us from Wednesday to the following Tuesday. I told my wife the good news. She said WTH? My orientation is going to be scheduled for that Tuesday, you need to change the reservation. Fine. I called jetblue and they were kind enough to change it for me on the spot. We were now traveling Wednesday-Monday. Problem 4 solved.
So it’s the Sunday before the trip. DW and I decide to go shopping for the trip that day. We are walking down one of the aisles in the supermarket and DW says to me, “call the hotel to make sure they provide refrigerators in the room.” I call up the hotel and asked to which they responded that they do. Then they said, “see you later today.” I said, “don’t you mean Wednesday?” They said that my reservation was for that day. I told them that Orbitz changed it to Wednesday. They said they have no confirmation of that. I would have to speak to their reservation department to fix the reservation, but the reservation department doesn’t work on Sundays. If I didn’t show up that day, I would lose my reservation all together. I was in such a state of panic. I called Orbitz immediately. I was on hold the entire time at the supermarket, driving to Brooklyn from Queens standing outside a funeral hall (I know, I’m a terrible person for being on hold with Orbitz instead of going into the funeral, but DW and I took turns waiting on hold. I didn’t want our trip that was coming up to be ruined). After the funeral DW walks over to me and says the call got disconnected. WTH. DW went inside the shiva house while I was on the phone with Orbitz outside. They finally said there was nothing they could do that day as nobody that works in reservations departments in Mexico works on Sundays, I would have to call back the next day. So I arrive to work the next day, and instead of doing work, I call Orbitz. After 2 hours on the phone, they tell me they will look into their records to see if they made a mistake (which they did and found out that they did) and in the meantime, choose any hotel that I wanted and they will issue me a full refund after I pay for it. Great. I said no way in gihenim I am staying by Flamingo. I did some research and saw that the Hyatt there just changed ownership and was now called the Krystal and it was very close to Chabad. So I chose that hotel. I was issued a refund. Problem 5 solved.
All problems were solved, or so I thought…
So when I was booking the flights, all of the flights bookable via true blue points required a stopover in MCO, which I was fine with. But I kept trying to book a segment online which was supposed to be LGA-MCO-CUN and on the return CUN-MCO-JFK. I was having problems on the computer, so I ended up calling jetblue and the agent actually suggested I take the earlier flight out. So our official itinerary was this- JFK-MCO-CUN and the return was CUN-MCO-HPN. For some reason it didn’t register in my mind that our departing flight was from JFK, though I did register the return to HPN. Problem 6 is about to sneak up on me…