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BOS-ORD-DFW-DEN |
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Zachary and I woke around 3:30a early Wednesday morning to begin our trip to Denver to visit CU Boulder.
My American Airlines AAdvantage miles delightfully entitled us to not one, not two, but three legs to get to the Mile High City: BOS-ORD (Chicago O'Hare), ORD-DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth), and DFW-DEN.
Cancelled. They kindly booked us on the 11:35a flight the next day. We'll call that one Flight 4. While the delay until Thursday wouldn't have been a disaster given that our all-day campus tour wasn't until Friday, it would have cost us time with friends and the expense of a hotel room near DFW. We headed to a nearby gate where an earlier Denver flight was delayed to ask about any available seats. We were third in what rapidly became a long line, but the display showed an already lengthy standby list. After a 30 minute wait for an American representative to appear, we were told "no luck" and that for further options, we'd have to check at the ticket counter outside security. The woman at the ticket counter put us on standby for a same-day 7:15p flight (Flight 5). Improvement, albeit small. We headed back in through security to the new gate area and the 4-ish hour wait to find out if we'd make it to Denver that night. Once there, we spoke with yet another American employee--she ended up being fantastic. She added us to the standby list for a delayed 3:30p flight now scheduled for 4:15p (Flight 6) and promised to be on the lookout for other options. For some reason, the ticket counter person outside security hadn't shared the 4:15p possibility. We sat to wait and see how things would play out. The PA then announced last call for a Colorado Springs flight, which prompted a thought I should have come to on my own. Back to our friendly gate agent, who found us two seats on a 5:50p Colorado Springs flight (Flight 7). Our next task was to change our Thrifty car rental--Colorado Springs is about an hour south of Denver. The original 40-day reservation was projected to cost $128. Adding the "pick up at one location, drop off at another" charge would have boosted that to $428. So, I logged on to orbitz.com to explore alternatives and found Payless Car Rental for well under the original $128 even including the one-way fee. As I was preparing to book, we were paged back to the gate. "Our" agent had found and booked us for two confirmed seats on the 5:50p to Denver (Flight 8). We gratefully accepted. Since I was still logged in to Orbitz, I checked the Payless 4-day rate for pickup and dropoff at DEN. $36 including all taxes and fees. Sold, a savings of $92 for our troubles. It was now just about 4:00p and we were listed 1 and 2 on the standby list for the 4:15p flight with two seats empty. They called us to board ... until an out of breath man ran up to the gate and presented his boarding pass. 5:50p it would be. We grabbed a bite, waited, boarded, and took off, eventually landing in Denver around 7:30p, a bit more than 4 hours later than planned. I had my doubts about how Payless would work--the "off brand" companies don't quite breeze you through the process the way that Hertz and Avis do. The shuttle bus arrived almost immediately after we got out to the curb, though, and the rest of the booking couldn't have gone smoother. If only we could have said the same thing for the weather. A driving snow was falling, slowing our progress into Denver. By 8:30p, though, we were parked and at the restaurant joining our friends for dinner. A long day, but we were back on schedule and looking forward to the several great days that would follow. |