Kamikaze WDW - Escape from Puerto Rico

We survived. 

It was crazy, just as I knew it would be. In fact, it was even crazier thanks in no small part to Tropical Storm Erika and her extremely erratic behavior but we accomplished all the stuff we set out to do except one thing (I'll get to that) and had a whole lot of fun in the process.

There's a Storm Brewing...

I had been standing watch since the previous week and saw it coming from miles away but in the end I was still helpless to do anything about it. Everyone was forecasting for Erika to be right over the island in the early hours on Friday. Our tickets to Orlando? Yup, they were for 5am Friday. As early as Tuesday, I began calling Jet Blue asking about what was gonna happen and their answer was the same on Tuesday and Wednesday: The flight was scheduled to leave on time and if I wanted to make any changes it would be about 700 dollars extra. I tried to explain my situation and that if my flight was canceled, I could not pick a later flight because I would lose my reservations, tickets and everything else but Jet Blue would not budge.

Finally, Puerto Rico issued instructions closing some schools and government functions on Wednesday night at about 11pm. This thing was coming for sure and Jet Blue was still adamant that my flight was leaving on time. On Thursday morning, I found out that they decided to include my girl's school as one to close so, with two of my girls in tow, I left for work resigned to the fact that we were probably gonna miss our flight. Then, just as I was parking at work, Jet Blue issued the code to change flights and I was forced to look for alternatives right then and there. Sure enough, our only choice was a flight at 1:40pm that very day so I set it up, signed off on some stuff at work, got the kids back in the car and headed home.

I don't think I have ever packed a suitcase as fast as I did for this. It was a madhouse. The girls were screaming all over the house because we were leaving for Disney World while me and the wife were trying to figure out what we were leaving out. Most of the packing was in order but when you're in a hurry, that nagging feeling that you are leaving something out is inescapable. More than leaving, we felt like we were evacuating. With me still in my work clothes and the girls still in their school uniforms, we headed to the airport.

Thankfully, from this point on things slowed down a bit. We got to the airport and checked in and despite my wife having some issues with security - They weren't accepting her type of I.D. anymore- we made it to the gate on time and had a chance to actually breathe for a minute before getting in the plane and heading for Florida.

In terms of pure nerves, this was the worst part of the trip. Things got a whole lot more fun from that point on, but not any less hectic. We had a very, very full schedule ahead of us so things were just beginning.

We made it!! In our school clothes but we made it.