Pics to come, I promise!
You should see vacation pictures from me tomorrow. I just needed to detail the saga of the lost bags first. I want to say that it wasn't the end of the world, and I know that. Losing our bags at the end of the journey when nothing vital was in those bags = no big deal. We both are experienced travelers, and we understand that lost luggage is part of the deal you strike with air travel. Sometimes your bags arrive with you, and sometimes they don't, and that's just how it goes.
BUT. The attitude of some of the airline employees left us with a bad taste in our mouths and threatened to overshadow our overall enjoyment of the trip as a whole.
So, short story: we flew from Puerto Vallarta to Dallas, and ran into our first hiccup at PV when Tyson tried to pay to check his bag and got an extra boarding pass and a notice that the payment didn't go through. But we fixed that easily. He picked up a couple of bottles of tequila at the duty free shop there, and everything was fine.
We had to go through Immigration and Customs on the way back, which meant grabbing our checked luggage and then rechecking it at the other end of Customs. I&C was fine, but the recheck seemed rather willy-nilly, and Tyson had to repack his tequila in his checked luggage since we also had to go back through security, and the tequila had to be checked because regulations. He hung around a bit because he thought his bag might be overweight, but there wasn't even a scale, so I pulled him through.
I should say that we waited around the baggage claim area for a really long time, and it fucking sucked, since we hadn't eaten much that day, and really wanted food. Our flight info never made it to the board above a carousel, and after about 30 minutes, we finally gave our claim check to someone (after asking repeatedly where our luggage might be) only to find out that it had been delivered and was sitting in the middle of the room, and not at all where we expected to find it. Strike one.
So, we manage to get food, and board our flight to Omaha, although it's closer than we'd like, and then we're home, and things break down again.
And look, lost luggage is a thing, and I get that, and we're careful about what we put in checked luggage, but the behavior of the airline personnel was so disrespectful, I cannot even. The main guy in the baggage claim office, seeing dozens of people waiting and knowing that trouble was brewing, just left. Also, when someone asked him where our baggage was, and if he had an ETA, he put his fingers to his head, screwed up his eyes, and basically said, "Fuck you, I don't know."
And then, it took over an hour to find out that our luggage hadn't arrived, and another hour to make a claim for our luggage to make sure it reached us.
If it had just been a case of lost luggage, I would have shrugged and said "Oh, well," but the asshole in Dallas, and then the other asshole in Omaha soured it for me. And then, we were told the bags would be delivered around 3 am, and we should keep our phones on, but they weren't. They showed up just before 7 am, but the bag that was supposed to be Tyson's belonged to someone else. His bag arrived around 8 pm yesterday.
So, not the end of the world, and not even that big of a deal in the long run, but the baggage handlers for American Airlines were awful, save for the one person that had to clean up the asshole's mess. His attitude, and the situation in Dallas, makes me never want to fly American Airlines again unless I have no other choices, including driving.
Like I said, pictures tomorrow, but I wanted to process this first.
BUT. The attitude of some of the airline employees left us with a bad taste in our mouths and threatened to overshadow our overall enjoyment of the trip as a whole.
So, short story: we flew from Puerto Vallarta to Dallas, and ran into our first hiccup at PV when Tyson tried to pay to check his bag and got an extra boarding pass and a notice that the payment didn't go through. But we fixed that easily. He picked up a couple of bottles of tequila at the duty free shop there, and everything was fine.
We had to go through Immigration and Customs on the way back, which meant grabbing our checked luggage and then rechecking it at the other end of Customs. I&C was fine, but the recheck seemed rather willy-nilly, and Tyson had to repack his tequila in his checked luggage since we also had to go back through security, and the tequila had to be checked because regulations. He hung around a bit because he thought his bag might be overweight, but there wasn't even a scale, so I pulled him through.
I should say that we waited around the baggage claim area for a really long time, and it fucking sucked, since we hadn't eaten much that day, and really wanted food. Our flight info never made it to the board above a carousel, and after about 30 minutes, we finally gave our claim check to someone (after asking repeatedly where our luggage might be) only to find out that it had been delivered and was sitting in the middle of the room, and not at all where we expected to find it. Strike one.
So, we manage to get food, and board our flight to Omaha, although it's closer than we'd like, and then we're home, and things break down again.
And look, lost luggage is a thing, and I get that, and we're careful about what we put in checked luggage, but the behavior of the airline personnel was so disrespectful, I cannot even. The main guy in the baggage claim office, seeing dozens of people waiting and knowing that trouble was brewing, just left. Also, when someone asked him where our baggage was, and if he had an ETA, he put his fingers to his head, screwed up his eyes, and basically said, "Fuck you, I don't know."
And then, it took over an hour to find out that our luggage hadn't arrived, and another hour to make a claim for our luggage to make sure it reached us.
If it had just been a case of lost luggage, I would have shrugged and said "Oh, well," but the asshole in Dallas, and then the other asshole in Omaha soured it for me. And then, we were told the bags would be delivered around 3 am, and we should keep our phones on, but they weren't. They showed up just before 7 am, but the bag that was supposed to be Tyson's belonged to someone else. His bag arrived around 8 pm yesterday.
So, not the end of the world, and not even that big of a deal in the long run, but the baggage handlers for American Airlines were awful, save for the one person that had to clean up the asshole's mess. His attitude, and the situation in Dallas, makes me never want to fly American Airlines again unless I have no other choices, including driving.
Like I said, pictures tomorrow, but I wanted to process this first.