Happy First Normal Day of the Year!

OK, we are now home! We got home last night. I will be doing catch-up posts, soon, I swear! I’ve been pre-occupied with other thoughts today.

I had a visit with M.! They are no longer testing positive for covid, altho they have lingering coughs and similar. So far — bizarrely — none of us are feeling sick. So. Because it was cold (but above freezing) and raining, we did not walk, but we did have an indoor visit.

R. went to Costco and Roche Bros.

The hold mail arrived and I went through that. A couple presents and a lot of cards. Very fun! Some bills, obviously.

ETA:

Catch Up Posts completed!

This was a really complicated trip to plan and implement. We had thought we would not see MIL, because she was headed north as we headed south. In the end, we _did_ get a visit for part of one day, and we had a unalloyed good time. Really, really unexpected bonus.

Traveling with my sister and her family is important to me, and I love all of them. Also, they are deeply challenging people, full stop. This is the _first_ trip I have ever done with her where there wasn’t at least one knock down drag out negative interaction with a lot of drama. Every, freaking trip. I post-mortem all of them, and I have learned so much over the years from these experiences and they are all miserable and I hate every bit of those interactions and we _did not have one of those this time_. I cannot even express how gleeful this makes me.

R. and I had lunch today at Benjarong (not much in the way of groceries and almost no veg, and we hadn’t had much time just the two of us for a while) and talked over some things, mostly to do with the canceled flight and subsequent travel choices. I’m going to be doing a bunch of research on how to handle rebooked itineraries that don’t work super good. He understands that he can’t be complaining about the get to the airport 2 hours before flight rule any more. We both understand what “late” means on the bag tag, and to escalate immediately. I spent a chunk of today planning packing for our next Disney trip, because JetBlue Terminal C is _such_ a haul from rental car drop off, so I have to pack much lighter if we are going to move at a reasonable pace. I’m also going to be researching airport lounges in hopes we can find quieter spaces for R. when he is at an airport, as they really bother his tinnitus.

Questions about baggage, MCO and Terminal C

So, I have a lot of questions! We arrived _in_ Terminal C an hour before our plane was due to leave, but by the time we printed our bag tags — not that many minutes later — it was already marked “late” and the bag drop was hundreds of people long. We’d arrived at the airport an hour and a half before our plane was due to leave. That all makes this particularly difficult reading:

https://thepointsguy.com/news/orlando-new-terminal-luggage-system/

I wanted to know, well, given that you have to turn your rental car in over at A or B terminal, can you _also_ turn your bags in at A or B and have them schlepped over to C, so you don’t have to walk those fuckers — and get them on and off the tram — in your journey over to C. I don’t have an answer to that question, however, it’s not looking like a yes, for sure.

One possible strategy on our next trip is to have R. drop 3 of us with all of the bags off at Terminal C, then drive back to A/B to return the rental car.

Which is insane.

Dealing with this new terminal is making me _really_ tempted to sell out of DVC and just not ever go back, but that’s not actually an option, as long as FIL and MIL are alive. We _still_ have to travel to Florida, and while we could fly into Tampa or Sarasota to visit FIL, MCO is still the logical airport for visiting MIL.

ETA:

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/11/22/flying-through-mcos-new-terminal-c-be-prepared-to-walk-for-a-rental-car/

Supposedly, we could have dropped the rental car off at Terminal C. *sigh* I don’t know if it is true, and I sure didn’t know that might be a possibility yesterday. That would have made a huge difference.

This is from National Car Rental (who we usually use): “For terminal C, our counter is located on level 6 across from Starbucks. Upon arrival to the airport, please proceed to the National counter to obtain your rental agreement. All renting customers at C terminal shall take the rental shuttle to B terminal to retrieve their rental car. Returns are accepted in C terminal garage.” I wish I’d noticed that. We did try to pick up a car in C, but we already had a reservation and the go straight to the car option, so we had to go to B for pickup regardless. I am feeling more optimism that our next trip will be less painful.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/12/19/rental-cars-still-in-short-supply-at-orlando-airport-terminal-as-holiday-travel-season-looms/

This confirms that when designed and built, terminal C wasn’t going to have _any_ rental car pickup and drop off (which, you know, why would JetBlue take gates there). Supposedly, Sixt has both pickup and drop off at Terminal C, but when I look at the Sixt website, they say go to A-side to pick up, which does not involve Terminal C!

I no longer feel like _such_ an idiot for how this went down. Altho I really do want to get it figured out now. I suppose one strategy is to call the week before we go next, figure out whether or not there is pickup in Terminal C, and then when we pick up the car (wherever we pick it up) get some definitive answer from National Car Rental staff on site whether we can return to Terminal C or not and, if so, where to go to drop it off. Because I’m unconvinced there is signage to figure that out currently.