We suffered a 24 hour delay in Florida following the Volcano eruption. We were generally well treated - and well informed by an UK call centre. We kept the car for an extra day, a contingency was to drop down to a basic model if things lasted any longer and stayed an extra night in a very pleasant waterside hotel in St Petes'. Virgin treated us to a day at Busch Gardens. Got a text from Lloyds TSB reassuring us of availability of funds for a prolonged stay. Part of the contingency was to er...enjoy the extra enforced stay....my wife was concerned about her work but works for a good employer whose business is reacting to sudden events. I was worried about the en-kenneled dog...but that was sorted.
We got an unexpected confirmation of a flight the next day - the call centre lady (and she was a lady with no regional accent !) was as surprised as we were. We flew home exactly one day late.
Web access and access to international news reports proved essential.
We got a good proportion of our extra money spent back. All in all it added something to the trip.
As a worse case scenario an internal flight or a lengthy drive to a minor international airport (Bangor Maine maybe) was one of the options. There was plenty of "bed" availability in Florida - heard some right horror stories from people, one family flew from Orlando to Washington and I reckon to the busiest airports on the planet with little or no hotel availability. The girl we shares a row with on the flight home was flying to Manchester with no plan on how to get to Exeter....
Last edited by: R.P. on Sun 17 Jun 12 at 10:08
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