20240507 Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 34 - Heading home and cruise wrap-up

Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 34 - Homeward bound

Ugh. 6:30 comes way too early. 

Our departure time, despite what we asked for, was set for 7:30. Sure, we could have gotten off later, but then it would have been potentially more challenging to get to our bags since they were divided by group. We grabbed our final breakfast, tossed the final items into our carry-on bags, and made our way down to Deck #7, Explorers Bar to wait for disembarkation. A few minutes later, our Silver #3 group was called and we were off. Wait in line, scan the medallion the final time, walk, walk, walk, find our bags in the sea of Silver #3 bags, and walk to Customs. Finding the bags wasn't too difficult, but it was interesting that all four of our bags were in different places. You'd think they would place bags from the same room together, but where is the fun in that? Better to have a final scavenger hunt.

We were prepared for a long Customs process, but we didn't get one. We walked up to the camera terminal. Look at the camera, *ding* - green light - welcome home, and we exited the terminal. Easy peasy.

We had to make the walk from terminal 91 where we docked to terminal 92 as that is where ride-share services like Uber and Lyft pick up from. I ordered an Uber XL (we had two bags plus a carry-on each) and in less than five minutes, we were on our way to stop-and-go L.A. traffic.

We hit solid traffic right after I snapped this

Before we even got going, I got a notification from Southwest. Our noon outbound flight to Austin, Texas was already delayed 29 minutes. Woo! More than three hours before flight time and we were already delayed. We had two hours in Austin, so we still had wiggle room to make our connection to Orlando.

Getting there

The iconic control towers at LAX

54 minutes later, our driver dropped us right in front of Southwest. We walked right up to a self-check terminal and got our bag tags. We walked right up to the bag drop and were on our way to TSA. We got to TSA and walked right up to the officer - nobody was in the Pre-Check line. Next, we walked right up to the scan station - again, not a soul there. Zip/zap and we were through security and on our way to Gate 15 to wait for our flight.

Southwest - if you know, you know

Of course, we had to listen to the incessantly repeated warnings to not accept any from anyone who asks you to carry something onto the aircraft. Seriously, aren't we past that? Don't we all know that? Plus, even way back, did anyone really ever say, "Sure! I'll take that bag to Albuquerque for you, even though you're not going!"?

LAX be fancy!

By the time we were all settled in, we had a shade over 90 minutes to wait before our updated boarding time of 11:59.

The late plane finally arrived, Southwest did their famous quick turnaround and we were off with a nearly full plane just over an hour late. We arrived in Austin, Texas with just enough time to grab a slice of pizza before grabbing our next nearly full flight to Orlando. Southwest sure packs them in.

Speaking of being packed in, welcome to Orlando. There were no less than eight Southwest flights that all arrived in Orlando within minutes of each other. So what, you say? There are a limited number of baggage handlers, especially at 10:30 at night. Our bags were unloaded, per the Southwest app, at 10:27. The bags finally arrived on the luggage carousel around 11:10. There were people milling about everywhere as hundreds of bags were coming out on three carousels at the same time. Pandamonium.

The next challenge was catching our ride home. The driver was there but fighting traffic. It took him ten minutes to finally get to the terminal. The amount of traffic at Orlando International Airport at 11:00 on a Tuesday night is crazy!

So, we're in the car, on the way home as I write this. We should be home around 12:30 A.M. Wednesday morning. That kind of sucks because some idiot (me) made a medical appointment for 8:15 A.M. so sleep will be limited tonight.

We flew across the country twice, sailed 11,000 nautical miles, crossed the equator twice, once in each direction, and crossed the international date line four times losing two days and repeating two days. We visited Hawai'i, Samoa, American Samoa, Fiji, and French Polynesia, adding two new countries to our list, and hitting 63 visited countries. It was a fun trip, although it was a little heavy on the sea days. But, on those days, we spent time with some wonderful people and that's part of what makes travel fun.

As we wrap up this trip, this blog, which I started in July 2021 with our Iceland cruise, is a few hits short of 500,000 lifetime views. It is humbling to know that so many folks have read it, and perhaps learned something or got a chuckle. We do it so we can remember all the amazing places we've been. I plan to continue writing and it will start again in just 23 days when we depart for Quito, Ecuador for our 16-day Galapagos and Machu Picchu adventure. Stay tuned - lots more adventures are coming soon! We're happy to have you all along with us.  See you soon!