Making FLL suck less
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So, doing some research on FLL’s incredibly slow site, I found some awesome information:
1. They have public baggage storage, helpful if your flight isn’t until much later.
2. The different terminals have different layouts/options. Terminal 3 (so far from what is S L O W L Y pulling up) seems to have the most pre-security food (as opposed to terminal 1 which had NO pre-security food)
3. There are shuttles between all the terminals.So, we can make Fort Seamonkey somewhere more convenient to food/drinks/etc, even stow luggage and then it won’t be quite the hellish wait for those of us that were unlucky enough to be in Terminal 1 this year.
We actually went over to Terminal 3 when we realized that it had both food and a big group of Sea Monkeys. Turned out be the shortest 8 hours we ever spent in an airport — we played games, chatted, and were treated to an impromptu concert by Glen Raphael (@glenra). When it got closer to our flight time, we walked back to Terminal 1 (we knew about the shuttles, but it’s not really that far), where we found yet more Sea Monkeys and played a game with them before their flight departed, at which time our flight started boarding.
We were gathering people who were passing by into our group all day, and I posted our location to the Facebook group. But since not everyone was reading it, a lot of people didn’t know. Would be nice to plan better in advance next year.
Warning about #1: You require a print out of your itinerary in order to use the bag storage. It is $6 per bag. We only had our itinerary on our phones – no dice, we had to keep our bags with us the whole time.
We walked through all of the terminals – Terminal 3 was the ONLY one with real food pre-security. The line for Chili’s was insane.The Luggage Valet service from the ship is great if you have a late flight — they got our bags to the plane for us and we did not have to schlep them to the airport or drag them around once we got there.
As to the Chili’s line, our group put in a to-go order to avoid having to stand in the line, and just ate out in the chairs by the end of the US Airways counter. However, the Chili’s folks told our folks that a bunch of people had not shown up for work that day so they were really short-staffed — that’s why the line was so slow and why it took an hour for us to get all of our food (and my order was messed up). But at least we were sitting and had Sea Monkey company while we waited.
The line for Chili’s around Peak Lunchtime was insane, but eventually it did clear. By 6pm there was no wait at all!
Was it me or did anyone else feel they.were walking into…whats the right word? Chaos is too strong tho with the right feel to it..but disorganized and confusing do not begin to capture my experience both arriving and departing.
It did strike me as bizarre that the airport at a major cruise port was so ill-prepared to deal with massive passenger influxes.
Yeah, that was very odd to me. I don’t remember how long we stood in line to check our bags (on AirTran) but the line stretched about halfway down the sidewalk for curbside. Then inside there was another line to get in the line to go through security. And then on the other side of security, if you wanted anything to eat or drink there was another monumental line. People said over and over “Saturday is when the most cruise ships come in,” and I was sort of like “Soooooooo could you maybe put together a plan for dealing with Saturdays a little better?”
Well, the other side of that is “why would they?”
I mean, they’re not gonna lose any business because of the spike in crowds on that day.“I mean, they’re not gonna lose any business because of the spike in crowds on that day. “
Queuing theory! They probably do lose potential sales, from packets…er, from customers who see that the lines are long and drop before entering the queue. Insufficient queues!That would be true of, say, a restaurant in a food court with shitty line management, but there’s only one airport in FLL.
Ergo…Ergo…
I would have bought something from Chili’s that day, but I did not, because I had heard about the line. So I went without.
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