Sundance 0.5: Are We There Yet?!

After Thundersnow 2011, I was worried that that my Sundance plans might be negatively impacted.  The good news was that N. and I made it to Sundance (which I promise to give you a full update on my experience in my posts to follow).  The bad news was that we got there on Friday afternoon, instead of Thursday night, which was originally planned.  That threw a wrench in our plans because we had planned on watching some movies Friday morning and of course we had already paid for our Thursday night hotel room non-refundable fee.  Oh, well.  Let me tell you what happened…

The day after the snowstorm, our flight was noted as “On Time”; however, upon our arrival at Dulles, we learned that that our flight was delayed.  To make matters worse, we had a connection in Detroit that was scheduled to leave on time.  We asked why our flight to Detroit was delayed and we were told that it was snowing in Detroit (where our plane was coming from).  Our plane to Detroit was a small commuter jet, causing it to have the last priority amongst planes in the de-icing queue.  That explains why our flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City was scheduled to leave on time (bigger plane).  Boo hiss!  Since there weren’t any flights leaving for Salt Lake from D.C. until 5:00pm the next day, we made the executive decision to fly to Detroit, whether we made our connection or not…and we didn’t. L

Again, there were lessons to be learned in this situation as well.

Layovers in Detroit should be avoided at all costs.  Did I tell you that I have been stranded in Detroit twice already? This trip made it three.  Something about me and that city don’t work out quite right and I always manage getting left behind. L

The chairs in the Detroit Airport are not comfortable to sleep on.  Yes, yes I know that airport chairs aren’t meant to be slept on in the first place; however, they should know that there would be some instances where passengers might have to sleep there for the night.

Me:  Fake "sleeping" demonstrating one of our many sleeping techniques

N: Real sleeping! Shhh! 

It always pays to have a backup plan.  Since we missed our connection, we were able to secure two tickets on the first flight out of Detroit the next day.  Since we were going to be missing some movies, we sought out movies where we could squeeze in the time we had available.  Luckily, these movies included a Sundance premiere! Basically, we made the best out of a hairy situation and in some ways the backup plan (besides the sleep deprivation) was better than the original plan. J