Reservations
Our spring break trip to the East Coast was a smashing success, I think in part because we all stuck to our assigned roles. Logan’s job was to be the main driver; my job was to distribute snacks and hold everyone’s stuff on my lap; and the kids’ job was to instantly start fighting each time they got into the car.
As successful as our trip was, however, it did get off to a bit of a rocky start. First off, we boarded our plane in Spokane and then sat on the runway for an hour and a half. Technical difficulties gave way to paperwork difficulties, which eventually gave way to human difficulties involving an unaccompanied minor who had to deplane 30 seconds after we’d finally been given the go-ahead to take off. Yada yada yada, we arrived in Denver 20 minutes after our connecting flight was supposed to take off.
Luckily (?) for us, we soon learned that our connecting flight was delayed at least an hour, which was a blessing because we had time to get food for dinner and didn’t die of starvation on an airplane as previously feared. The good news is that we made it onto our flight and ended up in Philadelphia as planned. The bad news is that we arrived two hours later than expected, at the delightful hour of two in the morning.
In an ideal world, the indomitable Dittos would tra-la-la their way to the car rental desk, pick up their reserved Suburban and be on their merry way to their (also reserved) comfy double hotel rooms.
Please note: we are not living in an ideal world. I may just be misunderstanding how reservations work, but when I put money down for something—say, an eight-passenger Suburban with adequate trunk space for all the luggage of said eight passengers—I expect that “something” to be available at the day and time promised.
Car rental agencies, however, seem to interpret “reservations” as general requests, as in, “I have eight people in my family, but as long as you give me a car that seats in the general ballpark of five to eight passengers, it will be fine. What to do with those three extra kids is MY problem! Here’s $1,500.”
When we arrived to pick up the car we’d reserved months prior, the rental agent acted like he’d never even heard of such a thing as an eight-passenger Suburban.
“It was right there on your website,” Logan told him, showing him our reservation. “See? Right here: ‘eight-passenger Suburban’.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the man replied. “We don’t even have any of those in our lot right now. The best I can give you is a five-passenger SUV with a third row of seats that folds up from the trunk.”
“If three of our kids are essentially sitting in the trunk, where will we put all our luggage?” I asked (maybe a little too) impatiently, pointing at the nine duffel bags strewn around the floor of the rental agency.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he repeated again, prompting what is possibly the biggest eye roll Julia Ditto has ever produced in her entire lifetime.
After an hour of back and forth, we finally gave up and drove their tiny SUV to the hotel, praying for better luck with the hotel reservation gods. But no. The gods hate us.
“I’m so sorry, we must have given away your second room,” the clerk told Logan as he checked in (at three in the morning by now). “We have one room left; do you want it?”
We didn’t even try to argue this time. We took our one room with two queen beds and laid out blankets on the floor for the four kids who drew the short straw.
“I’ll give you all five bucks if you’ll just lay down somewhere and go to sleep,” I finally said after half an hour of trying to Tetris ourselves into our room. Twenty minutes later, the room was quiet, with only the incessantly clicking air conditioner to remind us that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.
After a solid six hours of sleep, Logan woke up and drove back to the car rental place, where he found a shiny black Suburban all gassed up and ready for us to take on our week-long adventure.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said when he arrived back at the hotel and delivered the good news. “I had almost figured out which kids to leave behind, but I wasn’t completely sure.”