Carnival Sunshine Review, Part 11: Debarkationfeatured

I have this…sense…when we pull back into domestic waters on debarkation morning and my cellular service is restored. Something that wakes me up and tells me I’m reconnected to the world.

But connection is a bittersweet pill to swallow. After 8 days with Mom and Stephanie, I was ready to reconnect to my world. With that, though, it also meant reconnecting with work. And it meant I was about to trade in drinks with paper umbrellas and days of endless sun for campaign management, drip coffee and Excel grids.

((Well, maybe not drip coffee. We do have a pretty fancy espresso machine that makes some decent lattes and cappuccinos.))

My spidey senses failed me on this one. I had internet service the entire trip so reconnection for me meant I could access my texts and voicemails, and I slept right through that. My service was restored by the time I woke up at 6:30 in the morning. Bright and early, nice and rested. The sunrise was beautiful and there wasn’t a hint of sleep left in my eyes, but there was a sting in looking out the window as we docked in Port Canaveral. As quickly as this trip came on, it ended.

We’ve cruised enough to know that laying out our outfits and gathering our things the night before makes debarkation slightly smoother, so we quickly put ourselves together, rounded up our carry luggage and said farewell to our room steward Fauzi (who was seriously dream team material – we left him a bottle of champagne and an extra tip for his wonderful service). And then we headed upstairs to roll the farewell tour onto my amigos at the Blue Iguana, who asked me to come say goodbye before we left. They started plating my breakfast before I even reached the counter. Good dudes.

Debarkation takes awhile and our flight wasn’t until the afternoon, so we took our time in having our breakfast al fresco in the brisk Florida air.

Jaime announced that we were slightly delayed in debarkation but didn’t mention why. Either way, we headed down to the Limelight Lounge (which served as the Platinum/Diamond lounge/Special Needs debarkation lounge) when they began self assist and within minutes, Jaime had come over to personally escort the VIFP group down.

We left the lounge around 8:15 am, dinged out one last time, grabbed our luggage (props to the good people at Port Canaveral who line luggage up the old fashioned way instead of using carousels that take forever and a half) and we sailed right through customs. We boarded our transfer less than a half hour from when our number was called.

The drive from Port Canaveral to Orlando International takes around 45 minutes and, predictably, the airport was packed with people going home from their Christmas trips and Floridians leaving for their New Years trips. Thankfully, my status on American meant we could check our bags via the Priority line. I booked Mom’s flight, so she could use the Priority line with me through security and both of us got lucky to find TSA Precheck also stamped on our boarding passes, but Stephanie was on a separate reservation and had neither Priority or Precheck and we split up at security. Mom and I walked through security in (I kid you not – I timed it) two minutes and settled in to wait for Stephanie to make her way through. And a little bit of luck found its way to her, too – she was randomly assigned to a Precheck line anyways, and we were reunited and riding the monorail to the gates within ten minutes.

With nearly three hours to kill before our flight, we exhausted nearly every option MCO offers: we walked around and browsed the shops, we grabbed lunch, we hooked into the free wi-fi and we paced corridors.

Oh, and pro tip? Don’t wait until you’re at the airport to buy those Disney souvenirs. Yikes.

We eventually settled in at the gate so I could wait out my least favorite game: Clear an Upgrade at Departure. And in true fashion, I was the only person on the upgrade list not to clear (but in the interest of full disclosure, there were also only four people on the list and the only upgrades I can seem to ever clear are 7:00 am Sunday flights to Seattle, so my hopes were low to begin with). But it was a quick, smooth flight and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

And it ended as it began: walking through O’Hare, anticipating the next time I’d be back strolling that same corridor and where I’d be off to next.

Stephanie had parked at the airport, and as soon as we were in the car driving downtown towards my condo, our discussion was firmly planted forward…because up next? Vista. Europe. Whoa.