Spectrum of the Seas Review: Day 18 – Debarkation + the [Long] Journey Homefeatured

There’s this phenomenon called Murphy’s Law that states that, essentially, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

We’ve had run ins with Murphy and his so called Law before. I even titled a trip review after it back in 2010 or 2011. I thought our run-ins with Murphy’s Law were a thing of our past, but when Stephanie woke me up around 4:00 in the morning on debarkation morning, Murphy was back and he was roaring his law at us with a vengeance.

I told Stephanie the night before not to tell me what time we had to wake up at. It was better if I just didn’t know. I’m not a morning person. Not ever. Not when I have a flight to catch. Not when I’m doing something exciting. Certainly not when I have to get off a cruise ship and end my vacation. When she started tapping me awake, I couldn’t quite grasp what she was saying but I distinctly heard the word cancelled and caught the expression on her face and no splash of cold water or the world’s strongest cup of coffee could have woken me up quicker.

American cancelled our flight from Shanghai to Los Angeles. They didn’t know how to rebook us but they were trying. As best I could tell, because the flight was so empty, it was no longer generating revenue for the airline so they just cancelled it. Apparently they do things like that. Thanks, American.

I tried turning on my cell phone. It didn’t work (a result of being on the ship and connected to the Wi-Fi, I later realized. It worked fine when we got off the ship and into Shanghai). Then American rebooked us from Shanghai to Dallas and Dallas to LA – in economy, not the Premium Economy seats we had paid for. Those were likely taken by all of the customers they had to re-accommodate from business class. And we’d likely miss our flight home from LA (which was booked on American but under another reservation number, so they wouldn’t have known to connect it).

So I did what I do best: I moved into action mode. We FaceTime’ed Mom, who quickly moved into action mode with us. She called American from her landline while we FaceTime’ed. I looked up alternative flights that had open seats in Premium Economy and a goddess named Becky at American was able to re-accommodate us on the flight I had found, taking us to Hong Kong on Cathay Dragon and then onto Los Angeles on American, where we had an hour less but still an hour and a half to connect on our flight home to Chicago. She also put us on the upgrade waiting list for business class and tried to find us a more direct flight home from Chicago. Bless the technology that allowed us to talk to her through a speakerphone that was picking up on a FaceTime call. It was a hack to get through and we were fortunate it worked.

Stephanie ran downstairs to the shore excursion desk to figure out what to do next – our original plan was to take a ship tour of Shanghai that would drop us off at the airport for our 6:30 PM flight. Our new flight was leaving at 1:00 PM, so there wasn’t time for that. They couldn’t get us on an airport transfer, either, because they had already submitted the manifest, so we had to take a taxi. Fortunately for us, Stephanie had gotten some Chinese currency before we left and someone at guest services wrote out the airport name in Mandarin for us to show the taxi driver, who likely would not speak any English. Our tour was outside of the cancellation window, even for extenuating circumstances outside of our control, so we were out the money we prepaid for it.

Even though we couldn’t take the tour anymore, we were still able to debark the ship with the group, which meant we were first off the ship. So we left our room with one last look over our shoulder and headed down to the Two70 for a quick breakfast.

It was nice and quiet down on deck 5 – we were up long before anyone else – and I think I needed that solitude to start to calm down a little. I was so worked up and scared – there was so much that could still go wrong. We sat outside the café, where we had a breakfast of egg sandwiches and cereals. Of all the areas of the ship, I was going to miss this one the most.

We headed over to the Royal Theater, where the staff encouraged us to reach out to Royal Caribbean for a tour refund when we got back and were super kind to us on a morning where we just kind of really needed it. We were cleared to leave the ship around 7:10 AM and they warned us it would be a long walk off the ship, similar to how it was in Hong Kong. The walk was filled with fresh flowers and celebratory posters for the ship’s christening later that day and despite the stress of the morning, we were so sad to leave.

To get out of the terminal, we had to first clear a health inspection (another thermal reading), get our luggage and pass through immigration and customs (where we had to have our luggage x-ray’ed). I’m glad we got off early because it was already a madhouse!

From there, we followed the signs for taxi. Someone came up to us asking if we needed a taxi, but having been swindled in Paris by saying yes, we politely said no and continued on following the signs until we reached the taxi stand. A port employee asked us where we were going and wrote it again on a piece of paper for the driver and we were led into a large taxi and quickly on our way to the airport. It was easy enough for two people with very little idea what they were doing and could not speak or read a lick of the native language.

The ride to the airport took just under an hour. It’s not incredibly far, but traffic gets heavy in places. The person Stephanie talked to on the ship told us the ride would cost around $100 Yuan but when the meter ran, it was $215 Yuan. She only had $200 Yuan. Taxi’s don’t accept credit cards in Shanghai. Our driver didn’t speak English, but as Stephanie offered him other currencies, he was kind enough to accept $20 US for the remaining payment. Again, on a day that started out as stressful, these small acts of kindness went a long way (though, to be fair, the exchange rate meant he came away much better with the US money she gave him).

Our luggage had to be scanned through agriculture screenings again just to enter the airport. We quickly found the Cathay Dragon flight desk, where two young men were so kind to check us in, get us some primo window seats on the flight to Hong Kong and confirmed that our luggage would adhere to American’s baggage allowance (four checked pieces between the two of us) and would go straight through to Los Angeles.

It was all going so well, until it didn’t (again). As we were passing through immigration, we weren’t sure what would happen. We were traveling on a 144-hour visa waiver that the ship had processed for us. In order to get this waiver, you need to be traveling to three countries (A, B and C). B has to be Shanghai. A and C have to be countries other than mainland China and cannot be the same country. Originally, we got the waiver going Hong Kong (our last port of call) – Shanghai – USA. Now, we were going Hong Kong – Shanghai – Hong Kong – USA. I spent the better part of our drive in trying to figure out what to do and what our options were just in case, but I couldn’t come up with anything conclusive other than we either could be totally in the clear or we could face fines or jail time (or even get a permanent ban from China) for violating immigration laws. Stephanie got through just fine after telling them the ship (from Singapore) processed her visa waiver. I got flagged and moved to an immigration supervisor. No one spoke understandable English and anytime I asked what was missing or what I could provide, I was told to just sit and wait. They weren’t kind in any regard. A man was yelling on the phone. I couldn’t tell what was going on. It was isolating and scary and I didn’t know what to do. They pulled Stephanie back and took her passport and boarding pass away, too. After a half hour, they came back with our passports and boarding passes, stamped us out of China, and let us through to security. I still don’t know why we were flagged and held or why they let us through, but I’m so, so grateful they did. I honestly don’t know if I could have handled it otherwise – I was already getting high heart rate notifications on my Apple Watch!

Exhausted, sweaty and most of all thirsty, we headed towards the First Class 69 Lounge, a lounge in the Priority Pass network that I get access to through my American Express card. We sat in comfortable, leather chairs, we had all the Diet Coke and bottled water we could ever want. We had snacks. We decompressed and crossed anything we could that we could just get home. A lot had to go right and we couldn’t do anything more than hope it would.

We did a little shopping in the airport – the Shanghai airport was very modern and had plenty of shopping to distract me from how stressed out this entire day was making me. I wished we had more time – in Shanghai, in China, heck even in the airport, but this was just about the extent of our mainland China experience and I just kind of had to find peace in that.

The flight to Hong Kong was short and uneventful. Even at just under three hours, we were served a full on hot meal and before we knew it, we were gliding back into the distinct skyline of Hong Kong.

With a new ease and familiarity, we found our way through the transfer process and back into the American Express Centurion Lounge. We tried to relax. We grabbed some food. We thought the worst of it was behind us and we were just ready to get on home.

We got to the gate about a half hour before boarding was scheduled to begin and everything was as normal as it could be. We were bumped too far down on the upgrade list to keep our hopes up, but all we really wanted was to get home. The inbound flight had arrived and a steady flow of passengers were making their way down to immigration. A gate agent made the rounds trying to encourage passengers to gate check their bags.

Boarding time came and nothing happened. Boarding time passed, departure time approached, nothing happened. After about a half hour or so when it was clear we were not leaving, a meek gate agent quietly told a few people that there was a technical issue. I pressed for more – was the technical issue on the plane or at the gate? It was the plane. There was a problem with the plane. People were in wheelchairs lined up at the gate. Everyone was in their boarding groups. I was incredibly frustrated that they let it get that far when it was clear we weren’t leaving anytime soon.

Another gate agent said it’d be 15-30 minutes. Another group asked if there’s enough time for them to go back to the Centurion Lounge and a gate agent told them yes, so I immediately knew we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. 30 minutes passed, still no update, and the flight was finally delayed another 15 minutes after that. Our original departure was 6:30 PM. It was moved to 8:30 PM. Not ideal, but we could make it work. We made our way back to the Centurion Lounge, too, for another round of snacks and soft drinks because the I’m Sorry Your Flight Is Delayed water bottle the agents handed out wasn’t going to cut it.

Our new boarding time was 7:40 PM, so we made our way back to the gate, where there was a long line. We were hoping boarding was about to begin, but it was just the I’m Sorry Your Flight Is Delayed sandwich cart making an appearance. 7:40 PM comes. It goes. At 8:30 PM, the new departure time, we were still at the gate and the gate agents said maintenance was doing their final checks and if all went well, they’d board. I call Mom to call American to re-book us home from LA because at this point, it was going to be too close to make our connecting flight. They changed us to the red eye. It wasn’t ideal, but at this point, we were past ideal. We were halfway around the world and firmly in get home now mode.

A group of college students came back from the Centurion Lounge plastered. Absolutely schnockered. No one knew where they were sitting, but everyone was hoping it was not next to them because whatever liquids (and solids) they swallowed down were going to inevitably come back up. Security kept passing by them and seemed to be unconvinced they could fly in their current state, but also seemed to be unwilling to actually do something about it. Some of the other passengers were concerned that in their drunken stupor, they’d do something dumb like try to open the emergency exit during the flight. Valid concern, but even as some of them run to the bathroom to get sick, the gate agents and security guards seemed reticent to pull them away.

15 minutes pass. Another 15 minutes. The gate agents gather and whisper. One of them takes off their yellow vest. A bad sign, someone says. But a door opens! A good sign, another passenger says. I see one of them look down the gate and make an x with their arms and I know what’s coming – the announcement that the flight is cancelled. We came all the way to Hong Kong – the complete opposite direction we needed to go in — for another cancelled flight.

Gate agents appear in swarms to start rebooking people for either other flights or overnight accommodations, but they’re only willing to talk to first class passengers. There’s about 12 of them, but there’s like 50 business class passengers who are sure to come before us. I try to call the Gold line. Apparently you can’t call that from outside the US, so I call general reservations. I immediately get patched through to an agent who was lovely and calm and oh so helpful. I explain to her that we’re on our second cancelled flight, that we just want to get home and that we’d like to do that in the Premium Economy seats we’d booked because it’s a long flight home and we’ve already flown out of the way (and got detained at immigration because of it!) to find another way home. It’s 9:00 PM. She has a flight to Tokyo that leaves at 11:55 PM, where we could connect on a flight to LAX and then a flight home to Chicago. We’d get home 17 hours later than we planned, but we’d get home. She tries to see if she can book us more directly and as I’m on hold, the call drops. I call back to see if they can reconnect me with her and the new agent can’t. Just as I’m beginning to explain this entire ordeal again, the original agent calls me back – she had my number and didn’t want to lose me. She got us rebooked, everything was confirmed and we needed to move — fast. I didn’t catch her name, but I did ask to speak to her supervisor so I could tell her how wonderful and helpful she was on a very difficult day. A small measure for the swift help she provided, but it was the least I could do.

Meanwhile, Stephanie found another American Airlines agent, her name was Anita and I’m convinced she was an angel on earth. I don’t know how Stephanie found her, or maybe she found us, but she was almost like our concierge escort. To get on our new flight – we had two hours, but only an hour and 20 minutes to get our luggage checked before bag drop closed – we had to exit the terminal, go through immigration and customs, get our bags, go re-check our bags, get our new boarding passes, go through immigration and security again and take a shuttle to our gate. She walked us through ALL of it. She cleared all the blockers. She made new lines. She got shit done. I’m quite convinced she was an actual angel.

While we were waiting for our luggage in the middle of all of that, we met up with the others from our flight. They were still waiting to be rebooked, so calling American directly and getting our itinerary straightened out on my own definitely worked in our favor. I gave out the phone number and directions to whomever asked – Stephanie said I was more helpful than American’s own agents but I’m a firm believer in paying it forward and if it helped anyone else get closer to home, it was the least I could do.

When we got to the Cathay Dragon desk (yep, third Cathay Dragon flight in three weeks and the second that day – we were VIP’s at that point!), my reservation was ticketed but Stephanie’s was lagging (even though we were on the same reservation). Anita got on the phone. The agent clicked some keys and magically, her tickets came out. Hers were fine and set. Mine had the dreaded SSSS on them – Secondary Security Screening Selection. I didn’t know how it would be but I don’t know anyone who has anything positive to say.

We bid adieu to Anita, who held our hands and wished us luck getting home and I couldn’t stop thinking about how her just being there to help us meant so much. On a day that was so frustrating and frankly upsetting, the small acts of kindness by others meant so much – Anita literally walking us from flight to flight and everything in between, a woman from LA visiting her friends in HK who offered to get us a sandwich or a cup of coffee, the front desk agent at the Centurion Lounge who welcomed us back after our flight was delayed, the agent who rebooked our flights for the third time that day and was so kind in doing so swiftly and dealing with my constant questions – I’ll never forget it. Any and every act of kindness that was sent our way, it made my day the slightest bit more tolerable.

In the end, we made it to the gate for our flight to Tokyo with literally only minutes to spare. I was hot and sweaty and in all the mess of the day, I hadn’t been drinking much and I was definitely starting to show signs of dehydrating. I’m a big baby and I can’t function when I’m dehydrated. Stephanie found something called the Water Room, which had cups and purified water machines and I literally started crying when she brought me the most refreshing cup of water I’d ever had. I was so overwhelmed by that point that just getting a cup of water was making me emotional. I’d also not slept since 4:00 that morning so I’d like to blame the lack of sleep and American’s inability to get me home for my emotional outburst because I am definitely not an emotional girl.

Our flight boarded on time and much to my surprise, we were offered a full meal on an 11:55 PM flight. The food was good, the flight wasn’t great – it was super turbulent (which might have been more pronounced because we were sitting in the back of the plane in row 44 and I haven’t sit any further back than row 20 in over a decade because Mom always told me that sitting around the wing meant a smoother ride) and I didn’t get much sleep. But we made it to Tokyo and the promise of a new day also brought a new chance to get us home.

The transfer in Tokyo was super easy and as I braced myself for my secondary security check, I got nothing other than the standard x-ray and body scan. I asked two agents and they had no idea, but I knew it would have to come up later on. After security, we made our way to an empty gate. Stephanie napped. I had nothing else to do so I just logged into work and started clearing out emails. This adventure would keep me away another day and I wanted to be on top of everything for when I got back. If I got back. When I got back.

We were both getting hit hard by exhaustion. I was determined to power through it, but Stephanie had enough. At the Haneda airport, they have airside hotels where you can rent rooms by the hour and for around $100, Stephanie rented us what turned out to be a very nice hotel room for six hours so we could get some proper sleep. I fought it, I didn’t think it was worth the money, but as we settled into the room (which had a private bathroom with a full shower and plenty of toiletries provided), I was entirely grateful for it. We had grabbed some breakfast sandwiches from the food court (one of the few western food options available!) and we fell asleep just as soon as we finished them.

A few hours later, we woke up feeling more refreshed and less like zombies. We checked out of the airport hotel and got in some shopping at the airport before heading to the gate. We spent an obscene amount of money on special flavor Kit Kat bars that are exclusive to Japan. We bought locally produced chocolates and confections and it was a miracle we found any space in our suitcases for all of the things we bought!

Before we knew it, it was time to head down to the gate. For all of my worrying about the SSSS on my boarding pass, it turned out I wasn’t the only one selected and the process was quite simple – a very polite security officer swabbed my shoes, my clothes, my hands and my carry-ons for explosives residue, cleared me, apologized for the inconvenience and then let me on my way.

We were booked in Premium Economy again for the flight back, this time on a Dreamliner instead of the 777 we flew in on. The flight home from Toyko was also much more abbreviated – 10 hours vs the 17 hours we came in with. Though the seat was the same, I much preferred the 2x3x2 layout of the Dreamliner than the 2x4x2 cabin layout of the 777, especially because in getting re-booked so late, Stephanie and I lost our seats in the two-across row and got seated in the middle. And Stephanie, somehow the stable one of the two of us since I started crying over water in Hong Kong, took the middle seat and let me have the aisle seat. I would have let her have the aisle seat and it ultimately didn’t matter because the seats were so spacious and had their own arm rests so a middle seat wasn’t really any different from the aisle seat, but I was eternally grateful given how the end of our trip had been pacing.

The same amenity kit, slippers and Casper pillow and blanket were waiting on my seat, as well as the in-flight menu and Stephanie and I settled in for the ten-hour flight. This flight was SO much easier than our flight in. We both were able to sleep more (I think I slept for, at least, two thirds of the flight) and the cabin attendants were far more visible than on the last flight, constantly making the rounds through the cabin. The food was really good (especially the asparagus risotto!), too. The only complaint I had was that the cabin was absolutely frigid and I was almost certain I was coming down with a chest cold, which meant I was coughy, achy and freezing cold. It seemed to me that regulating cabin temperature is something American has trouble with in general. Maybe I was just doing my best Goldilocks impression, but everything was either too hot or too cold, but never quite right.

We landed just about an hour early, making our total flight time just around ten hours. Great, right? Except we landed so early that they didn’t have a gate for us. Apparently at LAX’s TBIT (the international terminal), they only have three gates that can hold the type of plane we had…and they were all full. So we had to go to a remote lot so we could be bussed in. Awesome. Except that was full, too. So we sat on the tarmac for about 40 minutes until they had a spot for us in the remote lot. On the plus, though, because there was no room for us at the international terminal, they were bussing us into the American Airlines terminal, which had its own Customs and Immigration queues. This was a relief because according to Twitter, the lines at LAX and SFO had been insane (like hours long), so having a line that was only for our plane was a good thing because we only had two hours to connect! And thankfully, Stephanie and I got on the first shuttle bus off the plane. We both (separately) basically walked through Customs, Stephanie through her Global Entry line and me through the regular line. I had some additional questions I had to answer (I imagine connected to my SSSS tag), but after confirming that I had indeed answered the questions honestly and truthfully, my passport got stamped and Stephanie and I made our way to the luggage drop for our connecting flight and then upstairs for security screening. Second bonus, we were already at the American Airlines terminal, so we didn’t have to change terminals before our flight! And, side note, at this point, I was just so happy to be home. I was smiling at strangers. I kept smiling at the Customs agent even though she didn’t seem to have the patience for it. I just missed the kind of friendliness you find here. Not to say Asia wasn’t friendly. It’s just culturally very different.

LAX is…not my favorite airport. It’s buzzy and disheveled. The food options aren’t great. It’s only redeeming quality to me was that the Backstreet Boys filmed the music video to I Want It That Way there. Stephanie and I found our way to the general vicinity of our gate, grabbed some lunch from the Dunkin Donuts and settled in. Once we finished our sandwiches, we decided to just mosey over to the gate, only to find out they had begun boarding! I was sure it wasn’t supposed to happen for another ten minutes, but I was so out of it at that point. We walked right on the plane and it was a packed flight. Every seat was full. And uncomfortable. And HOT! The doors closed on time and everything seemed to be moving along…until we didn’t depart. The pilots came on to tell us that they had been late switches to this route and there was something about a reroute because of storms and how we now needed more fuel. So we were delayed waiting for the fuel and we were taking a less efficient route. I think I fell asleep because I woke up and we were airborne. I fell asleep. I woke up. I fell back asleep again. I think I slept for most of the flight and I woke up feeling groggy and disoriented. I started feeling a heaviness in my chest on the flight to Tokyo and I was convinced now more than ever I was developing the chest cold people on the ship were passing around. I was super thirsty and it felt like this flight was taking forever.

After two days of travel, landing at O’Hare felt like the biggest blessing. I had never been so happy to be home after weeks away. I was exhausted (and, it turned out, clinically dehydrated *and* suffering from a mondo sinus infection) and it legitimately took me weeks to recover physically from the stress of our trip home, the jetlag and lack of sleep and get back to feeling like myself but I would have gone through it every time for the trip we had. It was one of my favorites, one that was just so special to me, and I just hope one day, we’re fortunate enough to do it all over again (but maybe without the whole multiple-cancelled-flights-and-detained-in-China part).