Air travel currently is unpredictable! Two of my coworkers and their daughters and I started off on our trip to San Antonio (SAT) from our home airport of Fort Smith, Arkansas (FSM) on a Thursday evening after working all day. This later flight works out perfect to get on our way for a long weekend since we have Fridays off during the summer. And since FSM only has one airline that services us, we always have to connect through DFW.
While waiting for the flight to arrive, I received multiple notices of gate changes on our connecting flight in DFW. Since our flight was a little late taking off and landing, I checked the most recent gate as we taxied on arrival. We quickly headed to the Skylink to change terminals only to find once we arrived at our newest gate that it had changed again while we were riding the Skylink! Off to the Skylink again to another terminal. Finally made it to the correct gate and flew to SAT without further issue. We made it to our hotel in San Antonio, Grand Hyatt Riverwalk, a little after 1am.
We started off Friday lazily with coffee on the 5th floor patio of the hotel. Around 11am, we found our way down to the lobby looking for an Uber to take us to Sea World. Our first driver that arrived immediately complained about how little money Uber paid him for this long route and asked us to cancel the ride and pay him outside of the app. Since we didn’t feel comfortable with that, we politely sent him on his way. The second guy was very friendly and when we confirmed he was good with the fare we loaded into his minivan. We got quite the earful on that ride. Apparently when we are quoted $32 from Uber/Lyft/etc., the drivers only get $18 of that. The driver we rode with also had his own cab business and gave us his card and asked if we felt comfortable with it, to contact him directly if we needed a ride back to the hotel after our Sea World trip was over, which we did.
Sea World was a lot of fun. I enjoy riding the rides and when we first got there, the lines were short. We were able to ride one roller coaster twice without having to re-queue. We watched the sea lion show, the orca show and the dolphins training. The big swing ride never disappoints in leaving my belly at the top! And the water ride was refreshing on the 100* day. The lunch situation was less than optimal – the lines were long, the tables were full & dirty, the food was sold out and left only limited selections.
Once back at the hotel, we followed our Uber driver’s recommendation and ate dinner at The Original Mexican Restaurant on the Riverwalk. The food was good, not outstanding. After dinner, we wandered down the Riverwalk further, then headed back towards our hotel to ride on the boat tour. Our hotel location was perfect for the activities we wanted to do.
Saturday morning, I was up before my friends. I grabbed a coffee and went for a walk toward the Hemisfair Park area. The girls were excited to go shopping so we did a quick tour of the Alamo then commenced with heading to the mall. Lunch was at Rainforest Cafe, then we headed to the Tower of the Americas. The 750′ tower was built for the 1968 World’s Fair and had a great 360 degree view of San Antonio. Afterwards, we went back to the mall. Well, at least the girls were headed back to the mall. Kim & I headed to Margaritaville for chips, salsa and of course a margarita!
When we checked out of the hotel Saturday morning, we checked our bags with the bellman. That came in very handy because we met “our driver” at the hotel for him to take us to the airport. We had arranged for our Sea World driver to come back and get us for our trip to the airport – he sent his brother who is also a driver. Our flight was scheduled for 7:33pm and we had already received a couple of notices that the flight was delayed. We originally had a nice 2 hour cushion at DFW. With each delay, our cushion was getting shorter and shorter. Eventually, they canceled our flight completely and rebooked us on the following flight out of SAT. But that also meant we were not going to make our connection. The gate agents do not get enough recognition for the juggling they have to do with a plane full of passengers that need to be rerouted! She was very kind and found us 3 hotel rooms near DFW along with meal vouchers and transportation to and from the hotel. Our flight Sunday morning was uneventful and got us home in plenty of time to get a nap in and make it back to work first thing Monday morning.
In all, we had a very fun weekend! We adapted as needed and got home unscathed!
| Hotel | 24,000 | Chase Ultimate Rewards Points ($400 value) |
| Airfare | $238 | Airfare credit from Salt Lake City trip ($362 remaining) |
