I missed our Bermudian service, going through the 'taxi terrors'

FRIDAY, MAY 18: My wife showed up at the Delta counter on our way back home from our cruises and they couldn’t find our reservation.

It was a rare case in which we didn’t have our reservation number and this was the one time we really needed it.

After doing some searching, the attendant did find it — unfortunately for us, in a major case of brain freeze, I had made it for the previous Saturday.

Oops.

We were pretty much out of luck since the flight had already left and we had not asked for a flight change.

Delta could get us on a flight to hit our connector out of Atlanta on Sunday, but instead of us leaving on Saturday afternoon, we would have to take a 5:40am on Sunday and the new tickets were going to cost us $1,400 for economy class.

My wife, who earned sainthood status forever for remaining calm in the face of my bungle, said she could work out a better deal than that.

So while sitting in the terminal she saw AirTran would only cost us slightly more than $700 for first class.

That was a winner considering it was 1) $700 less; 2) we were in first class rather than economy; and 3) it was leaving in three hours time instead of before 6am which meant a 3am wake up call.

The only ‘problem’ at that point was we were at the wrong terminal and we had a wonderful taxi driver zip us around to the correct one.

We had five other cab trips, and three of them were completely abysmal.

It truly made me miss the typical Bermudian service we get as I went through the ‘taxi terrors.’

We had a driver take us from Fort Lauderdale Airport to the Comfort Inn Airport/Cruise port. He was angry that the trip was so short and was verbal about it up front before we even got into the cab complaining that we should take the free shuttle from the hotel.

We didn’t want the free shuttle, we just wanted to get to the hotel and rest after travelling all day.

He drove five miles per hour below the speed limit and then proceeded to take us to the wrong hotel.

While in Atlanta, we had another cab driver complain about the same thing, that we should use the free shuttle, but instead of driving slowly, he drove like a madman. Once he got to the hotel, he overcharged us, which ended up being a wash as I tend to tip generously so he didn’t end up with any more money.

The third in our series of taxi cab confessions was in Jamaica. My brother and his family, my sister and her son and myself wanted to get a cab for a one hour tour as I had spa appointment back on the ship and could not do a two hour tour.

There was a sign clearly offering one hour tours and the price and we finally found a taxi driver who was willing to take us, but moaned on and on about it being just an hour.

In returning to the cruise port he got into an altercation with a Jamaican police officer after he got in front of a long line of other taxis.

We were all finally relieved to be out of his cab as we could see him being carted off to jail.

Earlier I mentioned the Comfort Inn Airport/Cruise port — this is a hotel to avoid. We had booked it because of a free shuttle to the cruise terminal as well as the airport, but the outside doors of the third story rooms looked like someone or something had tried to claw their way in.

Because people had booked the hotel for the free cruise terminal shuttle, everyone was checking out at the same time, which meant an over crowded lobby and waits for the shuttle.

On top of this they originally checked us in a smoking room, complete with a blanket with burn marks and holes, when we had booked a non-smoking room.

They moved us after complaining but the damage was done.

We stayed at a Renaissance Ft Lauderdale Plantation Hotel in between our two cruises, and including a rental car for our stay, was the same price per day as the Comfort Inn.

The hotel has just had a lobby makeover the previous year and it is close enough to the famous Sawgrass Mills Mall.