Bahamas 2019 Day 0

D0: Getting There

The toughest decision was whether to upgrade to First Class for the SJC-MIA flights. (We would never normally consider FC, but since we were trading in points it became a viable option.) Getting to Florida (whether FLL, MCO, or MIA) from the Bay Area is simple, but is NOT a comfortable trip. The main carriers are American, Delta, and United. American flies absolutely the WORST planes to Florida from here. None of the carriers can be said to have comfortable Economy seats, but AA’s planes are particularly crammed full of narrow seats, most of which lack both personal IFE AND power at the seats. So AA wasn’t a real player for us. They DO have some good timing options, so it is a shame that they use such poor equipment.

Seriously, American? You want us to use our own devices for IFE…but don’t put power into the seats on the Airbus planes so we can keep our tablets running? And you use the same narrow seats in Economy and Economy+? And those narrow B737 seats? No thanks!

United to Miami had really limited timing choices, none of which worked for us. They arrived in Miami later than we preferred. The biggest issue, however, was that the post-cruise flights all got home quite late on Friday night, which was the same day Andrew was returning. We already planned to have him picked up at the airport and kept with a family member until we got in, but we wanted our flight to arrive home no later than about 8PM so we weren’t imposing too long on goodwill. (MUCH later we’d find out that Andrew’s red-eye flight home wouldn’t arrive until early Saturday morning, long after we’d be home.)

So that left Delta. I had spent a lot of time looking at Delta’s Comfort+ seats on their planes, but reviews on SeatGuru were really discouraging. A typical plane would have 4-5 rows of C+ seats, but the reviews would suggest that more than half of them were actually sub-standard even from an Economy perspective. Too close to bulkheads, too narrow due to in-seat tray storage, too narrow due to impingement by exit doors, etc. LOTS of complaints that being charged a premium price for some of these C+ seats bordered on fraud. Mostly importantly, the C+ seats really didn’t improve on what was already a pretty narrow (typically 17” wide) seat. So moving up to Comfort+ seemed like an absolute waste.

But what about First Class? Those seats were listed as 3-4” wider than the Economy and Comfort+ seats. Sure, lots of complaints that the cushioning wasn’t great, and that all the other things you might want in FC – mostly upgraded food – weren’t that impressive…but those W I D E R seats were the thing we really wanted. Since we were basically getting a pair of Economy seats for free (thanks again, credit card points) we decided to pay for the upgrade. If we hadn’t been subsidizing the trip with points then we’d have sucked it up and endured really uncomfortable planes in Economy seats.

The planes Delta uses SJC-MIA. The Comfort+ seats give no more width than standard Econ, although kudos for wide-spread personal IFE and seat power. The First Class seats really give you some nice additional width. Many reviews says the “Recliners” really DON’T recline much – just a couple of inches, like typical Econ seats.

We had flown Delta for our 2016 Alaska family cruise and had endured no less than 4 flight changes (made by Delta, not us) in the weeks leading up to our departure. Ironically, by the time the dust settled we ended up back on our original flight – which had theoretically been cancelled as the very first change they made. So given that I was making flight reservations eight months in advance for our trip to Miami I fully expected Delta to once again make random changes to our flights.
Delta didn’t disappoint:

Late October 2018: Minor delay for departure of last leg home
November 18, 2018: All four flight legs change numbers, but everything else the same
December 8, 2018: All four flight legs change departure times by +/- 15 minutes. Total time of inbound legs about 30 minutes longer.
January 19, 2019: Return flight from MIA changed number and equipment (was A321, now A320)
February 4, 2019: Return flight from ATL changed to depart 2 minutes later the previously.

About 72 hours prior to our flight we each got an email from Delta asking us to pre-select our meal on the longer leg of the flight. We each had a choice of either a turkey-sausage omelet with potatoes or steel-cut oatmeal with fruit and nuts. Apparently, Delta has been doing this for about a year now, as it helps them both streamline on board service as well as ensure they actually have the food that the passengers really want. I like this a lot – I personally hate the stress of worrying about whether my choice of meal will be available by the time service comes around to me. The actual meal was not very tasty.

As our flight was going to board starting at 5:45AM, by working backward we realized that we were going to have to get up about 4AM. YUCK! As usual, I made prior arrangements to use Park N Travel for parking and shuttle service to the terminal. Didn’t want to risk trying to find a Lyft at 430AM to get to the airport. We got to the parking just before 5AM and were in the terminal in more than enough time for our flight.

A (fortunately) amusing introduction to our flight. We were sitting in row 2, so could hear what was going on in the cockpit pre-flight. At one point they were clearly doing some systems testing because we heard a pleasant (but forceful) voice saying "TOO LOW. TOO LOW", "PULL UP, PULL UP", and "STALL WARNING." Better to hear those on the ground than in the air, but did help get the pulse rate up for just a moment there!

The flight in FC was pretty nice. We couldn’t understand the complaints about sub-standard seat cushioning. Seemed fine to us. While a lifetime of flying Economy means that I’m conceptually aware that FC exits the plane faster than I usually do, I truly had NO IDEA how fast FC is actually off the plane!. We kept getting off the plane within about 90 seconds of the door opening. That was amazing (but not something I’d pay extra for.) The food was nothing special, although not ever having to push past a drink cart (since everything is hand-delivered) is nice. Again, not something I’d pay extra for. Boarding first and knowing that there will be no competition for overhead space? Nice…but not worth extra. Now, the additional seat width and leg room? THAT I might be willing to pay extra for – although the reality is that we won’t. It will be tempting...but we won’t.

During our stop-over in Atlanta we had lunch at Grindhouse Burgers. I had selected them based upon reviews from sites that surveyed all the airport restaurants, and this one rated highly on multiple sites without being a really expensive place. Not sure what all those reviewers were thinking – we thought it was pretty poor.

Got a Lyft from the airport to our hotel, Hampton Inn and Suites Midtown. Took about 15 minutes. The room was very comfortable. For dinner, there was a wine bar called Lagnieppe (recommended by someone on CruiseCritic) that was ½ block away that was INCREDIBLE! It offered wine-by-the-glass and build-your-own meat+cheese platters inside - plus live music starting at 9P on Sundays, when we happened to be there - and outside had tons of seating with a food window to get things like churassco and fries. We both had this and it was delicious. A great chimichurri sauce, and I think the fries were among the best I’ve ever had.

We had semi-planned to buy a couple bottles of wine on our way out the door of the restaurant, but as we looked through their collection we couldn’t find anything that appealed to us (plus prices were on the high side). So in the end we decided to keep the backpack light and order our wine onboard.