1st ever attempt at a trip report - "I feel like I'm on the Amazing Race"

It had been a rough start to 2013 for us. My aunt passed away at the beginning of January and my dad passed away January 16th. Shortly after that, our 15 year old Italian Greyhound started having strokes, then one of our labs got some mystery illness that required her to stay the night in the Doggie ER hooked up to an IV for 24 hours.....I decided that I NEEDED to go to the beach (Negril, specifically). I talked the hubby into it and found some decent airfare so it was on. This would be our 10th trip to Jamaica (5th to Negril) but our first non-AI trip. We booked two nights in Star cottage at Catcha Falling Star and four nights at Cocolapalm.


Day 1, April 6 (my birthday) - We had a 6 a.m. flight out of Dayton so the day started at 2 a.m. when the alarm went off. We were on the road about 3:15 for the hour plus drive from Cincinnati. Got to the airport and checked-in in plenty of time. Got on the plane, pulled away and we were off......or so we thought.....Next thing we knew, we were driving back to the gate. The flight attendant announced that there was a mechanical issue and had to go back to the gate. We sat at the gate on the plane for a few minutes and got another announcement that we had to wait for maintenance so we could get off the plane if we wanted. UH OH! This doesn't sound good. We were told that it would be 2 hours before maintenance would be there. WTH??? It was chaos at the gate desk mostly with people trying to figure out how they were going to get to their cruises. We were told that they were dealing with the cruise people first. OK, there's a second flight out of Baltimore to Montego Bay that we can hopefully get on. It doesn't get in at 11 a.m. but hey, we'll take it.

Well, once maintenance got there, we were told it was going to be another 2 hours for a part to be flown in from Atlanta. Well, crap, we're gonna miss that second flight to Montego Bay now. We were basically told that we could fly to Baltimore and catch the flight to Montego Bay tomorrow. UGH!!! This means we miss a day of our 6 day trip. I emailed Catcha Falling Star and let them know what was going on. We also called Kingsley to let him know. I had also booked the VIP arrival service so I let them know that we needed to cancel our arrival service.

Prior to our trip, I had been on flightstats.com quite a bit to determine if we wanted to purchase the arrival service or not. This obsession that I have for Jamaica came in handy. I pulled out the kindle and went onto flightstats.com to see if there were any flights arriving in Jamaica today that we could still get to from Dayton. Low and behold, there was a flight out of Dayton to Charlotte, arriving at MBJ at 7:53 pm. I went onto the US Airways website and it was possible to order the tickets so that meant there were seats available. We had befriended another couple on our 6 a.m. flight that was also headed to MBJ so we headed to the US Airways desk and asked if we could buy tickets for the Dayton-Charlotte-MBJ flight. The guy at the counter told me no, they were not available. I pulled out my kindle and showed him that I could buy them online right now. So, he looks again and still says no. Then, he says, oh wait, I found it. Yes, we can do that. We could buy a one-way ticket to MBJ. Awesome. OK, so now we have to get our luggage off the AirTran plane. So, we go down to the AirTran counter and make sure it's ok that we cancel our one-way to MBJ but we want to keep our flight home but we need our luggage off that plane NOW. We are told no problem. US Airways told us we had to have our luggage checked into them in the next half hour. AirTran reps tell us, yes, it's coming. In the meantime, AirTran confirms that they are refunding us the one-way amount of our ticket, which basically offsets the one-way tickets we are purchasing from US Airways. AirTran finally brings us our luggage and we are all set. We are going to make it to Jamaica today. I email Catcha Falling Star back and we call Kingsley back to see if he can still transport us to Negril. The US Airways flights went off without a hitch and we arrived to MBJ about 20 minutes early at 7:30. I should add that AirTran also gave us each a free roundtrip ticket because of all of this.

Our crew at the Charlotte airport Rum Bar.

Attachment 25724

Day 1 to be continued....I promise the rest of the trip won't be this long.

Great start! Looking forward to more.

Wow - what a beginning! Your persistence paid off.

wow.....I guess you could say you were lucky...I am, however, surprised that a flight to MoBay didn't leave jammed full, and seats were available at the last minute...I've NEVER seen that, and always wondered what the airline would do for us if we missed a connection..

wow - great that you got there! Looking forward to more :)

nice start -- don't worry about long - we like long :-)

:)very interesting, I can tell this is going to be a good report!

Sorry for your losses.

Day 1 continued.....

We arrive at MBJ and breeze through customs and immigration and grab our luggage. We go out to meet Kinsley and find Robert, his driver. It was raining in Montego Bay when we arrived and Robert was very safe. We stopped off somewhere to grab some Red Stripes and made another stop at a gas station for gas and more Red Stripes. There were people everywhere around the gas station. We are in Negril when nature calls. I know we're close but I gotta go now. I tell Robert that I know that we're close but I need to stop to use the facilities. He pulls into Times Square which is closed. He talks to the security guard and the security guard walks us through Times Square to the bathroom. Whew, barely made it but I'm good now. Back on the road to Catcha. We get to the gate and tell the security guard that we are staying there tonight. He says that no one is there to take care of us and all the rooms are booked but he lets us in. He calls for someone to come up and talk to us. A lovely, young lady comes up and we tell her who we are and that we are booked in Star. She proceeds to tell us that they got an email saying we wouldn't be there so they booked our room and there are no rooms available. I told her that yes, I did email to say we wouldn't be there but emailed back to say we would make it later today. She tells me they didn't get that email. We had already gotten our luggage out of Robert's car and he was turning around. I waved him down as he was passing by the office to ask him to wait a minute and explained that we do not have a room. Robert called Kingsley. Kingsley called Xtabi and the young lady at Catcha called Seastar. Seastar has a room for us so we load our luggage back up in Robert's car and he drives us over to Seastar. I wouldn't of cared if they would've gave me a pillow and a blanket to sleep in the office or kitchen at this point. Our day started about 20 hours ago so I just wanted to get to my final destination.

We arrived at Seastar and the Saturday night party was going strong. The sweet lady at the front desk greeted us and took care of us quickly and we were on our way to room 5. We dropped off our things and freshened up a bit and headed down to have a beer and catch a little bit of the show. One Red Stripe was enough for me and the bed was calling my name. Jeff walked back to the room with me and then headed back down to the bar. Needless to say, I didn't hear him come back in. I was OUT.

More more!

Some pictures from our Seastar stay.

Attachment 25726
Attachment 25727
Attachment 25728
Attachment 25729
Attachment 25730
Attachment 25731
Attachment 25732
Attachment 25733

Rough start to the trip.
Great start to the report!
Looking forward to hearing more :)

Lovemylabs:

"I'm sorry to tell you that you are the last team to arrive. Fortunately, for you, this is a non-elimination leg!!!" (Amazing Race reference for those who are wondering.)

Rough start, but glad you made it. I'm sure all will be well from here. We'll have to grab a dinner when you get home and give Jenny and I all the details over a few Red Stripes.

Rough start!

LOVING your trip report!

Wow. Nice persevering!!! I would have been in tears!

Enjoying! Looking forward to more.

WOW, that was a rough start. And yes, I would have been in tears too. Looking forward to hearing more of your adventure

A rough start to your trip... but you are an expert problem-solver! I would have been so stressed I was tearing out my hair!

Had some computer problems that put my trip report on hold but got a new laptop so I'm back at it now.

Day 2 - Sunday......
Woke up in Negril. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! All of yesterday's stresses are gone and life is good. We headed down to the dining area at Seastar for the included breakfast, which hit the spot. After breakfast, we walked around to check out the property in the daylight and headed to the pool for a little bit. Floated and chatted with Rasta Stan and Betty. Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and make our way to Catcha. We loved Seastar for the short time that we were there and would not hesitate to go back but we were super excited to get to Catcha. We knew we could walk down to Catcha but we had our luggage with us and it was hot so we asked if they could call us a ride. Chris (the owner of Seastar) offered to ride us down to Catcha, which just goes to show why people rave about this place, above and beyond!!!!

We get to Catcha and are immediately taken to Star cottage. It is just unbelievably gorgeous. I am the vacation planner so my husband doesn't ever really know what he's getting into and he was just in awe and absolutely LOVED it. We walked around the property a little bit and made our way to Ivan's bar shortly after arriving, had some drinks and just took it all in. A little while later, we headed across the street to grab some drinks at Wise Choice. We also made a stop at AhhhBee's to get some brownies (regular for me, special for hubby). Then we went back to Star and sat on the patio with some drinks and Jeff tried some of his brownie. About 5:30ish, he was feeling some effects of the brownie so I suggested he lay down for a little bit and then we would go to eat. I tried to get him up about 7:30 but he wasn't having it. So, I went and had dinner by myself at Ivan's bar and brought him back a doggie bag. Dinner was great (had steak and mashed potatoes) and there were plenty of people at the bar to chat with. After eating and having a few beers at the bar, I went back to Star to sit on the patio (I LOVED that patio) and then called it a night. Jeff got up sometime during the night and ate my leftovers. We woke up early Monday and went to Ivan's for breakfast and we both had the Johnny Cakes (YUMMMM). After breakfast, we put our suits on and hit the Catcha cove. I'm sure a lot of the Negril.com board members have heard about the horrible accident that resulted in two young men losing their life and one thing I noticed while at Catcha was that they were not taking that incident lightly. There were new life vests hanging everywhere, there was a new wood door blocking sea access and new chains to block sea access, also. I grabbed one of the life vests and my snorkel to float around, there wasn't much to see but I was just happy to be floating in the sea. Before we knew it, it was time to start packing up and head to Cocolapalm.

Attachment 26378Attachment 26379Attachment 26380Attachment 26381Attachment 26382Attachment 26383Attachment 26384Attachment 26385Attachment 26386Attachment 26388

Great report, sorry for your losses, and I hope you are doing well after your trip.

Great report... was curious how the VIP service was on arrival.. this last trip was our first time noticing it.. we thought about using it on departure, but there was very little line in security\immigration...

More pictures from Catcha Falling Star. We were there about 24 hours and I think I took at least 50 pictures.

Attachment 26435
Attachment 26436
Attachment 26437
Attachment 26438
Attachment 26439
Attachment 26440
Attachment 26441
Attachment 26442
Attachment 26443

txraider - we ended up not using the VIP arrival service because of our flight problems. I had went on flightstats.com and there was about 6 planes coming in within a half hour of our plane so I figured we'd try the service. Plus, we were supposed to get into MBJ so early, I wanted to get our trip started and not waste time in the airport.

It's hard not to take a lot of pics at Catcha isn't it?? Thanks for the pictures:)