My experience with Alaska Airlines

Now, I know this is irrelevant to party planning. But I am still so flabbergasted that I want to get this off my chest. I promise not to turn the blog into a soapbox bashing businesses, but this will serve as a warning to anyone out there considering a flight with Alaska Airlines.

We are Canadian and had been planning a trip to Hawaii for quite a few months. We  booked flights to go from Calgary, AB to Kona, HI. The plan was to fly from YYC (Calgary) to SEA (Seattle) with a 2 hour layover, then continue to KOA (Kona.) On the way to HI, everything went fine.

On the way home, here's how it went down.

Weds, Mar. 5/2014:
Arrive at airport at 8pm for our flight departing from KOA at 11:15pm. We check in and go through security, anticipating a nice quiet ride home with our two kids, aged 3 and 5. Sure enough, we board the plane, kids fall asleep, and off we go.

Thurs, Mar. 6/2014:
Arrive at SEA at 7:30am (Seattle time.) We're tired, but we know the longest part of the flight is behind us, and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. We grab a coffee, and hang out in the departures lounge for the next leg of the flight, departing at 9:10am. It's not even two hours, we think, no big deal.

At 8am we hear that the flight to YYC has been delayed. The lady at the Alaska desk tells us the plane taking us to Calgary was coming over from Portland, but the plane hasn't even left yet, so the flight is definitely delayed, probably by about a half hour. Ok, so we're going to leave around 9:45am, no big deal.

At 8:30am we hear the flight has been delayed again. The lady at the desk doesn't know what's going on, but she thinks the departure is going to be bumped back by another hour or so. 'Jeez,' we think. 'Better get these kids some snacks, or something. We've been on the go now for 12 hours so they're going to be hungry.' So we grab some more American money and buy a couple of coffees.

It is now 9:10am, the original departure time, and we aren't going anywhere. We hear that the plane is delayed again, with no explanation as to why.

At 9:45am, we have been sitting in the SEA airport for over two hours, with no idea of when we're leaving. We continue to be reassured by Alaska that the flight is delayed, but whatever, it's going to work out. We're tired, and we wish we could just go home - after all, it's been 12 hours since we checked in to our flight in Kona.

At 10:30am, my kids are falling asleep on the benches, and we're getting worried. At 10:45am, we hear the flight has been cancelled. We're instructed to go to the Alaska Airlines service counter to rebook a different flight. We're not thrilled, but hey, it happens, and unfortunately we had the bad luck to encounter a cancelled flight.

We traipse through the airport to the service desk. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, because all the other clients on the cancelled flight have to be rebooked as well, we're told we have gotten the last four seats on a plane leaving SEA to Edmonton at 2:55pm. From there, they're going to have us wait another hour and a half, then get on a plane back down to Calgary at 7:10pm. 'At last!' we think. 'We'll be able to brush our teeth! And shower! Hooray!'

At noon, we're sitting in a different departure lounge, waiting another three hours for the Edmonton flight. It's been 12 hours since we took off from KOA. Two hours pass, and I take my daughter - who is still wearing her pajamas, tired, hungry - for a walk. We happen to pause at a departure screen and I see it: the Edmonton flight is now cancelled. No announcements, nothing - just a flukey glance at a screen.

Once again, we collect our exhausted 3 and 5 year olds, and ourselves (bear in mind that as a parent, it's difficult to sleep on a plane with a child sprawled across you. At this point, we've gotten two hours of sleep, total) and schlep over to a different service counter to try to rebook, again.

While we're in line, we chat with a few other customers on this plane, who tell us they've all had flights cancelled, both coming into and going out of Seattle. One guy and his wife lost a day of skiing in Jasper for their 25th wedding anniversary because of the cancelled Edmonton flight. Another couple lost a day in Vegas. One guy phoned Alaska while we were standing in line and they were able to get him onto another flight - but this would have taken him from Seattle to Portland to Vancouver to Edmonton. It was going to take him 8.5 hours to get home when a direct flight from Seattle to Edmonton is around 3.5.

We can't get help at this service desk. There are so many people in line that the staff can't handle it. We go back to another Alaska desk. This time I look the employee in the eye and say "We have been trying to get home since 11pm Wednesday. It is now 3pm on Thursday. You have cancelled two flights. Please, please, just let us go home."

He gets us onto a flight going from SEA to YVR (Vancouver) in half an hour, followed by a flight from YVR to YYC. This time, we sprint across the SEA airport, praying to the gods of airline travel that this plane will actually leave the ground with us on it. It does, barely. We board the plane, a teensy little commuter puddle jumper going from SEA to YVR. It's filthy. There are crumbs and crap all over the carpet. The seat back pockets are torn from the seats themselves. And the best part - there are literally duct taped windows.

The rattle box takes off, while I clutch my children in terror, convinced that I have sentenced them to die in a hideous crash somewhere in Puget Sound when this tin can crashes. By no small miracle we make it back to Canada. Although I'm tempted to fall to the ground and kiss it, it's now 4:45pm and we have a flight leaving at 6pm - so gotta dash. We can barely move at this point. We're just a group of zombified airline passengers who have slept 2 hours and spent 21 trying to get home, but we dash anyway.

Because we have now crossed back into Canada we have to go through Customs. Then we have to pick up our baggage.

Guess what happens next?

Yeah. Alaska lost our baggage. But they don't know that, only we know that. We find out by checking every. single. baggage. carousel. in the Vancouver Canada connections terminal, then confirming with the Alaska Airlines baggage service girl. She tells us she has no idea where our stuff is, because they haven't updated the computer in Seattle yet.

At this point, it's 5:30pm, and we have only a half hour left before we have to be on a flight to take us from YVR to YYC. We RUSH through security, begging and thanking folks letting us stand in front and praying that by some twist of fate our baggage has made its way to Calgary (a possibility introduced by the Alaska girl at YVR.) Finally, we get through security, glance at the screen and see we have five minutes to get on our YYC flight.

Freedom beckons! We can taste the dry, cold prairie air! Scoop up children and backpacks, and dip into our final reserves of strength. We sprint across the departures lounge. My son trips and falls on the carpeted floor, but even his little boost of adrenaline spurs him on through the carpet burn. We fly around the corner, knowing we've got nothing left - no toothbrush, no time, no energy.

The flight to YYC is delayed.

This last flight, however, is not through Alaska. It's through WestJet, who will forever be seen by me as a shining beacon of hope in every airport I ever visit. They smile and say "hey, listen, we're just cleaning the plane up a bit. Give us a half hour." And amazingly, a half hour passes, and then we board the plane. And it flies to Calgary.

And we sob in joy. Sort of. That slight possibility of our luggage making it from SEA to YYC without us was... slight. No baggage. No carseats. No suitcases. No clothes, no toothbrushes, no mitts or tuques. We go to WestJet to ask if they know which Alaska counter can help us make a baggage claim. They take one look at us - bedraggled, exhausted, dirty, exhausted, hungry, exhausted, and have spent 22 hours trying to get home - and say "Nope, we'll take care of it."

And they do. They give us brand new carseats to take our kids home. They take our information and start the baggage claim process. They reassure us that often, baggage can make it from Seattle to Calgary on its own, and they offer to deliver it to us when it arrives. This morning they called just to update me on the baggage - still not found, but they're looking. WestJet is great.

This morning I called Alaska Airlines. They put me on hold. Then they offered me a $200 per person credit for another plane ticket with them. I told them they could offer it, but nothing was going to convince me to put my family through that kind of torture ever again.

To recap:

- four delays
- two cancelled flights
- a dilapidated duct taped plane
- lost baggage

And they didn't even give us a voucher for a free coffee. They didn't give us anything except another attempt to extort money from us.

The reason I flew Alaska was because their Kona flight arrived in daylight, and I wanted daylight when we tried to navigate Kailua getting to our condo. In retrospect we should never have made this choice.

Driving in the dark or paying an extra $100 would have been far more preferable than spending 12 hours waiting to go from SEA to YYC.The careless Alaska staff who saw us and our tired children standing there begging to go home didn't even have the decency to offer us a voucher for a bag of chips. Nobody apologized. And we aren't the only ones they did it to - we spoke to dozens and dozens of Alaska passengers whose flights were cancelled. Alaska wasn't cancelling empty planes - we are talking about full planes filled with people.

I own a small business, and I have clients. Part of my relationship with my clients is the contract created with a sale - they give me money, and in return, I give them a service.

I paid Alaska Airlines money to take me and my family and our belongings from YYC to KOA and back again. They trusted me to pay them, and I trusted them to provide me the service they promised. They failed to hold up their end of the deal. They are, essentially, taking people's money and failing to provide the service they claim to offer.

I intend to share this information with as many people as I can. Spending 23 hours going from Hawaii to Alberta is ludicrous. We had enjoyed a relaxing holiday together as a family, but the treatment from Alaska put a terrible stain on the trip and has made it the worst memory of the entire trip. We never want to set foot in an airport again at this point.

Finally, Alaska's carelessness extends not only to the way they treat clients - who flies planes fixed with duct tape?!

Save yourself the stress, additional expense, and exhaustion that comes with Alaska Airlines. I'll be flying WestJet from now on!

bad blogger! bad! and a sharky centerpiece

Super sorry for the lack of posting. I was at my first horse show on the weekend, which is my usual blogging time, and between little kids, work, and a life - I didn't manage to get in here until now!

Luckily I have another shark craft for you to try with your littles. I didn't take any progress pics, because, honestly, this one is super simple.

You'll need:

an egg carton
tissue paper in various shades of blue and white
bamboo skewers
googly eyes
glue
scotch tape
marker
grey cardstock

Cut out shark shapes from cardstock. Let your kids glue on googly eyes. Once the glue has dried, tape the dull end of the bamboo skewer to the shark.

Now wrap the egg carton in blue tissue paper and tape the seam. Layer the different shades of tissue paper on top.

Using the pointy end of the bamboo skewer, stick the sharks through the tissue paper and into the egg carton. Repeat with the rest of the sharks, leaving them at different heights. Fluff up the tissue paper if need be to make it look "wavier".

And here you go - sharks swimming in the ocean! This was a fun centerpiece for me and Boy Wonder to make and it was just the right size for snack time at his birthday party.

Shark party hats!

**

These hats were originally created by Robyn Rasmussen. View her info here at http://tipsfromtheheart.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

I apologize to Robyn - I saw her pic on Pinterest, and thought I could come up with somethign similar. I never visited her blog, nor did I see her tutorial on the hats. Now that she's brought it to my attention I can see we have nearly identical posts. With that said I feel it's not right to leave my post up here at the risk of looking like a plagiarist, so I'm removing it. Feel free to click the link to her blog to learn to make these cute hats.
**

Shark party!

So after Princess P's birthday, we went to Mexico for a week, and now we are gearing up for Boy Wonder's birthday. (This is what I get for having kids' birthdays back to back! Oh well.)

Boy Wonder has requested a SHARK themed party. To be honest I am still scratching my head, a little bit, trying to figure out how best to do this. So far we have given out invitations and are just waiting for our RSVPs to come in. Here is the invite:

I made these at work, so I didn't have my camera with me to take piece by piece photos for a real tutorial, but here's a quick & dirty one.

You need posterboard in medium blue, sky blue, grey, and white. You'll also need scissors (and if you have any pinking shears, those too), white glue, and a heavy black marker (I used a Sharpie.)

It's pretty simple - you need to cut out a medium blue rectangle for your background. Match the width of the blue background to the width of your shark's nose, and cut it from the grey. Cut another smaller piece from grey for the shark's mouth. Inside the mouth glue a piece of white paper cut to the same size and trimmed with pinking shears to make teeth (or cut the teeth in yourself with regular straight scissors.) Glue a sky blue wave along the top of the card for your kid's name & party name ("Dylan's 4th Birthday", etc.)

I put the party details inside the shark's mouth. According to my sister in law, my nephew loves his and made it chomp dinner after we gave it to him.

More to follow when I get some more sharky ideas figured out!

princess p's party pics

All my crafting of the jungle variety was put to use last weekend for Princess P's first birthday party. Pics:

Here's the table waiting for the party guests. Tissue pompoms from pendant light, palm trees on table, black, pink & zebra balloons tied to chairs, and Princess P had her own Happy Birthday! balloon.

Closeup of the table showing monkey plates at each place along with a jungle animal and a party blower.

Each guest got to keep their plate & animal.

Paper hibiscus flowers with pink and silver streamers.

Bigger tissue paper pompoms in doorway and enormous balloon bouquet behind it.

The star of the show about to dig in to her zebra cake!

The fruit elephant

Have you ever googled watermelon carvings? There are some incredibly talented people out there who can carve watermelons into amazing stuff, like flowers and designs.

I'm not one of them.

I CAN, however, make a watermelon into a fruit bowl, and use more fruit to give it a cute little elephant face. This is my fruit elephant tutorial.

Here's the final product:

Eat me! I'm fruity!



You need a watermelon and fruit. I used apples, blackberries, and pineapple - but there's no rules, here. Just find something to use for his head, and go from there.

First cut the top off your watermelon and carve it out like a pumpkin.

Then slice the end off an apple (or orange, or whatever) to make the head. Check to try to duplicate the curve of the watermelon in the cut end of your head piece.

I had to hollow mine out a little bit to get it to curve correctly.

Stick a bunch of toothpicks inside the melon through to the outside, then stab them into the head piece. Use as many as you need. I used my kitchen pliers (yes, I have a pair) to trim off the pokey bits.

Once the head is stuck, poke a few toothpicks into the head so that you can attach the trunk.

For the trunk, I peeled the skin off an apple in a coil shape to make it curl like an elephant's trunk. Word to the wise - make it thicker rather than thinner, to make it easier to stab the toothpicks into it.

Nose on!

Now you can do the face. I used slices of blackberries layered over apple pieces to make eyes (again, poked in to the apple with toothpicks) but there are loads of different ways to do this. Put your pachyderm into a dish and fill with fruit inside and around.

Aren't I cute?



Zebra cake! And cake pop horrors

So remember my cake pops post? How I was all "yaaaay, cake pops, they're so cute, I can totally do this!"

Um.

So, actually, cake pops are WAY harder than they look and I want to send out some mad props to the people who do them for a living. You guys are awesome.

I will now share with you the awesomeness that is the zebra cake I made tonight for Princess P's jungle party, and the major league disappointment that is my cake pops attempt. I think I know where I went wrong, and I think I'd tackle them again - after all, like anything else, it's a learning curve.

First off, the good news. I found a way to make marshmallow fondant without using butter or shortening, and reducing the amount of icing sugar that goes in. I used about 1lb of icing sugar (instead of the usual 2lbs the recipes call for) and just topped up with corn starch as I let the Big Mama (a.k.a. my kitchenaid stand mixer - Boy Wonder named it) beat it into submission. I liked the corn starch variety WAY better - significantly less sweet, but honestly, haven't we all been grossed out at some point by icing that was too sweet? And given that I can't use fondant without a crumb coat (in this case, chocolate) I think pouring all that sugar on top of melted marshmallows is just overkill and more money in your dentist's pocket.

So given all my soapboxing about icing, here are the steps I followed to do the cake.

- 1 bag of good quality marshmallows - I have been cheap on this before and paid for it. Spend the extra buck for the Jet Puft.
- 2 tbsp water
- 1lb of icing sugar
- a full box of cornstarch - honestly I have no idea how much I threw in. A cup? Maybe?

Nuke the marshmallows & water in a microwave safe dish for 1 min. Stir. If they aren't all melted, give it another 30 seconds. Stir. Keep going till they're melted.
Pour melted marshmallows into your greased Kitchenaid mixer bowl (I used Pam spray.)
Add 1lb icing sugar and turn on low. Use the paddle attachment at this point.
Once it's mixed, switch the attachment to the dough hook and throw in some cornstarch. Let it combine and look at the consistency - if it's still runny, throw in some more and give it another shot of mixing. Carry on until it looks like dry peanut butter.

Wrap in saran wrap and throw in the fridge for an hour. This is the part where you get to bake your cake and let it cool to room temp. I have no good cake recipes and I just used boxed mix.

Once the cake is out and cool throw on a crumb coat - this is your regular icing, buttercream, the premade kind from the store, whatevs. It's what your fondant will stick to. After the crumb coat is on, coat your rolling pin with cornstarch and your countertop with cornstarch. Get ready to get a workout and roll the hunk of fondant from the fridge to 1/4" thick. Keep rolling.

When you have a big sheet of fondant, lay it over your cake and press into the sides to stick it to the crumb coat. Use a pizza cutter to trim the fondant off. If you get any cracks, get the tip of your finger (or a pastry brush) a little wet and just rub along the crack to seal it. If you get any color on the fondant you don't want, a wet paper towel should take it right off (but you should get to it quickly.)

And here's the cake! I used the Dala cake pan from Ikea, Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, Betty Crocker milk chocolate icing as a crumb coat, and my homemade MMF on top. I iced it by hand using glitter icing gel I found at Michael's.

Aww! It's a little stumpy, and thick set, but hey, it's clearly a zebra, and it has a cute tail. It's going to look super cute when we stick a '1' candle in it and give it to Princess P.

On the downside, since we have nearly 20 people at her birthday (and it's JUST family! Crazy!) this stumpy little zebra isn't going to be enough to feed everybody. So in a moment of inspiration I said "hey! Zebra print cake pops! Perfect way to make sure everybody gets a bit of a treat at the party!"

Fool.

I even made a pretty cake pop box (cake pop cake?) to showcase my pops. I had worked on them all afternoon. They look... well, the cake pop box looks cute, and if you squint, the whole effect is pleasing.

Right? Cute pink flowers? Pink stripes on white, black stripes on white, white stripes on black. Sounds SO promising.

Until they give up the will to live, like this one:

(These photos were taken in my beer fridge freezer - I was so desperate for at least SOME of these things to survive till next weekend that I practically threw them in there.)

Stupid cake pops. Whatever. I'm still going to serve them at the party. I'll just make sure there's a huge pitcher of sangria next to them. Food on a stick + booze = party!