After a strenuous summer filled with 520 hours of work divided between an office internship and a summer camp counselor position, I have finally reached the peak of my summer – my family vacation to Disney World! I am so excited to enjoy the beautiful air, food, and relaxation. Our United Airlines flight is scheduled to take off from Newark Liberty Airport at 11:40am. After watching weeks of impressive United commercials during the Olympic Games, I am eager to experience the hospitality they boast as gold medal worthy.

Or so I thought.

I am typing this piece now physically aboard the plane, still sitting on a tarmac in Newark, now with the clock reading 4:15 pm. I have no idea when we will be taking off, as the current flight crew has just left the plane because their shifts are over. I’ve called and cancelled our lovely reservation for dinner in Magic Kingdom tonight, and I’ve held off on making a new later reservation because at this point, I’ll just be happy to see Florida before the sun rises tomorrow morning.

How did we get here you ask? An 11:40 flight to Orlando now abandoned as the New Jersey day turns to evening?

United…. WTF?

Well this adventure began at 10:50 this morning, our original boarding time. Curious as to why we were still sitting at the gate, my mom left to inquire. Apparently, our flight time had been delayed by twenty minutes. No biggie, we’ve waited two years to get to Disney World, twenty minutes is nothing.

Alas, twenty minutes passes, then thirty, then forty five and no signs of life from the United gate or the employees working there. Yet, mysteriously, the departure board now reads that the flight will leave at 12:45. So we, along with the flight’s worth of other souls itching to get a move on, wait patiently for the additional hour added on to our departure time. Usually, the wild terms of airline jargon being announced make no sense to the average ear, but this time the PA system remained suspiciously mute about our flight. That’s right, United made NO announcements about the fate of our aircraft. They communicated with their valued customers through occasional vague text… Hmm perhaps maybe TOO modern?? We surely would have appreciated being kept in the loop. The only excuse employees could offer was that the aircraft was undergoing “maintenance”. Fine, after all, I would rather that happen on the ground than while we were in the air.

The clock reads 12:20, but the departure board now reads 1:45. Another hour was mysteriously snuck on to our flight time with no acknowledgement from United. The group of us waiting at the gate all get a simultaneous text about our gate changing to one that is across the length of the airport. Bewildered, we look to the United desk for clarity or confirmation, and of course find no answers. Whatever, we gather up our things and traverse to our new gate.

Now it is beyond lunch hour, so my mother, sister, and I stop in a CIBO food bazaar in our new gate and pick out a few fancy sounding items for the wait. After a harrowing $60 total pops up on the screen we eat our gourmet quinoa bowls and wait for further instructions.

By this point in the journey, we encounter a wonderful United employee who regularly announces our flight updates. We end up boarding around 2:40, and once again the crowd morale is excited. We were finally heading to Orlando!

HA. Good thing we didn’t hold our breaths.

The aircraft crew sets us all up, we watch the safety video featuring team USA, and brace ourselves for take off. We wait about 30 minutes on the runway. The pilot announces that due to some bad weather off the west coast of Florida, we need to reroute 200 miles over the Bahamas and come in to Florida from the east. Collective sighs arise from the crowd as he continues to explain that we will need to head back to the gate to get more fuel for this new excursion. So, our plane parks itself back at the gate. We wait an additional hour for the “fuel guy” to come fill us up. At this point, we have been sitting on board for two hours and people are getting antsy. One woman is chewing out a flight attendant because “This has been an 11:30 fight delayed for five hours with no accommodations. People have small children and this is ridiculous!” Thanks United! Five hours later and I get a cup of ice and two crackers that will surely make up for me missing reservations in Disney World! The poor flight attendants are profusely apologizing during this time gap and passing out small packages of shortbread cookies to prevent a riot. Although just as we believe we are ready to take off, the pilot announces that we will need to wait for a new crew because due to our extensive hours of delays, the current crew is finished with their shifts. I can’t make this up.

Hey, what’s another hour or two right? I’m beginning to wonder if this is all just a bad dream.

Throughout this entire delay we are receiving confusing texts from United regarding our future. These texts are coming in telling us about another gate change happening at 4:02, meanwhile the text is time marked at 4:14? By this point we have low expectations and just want to get off the ground.

Finally, we head back to the runway. The fresh new attendant sheepishly “welcomes us to the friendly skies” and we all just groan and laugh with hysteria as they play the safety video for the second time. At this point it is 4:30 and we are not projected to land in Florida until 7:05.

Cheers and applause erupt as we get into the sky. We are so happy to actually have left Newark Airport! With the exception of a little turbulence, the pilot and crew safely get us to Orlando. Ironically, we didn’t re route over the Bahamas and therefore didn’t require the extra fuel that we waited over two hours for… Oops. We all leave the plane and head our separate directions, forever bound together by our crazy experience with United.

So I pose this final question to United - Do I have to be an Olympian to get some service?

By the way, we’re flying JetBlue back home. Updates to come.