Barcelo Maya Riviera: The Trip Home

By
Saint Greg

July 27, 2021

Good morning. I have been up for an hour now getting everything ready to go home.

I headed down to the buffet for my last Barcelo meal.

Chicken chimichangas and mushroom empanadas.

This mocha looks a lot different than the warm milk they served me the other day. And tastes more like it.

It took forever for them to come around and offer a second round. That’s why early in the trip I was ordering two at a time. But having had to leave two bad ones the other day, I didn’t want to have to waste two again.

I wanted to get a Bloody Mary but no way as slow as the service is.

I don’t think it’s a secret what part of the bed I use. I’m checking out.

Lomas was here waiting on me. We had a slight delay because I forgot to allow time to check out before meeting my transportation. This time I got the true shared transportation. I’m crammed in the back. But I’m alone back here which is nice.

The vents are all messed up I’m just trying to find the coolest spot.

They do have wifi

But it doesn’t work.

I was able to get their WIFI login page on my tablet. It is nice being able to spread out and get some work done back here.

It took right at an hour to get to the airport.

I signed this side and had to do it again. It’s the other side I needed to sign.

My check-in agent is a real stickler. She made me go to the immigration office and get my form re-stamped because it wasn’t clear enough. She also complained about some of my blank passport pages having folded corners.

I got into the same situation as last time where everyone gets to the security line entrance and they want a health questionnaire nobody told anyone about. And now they won’t give you the paper copy. You have to use the QR code. Everyone is standing around trying to get it done. Some people can’t get it to work. It’s chaos and everyone is upset.

This is the website you need to fill out the form on if you want to get it done before you get to the security area. It’s only good for a certain amount of time so you want to wait until you get to the airport before you fill it out.

I get through security and a late teens or early 20’s female is pitching a fit because her passport isn’t in her bin. She’s screaming at I’m assuming her mother or grandmother.

I saw a passport come through outside of a bin. The lady working the machine backed up the belt and put it in a bin. I don’t know if that was hers or not but I could still hear her screaming from the duty free shop. I tried to help but she was so hysterical I thought it would be best to extricate myself from the proceedings.

I made it to my gate but there is no plane yet. I have an hour and a half until boarding. I’ll grab something to eat.

They have a Guy’s burgers, pizzas, and sandwiches which caught my eye on the way in.

I’m going to try some things Guy’s didn’t have at Planet Hollywood or on Carnival. The bacon mac n cheese burger and Vegas fries.

Those fries are definitely shareable. I didn’t even make a dent. They have buffalo sauce and blue cheese crumbs.

At 1pm, 15 mins prior to boarding, I thought I’d walk around some stores on my way to the gate. I get back to the gate and boy was I shocked to see a Southwest jet sitting there. I go back to look at the screen. It didn’t show a gate earlier but my boarding pass says gate 64.

The screen says gate 56 so here I am at gate 56. It looks like the right spot. There’s an airplane out there and it’s even the right airline.

There’s no way we’re taking off on time. It’s almost that time and we’re still boarding. The guy announcing it announced gate 64 even though he’s standing at 56. I wonder if that confusion is part of the delay.

I get to my seat and the person in the middle seat is….I’m sorry to say this but she doesn’t fit in her seat. She’s halfway in my seat. I sit down. I can’t find the armrest. I can’t get my arm down. I’m wedged between her and the right armrest. I paid a little extra for the aisle seat on the exit row so I would be a little more comfortable but this is going to be an extremely uncomfortable flight for me.

A few minutes later a flight attendant and a guy who introduced himself as the manager come back and tell her they have to move her to a different seat. They say it’s for passenger safety with this being an exit row. They tell her she would have to use the forward exit so they are moving her to the front of the plane. They didn’t have two seats together at the front so the friend who was traveling with her kept her window seat on my row.

I’m sure this was horribly embarrassing for her but there’s no way I would book a middle seat if I were her. I don’t book them now because I don’t want to be stuck between two people. But I think that situation would’ve been handled better had they pulled her off of the plane and told her in private.

I love the USB ports.

We had to hang around about 50 miles south of Dallas for 10-15 minutes do to a thunderstorm near the airport but we landed safely. No problems.

This is Dallas so they need to have interstates and bridges for the planes to taxi on. When we finally make it to the gate the flight attendant says “Now that we’ve driven all the way back to Cancun…”

For some reason we had to get off on this and take a shuttle to the terminal.