When we decided on a Christmas week trip, the one thing we didn’t want to do was travel on Christmas day and especially not Christmas morning.
Ready to start your own blog? Click here to learn how.
Add to your Disney collection with Amazon! – affiliate link.
So, why you might ask, are we traveling on Christmas morning. When we booked the trip, the best priced return flight home for the miles ended up being Christmas night at 6pm. We figured that’d give us time to enjoy the day before heading to the airport.
However, while walking around EPCOT on Thursday afternoon, we were notified that our flight had been rescheduled for the 26th at 6am. So, we hopped on the Delta app and chatted with an agent who was able to get our return flight scheduled for Christmas morning, which meant not having to spend more on the hotel and rental car.
So, as I mentioned at the end of our Hollywood Studios day, we packed our bags when we got back from the park so we could get up and go early the next morning. We got up at 6 and headed to the airport at 6:30. The rental car return went pretty quickly and we headed over to the terminal. We took the elevator up to the third level and followed the signs to the Delta desk, which was all the way down the long line of airline desks. It was a pretty long walk.
When we arrived, they wouldn’t let anyone into the line without completing the check-in at the computers to get the boarding passes. I typically prefer to get the passes at the desk as they check luggage, so I was annoyed. Got that done and dropped off the luggage, then headed to TSA.
I wasn’t thinking about it, but I should have grabbed a picture of the area outside of security. It was very empty at the airport at 7:30 on Christmas morning. It took us about 5 minutes. We got our stuff together on the other end of security and headed for the trams to our terminal.
This location was even quieter than the main terminal. Hardly a person around. However, there was a Starbucks and Nathan’s Hot Dog open for breakfast. I grabbed a sandwich from Nathan’s while my wife and daughter headed to Starbucks. While we were eating, my distracted daughter spilled her entire hot chocolate everywhere. The manager at Nathan’s was very kind about it and helped clean up the area.
We then waited around for another hour before finally boarding the plane. The plane had plenty of empty seats, which explains why it was so easy to move our cancelled flight to Christmas morning.
We had a connection in Atlanta before making it home safely. We were very thankful to have been able to fly out Christmas morning.
And as a result of our cancelled flight and many others over the holiday weekend, Delta rewarded everyone affected with 15,000 miles, which for us, was a good deal, considering our flights were 20,000 miles, so we got 75% of our initial cost back. Delta has been a great airline for us and I definitely recommend them. See my Credit Card Churning page for more information on getting free miles when you sign up for the Delta Amex card.
This concludes my Christmas 2021 reports. Thanks for following along. I’ll have more updates as I prepare for my next trip as well as other fun content I find along the way.
If you’re ready to start exploring a Walt Disney World or Disneyland family vacation, I recommend checking out Undercover Tourist for your ticket options. I’ve already used them twice, once at Disneyland and once at Disney World and will plan to continue comparing their prices with other sites, however I usually come back to UT because they have the best deals and their instructions make it easy to add your tickets to the Disney apps.
The 360 of Disney 