Mardi Gras Day One - Snafus

So, I am just back from Mardi Gras 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana. So, let me start at the beginning. I went with my girlfriends, P & B and our security detail T. On Sunday, we all headed to the airport. Our flight, on American Airlines, was to leave around noon to Dallas and then onto New Orleans. P arrived first and checked in - noticing that our flight was delayed 2 hours. However, we still would make our connecting flight. Then I met up with P and tried to check myself in as well. Well, that didn't work as - there was an error. However, minor set back. The agent checked me in. I totally forgot that we have to pay to put our bags on the plane now. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper at the $15.00 fee. Anyways, so we headed to the terminal to wait. We called B to let her know she could be late as our flight was delayed. About an hour waiting, B calls us to let us know that she got a call from the airlines telling us our flight was now delayed another 2 hours and now we wouldn't miss our connecting flight to New Orleans, however, we were booked on a later flight to New Orleans. Fine then. So, B arrives anyways to the airport and we sit and wait. Now, as I am new to blogger, you don't know that P had to tell a small white lie to her dad that she was at a conference instead of going to Mardi Gras. So, all the blame went to her. KARMA! We spent the whole wait time telling her she should call her dad and fess up so we would make our flights. Anyways, after a 6 hour delay, we finally get on board the plane and head to Dallas. How exciting.
Plane ride was dull. Sleeping or watching movies. Nothing to fantastic. When we got off, we all flooded to get out hotel vouchers. Which, as it's American Airlines, they didn't have enough hotel vouchers for all the people they delayed. Which, by the way, we were told the flight was delayed because they needed to install something need in the landing gear and it was done wrong the first time which caused the first 3 hour delay. The second 3 hour delays was because they needed to fix what they had done wrong. I say, you should have brought out another plane or fire someone. T took a different flight, so he was there already partying it up. Anywho, we managed to wrangle a voucher and headed over to the shuttle to go to the hotel .Of course, we were all trying to check in at once, so the line took forever. Then, since we weren't allowed to get our bags, we asked for toothbrushes and toothpaste, which they didn't have. I wear contacts. I went to the store to see if they had contact solution. Lemme tell you something - the store in the hotel sold the normal items you would see - T-Shirts, medications, condoms, etc. But no contact solution! However, if you needed a stapler or post-it's - they had those in stock! Being the person I am, I did have a pair of extra contacts in my purse, so I was saved. We checked in, managed to get a few hours of sleep in our dirty clothes and got up to to catch the earliest flight the next morning.