Originally Posted by
dan1431
I find that the physical plant at PBI to be far superior to FLL in almost every circumstance except the availability of a club.
Seriously? The PBI terminal and concourses are dumps compared to the soaring, open, bright airy T1 at FLL (I will state that the rest of FLL terminals are probably more dumpy than PBI).
First, I have found that the public bathrooms at FLL to be downright filthy and never re-cleaned throughout the day.
They have cleaning people in and out of there all the time - I've rarely encountered a filthy bathroom in T1.
Second, the parking situation is horrible and I have never been able to find a spot easily without having to go up 3 levels before finding one of the gates open, even though there are free parking spots on lower levels.
The garage is almost 4x the size of the small parking area at PBI where even the remote discount parking lot can fill up during busy periods, and their remote parking bus never seems to run quickly or according to schedule. The trick with FLL parking is to go to the very top level (outside), drive west until you see the ramp leading down, then re-enter the lower levels by using the west-end ramps to work your way down until you get to the spot where you noticed spaces.
Granted, the TSA at PBI is less than stellar, but their FLL counter-parts are no prize either.
The TSA stinks everywhere - FLL had this annoying nasty dwarf who would stand there staring and scowling at people in line doing his imitation of SPOT, trying to get someone to break down and scream out "yes, you caught me!! I'm a terrorist!!". Thankfully he is gone, but the fact you can breeze through an elite line constantly guarded by two tough as nails line matrons makes the experience go by that much faster.
Yes, the PBI Senior citizens/snow birds and the "Wheelchair Cavalcade", (sometimes 34 wheelchairs for pre-boarding) is annoying, but so are the clueless FLL cruise travelers.
I don't fly on weekends, so thankfully I avoid the cruisers, but most of them seem to take Delta anyway, which is a different terminal. Things should quiet down further as I forecast NW will move in with Delta at T2 and Air Canada will move over to T1 from T2 to take one of the NW gates. United doesn't serve FLL anymore, so they won't be a factor there, which is certainly something to rejoice about.
The only potential downside to the alliance swap is having US as your only easy-FIM option should you encounter irregular ops or cancellations on CO, but this applies at both FLL and PBI.