Originally Posted by
dnvhle
My cruise out of Tampa is being rebooked to be out of Miami...
Voluntarily by you or is it a change forced by the cruise company?
Originally Posted by
dnvhle
I am traveling with 2 toddlers and the 5 hours drive from Tampa to Ft. Lauderdale would be too much for them after an 10 hours flight into Tampa.
It
is a long drive (4.5 hours TPA to the cruise port); you well might not want to drive the whole thing after a transcon flight, but note that your current air itinerary is actually 6:40, not ten hours.
Originally Posted by
Nevada1K
You should be checking for availability two or three times daily using the change flight feature in Travel Tools.
To make it quicker and easier the
OP should bookmark the Change Itinerary link that is displayed on her MySouthwest Future Itineraries page.
Originally Posted by
dnvhle
According to the rep, customer relation should have no problem accommodating the change.
I could be wrong but I doubt customer relations can change you to flights for which there is no award availability; it's worth a try, but you should be prepared with a backup plan, such as...
Originally Posted by
tusphotog
Or see if you can have a Rez agent add a leg to your PNR for TPA-FLL.
this excellent suggestion by
tusphotog. Fortunately you are booked on a direct flight to TPA (the suggestion would not work if you already had two flight numbers on your itinerary). Even with your direct flight, if you get a CSR who insists on sticking to the "letter of the law" you won't be able to add TPA-FLL to your itinerary, even though award seats are available on 14-Jun, and you could book it that way yourself online on any date for which it and SWA272 from PDX to TPA both have award seats available. In fact, I would think an RSA supervisor could even authorize
this type of change. (The one who looked at your situation most likely looked only at changing you to published, scheduled service for PDX-FLL; it is not surprising the supervisor could not make
that type of change.) You could try calling reservations again before Tuesday. If the first RSA and sup can't make it work, give polite thanks for the efforts and phone back to try again with another rep.
Originally Posted by
dnvhle
weekend fare runs $69/each so with taxes/fees
With your 1pm deadline Monday, you could book Monday morning flights for $39++ (from either TPA or MCO). Granted it obviously would be more hassle having to go through airport security again.
Originally Posted by
dnvhle
I noticed that more RR seats are becoming available for 2 weeks out so hopefully the FLL RR seats will open up next week
One difference may be that your flight is a summer Sunday. Those have notoriously poor award seat availability, so I think the odds are low in your case.
Originally Posted by
dnvhle
I did look at the Orlando option. The only RR availability is for a flight arriving around 9pm and I think it's about 3 1/2 hours drive to Mami.
You save about 45 minutes driving to MIA from MCO versus TPA, but you'd be giving up your efficient direct flight to TPA for a 9:40 connecting flight.(
FCFree, Bill Owen might be in need of your expert assistance! SWA has PDX-TPA direct but all their PDX-MCO flights are connections!

)
If you aren't able to get the flights changed with either
tusphotog's idea or through a CSR on Tuesday, you may have to rent a car and split up the drive, finishing it Monday morning.
Don't forget that you can use your RR awards for one way trips. You can book a one-way flight from PDX to FLL or MIA on a carrier with more reasonable fares (or one way award seat availability if you have the miles), and save half of your SWA awards for future use.
I assume you don't have travel insurance? This is going off-topic and at this point only good for the "lessons learned" file, but (IMHO) good travel insurance should always be purchased by anybody who decides to book related air and cruise travel independently.