Welcome to Flyertalk - and hope you will hang around a bit and pick up all kind of cool future-travel tips.

I hope some experienced folks will address your question on reimbursement - but also pay attention to some of the "here's things to consider for next time" travel tips. It will help a bunch.

A few comments...please don't take as criticism. If you wind up contacting Delta, it will be good to "boil down" to the main issues. A couple that I think are not even worth getting into...

An itinerary that "overshoots" your destination. This is not uncommon at all. (Actually here on Flyertalk, many of us enjoy itineraries like that, because we earn more flyer miles!) But during the holidays I'm sure the only consideration of the rebooking was to assume you wanted to get there as quickly as possible, not to accomplish the most fuel-efficient routing!

The other one - is airports closing during the wee hours. This is actually pretty common, even in fairly large markets - depending on the amount of international traffic, etc.

Good luck - and once again hope some folks with experience in dealing with baggage recovery, compensation, etc., will chime in for you!!