I had a Sunday noon-ish MIA-DCA canceled around 8pm Saturday night. (Interesting they didn't cancel the MCO-MIA morning connection.)

Anyhow, the robo-call had 'stay on to speak to an agent' option, I did so, and 10 mins later was talking to someone who was helpful. All Sunday morning flights on AA outbound from MCO were full.

After about 10 mins, they put me on a Delta flight to Minneapolis, then back on AA to ORD, then to DCA

Delta shorted my bag and put it on the carousel - though I had talked to Delta staff at both MCO and upon arriving in Minneapolis. So, I had to run from the gate out, find my bag, no time left to counter check it, ran everything through security, and gate checked it.

ORD-DCA didn't turn out well. DCA had it's own big thunderstorm and was backed up. We circled for 30 mins, then ran out of gas and landed at IAD. AA said, sure, you can walk off while we refuel, but you're on your own and can't collect your luggage here - need to show up at DCA later after we land.

After refueling, they couldn't get the 737 restarted. We waited about 3 hours while they tried several attempts, taxied around, etc. So, they finally gave up, canceled the flight for mechanical failure, unloaded our bags and gave us taxi vouchers.

It was 16+ hours for me to get from MCO home via these flights, would have been a 14 hour drive.