June '99 it's necessary for me to move my little boy from our home in NH to a long-term medical specialty center just out of Denver. We leave MHT (Manchester, NH) on NW bound for DEN through Detroit. Bad weather between DTW and DEN leaves us circling near Buffalo for so long we don't have enough fuel to get back to DTW so the pilot lands in Buffalo. NW doesn't have any gates or ground services in Buffalo so we are banished to a bare stretch of tarmac in the hinterlands for three hours while the pilot tries to buy a load of fuel, generate transaction paperwork, and keep an increasingly unruly trapped crowd under control. Finally, fuel trucks approach, weather clears, and we make it to DEN.
My son and I get to our hotel at 4:00 AM where the clerk has already posted us as a confirmed no-show, and now doesn't know how to give us our room. I politely suggest she give us the key and ask her boss in the morning. Big mistake, I should have talked to the boss myself because the following credit card statement shows the girl left my credit card on every night in the room for the month! She didn't know how to take it off. Hours of phone calls to Marriott Guest Services and credit card company, and letters to same, still waiting for credits to be posted to my account.
But, it gets better. Wrenching scene leaving my 12-year-old two thousand miles from home, followed by return journey DEN-DTW-MHT, again unsuccessfully. Weather again intervenes, miss the last connection back to MHT thus stranded alone in DTW in despair. I am very, very nice to the NW agent who gives me dinner and b'fast vouchers and a dirt cheap hotel rate (Clarion) for the night (no freebies on weather...) but all the restaurants are closed near midnight, and I end up with a limp salad and warm soda delivered by local joint, consumption of which was only possible after pushing aside the foodstuffs left by previous room occupants. I'm thinking of my little one his first night in the strange new place, frightened of this hotel, and praying for a seat on an AM flight to MHT.
For my monthly trips to DEN I now go to BOS and take the UA non-stop. World of difference. After Catman's raves I joined the RCC and that has helped a lot! BOS RCC is small and tired, but apparently moving to better quarters in Sept. DEN RCC is very good.
It'll be a long time before I try Northworst again.