orlandodlplat

If I were you I'd call DL and ask to adjust my schedule. With that much time to hang around, you can tell them you had hoped to be productive in the skyclub and now cannot. Is there a way they can get you to ATL earlier to spend time there instead?

Or maybe you can take the Virgin nonstop from MIA? DL/VS are in a joint venture and there's a DL code on that flight.

newtothis1

dldmfll

krlcomm

FLL re-opened last Monday (10/15). The club is smaller than the old club (which tended to be crowded at times) and is "temporary"... they will open a new FLL club in 2020.

newtothis1

LJMclean

I understand from the thread that the lounge is back open. What is there at the lounge? I have just spoken with Delta in UK (well Air France as they now handle all Delta UK queries) and they said there was no lounge in FLL. I am due to fly out of FLL in January 2019 and really hoped there would be a lounge!

krlcomm

It's a standard Sky Club, in the same location it was previously. There's a bar, food, restrooms, etc. It's just smaller than it was... and it's temporary until they open the new SC in 2020. It's full service now, just more crowded. I'll be there around 1 today... stop by and say hi! :-)

cardsqc

Any update on how things are at the Fll club? Going to have to spend a few hours waiting for a flight sunday.

ijgordon

Was last there in September, the previous post is still accurate. Full service, but smallish and a little tight, no natural light.

cardsqc

Ended up not making it into the lounge. Delta started out with a 3 hour restriction on checking luggage, and then moved it down to 2 hour. By the time we got through security, getting something for lunch before getting on the flight was more important than checking out the club.

I'm really hoping that once they get that terminal renovated that the whole experience there will be a lot better.

ijgordon

Wow, it's never taken me more than, like, 30 seconds to get through security there (with PreCheck; Clear seems to actually take longer). But I'm not usually departing Sat/Sun morning with peak cruise traffic.

But also, you could have had enough to eat in the club for lunch! And may have been quicker than waiting in line for mediocre pizza or a Miami Sub (I think that's the other concession?)

cardsqc

Security isn't the issue, it's that Delta (or for that matter air canada) won't accept checked bags more than a certain time before your flight (and they change that randomly depending on how they feel, I've seen anything from 4 hours down to 2 hours). As part of that mass of cruise traffic, we had bags to check. If I had status, I think we could have checked things, but nope, not for me. They started at 3 hours before flight for checking bags, and shortly after we got there went to 2 hours. Security in pre was just a few minutes, other than my wife (as usual) getting hit with the random check.

Since I have to pay to guest my wife in, figured that with the short time we had that any food they had available wasn't really worth it. I also did run into someone that had been in there that was saying about all they had was a vegetable soup.

I think the concessions there has changed some though since the last time I went through. One was a shake shack (which is what we went with), and there's still a pizza place, although from what I could see the pizza actually didn't look all that bad. And I think there's still at least one other place (kinda hard to tell, with all the construction, it's a lot harder seeing things than it used to be.

FLL has always been a rather interesting airport. With all the cruise traffic, they get a lot of people early in the morning that don't fly out until later in the day, something that's not real normal for airports. Most people don't go to the airport 4-6 hours ahead of their flight at a regular airport. I don't know if they're being smart enough in the renovations to be adding more staging areas for bags for later flights so people can check in earlier or not. If not, this mess will always continue there. Normally I try to catch the 11:30am flight out when getting off a ship so I don't have to sit through the mess very long, but just cost too much this time.

In a perfect world where money isn't an issue they should really build some sort of large food court type area somewhere in the neighborhood of where the parking garages are that has lots of seatings, and direct connections to all the terminals. That'd give the airport a good place to handle the mobs of people that don't fly for quite a while. Course, in a perfect world I'd also kinda like to see some sort of tram system that runs to the cruise ship piers too . Probably wouldn't be reasonable to hit all the piers (we came in at 29, which is kinda in the middle of nowhere), but hitting 2/4, the big royal caribbean dock, the one that runs e/w at the south of the terminal, and then the peninsula area would be really nice.

ijgordon

I was just surprised that even if you checked your bags at T-2 hours, you still didn't have time to visit the lounge especially since you say security was fast. But having to pay the guest fee is certainly a valid consideration. You probably paid a similar amount to the $29 fee for lunch for 2 in the terminal though.

writerguyfl

That's part of the Master Plan for FLL. If the plan actually happens, the Palm Garage will be razed are replaced with an on-site hotel, commercial center with conference space, and restaurant/dining. If anyone is unfamiliar, the Palm Garage is the one on the west side. It connects with Terminals 2, 3, and 4.

Here's a screenshot from the Master Plan video showing a rendering (that will undoubtedly change).

The darker building at the top of the image is the current Terminal 4. The white building that wraps around to the right side is the rebuilt/renovated Terminal 3.

The above image is from roughly 5:20 in the Master Plan video, found here:
This concept is also part of the Master Plan. In the above image, you can see the proposed landside people mover. That will connect with the proposed Intermodal Center, which will be built on the east side of the airport inside the loop you drive around to enter the airport when approaching from the north on US 1. Here's a screenshot of the proposed Intermodal Center (taken from the above video around 4:25):

The bridge-like structure that curves off the bottom of the image is a proposed monorail (or similar) to Port Everglades. I have no idea where it's intended to go once it enters the Port, however.

The bridge that does under the automated people mover is a connection to the currently operating Virgin Trains USA (formerly Brightline) that runs between Downtown Miami and West Palm Beach with an intermediate stop in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. The line is extending to Orlando within the next 3-5 years. A FLL station would be perfect for tourists who want to combine a theme park vacation with a cruise vacation.

ijgordon

Wow, had no idea any of this was in the planning, very cool!

Would be great to put the unscrupulous taxi drivers out of business. They always take the long way to/from the cruise terminal, and always have some excuse. That said, I had a Lyft driver do the same recently (said he saw long lines heading in at the closest entrance to my hotel on 17th St.), but given it was a fixed fare I suppose maybe he really did think it would be faster. I guess the taxis could just move to a fixed fare for airport-port; it shouldn't even really matter which cruise terminal. But I digress.