Playground Tactics

Our plane emerged from the hangar, and is now sitting a few hundred yards away, doing nothing, except for taunting us.  The board still says we're leaving at 9:00.  But it's 8:57 right now, so I'm thinking that's not going to happen.

After Thought

We left for the airport at 4:45 this morning.  If we had just driven to Minneapolis, we would have easily made our connecting flight.

Sigh

You know how sometimes a sequel is okay, but not as good as the original, but the third or fourth in the series almost assuredly sucks?

Well, we've been delayed again.  New departure time out of Des Moines: 9:15, arriving in Minneapolis exactly one minute after our connecting flight leaves.  So now it looks like we'll miss our first film.  Sorry, Ms. Ambrose.

Again

So as it turns out, we weren't leaving at noon, but rather they just didn't know when we were leaving.  I guess they figured if they sent a confusing enough message, we'd probably get in touch, which was the desired outcome.

Anyway, they rebooked us through Minneapolis, and not too much later (7:00) than we were originally scheduled.  So that's nice.

Of course, no sooner than we finished our rather flagrantly priced airport breakfast sandwiches, we received another message from Delta.  Our new flight has been delayed, departing at 8:00, arriving at 8:39.  I guess we're going SST.  Unless they really just mean, "Hey, could you give us a call?"

The Miracle

Delta says our flight has been delayed.  Our original itinerary had us leaving at 6:35 AM, arriving at 9:39 AM.  Our new departure time is noon, but still arriving at 9:39 AM.  Delta has discovered time travel.  They're going to make billions!

Resolution

TIFF called back, by the way.  Apparently, they've had a recent surge in "Contributor" level memberships, or at least that was the explanation I was given as to why we only received 80% of our first choice selections this year, after we got 19 of 20 in 2009 and 17 of 20 in 2008.  Do I buy it?  Not completely.  But if it is true, then it raises a frightening question: If I wasn't a "Contributor" level member, what percent of our selections would we have received?  And now I am to believe that I have to renew my membership to get the level of service I had grown to expect by merely buying tickets?  It's not a happy thought, and I love the festival.

The man who called from TIFF was nice enough to throw in a couple extra vouchers for the mix up in our order, though, so it appears you, faithful reader, have 21 reviews forthcoming.  There are a few of you out there, right?

Meanwhile, if we want to see The Ides of March, Take This Waltz, and The Island President, we'll have to rush for them (see Appendix B of my "How To Festival" post).  Sadly, we didn't get tickets to those films.

TIFF, we have a problem...

Yesterday, I received an email notifying me that my ticket selections had been processed.  I excitedly opened up the email, performed a quick count of movies on our schedule, and sure enough, we had 20.  Then I looked a bit closer and noticed that once of our second choice picks was among them.  "Bummer," I thought, "we didn't get all of our first selections."  I set out to see which ones we didn't get, and discovered that we received all of our second choice picks, and rather indiscriminately.

We are double-booked three times in two days.  I don't know if you've tried it, but watching two movies at once is quite challenging, particularly when the theaters are over a mile apart.

I'm sure TIFF will rectify the situation by replacing our second choice tickets with vouchers for the three double-bookings, but that overlooks another little issue.  This year, we bought a membership to TIFF.  At our contribution level, I was told that our ticket order would be processed "before the general public".  It would appear that we're in a rather large group and that all of us pre-general public people picked the same films.  Or perhaps our order was processed among all the other John Q. Public's orders.  I'm more than a little irritated, and less than enthused about renewing my membership next year.