A Surprisingly Easy Flight

Like I said in my previous post, we were flying with 5 small children and set to arrive in PTY at 1 in the morning. The flight went well! When we had to change planes in Florida and had a layover, we were hanging around another family who I thought was also going to PTY. We then realized that they were doing a FINAL boarding for our plane and we had almost missed it! Yikes!

Having 2 double strollers was great! The kids were able to ride around in them through customs, immigration and getting the car rental. We also carried on one car seat for the 2 year old and checked one so we could have it in Panama. This was very helpful so we didn't have to rent car seats while there. We plan to use Spirit Airlines again since it is the cheapest way for us to fly.

The flights went pretty well. I thought all of the people were friendly who we encountered and they always worked to help us...even when we missed our Florida to home connection. The flight there wasn't bad since we arrived around 1 and the airport was pretty empty so we quickly collected our luggage, had it scanned and headed out. I had forgotten that if anyone touches your bags, they expect a tip. Next time we will have a better cash source right off the plane!

The kids all did great for the most part. There were some tears about being woken up or not wanting to go to sleep after having a short nap. They told us they weren't tired at time or two, but quickly fell asleep when we needed them to. They were entertained by a zippered bag each of them received from their Nana full of paper, stickers, pens, etc.

When we arrived, we decided to drive the 8 hours to Boquete in the middle of the night. This was both brilliant and the dumbest thing we could have done. It was brilliant because we hit no traffic and arrived there at 10. The kids slept most of the way and we didn't have to make a lot of bathroom breaks. It was the dumbest thing because my husband was so tired after not sleeping on the plane. He did a great job for most of the drive but then he started getting drowsy. We pulled over a few times so he could nap for 20 minutes on the side of the road, but I was kind of paranoid so these were quick stops. We have decided in the future to just get a hotel in Panama City and spend at least one night there. We drove because flying from PTY to David was $50 a person each way and that adds up quickly with a large family. Plus we needed a van for the week.

A Planned Visit

We have planned a trip where we will be gone about 10 days.  We have 5 small children and I was most worried about getting them on and off of the airplane at random hours of the night.  You see, we are flying on Spirit Airlines which arrives in PTY at 1am and departs at 2am when we are set to fly home.  After getting all the way through booking, I found out that they will let us take a stroller and car seat for each of the younger children who aren't lap babies!  That means 2 strollers and 2 car seats in our situation!  This is an answer to prayer as we plan to take 2 double strollers and wear the baby. 

We were able to use a discount code and get the flights from our local airport to PTY for $1452 for all seven of us.  We decided to go ahead and book it because we didn't want gas prices to go up and lose out on such a good deal - even though it was only 2 weeks until we flew out!  Hopefully we can get everything done we need to between now and then! 

I plan to post a review of the flight, trip and experience after we return home.