Stuck in Tampa: The Unexpected Vacation Win

I hope you didn't get stuck at some airport when all of their computers went down. I've been fairly fortunate traveling and not getting stuck someplace, except for this one time.

It was a Flakes Trip, and that was our last cruise. We sailed out of Tampa. Well, something happened to the ship that made us get back to port about six hours later than scheduled. We had two of our Travel Cafe professionals with us. Once they found out that we were going to be late, they got on their laptops and started getting people in our group on different flights. They got everybody out that day except for about a dozen of us.

Get our free mobile app

It was no big deal to me because we always build extra days into our trip for emergencies like this.

So we get back to the hotel, and somebody in our group says that he can't believe we got stuck. I said, "Yes, but we're stuck in TAMPA!" Folks, I cannot recommend Tampa enough if you ever have to get stuck somewhere.

The gals all enjoyed the shopping, and everybody loved eating at restaurants that we don't have here, like The Cheesecake Factory.

A group of us went to Busch Gardens, which is a major amusement park, botanical garden, and zoo.

I went from zero to 60 in one second in the morning on the Cheetah Roller Coaster, then got to pet an elephant in the afternoon.

The whole experience was much better than sleeping in some airport.