California Trip: Day 1

I've had this trip planned for Cameron since January. Shortly after his surgery I wrote a handful of letters to Universal Studios about the new Jurassic World: Dominion movie. I didn't hear anything for months and then in January I got an email from an incredible woman - who invited us to the World Premiere in Los Angeles. We kept in touch and once the date was locked in - I booked our flights out of our local airport and made hotel reservations. The event was scheduled for Monday, June 6 at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. We would fly in the Saturday before and leave the following Wednesday. We packed our bags, got our dress and suit for the event and made sure we have everything in order. The night before we checked in, printed our boarding passes and went to bed super excited for the next day. I woke up about 2:30am to a text message on my phone that said "Your flights have been cancelled" and my heart sunk. I sprung out of bed and read the email that was also in my inbox. I could fly out locally to Philadelphia; but my flight to Los Angeles from there was cancelled. I clicked to find alternate flights and there was nothing. Nothing for Saturday. Nothing for Sunday. Nothing for Monday. Flightaware had tracked over 1,500 flights cancelled by American and Delta at midnight. I was crushed. I called my parents and asked them if it would be possible to get us to either Norfolk, Washington DC or Baltimore airports if I could get a flight out - they said of course and got dressed and came over. The only flight I was able to get (that wasn't a red eye) was leaving out of Regan International via Southwest and made two stops - Omaha and Phoenix - before getting us into Los Angeles at 5pm. I booked it totally disregarding the price - I'd deal with the credit card company when I got back. I woke up Cameron, got him dressed and we jumped in the car for our 3 hour trip to the airport. We made it with plenty of time.

Cameron made friends with our pilot, Tim. Who was amazing and invited us onto the plane early and allowed Cameron to push button, pull the yoke and just be a kid in the cockpit.

Cameron had flown before but didn't remember it - so he was experiencing everything like it was his first time. Which was amazing to see.

We stopped in Omaha to drop off and pick up. Thankfully we weren't there for too long and we had a quick trip to Phoenix. Cameron is a great travel buddy and we packed lots of things to keep him occupied. He ended up taking a nap part of the way during our second flight.

We made it to Phoenix and decided to get some lunch before going to our terminal. The flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles was only an hour. The flight attendants made him a crown made of coffee stirs and snack packs. He loved it! Cameron could hardly wait to be in California and one step closer to seeing his hero "Owen".

We landed, got our bags and headed to meet our driver, Nicolas, who took us to our hotel. We were worn out from the 16+ travel day and decided to order room service and crash.