Ryanair

Flying Ryanair to Dublin was such a pain in the ass. It was unreal how many issues came up and things they want to charge you for! We bought a seat for Hailey even though she is still technically under 2 (because she is such a squirm and does better if we can strap her into the car seat!) and it caused all sorts of problems. Their system online wouldn't let us put in her birthdate (since she is under 2) and wouldn't let us submit it so none of us could check in. Then, even after calling and having the lady tell me that we had to check in at the airport and could do so free of charge, they wanted to charge us for checking in at the airport and sent us back and forth to different counters, making us wait in 3 lines while our time was ticking away. Not only did they make us explain it again and again, they treated us like we were making it up or something. 

Then they made us gate check our carry-ons (which was unfortunate because we had Hailey's car seat strapped to the wheeled carry-on which made things easier. Once on the plane after being some of the last to board (due to the ordeal earlier), they made a stink about the car seat. And held up takeoff for some guy to take it out after we had it and her all strapped in to make sure it had an EU airplane approved sticker on it and fumble with reinstalling it.

Last, they made me hold her in my lap for takeoff and landing (even though she had a car seat) and I had to wake her up from her peaceful nap after 20min. to put her in my lap for the landing. Let me just say neither Hailey or I was thrilled about this.  How on earth is having her on my lap with a pull release lap belt (that she wanted to play with and could totally open by herself) attached to my lap belt safer than having her fully strapped into her car seat in her own seat right next to me? Her face is merely inches from the seat in front of us and it would be like having a kid on your lap in the car! Really? They regurgitated some garbage about how it was safer so I could help her with a mask if necessary? 

Then on way back they wouldn't let us do the phone tickets because we are non EU and then they forgot to stamp our boarding passes indicating they had checked our passports so they could have refused us at the gate. (But luckily they let us go "this time" because we would have missed our flight and it was their fault for not stamping them earlier.) Agh, almost all idiots working there. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Ha, we have two more trips on Ryanair--Greece and Milan flights. At least now we know all their weird things that could possibly occur and can hopefully avoid some of them? When Chris and I took Ryanair to Sicily, it was super simple and straightforward but apparently they had to try making flying with kids be as difficult as possible (as if there aren't already challenges)! Ryanair, you are super cheap and we are grateful that you made several trips possible but why do you make us hate you so? Okay, rant over. :)