If you’re traveling through Orlando International Airport soon via Spirit Airlines, you might be in for quite the ordeal if you’re not prepared!

While we’re usually fans of Spirit Airlines and their budget-conscious fares, we’ve recently seen these companies pulling routes to Orlando. To make things worse, we encountered a MAJOR problem with one of Spirit’s most recent changes to their baggage process that you’ll want to be aware of before it becomes an issue for you, too!

Spirit Airlines recently made a HUGE change to their baggage check-in system that was intended to make dropping off your bag easier and more efficient. According to Fox 35, this new process involves several self-service machines that passengers could walk up to and experience an expedited check-in that the company estimated would take around 70 seconds. They hoped the new baggage system process would help its passengers move on to security quicker since they wouldn’t need to stop to check in with an agent at the airport.

So, while we’ve known about this change for a while it hasn’t seemed to be much of an issue… when it works. However, on our recent trip using Spirit Airlines and this baggage machine drop-off system, this was not our experience. Here’s how this experience is supposed to work:

Check-in at the kiosk
Tag your own bag
Proceed to the self-bag drop machine
Scan your boarding pass
Scan your ID
The bag machine compares the photo ID scan with a facial scan and compares ID information with your flight details
Once the match is successful, you’ll put your bag on the conveyor belt attached to the machine (which scans the bag, weighs it, and then accepts payment for any additional services)
You’re free to move on to security. Your bags are then sent to the airport’s checked baggage system

Spirit has said that none of the data it collects during this process is shared with any government agencies. Passengers weary of this part of the process can opt out of the biometric photo-matching technology and choose to work with an agent if they would rather. It sounds simple enough, right?

Here’s a breakdown of how our recent experience went when this baggage system was down! Although we were near the front of the line, it took us upwards of around 40 minutes just to wait our turn to drop off our bags in the completely user-operated machines. At MCO, Spirit has replaced almost every desk with this system and only a handful of the machines were working during our fiasco.

We hope this issue won’t be an ongoing occurrence and recognize what a nightmare this can be to those who aren’t as familiar with flying as we are. If you’re planning on flying through MCO soon and using Spirit Airlines, it might be beneficial to plan ahead and allow for more time at the airport in case this issue is still ongoing when you’re trying to check in for your flight and get to security. Hopefully, Spirit Airlines will also recognize the problem and remedy the situation as quickly as possible!

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Have you ever encountered any weird happenings at the airport when flying to or from your Disney World vacation? Tell us all about it in the comments below!

The post We Experienced a MAJOR Problem With a New Baggage Process at the Orlando Airport first appeared on the disney food blog.