Kids fly solo to Nashville, wanted to go to Dollywood

Except that they weren't 15 and sneaking away from the parents besides Bridget ;).

Lord Gonchar said: Interesting. I thought just the opposite.

Gonch thought the opposite?! Color me shocked (not!) :)

kpjb said:

Well, sure!

Christopher Columbus
Lewis & Clark
Bridget the Dollywood Chick
Amerigo Vespucci

Same diff...

Exactly.

And imagine if anyone had prevented the others from traveling because they didn't have ID. Where would we be then, huh?

This is kinda of good PR for Dollywood, I wouldn,t be surprised if the park flew the whole family to the park and paid for their lodging.

Corkscrew, I get the feeling you might be correct in your above statement.

Did anyone else catch that James Brown is the father and Bobby Brown the son? I just found that remotely amusing, as I find the rest of the story rediculously stupid. How did you not noctice your children all under 16 missing for that long? Blame really rests on the parents.

It's a fine line between courage and stupidity. :)

...and between love and hate.

Awww... the kids these days! What shenanigans will they come up with next!

If there's a fine line I have to say these kids fell over to the stupid side. The thing that sticks in my mind as stupidest, with all the info that's is available to kids these days, is that she didn't even know what city they needed to go to! Ok, so maybe Southwest doesn't fly to Pidgeon Forge...hey, we've all done it to save a dime on the bag check!

This is so laughable, starting with the looks on the kids faces in that pic, but at the same time downright sad, starting with the fact that they got away with it to begin with. I'm gonna start and stop with the parents. They accidentally or not let a weird thing happen and now they're busy launching accusations. Mirror, please.

The previously raised, frightening notion that it's a short, short time before she's declared "grown" is also sticking in my mind. You all, like me, tend to visit large, crowded places. And maybe, like me, you sometimes look across what I call the "Sea of Humanity" and shake your head that half these folks are out there reproducing, let alone driving!

Why didn't she just ask her parents to take them to Dollywood?

Ridiculous. As in ridicule. Spell it with me.

Thanks for pointing it out Jeff. I usually run spell check when using words more that four syllables, but was in a rush... LOL

Blame rests entirely in the parents on this one. Maybe the ticket agent could have questioned why a 15 year old was buying tickets on her own, but that's policy.

The kids getting past security without ID is disturbing, though, but maybe there's a policy for that? (Under age X they won't HAVE id, so if they're unaccompanied and ticketed they can go through)

To Southwest's credit (as much as I normally want to hate them :) ), they've said they plan on refunding the girl's money. There's no way they're remotely required to do that, but it's a nice gesture.

Why blame the parents? Its not like they chose to have children! :)

FYI, you don't need picture ID to fly. It just can speed up the process.

My wife and I went to Boston last year, and she lost her driver's license. We called JetBlue to see what to do, and they told us just to go through security as normal. She still got through because she could show a credit card with the same name as the name on her ticket... they just took a bit longer and gave her a few ?'s to verify that she indeed was who she said.

Good to know. We were almost worried we'd be stuck on Kauai when Diana's DL came out of her pocket on the rental car shuttle. Being stuck on Kauai would be awful.

I don't understand why we need to blame the parents or the airline.

This goes back my line of thinking in this thread:

Kids do stupid stuff.

The airline followed policy that has never been a problem before this.

The parents most likely had no reason to be concerned either. If my daughter (almost 13) told me she was at a friend's house, she'd have way more than the 1 1/2 hour flight time before I became concerned of her whereabouts.

This is a case of kids doing stupid kid stuff. Really spectacular stupid kids stuff, but stupid kid stuff nonetheless.

The thing I really don't get is why the kid thought it was a good idea to spend $700 going to any amusement park. I mean, even if $700 was going to buy her the cab fare, tickets, and flight home, at age 15 I was already saving for things like college.

Dollywood is really fun, Andy. Duuh. ;)

I traveled from Barboursville to Camden Park (about 15 miles lol) more than a few times when I was as young as 12, and I rode my bike all over Altoona when I lived there (no car rides for me), but I wouldn't have ever dreamed of sneaking away from home, with my neighbor kid friend and little Sister, even up into my young adult years. I'd ask my parents to take me, and if they said no, I'd find another way there.

I took my first bus trip to SFMM from San Francisco at 17. I had no idea how the trip would turn out, and that was part of the fun or adventure of it. Until I figured out that the bus I took would arrive about 40 miles away from the park, and I had to pay a taxi about $75 each way. I litterally thought the park was in smack dab in the middle of the city of LA. lol

Hell, some of the questions that show up right here on CB about parks from "adults" aren't the most informed or researched. I completely get where this kid was coming from. It was stupid, but I "get" it.