Fort Lauderdale Airport

Our first time using FLL and found baggage delivery quick and efficient. As we arrived at the terminal with the rental car convenient although a bit of a walk compared with say Tampa. Good signage for returning rental cars. Line up for security quiet long mid afternoon.

I used FLL for the first time as a local driving up from Miami. The signage into the airport is beyond confusing. Within a few hundred feet of exiting I 595 you are confronted with poorly designed overhead signs pointing to hourly daily extended and economy parking; $15 a day parking; $36 a day parking; the Hibiscus Garage; the Mimosa (?) Garage; rental car return; arrivals; departures and Terminals 123 and 4 (with airlines listed). One driver was so confused he (recklessly) stopped his car in a middle lane to interpret the signs. In my case I somehow ended up in the $36 garage (I had wanted $15) and had to exit. Cashier said people do that all the time. I then had to go completely around the airport and re-enter and this time missed ALL of the parking. Another go round and got to the right garage but each level has confusing signs and booms restricting access to each. Make a mistake and the boom does not open and you can't back up due to traffic - and there are two near-impossible-to-read sets of overhead signage in the garage: one for pedestrians (exit to terminal 1234 etc) and for cars (to level 6 to Hibiscus etc). The garage itself has tiny narrow spaces. You almost need a sliding door mini-van to get out. Then I was challenged to find my way to the terminal. There is a bus and / or tram promised but the signs peter out before you can find a "stop" and here are no obvious bus stops. I ended up following color coded very faded lines painted on the concrete through ten or fifteen turns and 100 to 150 meters to get to terminal 4. Returning at 10 PM I encountered different unmarked bus stops for different lots (economy versus daily lots) with a mishmash of signs on the busses for the Hibiscus Garage Economy parking and Rental cars. Actually got on the wrong bus and had to get off a few meters later. (No announcement on the bus - you have to ask). Ended up having to get to the garage via the rental car building and then found that the location I had written down did not correspond to the actual location of the car. (Depending on how you exit the garages you can write down the wrong location). Another 15 minutes searching for the car in sauna-like heat and humidity. All in all a completely confusing and frustrating experience for locals driving in who do not use the airport on a regular basis.

Flew recently to FLL. Worst Immigration line I have done in my entire life. 14 officers (for visitors) were supposed to be working and there were just 3 checking us while the whole 10 officers were checking the US citizens. There was a system rundown so it made the delay even worse. We were in a queue for 3 hours! no priorities for little children nor old aged people. I can't say anything about baggage claim because once we could step out of customs we saw our suitcases almost being delivered to the "lost baggage office". Departure was a mess. They changed our gate twice and terminal 4 was really small to handle all those pax.

Used FLL this past weekend on USAir. Easy to use facility but definitely needs some work. Signage needs to be improved-not a single direction sign as you deplane requiring all to look both ways to determine which way to exit the terminal. Rental car facility is all in one location whcih is nice but can be confusing as to where to go. Return midday Tuesday only about 15 minutes at security. Beware-there is extremely limited dining/shopping options air side.

FLL has been renovated / expanded and seems quite new. Given that it is really hard to understand what they were thinking when they designed this airport. There are 3 predominant types of users: people with families going on vacation people who speak little or no English and the elderly. Given that fact one marvels at how disorienting poorly organized and poorly signed this airport is. Terminal 1 has high volume cattle car carriers Southwest and JetBlue and there is hardly enough space for the lines at the ticket counters the lines at security and the lines at the small eating places. TSA seems to have been trained to stop terrorism by confusing and confounding passengers. There were different rules about what to take off or take out as you're going through the machines in different lines and each line had someone shouting conflicting commands. In one you left your shoes on before going through one machine then took them off. The rental car center seems well organized. But finding it unless you arrived at Terminal 1 requires GPS and a 10-minute briefing upon arrival. One can wander the big parking garage for what seems to be an eternity. Best example of how this airport works is how one gets to the garage from the rental counter.: There are two pair of doors. You can see the parking garage which is outside of the building through the glass in the doors. One pair has the word "Enter" written in bold the other has "Exit." Above the door that reads "Enter" is a bright emergency sign that reads "Exit." Since they both have automatic operators you can only use one. This must provide FFL staff hours of amusement watching septegenarians try to figure out which door won't knock them over. I want to meet the person who thinks this stuff up and smack some sense into him (or her). (The correct answer is that you must exit through the door that says "Enter.")

Terminal I at Fort Lauderdale is the worse I have recently experienced. The catering facilities were at best described as basic and totally inadequate for the post New Year volume. The airline information was inadequate. Clearly not an airport to enter until the flight is due to board.

Used FLL on 2/10/07 and again 2/17/07. Inbound wasn't bad - I got a kick out of the decor in the baggage claim area as well as the use of music instead of an alarm before the conveyor belt started up. However on the return trip I also found that the employees are rude as well as quite a few of the passengers.

Flew into and from new terminal one (on Continental but terminal services NW Southwest and JetBlue) - so much easier than Miami! Nice sit-down restaurant. Terminal is very open and tropical in feeling. If you are flying within the US this is much the better alternative. The one problem is that there was a line for security.