Let me get this said outfront – line or no line, I’d rather have PreCheck than not. While I’m capable of griping on occasion, such as about my recent early Monday morning in Atlanta experience, the idea of avoiding shoe carnival, not removing my 3-1-1 bag and my excessive amount of electronics will always trump the routine screening process for me. Wearing an insulin pump is the final straw as my presence in the nekked scanner voids the warranty on the pump according to its manufacturer. In other words, no PreCheck = guaranteed patdown for me.

Since I whined a little last week, I think it’s only fair that I blog about the flip side of the coin – the absolutely positive experience I had with TSA PreCheck in Orlando last week. For sure, Thursday at noon may not be MCO’s peak departure hour, but the security queues were well subscribed anyway. Nonetheless, I walked up to the PreCheck lane and was immediately met by a courteous TSA employee who scanned my boarding pass and checked my ID. Then, I made my way through the queue to the walk through metal detector. I was ready, but the newbie in front of me was not. Nonetheless, the TSA folks were on top of it, firmly but politely letting the person in front of me know what and what not to do. With a minimum of fuss, the newbie made it though and so did I.

All told, I was in and out of screening in about 3 minutes. I’ll take that, and I’ll take PreCheck any day over anything else.

-MJ, May 21, 2014