We booked the same Miami-SXM flight, AA 1136 for Wednesday the 22nd (day before turkey day) for exactly those reasons, mainly getting here ahead of the big crush and all was going perfect until just after boarding was to start. The gate agent announced our plane had a significant issue and wasn't quickly fixable, so they had to find another aircraft. We were like..perfect. This is what we get for booking on the busiest travel day of the year, what are the odds they'll have not only another aircraft, but another with the same layout etc., but less than 2 hours later we were wheels up.

We ended up rolling in on the back side of the mid-afternoon crush, and made up the 4th line at the arrival hall. Basically, depending on plane size, from what I could tell just about the last half of the second bus load winds up out the end of the covered area and thus out in the sun. Lots of sweaty faces. We grabbed extra water in Miami in anticipation of the wait, but we had barely gotten into them when they called us well out of order. We felt badly for the folks that had been there way ahead of us..it had to be exasperating. As many have posted, the baggage hall and single carousel are the bottleneck. Immigration was a breeze, and they actually waived us into the residents line. The bags from the previous flight that hadn't been claimed yet were being stacked against a wall to make room for ours, and I spotted our purple bags coming through the portal as soon as we walked in. So believe me, compared to some of those poor souls we had an easy time of it.

Out the door to a taxi, and then 3 awesome days at the Holland House downtown before moving here to the BSV on Saturday.

On the service charge thing at the Dinghy Beach..been a few times now and no S/C added. That said, just about everywhere else we've been is adding 10-15%..and we've also had a few servers ask for an additional cash tip as "we don't get any of the S/C", and also one who said not even additional tip via card. It's uncomfortable, and the owners should fix whatever is driving this behavior IMHO. I'm not calling out individual restaurants, as it's not my nature to do so. In most cases, I've let the manager know how we feel about it and to let them know many are paying attention, and openly discussing on forums like this one.

Cheers!