ChibiJones
<font color=darkcoral>I could not be happier with
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2000
Background info:
We had decided over the summer to go during Christmas (the university is closed & the team would be somewhere cold for their winter tournament). IâÂÂm originally from Southern California so winters are tough for me. I gave my boyfriend a choice, either we go home to my parents or to Disney World. He opted for Disney World, but the catch was I had to do all of the leg work. No problem. I had a bit of a deadline for getting everything sorted out because I knew once the season got started I would be way too busy to put much effort into planning this trip. I was also going to be taking my last semester of classes for my bachelorâÂÂs degree.
We ruled out staying on-site pretty quickly. Since it was just the two of us, we couldnâÂÂt justify spending that much money just to save a 20 minute drive. I kept checking airfares, but wasnâÂÂt getting anything reasonable. I missed out on a deal by a couple of days because we were waiting to get his vacation time approved. After that, the prices jumped up to about $220 so I decided to take the plunge and try Priceline. We got tickets on Midway for $176 each (that includes all taxes, fees, etc) into Tampa. Midway was fine, but we learned after the first leg of our flight down to Florida that we needed a pillow behind our lower backs. It did seem like we had a little more leg room than on your average carrier. We were slightly delayed both ways in Raleigh-Durham, but nothing too horrendous. Our flights were all late afternoon/early evening so the delays were trickle effects from problems at other airports. Other than that, there were no crowds at all at the airports. Since we were only going for 4 days, we just took carry-ons.
With the flight sorted out, I turned my attention to the car rental and hotel. I reserved a compact with National using the Entertainment book coupon and the MKC discount for $156 (ended up being $163 when we got the final charges). My confirmation said unlimited mileage so I ended up spending a little bit of time at the counter while the agent sorted everything out (the poor guy was all by himself since all of his coworkers had called in âÂÂsickâÂÂ). Moral of the story â bring your confirmations with you, I was glad we had ours. We ended up being way under the 500 mile limit we would have had, but I didnâÂÂt want to risk it. The National counter & lot are both on-site at Tampa so once we were done at the counter, we walked across the street to the parking structure to get our car. I asked the agent there which car to take. He pointed to a dark red 2001 Eclipse Spider on the Emerald Aisle (hereafter refered to as the Hot Chick Car). There weren't many cars left so I guess they were all sold out of compacts. He was all alone too. It was 12:30am on Christmas Day by this point so there was no traffic at all from Tampa to our hotel. (Slight rant here: WHY do businesses not put the street number on the building? We ended up at the wrong Econolodge at 1:30am because there was no street number)
For the hotel, all we wanted was a bathroom & a bed so we opted for one of the Econolodges on 192. Not the best hotel IâÂÂve ever stayed at, but not horrendous. The beds were comfortable. We found out that one of the chairs wasnâÂÂt too sturdy so we just sat on the bed. The bathroom was a little moldy next to the toilet, but since we werenâÂÂt going to be standing on that particular spot, it didnâÂÂt bother us. It ended up being about a 20-30 minute drive depending on which park we were going to. It was very easy to get there and back.
Ok, this is long enough. Boy, can I get verbose!! Just a quick outline of whatâÂÂs coming up: Christmas Day at AK, a Keys to the Kingdom Tour, a CP package, and more.
We had decided over the summer to go during Christmas (the university is closed & the team would be somewhere cold for their winter tournament). IâÂÂm originally from Southern California so winters are tough for me. I gave my boyfriend a choice, either we go home to my parents or to Disney World. He opted for Disney World, but the catch was I had to do all of the leg work. No problem. I had a bit of a deadline for getting everything sorted out because I knew once the season got started I would be way too busy to put much effort into planning this trip. I was also going to be taking my last semester of classes for my bachelorâÂÂs degree.
We ruled out staying on-site pretty quickly. Since it was just the two of us, we couldnâÂÂt justify spending that much money just to save a 20 minute drive. I kept checking airfares, but wasnâÂÂt getting anything reasonable. I missed out on a deal by a couple of days because we were waiting to get his vacation time approved. After that, the prices jumped up to about $220 so I decided to take the plunge and try Priceline. We got tickets on Midway for $176 each (that includes all taxes, fees, etc) into Tampa. Midway was fine, but we learned after the first leg of our flight down to Florida that we needed a pillow behind our lower backs. It did seem like we had a little more leg room than on your average carrier. We were slightly delayed both ways in Raleigh-Durham, but nothing too horrendous. Our flights were all late afternoon/early evening so the delays were trickle effects from problems at other airports. Other than that, there were no crowds at all at the airports. Since we were only going for 4 days, we just took carry-ons.
With the flight sorted out, I turned my attention to the car rental and hotel. I reserved a compact with National using the Entertainment book coupon and the MKC discount for $156 (ended up being $163 when we got the final charges). My confirmation said unlimited mileage so I ended up spending a little bit of time at the counter while the agent sorted everything out (the poor guy was all by himself since all of his coworkers had called in âÂÂsickâÂÂ). Moral of the story â bring your confirmations with you, I was glad we had ours. We ended up being way under the 500 mile limit we would have had, but I didnâÂÂt want to risk it. The National counter & lot are both on-site at Tampa so once we were done at the counter, we walked across the street to the parking structure to get our car. I asked the agent there which car to take. He pointed to a dark red 2001 Eclipse Spider on the Emerald Aisle (hereafter refered to as the Hot Chick Car). There weren't many cars left so I guess they were all sold out of compacts. He was all alone too. It was 12:30am on Christmas Day by this point so there was no traffic at all from Tampa to our hotel. (Slight rant here: WHY do businesses not put the street number on the building? We ended up at the wrong Econolodge at 1:30am because there was no street number)
For the hotel, all we wanted was a bathroom & a bed so we opted for one of the Econolodges on 192. Not the best hotel IâÂÂve ever stayed at, but not horrendous. The beds were comfortable. We found out that one of the chairs wasnâÂÂt too sturdy so we just sat on the bed. The bathroom was a little moldy next to the toilet, but since we werenâÂÂt going to be standing on that particular spot, it didnâÂÂt bother us. It ended up being about a 20-30 minute drive depending on which park we were going to. It was very easy to get there and back.
Ok, this is long enough. Boy, can I get verbose!! Just a quick outline of whatâÂÂs coming up: Christmas Day at AK, a Keys to the Kingdom Tour, a CP package, and more.
