RustyC
Oct 25, 07, 8:15 pm
Another celebration-of-the-mundane trip report.
Finally got in early enough on a Spirit sale to land both legs on a sale fare. $8 each way, ATL-MCO-ATL (Orlando was the only city offered from Atlanta at that fare), with the first flight over and the last flight back the next day. Fare came to $36.80 all in.
So I treated it a bit like a weekend getaway trip, even though it was on Tuesday and Wednesday. One of the great things about being self-employed is being able to at least "bend" your many work hours to allow for stuff like this. It's a great example of the kind of trip I would have had to pass up back when I had only 14 or 19 vacation days a year to allocate.
Decided to head to the Tampa Bay area rather than stay around Orlando. The 2* ESA in Clearwater Pricelined at a great $26 ($36 or so all-in). It's a fine place in a hard-to-find location; if it were near a beach or had much better road and exit visibility it probably wouldn't show up as often on Priceline.
For the car rent I had a backup reservation with Fox, but Priceline came through at the 11th hour with a $17 compact (around $25/day all-in) with Alamo.
The outbound flight was at 6:30 a.m., which caused the usual circadian shock in having to get up so early to head to the airport. Usually the very early and very late flights force a need to use parking near the airport, since the transit system's hours aren't quite that long. Security was crowded but still manageable.
The lady at the check-in counter wanted me to try my rolling carry-on with the size-wise unit, even though it was a Samsonite specifically designed for that space. First time I had ever been asked that, though.
The plane would be 100% full, though the zoned boarding was enough to prevent a Southwest Airlines cattle drive. It was an A319 with gray-leather seats and a knee-brushing seat pitch. Most drinks were $2 with a credit-card-only arrangement. FAs on the particular flight were a bit like barking teachers around recess time, but it wasn't too hard to shrug it all off for an hour flight.
Alamo was thankfully in the airport and, at 8 a.m., even more thankfully uncrowded. Easy to imagine, though, getting stuck with too many other customers and not enough cars if you hit it at the wrong time. Was able to pick a Chevy Cobalt SS on the compact rate. It was pretty nice, having 2 doors, a sunroof and some ability to jump into traffic.
Lack of sleep started catching up on the first day. Ate lunch at Shell's (one of the best clam chowders anywhere, though also expensive at $6.99 a bowl), and later dinner at bd's Mongolian Barbecue (IMO the best MBBQ place out there).
Weather was very uncooperative on day 2, so plans to do outdoorsy stuff had to be altered. Went to the Salvador Dali museum in downtown St. Petersburg for the first time in 10 or so years. In addition to the permanent collection they had a number of drawings and three paintings on loan from the Dali museum in Spain.
It was good stuff, though a bit aggressively priced, what with 95-cent postcards and $4.75 magnets in the gift shop and $15 regular adult admission (discountable to $13 via multiple coupons). The gift shop had quite a lot of floor space in proportion to the galleries. They got away with it all because of the uniqueness factor.
Also dropped by Haslam's Book Store, a local institution since 1933. And Banana's records, which used to have retail stores but is now relegated to warehouse space on 16th Ave. North that is tucked away in a mostly residential area. The warehouse, which you have to walk up a rusting, fire-escape-like staircase to get to, has easily the most vinyl records I've seen in one place anywhere in the world. If an album was popular in its day, then the warehouse will have 10-20 copies of it to choose from among the cramped shelves. The major drawback is that they price based on book value, which is usually unrealistically high. They also do most business online, so the hours for walk-ins are relatively short (10-5 Monday-Saturday). But in terms of sheer volume it's mind-boggling.
Took the no-toll route back to Orlando and saw what a backed-up mess the Sand Lake Rd. area can be around rush hour. Part of Spirit's gameplan for being able to offer the ultra low fares, a gate agent explained, was trying to turn around planes quickly so that they could squeeze an extra flight out of the aircraft per day. Unfortunately, that meant everything was timed assuming near-perfection. When that didn't happen (i.e. most of the time), it'd cause a ripple effect. So, if you had the last flight of the day, you had an excellent chance of it being late. And that's exactly what happened, though thankfully the damage was contained at about an hour. This one was only 97% or so full.
So overall it was a bit of a cattle drive to fly Spirit, but with some advance planning it wasn't too hard to get an assigned seat and carry only a single carry on and brace oneself for the rest.
Finally got in early enough on a Spirit sale to land both legs on a sale fare. $8 each way, ATL-MCO-ATL (Orlando was the only city offered from Atlanta at that fare), with the first flight over and the last flight back the next day. Fare came to $36.80 all in.
So I treated it a bit like a weekend getaway trip, even though it was on Tuesday and Wednesday. One of the great things about being self-employed is being able to at least "bend" your many work hours to allow for stuff like this. It's a great example of the kind of trip I would have had to pass up back when I had only 14 or 19 vacation days a year to allocate.
Decided to head to the Tampa Bay area rather than stay around Orlando. The 2* ESA in Clearwater Pricelined at a great $26 ($36 or so all-in). It's a fine place in a hard-to-find location; if it were near a beach or had much better road and exit visibility it probably wouldn't show up as often on Priceline.
For the car rent I had a backup reservation with Fox, but Priceline came through at the 11th hour with a $17 compact (around $25/day all-in) with Alamo.
The outbound flight was at 6:30 a.m., which caused the usual circadian shock in having to get up so early to head to the airport. Usually the very early and very late flights force a need to use parking near the airport, since the transit system's hours aren't quite that long. Security was crowded but still manageable.
The lady at the check-in counter wanted me to try my rolling carry-on with the size-wise unit, even though it was a Samsonite specifically designed for that space. First time I had ever been asked that, though.
The plane would be 100% full, though the zoned boarding was enough to prevent a Southwest Airlines cattle drive. It was an A319 with gray-leather seats and a knee-brushing seat pitch. Most drinks were $2 with a credit-card-only arrangement. FAs on the particular flight were a bit like barking teachers around recess time, but it wasn't too hard to shrug it all off for an hour flight.
Alamo was thankfully in the airport and, at 8 a.m., even more thankfully uncrowded. Easy to imagine, though, getting stuck with too many other customers and not enough cars if you hit it at the wrong time. Was able to pick a Chevy Cobalt SS on the compact rate. It was pretty nice, having 2 doors, a sunroof and some ability to jump into traffic.
Lack of sleep started catching up on the first day. Ate lunch at Shell's (one of the best clam chowders anywhere, though also expensive at $6.99 a bowl), and later dinner at bd's Mongolian Barbecue (IMO the best MBBQ place out there).
Weather was very uncooperative on day 2, so plans to do outdoorsy stuff had to be altered. Went to the Salvador Dali museum in downtown St. Petersburg for the first time in 10 or so years. In addition to the permanent collection they had a number of drawings and three paintings on loan from the Dali museum in Spain.
It was good stuff, though a bit aggressively priced, what with 95-cent postcards and $4.75 magnets in the gift shop and $15 regular adult admission (discountable to $13 via multiple coupons). The gift shop had quite a lot of floor space in proportion to the galleries. They got away with it all because of the uniqueness factor.
Also dropped by Haslam's Book Store, a local institution since 1933. And Banana's records, which used to have retail stores but is now relegated to warehouse space on 16th Ave. North that is tucked away in a mostly residential area. The warehouse, which you have to walk up a rusting, fire-escape-like staircase to get to, has easily the most vinyl records I've seen in one place anywhere in the world. If an album was popular in its day, then the warehouse will have 10-20 copies of it to choose from among the cramped shelves. The major drawback is that they price based on book value, which is usually unrealistically high. They also do most business online, so the hours for walk-ins are relatively short (10-5 Monday-Saturday). But in terms of sheer volume it's mind-boggling.
Took the no-toll route back to Orlando and saw what a backed-up mess the Sand Lake Rd. area can be around rush hour. Part of Spirit's gameplan for being able to offer the ultra low fares, a gate agent explained, was trying to turn around planes quickly so that they could squeeze an extra flight out of the aircraft per day. Unfortunately, that meant everything was timed assuming near-perfection. When that didn't happen (i.e. most of the time), it'd cause a ripple effect. So, if you had the last flight of the day, you had an excellent chance of it being late. And that's exactly what happened, though thankfully the damage was contained at about an hour. This one was only 97% or so full.
So overall it was a bit of a cattle drive to fly Spirit, but with some advance planning it wasn't too hard to get an assigned seat and carry only a single carry on and brace oneself for the rest.