Life’s too short...to never sleep in a treehouse! 8/27 TR is up! Link in siggie

[winkers]

I'd go with the cheaper flight and adjust a day...but then I'm a tight wad.

If it were only a few tickets it wouldn't make that much difference but $200 times 6, that's a lot of money I could spend on souvieneers.

 

[englishrose47]

congrats !!!

The new job sounds very challenging !!!

As for thr airfares I say go with the cheaper ones and add a day!!!!

 

[jordanyosh]

cheaper and better flights....

 

[glennbo123]

Ewww, those are some tough airfare decisions. I'm thinking the $321, shifting one day (next-best option) might be the compromise, where it's not too expensive but gives some of the benefit and doesn't conflict with tryouts.

(Now you have me itching to go out and see if my fares have changed. Oh no.)

 

[Native NYer]

Congrats!!!!!
What a great oppportunity

 

[Native NYer]

I say see about moving the dates.
There's always the possibility that the airfare won't come down. If you wait too long, you may end up paying more money.
What airlines are you considering? Does Airtran or Southwest fly from your area? They tend to be really cheap.

 

[Charleston Princess]

Oh my goodness! Airfare Roulette is the worst game!!! Hope you are able to snag the great price even if it means adding a day.

 

[eandesmom]

I'd go with the cheaper flight and adjust a day...but then I'm a tight wad.

If it were only a few tickets it wouldn't make that much difference but $200 times 6, that's a lot of money I could spend on souvieneers.

yes, times 6 it gets ugly really fast!

congrats !!!

The new job sounds very challenging !!!

As for thr airfares I say go with the cheaper ones and add a day!!!!

Thanks Rosie! Stay tuned to see what the ball landed on in our roulette game...

cheaper and better flights....

It's been an interesting day to say the least. Where we landed may surprise you.

Ewww, those are some tough airfare decisions. I'm thinking the $321, shifting one day (next-best option) might be the compromise, where it's not too expensive but gives some of the benefit and doesn't conflict with tryouts.

(Now you have me itching to go out and see if my fares have changed. Oh no.)

Don't look!

We had a lot of options, some good, some bad, some in between and some just...different. We did make a decision.

Congrats!!!!!
What a great oppportunity

Thanks! I'm excited

I say see about moving the dates.
There's always the possibility that the airfare won't come down. If you wait too long, you may end up paying more money.
What airlines are you considering? Does Airtran or Southwest fly from your area? They tend to be really cheap.

Air Tran is cheap, so is United. It also takes 9-12 hours to get to Orlando from Seattle on either one and uses up a whole day with at least 1 stop and crummy layovers. We could get flights for around $235 on either one.

Oh my goodness! Airfare Roulette is the worst game!!! Hope you are able to snag the great price even if it means adding a day.

We snagged a price. Was it Black? or Red?

 

[All7OfUs]

Ewww, those are some tough airfare decisions. I'm thinking the $321, shifting one day (next-best option) might be the compromise, where it's not too expensive but gives some of the benefit and doesn't conflict with tryouts.

(Now you have me itching to go out and see if my fares have changed. Oh no.)

STOP. IT!!


Cynthia- $321 doesn't sound too bad; only 1 day's change, and no sports issues. I feel your pain.

 

[eandesmom]

STOP. IT!!


Cynthia- $321 doesn't sound too bad; only 1 day's change, and no sports issues. I feel your pain.

no, it's not bad. But $321 x 6 is $678 more than the $208 option....

that's a lot of cabbage. BUT not missing tryouts is very important.

Question is...what did we decide?

And decide we have.

 

[All7OfUs]

The suspense is KILLING me!! How could you do this to us??!!

Oh wait, I'm doing the same thing to you!

 

[eandesmom]

The suspense is KILLING me!! How could you do this to us??!!

Oh wait, I'm doing the same thing to you!

turnabouts fair play

 

[Happydog]

This is making my head hurt! just tell us already!!

 

[eandesmom]

This is making my head hurt! just tell us already!!

 

[Angies1274]

hmm....waiting to hear what you decided.

 

[MEK]

Well Cythnia - I apologize for being two days behind with you fantastic (but not surprising) news. Congratulations!We are all very excited for you!

As far as your flights are concerned, I vote for adjusting the dates. I know that Kendall supposedly CANT miss one day of soccer tryouts or the world will come to an end, but I think that is what you should do. What if Kendall were to get injured in a game and couldn't play or practice for a day, a week, a month?????....would that be the end to her soccer career???? I hardly think so. It happens ALL THE TIME in boy's soccer. I can't imagine any soccer coach not accepting the fact that a kid can only fly home from a FAMILY vacation on a certain day and that you have tried all other options and can't work it out. Kendall's mom just has to talk to the coach ahead of time. Of course, she won't. And that is so short sighted. Ugghhhh.....it gets me too frustrated to even comment on.

I know how my boy's high school soccer coach is and he would be OK with unavoidable travel plans. Its just NOT that big of a deal. OK...enough...mouth shut now!

 

[eandesmom]

Airfare roulette.

What a game

What a ride

I forget how exhausting and stressful it can be

I think I’m guilty of some false arrogance in this area. Thinking that I have all the time in the world to keep an eye on fares and jump at my own pace when the right thing pops up.

Boy did I get put firmly in place yesterday!

I’ve been tracking fares pretty much year round. Both what they are averaging 1 month out from any given day and specifically for our trip. Generally they’ve been running about $240 about 30 days out from any given day. That $240, generally, was for one stop flights though, so a full day there and a full day back.

Tracking for our trip, best fares have been around $335-$357. And those were crummy crummy flights. But it's pretty far away still. Last year I bought tickets 46 days before the trip and got the $208 rate. It doesn't get better than that.

Except.

Our flight times sucked last year. Sure we had a direct there which helped in the sense of 3 kids getting to go to school for a half day (which helped sell K&T's mom on the trip) but that's about all that was good for. That mid night arrival killed us. EMH saved us but that's another trip report!

That said, not flying direct really kills the trip as well. When we decided to do this again we were pretty firm that it would be non stop or nothing and it would be at our preferred times.

Our ideal flight times were....

Red eye on the 11th. Leaves SEA at 10:45pm, arrives MCO 7:15 am. This is what we did in 2004. And as you will remember from the flight from you know where update...it was brutal in it's own way. 4 boys who didn't sleep, the eternal wait for a car, the clown car pack in to get out of MCO and the longest breakfast in the world. Culminating in 4 exhausted people stumbling into ASMusic to be greeted with an immediate bed and falling in love with staying on property then and there.

It is odd to say but we have really fond memories of that flight. Not the flight itself of course but what happened after and the fact that it forced a clock reset AND you don't lose a day on the plane.

Coming back, less of an issue...as long as it didn't involve getting out of bed before 6am and preferably a heck of a lot later so we could enjoy some of that last day.

And then I began to spin the wheel.

round


and

round


and

round


​

I really hadn’t planned on spinning the wheel. I’d planned on tracking through Bing, Kayak and whatever other various tracking services I’d signed up for, keeping an eye on things and then having about a week to decide and book.

Not so.

I am not really sure what made me look yesterday. I got one of my standard spam travel emails, only one, and one that didn’t really apply to our trip. It was from “cheap-o-flights”. Love that name. I’ve never bought through them but they have been showing the lowest rates. The email was for this “Virgin America Sale from $49 OW | Up to 70% off Orlando Hotels | Apple Vacations SuperSale” none of which really applied but for whatever reason…it made me go look. I ran a Bing fare comparison…was seeing some low numbers…went to Cheapo…was seeing lower things and decided to look at the Delta and Alaska sites.

Maybe it’s just me but I almost always buy my tickets direct from the airlines. I’ve done Expedia, though work, but other than that I just feel more comfortable purchasing direct. Not sure why.
So, sure enough…there were some lower rates.

But not on our dates.

Before and after our dates.

Now it’s interesting. I really did try to look into this from a better day of the week to fly standpoint but in the end just went with what worked around sports tryouts. At the point we chose dates all I could see what that the flights we wanted were offered, rates were equally high on every day ($457 the cheapest back then). Oh well.

I started scribbling notes.

I started emailing my TA to check on things too

I started emailing Jeff with information.

I asked my TA to put something on hold. In fact, I tried to put it on hold myself.

The rate was gone.

I panicked. I’ll be honest. Flat out panicked.

Not to beat a dead horse but when you are traveling with 6…an extra $100 per ticket makes a huge difference. I’d budgeted to pay up to $319 a ticket but I really really didn’t want to!

This is what it looked like during the process.

Here were the options. I was toggling between the Delta and Alaska sites and also on the phone with Delta. The very funny part of this is that it is the SAME flights in most cases. Delta code shares with Alaska. Which has the non stop flights we wanted. Delta consistently charges less. We booked through Delta last year but were able to get miles on Alaska which, living here, works well for us for other trip options!

Option 1. $458
Original trip dates. Non-stop red eye on the 11th, flying back on the 22nd,. Non-stop, leaves at 6:25 pm, lands Seattle 9:33 pm. $229 each way. $458

Pro. Great flights and on our dates
Con. Cost!
​

Option 2. $208
Red eye on the 10th, flying back on the 23rd. 6:25 pm non-stop flight as in Option 1. $104 each way on Delta ($124 on Alaska, SAME flights).

Pro. $208 round trip!
Con. Would add 2 nights to the trip and run into HS tryouts.
​

Option 3. $208
Red eye on the 12th, flying back on the 23rd. $104 each way. $208 total.
Would slide the trip by one day all around and mean moving both hotel reservations and ADR’s. Would run into HS tryouts. This is the one I tried to put on hold and the outbound leg at $104 disappeared before my eyes.
For a minute it looked like I could get it on Alaska for their $124 each way/$248 rate round trip but that too went bye-bye as I frantically tried to enter 6 peoples information online to hold the tickets.

Pro. Great price, kept trip at same length so no extra hotel nights.
Con. Disappeared and ran into tryouts.
​

Option 4. $333
Red eye on the 10th, flying back on the 22nd. $104 outbound, $229 return ($124/$248 on Alaska)

Pro. Kept return date intact, no sports conflict.
Con. Cost and added one extra night to the trip.​

Option 5. $208
Fly out on the 12th, leaving at 6am, via LA, arriving MCO at 6:30 pm. Flying back on the 6;25 flight on the 23rd. $104 each way.

Pro. Cost
Con. Give up the idea of the red eye, 12 hours to get there, lose the entire day of the 12th and ran into HS tryouts. But a 6pm arrival would be far better than the midnight of last years. 1 lost day of vacation.
​

Option 6. $224
Fly out on the 12th, leaving at 6am, via LA, arriving MCO at 6:30 pm. Fly out on the 22nd via United, leaving at 11:30, 1 stop, arriving SEA at 11:30 pm. $112 each way.

Pro. Cost, kept our dates
Con. 2 FULL days of flying = 2 lost days of vacation.
​

There were a ton of options along the lines of Option 6 between United, AirTran and the occasional Delta/Alaska leg in there. This was the best of the bad options lol. Aka Flying where we already have miles.

I called Jeff at work. I NEVER do that. Twice in one week! Once about the job and now this.

I.Was.Panicking. Big time. And of course knowing in the back of my mind the drama and complications of date changes with Kendall’s mom and that it would be pointless to run anything by her as she would just choose to ignore it and not respond at all.

Will K pick soccer or vollyeball? What time would tryouts start on the 23rd? Would one versus the other change what time we could get back?

He was glad I called and agreed we need to decide, NOW.

We pulled the trigger.

What did we do?

 

[DisMomAmy]

Are you kidding me?? Another cliffhanger about the same topic!

I totally get why you are stressing over these flights. We only fly direct (so far) and I'm always juggling airport decisions (we have three possible departure airports & two possible Florida airports) and airlines (love Southwest to get the two free bags per person & Jet Blue was pretty good too). And we are only taking 3 hour flights down the coast... I can't imagine flying across the whole country! Even with our short flights we find that if they aren't timed well it can end up taking us a whole day to travel. The fares have also been really whacky this year.

Can't wait to hear what you decided... soon... like today...

 

[eandesmom]

hmm....waiting to hear what you decided.

it may surprise you

Well Cythnia - I apologize for being two days behind with you fantastic (but not surprising) news. Congratulations!We are all very excited for you!

As far as your flights are concerned, I vote for adjusting the dates. I know that Kendall supposedly CANT miss one day of soccer tryouts or the world will come to an end, but I think that is what you should do. What if Kendall were to get injured in a game and couldn't play or practice for a day, a week, a month?????....would that be the end to her soccer career???? I hardly think so. It happens ALL THE TIME in boy's soccer. I can't imagine any soccer coach not accepting the fact that a kid can only fly home from a FAMILY vacation on a certain day and that you have tried all other options and can't work it out. Kendall's mom just has to talk to the coach ahead of time. Of course, she won't. And that is so short sighted. Ugghhhh.....it gets me too frustrated to even comment on.

I know how my boy's high school soccer coach is and he would be OK with unavoidable travel plans. Its just NOT that big of a deal. OK...enough...mouth shut now!

Thanks for the congrats. And the empathy, I know you get it and it really means a lot!

It's not the school or the coaches that's the issue, you know that and we do too. It is, sadly, just another thing for Kendall's mom to place blame on IF she were not to make varsity. Which of course she won't. Which of course we will get blamed for, because taking her on vacation will have ruined her training and her performance as a result. We can't win and so as best we can, we don't try but what we do try to do is not put K in the middle. Coming back late puts her in between Jeff and his ex and we try really hard to never go there.

Funny you should mention injuries. K twisted her ankle 2 weeks ago during a volleyball tournament. Was told she might have fractured the growth plate. Wore a boot for a week, told to stay off it completely for a week. Went back in. Got the same story but told to stay off of it for TWO weeks and was given some kind of brace instead of the boot.

5 days later her mom decided she was fine and has her back playing everything. Without doctors approval. The 2 week follow up appointment isn't till Monday. This was not K pushing for it, at all. Instead her mom "tested her" by having her run stairs or something and decided she was fine.

Because she's a doctor you know.

NOT.

I pray nothing is damaged as a result, we are both just sick about it. We were not consulted or told (of course) only found out b/c K posted on fbook about her vball game (which we assumed she was WATCHING) on Sunday. K is mad at Jeff right now (a whole 'nother story) so "neglected" to inform him directly.

So no, Kendall's world won't end if we come back a day late. Her mothers might though.

Interested to see if she tells the doctor the truth on Monday or puts K in the position of lying about it. In the meantime we are in the lovely position of taking her to both this weekend, (since it's our weekend) which includes one soccer game and a 2 day vball tournament or refusing to without the doctors approval which would of course put K in the middle.

ok, vent over. I'm going back to my happy place and being a duck.

Are you kidding me?? Another cliffhanger about the same topic!

I totally get why you are stressing over these flights. We only fly direct (so far) and I'm always juggling airport decisions (we have three possible departure airports & two possible Florida airports) and airlines (love Southwest to get the two free bags per person & Jet Blue was pretty good too). And we are only taking 3 hour flights down the coast... I can't imagine flying across the whole country! Even with our short flights we find that if they aren't timed well it can end up taking us a whole day to travel. The fares have also been really whacky this year.

Can't wait to hear what you decided... soon... like today...

Ok juggling 5 airports would make me crazy. I think that sounds worse!!!

Jet Blue is really pricey to Orlando from here. Great to NYC though. I am not a big Southwest fan and I've never seen anything pop up as a good deal from or to here although they do fly here. It's kind of odd actually if you ask me.

 

[carissanboys]

I missed the news!! Congratulations Cynthia!! So happy they offered you the job (but not surprised).