Priceless

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Because we bought plane tickets for the kids to visit their grandparents this summer.  Boy I miss homeschooling sometimes, so I could go whenever. But then they wouldn't have been able to see their cousins who were in school....

Anyway...

I've been OCDing on finding the lowest ticket prices, I'd gone to the travel agent on base, signed up for email alerts to let me know when my airports were on sale...  And the back of my head was having a temper tantrum about why is it US who have to travel to see them.. the planes, trains, and roads travel both directions. I know. I've been on them. (well, not the trains.....)

And here's a tid bit of knowledge I picked up:
universally airfares online are cheaper than if you pick up the phone and call the airline.

But I didn't know that.

So.. I look online find Continental had the cheapest tickets. By alot. AND they fly out of our rinky dink airport up here in north county, so instead of driving an hour to get to the airport, it's about 15 minutes. Cool.

HOWEVER.. not so cool is the fact to get the cheapest flights you had to leave at 8pm. And change planes 3 times. With kids.

Oh boy, this could be fun.

So I ask the kids "if the only way you get to see Grandma is that we get on a plane at night, you sleep a little, then I wake you up and we have to get on again, and do that again.. can you do it and not cry and complain?" and they cheer "YES!" then one of them says "you mean we're not going to Disney?' because part of the deliberations were we could get year long no black out date tickets to Disney, parking gas and food included or go to CT for the same price.

Priceless. That's what I'm telling myself. Priceless for my kids to have a relationship with their grandparents and cousins. Fun.. well.. I think Disney might give them a run for their money.. but... the tickets are non-refundable.

So.. our adventure includes our overnight flight and 3 plane changes.

But online said there were 3 tickets at the low price. Well.. ok. Give me those three and add 2 more on in the next highest price bracket.

Nope. No can do. If you want 5 tickets you need to jump 10 price brackets. If you get 10 people you can qualify for a 10% price reduction (I did the math for you. It's still alot more than the 3 cheapest tickets)

So.. I call Continental. I want a person to talk to to explain that I want the 3 available tickets plus 2 more. On the same plane, on adjacent rows if possible.

Continental uses my old friend voice recognition technology. So.. it asks me where I want to fly from, I tell it Carlsbad, it says " you want to fly from Minot?" I yell "no" and it says I'm sorry, let's try again.. repeat a dozen times until it has me flying from Copenhagen to Harlengen. I yell operator at it another 6 or 7 times until it says "you would like to speak to an agent? Before I can connect you, please speak the name of the airport you are flying from"

I think I used a few profanities that finally told the computer I was frustrated so it put me on hold to talk to a human. 25 minutes later I get a human. I think. I mean she sounded human but she was about as helpful as the computer. And she had a hard time finding the Carlsbad airport, also. *I* on the other hand let the control freak in me get out of control and I had in front of me before I called the airport codes an the flight numbers, dates and times I wanted.  She couldn't find at least one of them.

So finally she says, ok, that'll be $633. And I said "a person?!!" she says, yes. I inform her the online prices are in the 300s. I want the $333 tickets and the next available and if she can do a military discount, that'd be terrific. She puts me on hold and comes back with "OK, with the discount, it'll be $597"  I ask her how many open seats are on the plane. She can't tell me. I ask her "are there more than 5?" she says yes, except she can't find the last flight and flight number in her system. OK. whatever.  I ask her, the absolute lowest price you can find is no where near $333 and she says, right, I don't know where you have that number, that must be an old number. I inform her yes, it was, because it was correct as I was calling her and getting put on hold 20 minutes ago... but 20 minutes ago it was accurate.

She tells me she can't match that. But she'd like to give me a good deal on a rental car.

You're joking. I can't find a way to get there yet and you're trying to rent me a car at a destination I might end up driving to?!!!!

So.. I decide to try lady luck and go back to the online system.

And I plug in the numbers, find the flights and I'll be.. there are still 3 tickets available at the price I wanted. hummmm...

OK.. so open a new window and  plug in 5 people flying and get a ridiculous price but still not as bad as the computer chick was giving me... I think "oh, the heck with this, I'll buy 3 then 2" go back to the original window who gives me the 5 people tickets (ah ha. they use cookies) and then I get creative..

I break out Larry's computer and put them side by side. I plug in 3 flying on my computer, 2 flying on his and hit "buy" within seconds of each other.

And guess what.... I got the lowest price for all 5.

And now I'm sharing online so some computer nerd can write a patch job to fix it. (Hint to the guy: southwest software does this. You go to buy your tickets and it pops up in red that those are no longer available, but the new prices are below, please choose your flight.) (hint to Southwest: if you hadn't done that repeatedly and given Larry a lower price than I was getting at the same time, we might have been flying with you. However.. we are not. And I don't worry about the roof blowing off midair)

So.. this summer's journey might be the most blog worthy yet. Generally anytime we travel it's worthy enough to blog about - putting kids on luggage carts that say not to, falling down escalators carrying toddlers and having the paramedics called, multiple car sick kids and multiple flat tires, for examples...

OR.. God might smile down on us and things might go wonderfully smooth. Or it'll be funny when I look back and write about it. Either way you'll hear about it here. If you don't get an earful picking me up from an airport.