Event Planning

I remember when I belonged to AAA. Planning a trip was pretty easy and those trip-ticks were great. For work travel, I have a corporate travel site. So that leaves personal trips. I have a weekend trip planned for the Fall and I cannot believe the amount of effort and time it’s taken to finally get all the details ironed out. Sure, I had some unique things to throw in there that I wouldn’t normally have, but I still didn’t think it would take up half the day.

Sleep
This is a short trip and I wanted to try and use my hotel points. This is easier said than done. First of all, I had to try and remember my account information when I went to the hotel website. Not a big deal if I am going through the corporate travel site, but doing this all on my own, I realized a couple of problems. First was the fact that I can’t remember ever being on this site before, so I have no idea if I have created a password or not. So, I tried to figure this out first. After lots of fun error messages and an extensive search through old emails, I finally gave up and went searching through my files for past statements. Yeah, I keep all of them for everything I belong to, doesn’t everyone? And there on page one for a statement that’s a good 6 years old is the information I’m looking for. Estimated time at this point is probably 30-45 minutes.

So once I can finally get in and review my account information, I now have to spend some time updating things like address, email, and all the rest of that stuff that is several years old. Once that is finally done, I can proceed to what I wanted to do in the first place, make a reservation. That process is easy enough and I am able to find what I need and apply my hotel points to them. And, now that I have updated my email information, I am reasonably confident that I will receive the appropriate confirmation emails and hotel certificates. But just in case, I go ahead and print everything anyway. Estimated time is now 90 minutes. At the end of this process I have 2 reservations and at least 6 emails sitting in my inbox.

Transportation
For such a short trip, I have managed to make transportation amazingly complex. In a 72-hour span of time I am driving and flying. Picking up a rental car in one location and returning to another. And I want to use an airline credit from a cancelled flight earlier this year. This alone is going to require at least 2 websites- Car and Airline. After fortifying myself with another cup of coffee, I begin.

I figure I’ll spend more time dealing with the airline, so I decide to tackle this first. I cross my fingers and hope that I can take care of what I need to do online. Amazingly enough, I can. Not only is my airline credit visible, applying it to the flight I want is as easy as clicking a button. No problem. Another email sitting in the inbox and it took me about 10 minutes. Wow. I know I have said it before, but I am in love with Southwest Airlines. Cattle call or no, they are by far the easiest and friendliest airline to deal with.

What was a little more surprising was the car reservation. Once again, this is a site I never visit because I generally make my reservations through the corporate site. So I have to go through the password process and updating information craziness before I can make my reservations. This took a bit longer, but still not bad. Probably 20-30 minutes and another couple of emails.

Where’s the Sun?
So now that I have a place to sleep and my transportation issues worked out, it’s time to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Google Maps is what I end up using. First, there is some pre-work involved. Since I love lists, I have to make a list of all the locations and the addresses. Once I have all of that handy, the map process is a lot easier. 6 maps later, I think I am finally ready to print everything.

You would think that is the end of it, right? Not quite. I don’t know about you, but I don’t completely trust any mapping software. I think we have all had experiences where strange directions appear that seem to take you far out of your way and of course, they can’t possibly account for construction. I also have a GPS system in my rental car reservation, but it hasn’t earned the name “Never Found” for nothing. So even after printing everything, I have to make some final searches just to be sure I have it all correct. That means going to each location for the trip and reviewing the directions they give for themselves. Hopefully, they know where they are, right? So a few more searches and notations later, I am finished.

I think all told I spent about 4 hours and printed about 12 pages of maps and confirmations. I feel pretty good at this point, but part of me is still going to try and be prepared for disaster. (If the f**king band cancels, for example) Believe me, if anything happens, you’ll hear about it.