Creative Charter Bowl Site Travel Packages

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Better Dead Than Red said:
I called this morning to find out the price for the package with airfare. The lady there said it would be around $1200. The four in my group can not swing this. This is another reason the gophers have bad bowl attendance.
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Absolutely. I don't need to be tagged and led around like cattle. I don't want to. Just need to get to Houston. But $500+ per person is too much for airfare, considering it is just an in and out destination with no other real attraction.
 

Cheaper flights if you fly in to Dallas and make the 3ish hour drive. Depending on the dates, I found flights less than $300
 

Flying in to collge station Texas, Dallas Fort Worth or Austin may be the way to for most Gopher fans looking for reasonable airfare. The Direct flights to Houston are not appealing at $570. Most of us that are not driving will have to rent a car anyways. Texas Aggie how difficult is it to rent a car in College station if not pre booked, meaning will they have plenty of cars, or is this a situation where booing the rental ahead of time is must. Might have to do the rental book anyways with trying to get coporate discount rate.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
Texas Aggie how difficult is it to rent a car in College station if not pre booked, meaning will they have plenty of cars, or is this a situation where booing the rental ahead of time is must.
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There are always a few dozen cars out in the rental lot, but it would be advantageous to book ahead to make sure you get a certain type of car (i.e. not have to squeeze your whole group into a compact or pay extra for a larger car).

Anyone flying into College Station is guaranteed one free pitcher of Shiner Bock at the Dixie Chicken and a golf-cart campus tour with me.
 

$399per person for the two night land package seems step to me - thats $200 a night for a hotel per person - if you made your own reservations for a hotel I am sure yu could do much better - air fare too I suspect - maybe that's the creative part of Creative Charters
 


I wish Sun Country would do charter services and offer a good deal for trips like this. They could fill planes, and still make a small profit while not gouging people like Creative Charters does.
 

DLguy said:
I wish Sun Country would do charter services and offer a good deal for trips like this. They could fill planes, and still make a small profit while not gouging people like Creative Charters does.
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I'm with ya! If you're not a road tripper (which I am not, I hate driving even more than 7 miles) it would be great if there was just a flight optioned offered, getting a game ticket and hotel is not an issue.

I would honestly love it if the U just chartered a bunch of flights, make the tickets $200-300, and get a bunch of fans down there if they want to show any selection committee that we travel well in the future. Small drop in the hat now to not get jumped in the future.
 

Nadine, I totally agree. Aren't there Vegas junket-flights like that? How are classmates/college kids supposed to afford this? I'd like to see the U put together a number of charter buses for the students if cheap flights aren't an option. We're driving. Ugh. But we'll be there.
 

You can charter through their website, I'm not going to go through the process of getting an RFP, etc. but here ya go: http://book.suncountry.com/charters/charterflights.jsp

My guess is it'd probably end up around $60,000 plus fees, etc. but not sure. That'd be about $465 per person on a 129-seat 737.

Of course, if you chartered a bus it'd be much cheaper ...
 



Why don't all of us just rent a private jet. You only live once right?
 

go4ergold said:
Why don't all of us just rent a private jet. You only live once right?
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what-he-said.gif
 

GopherLady said:
I'm with ya! If you're not a road tripper (which I am not, I hate driving even more than 7 miles) it would be great if there was just a flight optioned offered, getting a game ticket and hotel is not an issue.

I would honestly love it if the U just chartered a bunch of flights, make the tickets $200-300, and get a bunch of fans down there if they want to show any selection committee that we travel well in the future. Small drop in the hat now to not get jumped in the future.
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I'm guessing the U doesn't do this for liability reasons. It would make sense though if they were trying to entice some alumni and fans to travel to the lesser bowl games that wouldn't necessarily draw as well as a Florida bowl.
 

afurry91 said:
Those are actually phenomenal deals. If I wasn't a student and had a job I would jump all over those. The 2 night deal for $299 is excellent.
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i disagree. the travel package is twice as expensive as it should and it forced me to rent a car and drive myself. outside of the time in the car it will cost me about a third of what these packages give.

I will miss the hotel that they have booked to the brink setting them aside for CC
 



GopherLady said:
I'm with ya! If you're not a road tripper (which I am not, I hate driving even more than 7 miles) it would be great if there was just a flight optioned offered, getting a game ticket and hotel is not an issue.

I would honestly love it if the U just chartered a bunch of flights, make the tickets $200-300, and get a bunch of fans down there if they want to show any selection committee that we travel well in the future. Small drop in the hat now to not get jumped in the future.
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I also agree more people woudl go if the travel wasnt such a gouge. I havent seen any bus trips? I looked into Grey hound but with all the stops it was over 24 hour trip.

The Sun Country angle is a good one. why the U doesnt tap into that local company is beyond me. they probalby doent fly them during the season

Its a shame that more affordable transportation is not available
 

The family gets free flight, so if the tickets can be bought separate of all other packages, we just might go. Figure a 1 night stay in a hotel plus the tix... Total costs for the whole trip would have to be under $350 for it to be worth it at all IMO though considering the city and matchup.
 


I just booked through price line. Three of us are one the way for $572 a piece. We are flying AA to Dallas then to Houston and staying at the Doubletree down town. This is about what we budgeted for and are stoked.
 

DoubleB said:
I also agree more people woudl go if the travel wasnt such a gouge. I havent seen any bus trips? I looked into Grey hound but with all the stops it was over 24 hour trip.

The Sun Country angle is a good one. why the U doesnt tap into that local company is beyond me. they probalby doent fly them during the season

Its a shame that more affordable transportation is not available
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I think they do actually use Sun Country, the last Brick By Brick showed them getting on the Sun Country plane.
 

last year the U got a couple of busses and bused students down to the game. got an email today that seemed to indicate they were doing the same thing this year.

can't remember what they charged last year but I recall thinking it was very reasonable.
 

Last year the student trip was $200 for the bus, a 1-night hotel stay, and the game ticket. Apparently in addition they raffled off a ton of prizes worth more than $200 as well so it was very worth it, aside from one of the buses breaking down for a few hours.
 

I applaud the 'U's efforts to get some students down there. But how in the world would you ever get 40,000 of us to the Rose Bowl? Certainly you can't rely on commercial transportation means only. There would be nowhere near enough capacity. What we need are cheap flights. We can fend for ourselves on the car rental/hotels, etc.
 

I am going to have to bypass the game and trip totally. At gametime, I will be in the air to Phoenix for a vacation visiting my daughter and her family.
 

Sun Country does have a connection to the U. They are big advertisers for hockey. They have "Sun Country Seat upgrades" and there is also a promo "get loud" thing where Wooger is flying one of the planes at take off. So they have the connection. Use it! (If we give you X amount of advertising at next year's games, you give us flights for X amount.)
 

DLguy said:
Sun Country does have a connection to the U. They are big advertisers for hockey. They have "Sun Country Seat upgrades" and there is also a promo "get loud" thing where Wooger is flying one of the planes at take off. So they have the connection. Use it! (If we give you X amount of advertising at next year's games, you give us flights for X amount.)
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Perfect. And I believe that the 'X' in this case can be a number which could generate a small profit for Sun Country. A number like $300 or $350 sounds really good compared to $500-$700, especially if you'd like to bring your family.
 

DLguy said:
Sun Country does have a connection to the U. They are big advertisers for hockey. They have "Sun Country Seat upgrades" and there is also a promo "get loud" thing where Wooger is flying one of the planes at take off. So they have the connection. Use it! (If we give you X amount of advertising at next year's games, you give us flights for X amount.)
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I'm sure they already do this, since the university sometimes uses Sun Country to fly teams to road games. Getting discounted flights for fans to a bowl game would be a separate deal.
 

Creative Charters use Sun Country.

They offer the price they feel is justified based on their expenses and profits, if you don't like it you are free to compile your own trip. I've used them twice for road games, fly in and out on the day of the game, and those were very reasonable. Actually in both cases, less than I could have found on my own.
 

$236 roundtrip from MSP to DFW 12/24-12/28. You'd spend Christmas in Texas, but that's not so bad if you rented a guest house.
 

If Sun Country can afford to fly to Vegas for $200 roundtrip, then they can do it to Houston as a service to the U. They wouldnt have those flights to Vegas if they lost money. Alumni Association should head this up. Not thru a third party trying to bend everyone over the table to make a big profit.
 

Just added a second flight. Must not have gouged enough fans. Nebraska canceled their only flight.

What a lot of people want is for CC to take a loss on this, just to get more "fans" to the game. Ridiculous. The Erbans contribute more to the program in time and money than 99%. That's what they do.

Shameful criticism. Shameful.
 

highwayman said:
What a lot of people want is for CC to take a loss on this, just to get more "fans" to the game. Ridiculous. The Erbans contribute more to the program in time and money than 99%. That's what they do.

Shameful criticism. Shameful.
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I don’t see much “shameful criticism.” Mostly, it seems that people are frustrated by the fact that the only officially sanctioned trip open to the general public costs so much. I don’t begrudge them a profit, but they want over $4600 from my family of four to fly us down to Houston, put us up in a hotel for two nights, give us rides back and forth to the airport and the game and provide us with access to a tailgate party. Planning my own trip, I am staying four nights at a similar hotel in a similar location and renting a car so I can go wherever I want. I don’t get the tailgate party, a luggage tag or name badge, but the $2000 we saved will cover our game tickets, parking, five days of food and entertainment and still leave me with plenty of walking around money in case I decide to buy some cowboy boots.

The point isn’t that Creative Charters is greedy or bad or evil, it’s that when presented with those numbers, people who would otherwise be interested in the trip simply give up because for many that amount of money can’t be justified. If they (or somebody) put together charter flights for $300 or $400 (or whatever it would really cost including a reasonable profit) and let everyone find their own way from there, I bet it would be a popular option. There will always be a market for the "all-inclusive" option, but people shouldn't be surprised that more people don't go when the only "pre-packaged" trip presented costs so much.
 

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