Travel Plans for Gnomedex - Internet RULES
I finally got around to setting up my travel arrangements for Gnomdex in August. Gnomedex is the conference being put on by Chris Pirillo and his wife Ponzi. And if you don’t know who that is, perhaps you’ve heard of Lockergnome.com which is the site started by Chris. The conference is August 9-11 in Seattle, Washington. I live in Tampa Bay, Florida. I don’t feel like walking. Driving would suck. So, flying sounds like the right course of action.
I checked out Travelocity, Orbitz and Hotwire. Cool sites. I’ve used Travelocity in the past, but I am always impressed (from the technical side) at how well these travel sites are put together. Just slick. And besides being slick, its just convenient as hell. Sitting at my desk in my jammies, I am fully searching the database of flights and hotels in the area. Since I want to be close by to the Bell Harbor convention center, I also want to check out where these hotels are. No problem, go plug the street address of Bell Harbor and the address of a hotel into Google Maps and - whalah, I get a map and distance between the two. Well, after looking over the LONG list of hotels the sites provided for Seattle and reading reviews of them, I settle on the Grand Hyatt Seattle. According to Google, its only about 1.6 miles from the convention center. I then pondered whether it would be worth it to get a car. In one word: no. In reading the hotel reviews, I found that is can cost anywhere from $10-$30 per day to park a car at these hotels. Screw that. I’ll catch a cab.
I ended up using Hotwire to book. At first, I was looking at a 3 night stay with easy-ass flights and was looking at about $1200 for the whole thing. Travelocity was the most expensive, and Orbitz came in about $50 cheaper for essentially the same thing (just a different flight that would have a little longer layover in Dallas). I talked to the wife and she talked some sense into me (one of the many reasons I love her), so I decided to save myself a night’s stay and simply fly out right after the event is over. Yeah, it’ll be a red-eye flight and I’m going to have to hussle a bit after the conference ends to get to the airport. However, by doing that, I am literally saving $398. Hell, I’ll sit in a plane for a night to save that kind of money. So, now I’m flying Delta both ways, with a red eye flight on the way back to Tampa, and staying 2 nights in the Grand Hyatt for $794. I can live with that, and I hear the Grand Hyatt is pretty damn nice.
Definitely check out Hotwire if you need to make travel plans. I found that the prices were cheaper than Travelocity or Orbitz - at least in my case.
I hope Gnomedex will be a useful experience.
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I’ll honestly never understand why most of the attendees aren’t Edgewater happy. Heck every year we give up Marriott points because we have become addicted to The Edgewater. Granted many Gnomedexers do stay at the Marriott. I just don’t see the need to walk a long distance or have to deal with travel arrangements. Especially when two perfectly good hotels are less than half a block away from the conference center. The only time I could see skipping the two closest hotels. Is if your on a very tight budget. It seems as if only a few Gnomedexers are left who understand what that is like. I’m still one of them to a point.