Getting Ready for Vacation

Brian and I do not like spending money. It's not in our nature. We basically enjoy it when amazing things fall into our lap for free and we can save our money for something else more exciting, like retirement, car repairs, or vet bills (or chickens and goats as I said in my previous post).

But vacations, by their very nature, require the spending of money. So we recently found out about hotwire.com from my friend, Heather, who used it to get an awesome 4 star hotel room in Indy for a weekend date with her husband a couple of months ago. She was ecstatic about the great deal they got for barely the price of a 2 star hotel room. I figured that there's no way a deal that good could come true more than once.

But being a couple not given to spending money, we thought that maybe we should check it out. So we got on hotwire.com and tried it out and found that we could get a 3 star hotel for only $69 / night. The bad part about hotwire is that you don't get to see what hotel chain or type of room was chosen for you until after you pay for it. And being a couple also not given to enjoying surprises (AT ALL - not surprise presents, not surprise guests, not surprise meals) we were not sure we could hack that little detail. But being cheap won out over being predictable control-freaks, so we went ahead and ran with the deal hoping, HOPING, HOPING that we didn't end up in a cockroach-infested flea bag motel like Super 8 or whatever that hotel is called where they say "we'll leave the light on for you."

So being a couple not accustomed to enjoying surprises, especially surprises that cost us a lot of money, we clicked the "Buy" button and crossed our fingers.

Here's what we ended up with . . .
http://blueash.place.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/place/index.jsp

http://www.hyatt.com/hyatt/place/virtual.jsp

Isn't that amazing!!! After we clicked "Buy," and they said the name of the hotel we clicked over to check it out online and it turns out that if we had bought the room like normal we would have paid over 2 times what we did pay. We are SAVVY shoppers, and Hotwire.com DOES work!

Here's what the pool looks like . . .
http://delivery.vrxstudios.com/50326/VirtualTours.htm?package=680&id=57293&id_type=9&locale=1&container=1&

And our room . . .
http://delivery.vrxstudios.com/50326/VirtualTours.htm?package=680&id=55441&id_type=9&locale=1&container=1&

I showed the video of the bedroom to the girls and they nearly fainted when they saw the TV in the room. They're going to get to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on TV as big as life, and then they're going to get to actually meet him in real life, all in the same day. I don't know if they're little hearts will be able to bear that much excitement!

I'm so excited. I can't wait to pack for our little getaway. I printed off the e-tickets to Kings Island and Hailey came over to gaze at them admiringly. Hopefully our map directions will work without a problem. What did they use to do in the olden days before computers did all the work for you?