Famille Du Pentium

In March / April 2006 I took my family of five (two adults including myself, three kids aged 2, 3, and 8 years old) to New York City for a family vacation.  Because we were staying downtown and sightseeing in that area, I did not need a rental car and didn’t want to pay $21 a day parking plus car rental just to get to and from the airport.  Also, I was concerned that we would not all fit into a standard NYC Taxi, especially since we have two kids in carseats. 

I went online and booked my trip, prepaid, from the Super Shuttle website.   The sign-up was fairly easy, although a bit confusing because they want you to book your trip to the airport first and your trip from the airport second.  

On March 31 at about 11:00 AM, Upon arriving at LaGuardia and making my way downstairs, I found complete chaos.  The hotel shuttle desk was staffed, but with people who were clearly not in control of the situation.   My prepaid instructions told me to go directly to the phone and press the button for Super SHuttle, so I did.  It dialed me through, and a surly person asked for my confirmation number and promptly put me on hold for ten minutes.  Given the chaos that was ensuing at the counter, I held.  Finally I got through to someone who took my information and told me that a shuttle was on the way, and the driver would know my name.  No estimated arrival, no van number, they just gave me that and hung up.  So I took in some of the activities at the desk.  The lady behind the desk was handing out tickets to people who were already waiting, so I asked if I needed a ticket and showed her my pre-paid email confirmation.  She simply walked away as if I spoke another language.  After firmly reasserting myself, she acknowleged my existance and told me to go pick up the phone.  When I told her I had already done that, and was just curious if I needed to exchange my voucher for a ticket, she told me to go pick up the phone.  Mind you, she was wearing a Super Shuttle badge.  Meanwhile, passengers who had been waiting for hours were complaining to both people behind the desk, and drivers were coming in, calling out people’s names, asking where they were going, and replying "I don’t have enough room for you."  So I was getting a bit worried.  Finally one lady behind the desk advised me to call their dispatch center (the other end of those mystic phones) back, and ask them to look up my van number and ETA.  I did, and was told 10 minutes and a van number.  I watched the chaos continue.

 In about 10 or so minutes, my van actually arrived.  I had a pile of luggage (three kids) plus a stroller and two car seats; he grabbed the car seats first and I figured he was going to put them in the van seats.  When I arrived outside with our luggage, I found that he had packed the car seats into the back of the van.  Upon entering the van, I learned why – even though I had made reservations for five and had confirmed five when I called their dispatch, there was only one bench seat open, that would normally hold three.  No room anywhere for car seats, and given the chaos in the terminal, I wasn’t about to take my chances and wait for another one.  We held our kids tightly and hoped for the best.

 Luckily no accidents occured but I was miffed to learn that I had been routed on a shuttle that had to drop off three passengers at upper Manhattan hotels.  My hotel was the Marriott Financial District, nearly as far downtown as you could go.  We ended up taking a little over an hour to get from La Guardia to downtown.

On the return trip, the van was wide open and plenty of room for car seats.  The driver was much more courteous, and he seemed to be training a new driver.  The driver arrived on time, loaded my bags, helped me secure the car seats, and helped us up into the van.  Upon arrival at La Guardia he unloaded our bags to the curb and helped me unload the kids and car seats.  

The service at Super Shuttle seems hit-or-miss.  I probably won’t use them again, because when I’m travelling with my family I can’t afford to take risks like holding my kids because the van can’t accomodate a car seat.  Also I don’t think I want to take a chance of waiting hours for a shuttle in the future – I’m sure I lucked out this time but next time I could be that poor schmo who waited nearly two hours for his shuttle.   

This is a review of the Marriott New York Financial Center, where we are staying during our family vacation.  Review starts after the jump.

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Here’s our itenerary for this week’s family trip to New York.  I’ll post pictures when we return.

Friday: Fly out in AM, arrive early afternoon.  Go to Gray Line Tours, pick up our tour tickets.  Check into hotel and relax, meet up with Lisa and Rory.

Saturday: Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty in AM.  City touring in afternoon and evening.  Times Square at night.   

Sunday: Empire State Building in AM.  Probably swimming and relaxing in the afternoon.  Lisa and Rory head to Long Island, we pack up.

Monday: Fly home 

I checked in after a full day of work at the office.  Check in was generally pretty strait-forward, I gave them my CC and got my keys. 

I had been warned about the "Club Room" accomodations.  These are rooms intended for business travelers, and they make no attempt to make it seem bigger than it is.  It’s really small.  There is a bed approximately equal to an American twin bed.   For business travel, I rarely complain about accomodation size since I don’t spend much time in the rooms. 

In general it is my understanding that the Hotel IC sets itself apart with its service.  I will say that while the service wasn’t outright bad, it was a bit inconsistent.  When I returned to my room after a full day’s work, it was always interesting to see what shape the room was in.  It was always clean, mind you, but sometimes the bed would be turned down, and sometimes it wouldn’t.  Sometimes they had (mercifullly) left the window open, keeping the room near a liveable temperature.  Other times the heat was cranked up and the windows closed, resulting in a sauna-like homecoming.  

In fact, to keep the room comfortable at night, I had to keep the A/C on and the window open all the time.  Mind you, this was in February.  I don’t know where the heat radiates from, but the rooms are really hot.  And the "A/C" is little more than an air blower.  And the one window that opens exposes you to a sum total of about two inches of exposure to the raw winter evenings in Zurich.  

One weekend day, I decided to take one of those "Gray Line" city tours.  It never ceases to amaze me how many cities in various countries around the world have these.  And, it’s always Gray Line.  We’re taking a Gray Line tour when our family goes to NYC this month, and in February I took a Gray Line tour of Zurich.  I’ve taken Gray Line tours of Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Seattle, and probably others I can’t remember.  

Anyway, the hotel wants you to buy the tour ticket from them.  They probably get a commission or something, although the ticket price at the concierge was the same as the Gray Line ticket window.  Anyway, I went to the concierge, asked to get a ticket, and was handed the Gray Line tour ticket log to fill in myself.  Then, I asked if I could put the ticket price on my (personal) MasterCard – big mistake.  I try to avoid charging personal expenses to my room or corporate Amex because the cross-payments to get everything strait later are a pain in the butt.  

So there was general hrumphing as people behind the desk tried to figure out how to charge it to my MC.  At one point they asked me to sign both an M/C charge slip and a room charge.  I politely declined and tried to reiterate my position.  I learned later why they asked me for this.  It turns out, when I presented my personal MasterCard, they took it as "put all charges to my room on this card, retroactive to when I checked in."  I leaned this on check-out, when they asked if I wanted to keep all my charges on my MasterCard.  That took some clearing up, and I still had pre-charge authorizations  from IC stuck to my card after I returned.  

I’m sure if I were staying in Zurich for a holiday, I would choose a different hotel, like the Savoy at Paradeplatz or the Marriott or Hilton.  For sightseeing, the IC is fairly centrally located (on one main tram route to downtown and walking distance from one to the central train station) but as far as view and holiday comforts, you should go to one of the bigger hotels.  Otherwise, the IC is perfect for the business traveller who spends little time in their hotel room. 

After the jump, links to pictures of the hotel room.     

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I don’t really have a story about Zurich per-se, as a bunch of notes.  Here are some various thoughts about Zurich itself.

•  They have one of the best transit systems I’ve seen.  Which is pretty amazing given that the entire system works on the honor system.  You buy tickets in advance of your ride, and then wait at an open street-level platform to board.  There are no turnstyles to get onto the platforms, and no conductors walk throughout the train to collect the tickets.   There is a hefty fine for riding the system  without a ticket, but little enforcement that I saw. 
• Shop Bahnhoffstrasse for high-end; and downtown for cheaper gifts.
• Shop at the main train station for souviners

(Probably) More To Come…  Meanwhile, here’s some pictures to look at.

I have been absolutely buried since returning.  And, I’m trying to get caught up just in time to fly out to New York in two weeks.  And then India after that.  Busy year.  And soccer starts soon.  So anyway, enough cryin’, I’ll be finishing up the Zurich travel blogs soon, stay tuned.

It’s been a long time since I published a blog of my travels.  Unfortunately, all the old blogs are lost forever, the victim of a flooded basement in 2002.

However, I leave for Zurich, Switzerland this Sunday for two weeks.  It’s a fairly heavily scheduled business trip, and I might have one day to look around.  But I’ll comment on the trip here. 

So this week, we’re starting to plan for booking a trip to Disney World, probably in the summar of 2007.  I love taking the kids to Disney World, and I’ll explain why I’m not crazy now.  

 None of my friends like Disney.  Too commercial.  To overpriced.  Too crowded.  I’m the only one in my crowd of acquaintances that actually enjoys family trips to Disney.

The thing that I appreciate about Disney most is, the kids can behave however they behave (within reason), and I don’t have to worry about it.  Normally a restaurant trip goes something like this:

• Order dinners & beverages
• Keep youngest from grabbing cream, butter, and glasses they served water in
• Move dangerous plates around as they arrive so youngest kid doesn’t grab them
• Try to keep kids eating
• Try to keep kids in their seats
• Try to keep kids quiet

At Disney World restaurants, things go much differently.  First, ordering is easy.  Many restaurants serve "family style", which in Disney means, they bring you a plate of everything on the menu.  Inevitably, there is something that one of the kids want, and if they want more, the waiter or waitress brings more.  Because this is Disney, there is none of the normal  stuff on the table that gets in the way of eating with a family (especially kids).  The cups are plastic.  There’s nothing that you have to worry about the kids getting ahold of.  It doesn’t matter if they run around, yell, or smear their food all over their faces.  It’s Disney.

The same holds true for just about everything else.  Within reason, you don’t have to worry that the kids are behaving.  This is extremely relaxing for me, I can just spend time with the kids and not have to worry how they’re behaving or what the people sitting next to us are thinking.  If talking kids are a problem, they should probably not eat at Disney World.

As far as the crowds and lines,  we found a really simple and extremely effective solution.  Buy one of those books that tell you how to plan your day at each park.  "Plan’ is really an understatement, these books include complete, step-by-step day planners.  Maybe that sounds a bit too structured, we thought so too at first.  But then, we went to Disney World – during the week between Christmas and New Years.  For those of you who’ve been, this is just about the absolute busiest time at Disney.  The parks actually stop taking visitors just after they opening.  In any case, we followed these day planners religiously, and quite frankly, we were overjoyed.  I think we actually stood in line maybe twice during that week, the rest of the time we were almost running thorugh open line bars to get to the front.  The trick is, they have you criss-cross the park, and always be at the popular rides when nobody else is.  (They do this by visiting the park and tracking when each ride has it’s busy times and lulls.)  Every ride has a lull during the day, so with the proper planning, you really get to ride whatever you want.  And you really take lots of rides.  It was great.

The book we use is listed in the extended entry, linked below. 

 Finally there’s the cost.  Well, I can’t do much about that.  In reality, we spent slightly more for our weeklong Disney vacation (plus driving there and back) than we would normally spend for a week-long vacation.  The trick is to budget well, so you have enough money for everything you want to do (mostly eat, since the resort tickets include hotel and park tickets)  and buy.  I budgetted well, saved up, and didn’t worry about money while we were there. 

Lastly, a few tricks.  Disney luxury resorts are expensive.  You might be tempted to save up more to plurge on the luxury resorts.  The luxury resorts also have direct monorail transportation to the main parks.   A few points to know:

• If you’re like us, you want to spend most of your time at the parks.   Your hotel becomes a place you crash for six to eight hours per night.  You won’t notice much difference between the Disney Value hotels and the Luxury hotels. 
• During peak times, the monorail and ferries to Magic Kingdom are jammed.  Bad.  The busses are a much better way around anyway. 

I’m not saying don’t use the nicer hotels.  But think about what you want to do, and if that mostly involves open-to-close park hopping, save the money on the expensive hotels, and spend it on a few character meals or souvineers.  

One more tip: during peak times, the park closes to day passes within about an hour.  You might get in (if you’re lucky), but once you leave, you have no way back in.  Resort guests can always enter, any time, and can hop from park to park.  If you go during peak times, it is imperitive to stay on property.  

So this is how we have fun at Disney.  It may not be a mediterranean cruise, but for my family vacation dollar, I love it, and the kids do too.  We’re going in 2007! 

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