Saturday Morning Coffee 10/31/09

Good morning blog world. If you actually follow this blog you have probably wondered what is going on because it has been several weeks now without a post. Well I will give my excuses but that is all they are because most of it is laziness combined with lack of creativity. For those of you who blog yourself you probably know what I am talking about when I say I get into a slump. Nothing will come to my mind and if something does it just sound all that interesting to me so I know darn well you don't want to hear it. On top of all that I have actually been really busy finalizing the largest group I have ever booked. 31 cabins and 62 passengers are paid in full and ready to go! Boy they have been a great group to deal with and a lot of fun, but all that said it takes a lot to track down that many mostly retired folks for payment. I have told just about every one of them that if I had the money and time I would go with them just to watch. They are an alumni group from Panama City that graduated HS in 1961 and seem to be a real close knit bunch. One of my favorites is a lady who chose not to eat with the main group @6P.M. because that is cocktail hour! Oh yea and she has about 8-10 that have chosen that route too. Also, today I am writing from a hospital on my Aunt's laptop because my grandfather had a pretty major back surgery on Wednesday and is still having a hard time mentally recovering from the anesthesia. I haven't had more than 2 hours sleep if that so if this all sounds senseless I will blame that and not my ignorance. I know today is Halloween but I don't really get all that into it, however being awakened @ 510AM to a freaking bunny walking into the room to take his blood pressure was just about the weirdest thing I have ever experienced!
As far as travel news goes I will run through the highlights pretty quick. Royal Caribbean is really pushing the unveiling of the Oasis of the Seas which will be the largest cruise ship afloat. I think all of you experienced cruisers out there really aught to consider giving this one a try this year. I really believe it will blow you mind, just the sheer amazing. Got to run he is awake, breakfast is here and so are the nurses.
Jeremy

Saturday Morning Coffee 10/3/09

Hello from the back room of my house, also known as my office. The first thing on my mind today is the same thing I have seen on every one's FB status' and that fall is here! At least this week anyway for all of us Alabamians. It really has been like a burst of energy for me. I know by late February I will be just as ready for spring as I am now for fall but the biggest difference is there will be no football on and no major holidays right around the corner. Oh well, I am sure some of you get tired of my "pre-blog" rambling so I will get right to it. This week my home office, Cruise Planners/American Express, announced an extension of it's CP cares program and I am very proud of what we have accomplished. I am especially proud we, along with Royal Caribbean, have chosen Fisher House Foundation as our charity to donate to. Just last week I was at the VA hospital in Montgomery with my Grandfather so I have seen first hand the needs of some of the veterans. Seeing as how I am not the best blogger in the world anyway I am going to add the details below from my home office. They set this up for us to use as our own but I do not like to take credit for someone Else's' work so here it is.
Chances are good you probably have a close relative, friend of neighbor who served in our Armed Forces. Now you have an opportunity to assist the thousands of veterans and their families who require extended care at a VA medical facility through Cruise Planners’ Voyages for Veteran’s program. When you book a selected cruise on Royal Caribbean, we will make a $50 donation in your name to Fisher House which provides free housing to the families of veteran’s while they undergo extended treatment. This donation does not affect the cost of your cruise, so it is a “painless” way to donate. For more information on Fisher House you can visit www.FisherHouse.org To see a list of departures for this exclusive Cruise Planners/American Express program please visit my web site at http://www.getawaywiregrass.com/site/VeteransProgram

Saturday Morning Coffee 9/26/09

Good Morning Wiregrass and beyond! I hope everyone had a great week and are as ready as I am for some football today. Today I am copying and pasting an email I sent to several ladies this morning about some deals in Cancun this March. They all asked for the details on my fan page with Facebook yesterday so I figured that if there were three hand raiser's then there were many more that really wanted to know. Here is the meat of the information:
I am going to give you two resorts to check out that fall in the price range. I used the date on March 22nd-March 27th(Mon-Sat) flying out of ATL. I can't remember, but I believe the flights were direct and I know they were at decent times. Any way the resort that came in under $800 was the Oasis Palm Beach resort. It priced out including air and taxes for $777.74pp. The other was the Barcelo Tucancun Beach Resort. It was priced $832.76pp with everything else remaining the same. I will provide links to both at the end of this email. As with most, the web sites look great but sometimes you don't know what you get until you get there in foreign country. The good news is I have been to the Barcelo myself about 6-7 years ago. The resort wasn't by any means luxury but we were all very pleased. It was right on the beach and clean. The beach itself was actually a nicer beach than the one at Sandals in the Bahamas. The staff did a great job with activities both day and night. There was constantly something going on during the day(volleyball,kayak race,pool games, and even beer pong). Every night there was also some form of entertainment in their courtyard area. There were variety type shows to cultural Mexican dancing girls to a one man band singing Spanish songs we didn't know! Long story short, pending it is still the same, I would go again. The only knock I had was the food...it was pretty mediocre but still got the job done. Oh yea, it didn't matter to us at the time but your choices for beer, which is included, was Dos Equis or Dos Equis. Tip...after spending WAY to much time at the bar one afternoon me and another guy made friends with the bar tender and asked him if he knew how to make Sangria and boy did he ever. He only made us about 4-5 pitchers that afternoon!
http://www.oasishotels.com/WebOasis/EN/ficha_hotel/oasis_palm_beach/servicios/generales.jsp

http://www.barcelo.com/BarceloHotels/en-GB/Hotels/Mexico/Cancun/TucancunBeach/Home

Thank you so much for reading, Jeremy

Saturday Morning Coffee 9/19/09

Good morning and I am way behind! As you all know two weeks ago I went up to Auburn for the day and we had a blast. Last week I had to take my niece to a birthday party followed by a Sunday school social. Well needless to say I haven't taken the time to sit down and blog. I do actually have some travel news to share with you this morning. After keeping you in the loop with the latest ship changes and one "interesting" new cruise, I am going to list at the bottom some group space I have blocked for this year's spring break for 95% of the Wiregrass area.
I received an email from my Carnival BDM yesterday letting me know that in May 2010 the Fantasy would be replaced in Mobile with the Elation. Wow, we have gone from the old Holiday for years to two new ships in less than six months. That's right you will have only about 5 months if you want to experience the Fantasy out of Mobile. The good news is the Elation is a sister ship to the Fantasy(same deck plan) but is a few years newer. The reason they are making this change is because Carnival is starting a year round itinerary our of Charleston, S.C. and that is where the Fantasy will be headed in May 2010. I really appreciate the fact that Carnival really does try to use as many ports as possible to try to give everyone the chance to cruise without the added expense of air-fare. If only I could get the rest of the cruise lines to get on-board! How awesome would it be if they ALL docked in Panama City or Destin? I bet my business would double or triple. Oh well, I can dream I guess.
As far as the interesting news goes, well it involves Carnival too. I spotted this on Fox news yesterday and Lind's and I had a good laugh. There is going to be the first ever "cougar cruise" coming soon! Yep, you are right, they are talking about that kind of cougar...over 40, single, and in to young men :). There are several companies out there that put together singles and gay cruises all the time but this one is a first. I believe one of the companies mentioned above has come up with this idea. As of the interview the cougars are heavily out numbering the "cubs" on this inaugural sailing so the odds are looking good fellows. Here is the bad news for us here in LA, it is sailing out of San Diego for a weekend trip. However, I am sure there is someone out there that would not mind making this trip. I know I have one friend in particular that will be counting his pennies.
Thank you for reading today and like I stated above I am going to list some specials for spring break in 2010. Jeremy

3/15/10-3/19/10 Royal Caribbean Bahamas cruise $364.90, including all taxes and fees.

3/15/10-3/20/10 Royal Caribbean Belize and Costa Maya $602.93, everything included.

3/22/10-3/26/10 Royal Caribbean Bahamas $364.90, everything included.

3/22/10-3/27/10 Carnival to Grand Cayman and Cozumel $473.67, everything included.

Saturday Morning Coffee 9/5/09

Early good morning,
I am excited today which would explain why I am up blogging at 5:20 on a Saturday morning. I am going to Auburn in a little while for the first time in over three years! I had really gotten burnt out from years past mostly due to it taking an entire Saturday and into Sunday, like tonight, to go have the game experience. I have said it before but is worth saying again, I would have told any one that they were nuts if they thought I would ever miss 3 years of Auburn football. I guess the simple fact is I am getting old and it sure is nice to sit in my recliner, in the air conditioning, bathroom within 10 yards, and watching all the other action before and after my game. Like I stated above I am really excited about the game today, but even more excited about who I get to go with and see. I have my college roommate and my may as well been our roommate driving up from FL to go with me. Getting back to the older issue above it will be nice to spend time with these guys since marriage and babies(for one) limit the amount of times we see each other in a year, esp. without any ladies around! I am guessing there will be at least one story that starts "do you remember that night when we were up here that..." fill in the blank. Also my brother-in-law is going up with us and he is one of the funniest guys I know. If he warms up to the other two pretty quickly he will keep us in stitches all day. We are leaving Dothan around 8:30 and headed to Buffalo Connection for lunch and some other games on TV before we head to the stadium about 2. Then I am going to set out to find yet another reason today will be a good day, John Nelson. I met this guy way back in Nov. at training for Cruise Planners. We were assigned seating in class and ended up right next to each other. Well it didn't take John long to figure out how much I loved college football and the Auburn Tigers. He told me that his son was a high school kicker from Ciblo, TX and was signing with La Tech this past spring as the starting kicker. He also said you have to come to the game and we will hook up/hang out. Well, I have to admit I knew he was a heck of a nice guy and I did believe his kid was signing with La Tech but I said there is no way he knows that his kid will be the starting kicker. Either Coach Dooley is blowing smoke and they believe it or he is just "one of those dads". Well long story short, he was named the starting kicker as a true freshman and has one proud papa. So not only do I get to spend the day with some of my best friends in the world, I also get to see one of my newest friends and watch his kid run onto the field at Jordan Hare for the first game of his college career. His name is Matt Nelson and according to CBS Sportsline he will be wearing #33. It also says he weighs a whopping 155lbs. As a friend of his dad and die hard Auburn fan I hope he kicks a minimum of three Field goals but Auburn wins 42-9! War-Eagle and Matt Nelson.
Jeremy

Saturday Morning Coffee 8/29/09

Good morning to the Wiregrass area and beyond. It has been a pretty good week here at Wiregrass Travel. I did have one major hick-up yesterday with my computer. For several weeks the monitor would go to sleep and then not come back on until we re-booted the system. Well bright and early yesterday it was off and didn't come back on. After lots of great advice and tips from my Facebook friends and a visit from my neighbor who is an IT guy for an engineering firm, I knew it wasn't going to be a cheap fix. Long story short, two trips to Best Buy and $130 later I was back in business about 12:30. For those who are wondering what it was, the video/graphics card was dead. Apparently there is a fan mounted on it to keep it cool and the bearings had gone out causing it to over heat, which explained why it went out slowly.
Enough of the technology talk, I have some major news about a Carnival ship. The Fantasy, that is being moved from New Orleans over to Mobile late this year is undergoing a complete renovation in January and they are adding 98 balcony state rooms! This is really big news for me. A ton of my customers who have never cruised always want to sail out of Mobile. As some of you already know the Holiday that is in Mobile now, is Carnival's oldest and smallest ship, not one I would necessarily recommend for a first time cruiser even though some still choose it. I have been knowing for a long time about the change to the Fantasy which is a good bit larger but the fact that they are adding the balconies gets me excited. I think everyone should get a balcony state room every time they cruise. Yes it is more money but the benefit versus the cost is not comparable. The problem with the class ship the Fantasy is in is older and the only balcony state rooms available were in the form of a suite, which was quite a bit more expensive. Now I believe I will be able to book my customers on a nicer ship, closer to home, in a great cabin! Have a great weekend.
Jeremy

Saturday Morning Coffee 8/22/09

Good morning everyone! I hope all my readers have evaded the swine flu this week and continue to do so. It seems that is all that is being talked about this week. For those of you not located here in "LA" we are hearing astronomical numbers of kids getting sent home with the flu and of them several confirmed cases of H1N1. By my best guess I figure that puts about 80% of us at a very high risk of at best getting the regular ole flu this year.
I know you are thinking what in the world does this have to do with anything? Lucky for you I will tell you. I am just sitting here thinking this morning about a blog post I made some time back before June about the swine flu. You probably remember that Mexican ports were closed for several weeks and everyone was freaking out about H1N1. In that post I basically said that I wouldn't wish it on anyone but that I felt everyone was over reacting and even though some people had passed away from it, there were people that die every year from the"normal" flu. I ended the post back then saying that my personal opinion was that is was perfectly safe to travel to Mexico, but you should always use good common sense. Well low and behold just before school starts back up this month the CDC comes out with a statement saying there most likely will be a major outbreak here is the U.S. but that closing schools would not affect the outbreak either way. They also said the best way to avoid getting it yourself was lots of hand washing and bathing in general! Boy I hate to say I told you so.....but I did. It's almost like since it is here in the U.S. like we perceive it as not as bad. Folks it's the same nasty flu that was in Mexico in May, it did not take a bath,cut it's hair, and put on a suite just to come into the states. It's all about perception and I believe, just like I did before, that the media here in the states are so starved for stories/dramatics that they LOVE to blow things way out of proportion and stir our citizens into a frenzy.
In closing, let me say this to everyone who thinks I do not have a heart. I hate that the H1N1 has come into the world in general. I do not wish being sick, or worse, on any one. I personally may be the next one catching the H1N1 and reserve the right to change my mind. I am simply saying that we sometimes need to take a deep breath, relax, and think before we absolutely flip out believing every thing that the media reports, causing us to make rash decisions like closing ports and rearranging cruise itineraries. I haven't heard one single report, now that it is here, about anyone thinking about stopping business in any way. Perceptions, perceptions...
Jeremy