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Old 03-14-2005, 10:55 AM   #54 (permalink)
braisler
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Location: Midway, KY
This post could equally well go in Tilted Travel. Since my main goal is to share how we saved a bundle of money by travelling the way we did, I thought this would be the appropriate venue. I hope that everyone can take away something positive from our experience.

My wife and I just returned from a fabulous vacation in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Beaver Creek is the sister resort to the more well-known Vail, CO. It is also the site of numerous downhill world-cup racing events and has some of the best skiing in the world. Now being as frugal as we are, how did we manage to take this luxurious vacation? We took this trip for just over $1000 for the two of us including airfare, car rental etc.

The biggest single thing that made this trip possible for us is that my mom lives in Beaver Creek and is a resident partner at a great rental home on the mountain. The place usually rents for $2300 per night during the ski season (7 night minimum), but they had a brief vacancy in March and invited us out to stay during that time. I didn't want to pass up the opportunity, so we packed our bags and went for it. For those of you who are curious, you can see the residence at Elkview.com. Just try not to get too jealous and don't go hitting up my mom for a discounted rate!

Here are the details of what we did:

What we paid for travel-
Airfare - $454 for two tickets on ATA roundtrip from Louisville
Rental Car in CO - $167 paid for compact car, got a Minivan instead
Airport parking in Louisville - $63 for 7 days parking
Eating out - $160 ($100 of that was a thank you dinner for my mom and her husband for letting us stay at the house)
Ski Lift tickets - $60 (My mom had vouchers that gave us some free and some discounted lift tickets)
Pet Boarding - $196 (Two dogs for a week stay)
Ski Rental - FREE (Mom knows the guys who run the ski shop)
Snowshoe Rental - FREE (The lodge has snowshoes for the guests)
Ski Lesson for my wife - FREE (Mom knows the guy in charge of lessons on the mountain)
Snowshoe lift tickets - FREE (Mom works part-time on the mountain and gets two free foot lift tickets per season)
Eating In - FREE (We ate breakfast and dinner mostly at home with my mom and her husband and packed our lunches)

Our total that we paid was $1094 for everything.

What we would have paid-

Now this is a bit subjective, because we might not have taken the trip at all if it was too much more expensive. But I will try to estimate the costs to give you an idea of what we might have paid for the trip.

Airfare - $756 ($376 was the best rate flying from Lexington instead of Louisville)
Car Rental - $315 (What the minivan would have cost us if we had booked that)
Housing - $13800 if we had rented Elkview ourselves (This could have been less if we stayed somewhere else. It wouldn't have been cheap since even the Motel 6 is $189/night)
Eating out - $300 (If we were able to keep our costs down to $50 per day for two people... not easy in Beaver Creek!)
Lift Tickets - $462 (6 lift tickets, 4 days skiing for me, 2 for my wife at $77 per day)
Pet Boarding - $196 (This stays the same since we couldn't avoid the cost)
Ski Rental - $200 ($20 per day for 2 people for 5 days)
Ski Lesson - $157 (Full day adult lesson with lunch)
Snowshoe Rental - $40 ($10 per day for 2 people for 2 days)
Snowshoe lift tickets - $30

The total goes up to over $16,200 with everything included!!! We saved over $15,000 on this trip. And, yes, we thanked my mom and her husband profusely, though probably not enough.

Now I will be the first to admit that not everyone can get the same kind of deals that we did, but similar principles can be applied. Think about who you know in what locations. Maybe you have a relative who lives in Orlando, FL. Or know someone well who works in a resort town in the Smoky mountains. In addition to possibly providing free lodging, a local can point you to the best dining, maybe find you discounted tickets to local attractions, etc.
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