How much??
Holidays are an expensive business.
We're going to Florida this year for our holidays, and it's turning into a rather expensive exercise. We've booked a villa via a colleague of Ele's at a reasonable (but not brilliant) cost; we could get a package flight + hotel for far less, but would be cramped into a single hotel room for 2 weeks.
Then there is the theme park entry. I've not got the exact prices, but the going rate seems to be one arm and one leg per person for entry to Disneyland. For some reason you can buy a 7-day pass. Why would you want to goto Disneyland every day for a week? Or even if it doesn't have to be consecutive days, why would you want to go that many times? Even if it's too much to do in one, two or three days, can't you find something better to do than standing in huge queues all day for 5 minutes on a ride? Certainly we'll go to Disney and, I expect to a couple of the others like Universal Studios, but I'm not spending my entire holiday in them. The only must-see on my list is the Kennedy Space Center, actually. If there happens to be a shuttle launch whilst I'm there I'll be as happy as - well - a kid going to Disneyland, I suppose. I am, of course, assuming there are other things to do in America. I may well be wrong.
But it's the flights that are doing me in. I had assumed that I could use my collection of airmiles to help soften the cost a bit. Indeed, a month or two ago, that seemed to be the case. Then I got some post from them about how they've simplified things (always - ALWAYS - a bad sign). And now I can't pay part-cash, part-miles for the flights I wanted. The option simply isn't there. I can fly two weeks later - and get a really really good deal like this - but Jess would be back at school by then and that wouldn't be allowed. Missing 2 days of school to save the parents thousands of pounds is not important to them, even if all they will learn on those 2 days is how to claim benefits, speak Polish and how to upload happy-slapping videos.
So, we're having to look around to pay full price. The Virgin Atlantic website helpfully gives you a "fare breakdown", so I clicked on it. It then tells me the price of £811.50 is made up of £633, plus £178.50 in "Taxes, fees, charges & surcharges". Hardly a breakdown, is it? What charges? What taxes? What surcharges? What fees? Why is a fee different from a charge? Why is a charge different from a surcharge? Why does the whole lot come to nearly 180 bloody pounds? I bet a lot of it goes to various governments, and some of it is fuel costs. For some reason airlines seem to think that if the price of their (seriously subsidised) aviation fuel goes up that they can charge us more. Bus drivers don't demand you stick 10p in a jar when you wave your Oyster card at them when you get on a bus, so I don't see why airlines need to do it.
So now we're looking at about £3000 for flights (instead of half that), plus the villa, plus a hire car (not looked at that yet but I think it's fairly cheap), plus passport renewal for me and a passport for Joe, plus multiple limbs for theme park entries.
Can anyone spare a few quid?
We're going to Florida this year for our holidays, and it's turning into a rather expensive exercise. We've booked a villa via a colleague of Ele's at a reasonable (but not brilliant) cost; we could get a package flight + hotel for far less, but would be cramped into a single hotel room for 2 weeks.
Then there is the theme park entry. I've not got the exact prices, but the going rate seems to be one arm and one leg per person for entry to Disneyland. For some reason you can buy a 7-day pass. Why would you want to goto Disneyland every day for a week? Or even if it doesn't have to be consecutive days, why would you want to go that many times? Even if it's too much to do in one, two or three days, can't you find something better to do than standing in huge queues all day for 5 minutes on a ride? Certainly we'll go to Disney and, I expect to a couple of the others like Universal Studios, but I'm not spending my entire holiday in them. The only must-see on my list is the Kennedy Space Center, actually. If there happens to be a shuttle launch whilst I'm there I'll be as happy as - well - a kid going to Disneyland, I suppose. I am, of course, assuming there are other things to do in America. I may well be wrong.
But it's the flights that are doing me in. I had assumed that I could use my collection of airmiles to help soften the cost a bit. Indeed, a month or two ago, that seemed to be the case. Then I got some post from them about how they've simplified things (always - ALWAYS - a bad sign). And now I can't pay part-cash, part-miles for the flights I wanted. The option simply isn't there. I can fly two weeks later - and get a really really good deal like this - but Jess would be back at school by then and that wouldn't be allowed. Missing 2 days of school to save the parents thousands of pounds is not important to them, even if all they will learn on those 2 days is how to claim benefits, speak Polish and how to upload happy-slapping videos.
So, we're having to look around to pay full price. The Virgin Atlantic website helpfully gives you a "fare breakdown", so I clicked on it. It then tells me the price of £811.50 is made up of £633, plus £178.50 in "Taxes, fees, charges & surcharges". Hardly a breakdown, is it? What charges? What taxes? What surcharges? What fees? Why is a fee different from a charge? Why is a charge different from a surcharge? Why does the whole lot come to nearly 180 bloody pounds? I bet a lot of it goes to various governments, and some of it is fuel costs. For some reason airlines seem to think that if the price of their (seriously subsidised) aviation fuel goes up that they can charge us more. Bus drivers don't demand you stick 10p in a jar when you wave your Oyster card at them when you get on a bus, so I don't see why airlines need to do it.
So now we're looking at about £3000 for flights (instead of half that), plus the villa, plus a hire car (not looked at that yet but I think it's fairly cheap), plus passport renewal for me and a passport for Joe, plus multiple limbs for theme park entries.
Can anyone spare a few quid?
posted by Nej at
2:50 pm
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