Get Your Thrills For Cheap in Sandusky, Ohio

Since I was born and raised near Cleveland, Ohio, it has been a tradition of mine to go to (in my humble opinion) the world’s best amusement park Cedar Point at LEAST once every summer. I only live about 2 hours away from Sandusky, Ohio where the park is located, so the drive is no big deal to me. For anyone reading this that isn’t from Ohio- I SERIOUSLY recommend traveling (no matter how far) to Cedar Point and Kalahari for a quick, fun and cheap weekend getaway.

So what’s Cedar Point? 

A View of the Park, courtesy TLC.com

According to the Cedar Point website:
“Cedar Point is known for a couple of things. It’s known as the roller coaster capitol of the world. But some  just refer to Cedar Point as the world’s best amusement park. Cedar Point is an amusement park that brings    people together through thrills. With 120 mph roller coasters that have 80 degree drops. An amusement park that, on top of roller coasters, has exhilarating thrill rides. An amusement park that has rides for the entire family and gives you water rides…”

As an avid fan, I can really say that all of this is true. That moment before you drop over the hill on the world’s second tallest roller coaster Top Thrill Dragster or the rush you get on The Maverick when you drop down an inverted hill are feelings you will never forget. If you aren’t a big thrill-seeker, Cedar Point has plenty of tame rides you can enjoy like the Ferris Wheel or the spider ride. Cedar Point is also about to start featuring more nighttime attractions to give it a Disney Land type feeling with fireworks and large shows.

The good news about all of this is that Cedar Point is pretty cheap. For a full day, tickets are 52 dollars and 47 if you order online. However, I recommend going to Marc’s or AAA and you and get tickets for about 40 dollars. If you want to wait until later at night to go, you can get Starlight Tickets for 33 dollars. Not to bad when you think about all Cedar Point has to offer. Really, a day isn’t even long enough to do everything the park has to offer.

Cool off at the water park

While you are already in Sandusky, I also recommend that you check out Kalahari water park. I am usually not one big on that sort of

The Outdoor Pool at Kalahari, courtesy kalahari.com

thing, but it was actually pretty fun! Kalahari is an African-themed water park that has a ton of water slides, a lazy river, a wave pool and lounge pools among other things. If you get sick of being in the water, the place is also stocked with a huge arcade room and zip lines! Also, for the adults, they have a full bar and nice little “huts” that you can rent. Tickets to the water park are 50 dollars but, once again, if you have a AAA membership you can get tickets for cheaper.
My recommendation

Since these parks are only about ten minutes away from each other, I recommend you make a weekend out of it. My friend and I did it this summer and had a blast. To save money, rather than paying to stay at one of the pricey resort hotels, we decided to stay at the Motel 6. Now don’t laugh or scoff, the motel was actually very nice. Yes, there were not a lot of amenities but they had a really nice pool, the rooms were clean and the staff was very friendly. In fact, we met a group of other young people like ourselves from Chicago trying to save money and they seemed to enjoy the motel just as much as we did. The room for one night was about 40 dollars.

The total price for this trip was around 150 dollars and it was an extremely enjoyable and relaxing weekend. I realize it might be more expensive for people driving or flying from further away, but I really believe these are two places everyone should check out in their travels.

Hotels To Allow Reviews on Web Pages

Chances are, before you go on vacation and book a room at a hotel, you most likely checked out hotel reviews before hand. Just like restaurant or movie reviews, it can be confusing because you don’t really know who to trust and what to believe. I once had an awful experience in a hotel that had all pretty positive reviews and, conversely, a great hotel experience in a place that had fairly negative reviews.

I stumbled upon a USA Today article discussing the new trend of hotels embracing these hotel reviews. I don’t mean just reviews on other websites like TripAdvisor or Yelp, but hotels are actually allowing people to post reviews on their own websites. These are major hotels too like, Hilton and Starwood (the world’s largest hotel chain). As a PR student, I think this brings up interesting points to mull over.

The Good

courtesy blogs.villagevoice.com

To be honest, I think many good things can come from this approach. First of all, I believe allowing for these posts will make the hotel look better. It shows that management is proud of their hotel and that they are confident that people will have pretty good experiences when they stay there. Transparency is key here, and I think this is great that hotel chains want to be open and honest with consumers about what it is like to stay at these hotels on vacation. Also, think about when you go to create a resume or LinkedIn profile. Talking about yourself and all of the great things you can do is awesome (if it’s not exaggerated), but doesn’t it make you seem a lot more valuable if you have other people (bosses, teachers, former co-workers, etc.) talking about how valuable you are? Having a third party endorsement makes you seem much more credible, and this is the benefit of allowing for reviews to be posted on your website. I also think this can make users lives easier when they go to book a room. Instead of having to search around multiple review sites, everything they need can be right found right on the hotel’s page!

The Bad

From a consumer standpoint, I see mostly positives coming from this new approach, but then this also opens the door for disaster. What if your hotel ends up getting so many bad reviews that it is put out of business and all of those people loose their jobs? I also feel

A Cartoon About Complainers courtesy http://www.suzeoge.com

that this opens the door for the ever present “negative Nancy’s.” We all know people like this, they find one little thing wrong and they fixate on it. I believe these negative Nancy’s would be more likely to post reviews, even if it was something really small (the ice machine was broken on my floor for two hours and it ruined my WHOLE vacation…really? Who Cares?!). After all, isn’t there some sort of saying that people are much more likely to complain about something then say something positive. Couldn’t this just encourage negative people to respond and couldn’t these negative people turn off potential customers?

Possibility of ethical issues

Just like a company’s social media page, allowing people to post things about your hotel can raise some ethical concerns that need to be watched out for. First, there is the issue of deleting negative posts. No matter how awful a review is, it can be argued that you should never delete negative posts (unless there is profanity). This is what transparency is all about- being open and honest about your company and allowing customers to be open and honest about their experiences with your product or brand.

Second, in my humble opinion, is that it is SO important to make sure that you do not have people who work for your company posting reviews. To me, this is a deal breaker. How many times do you read reviews and think to yourself, “this sounds so insanely positive to me, it has to be someone working for the company.” Also, remember if someone won a contest and stayed at the hotel for free or something of that nature, you need to make sure (according to FTC law) that they disclose that fact. Without complete honesty, this new hotel review process is doomed to fail.

What do you guys think? Is this a good idea or not one of your favorites? Regardless of what you believe, reviews are just that- REVIEWS. Always take them with a grain of salt.

Planning Your Road Trip

I hope up to this point in my blog you have thought of me as a sane and rational person, but now I am about to spew a little bit of crazy at you and talk about my 21-hour road trip down to Austin, Texas.
While taking a road trip isn’t anything too weird, I should tell you the reason I decided to take this road trip with my friend Irene was

View of Austin From Our Hotel

to see my favorite band 100 Monkeys. You may not know who they are, but Jackson Rathbone from the “Twilight Saga” happens to be in the band, which has given them a lot more notice recently. Anyways, the band was offering a Sheraton Hotel and “meet the band” deal and a former roommate of mine lived close by, so I felt the opportunity was to good to pass up ($100 per person for a room, concert ticket, champagne toast, and autographed pictures). Plus, I have always wanted to go on a road trip. So let’s talk travel!

Planning

Planning the road trip was definitely the easiest part and we were able to figure out roughly how much the trip would cost from the get-go. The first thing anyone should do before planning a road-trip is figure out how much your gas will cost! I used gas buddy, a simple site where you enter your start and end points and what type of car you have and then viola, you have your round-trip cost! Our trip ended being around $115 per person, which wasn’t too bad when you compared it to the $400 airplane ticket.

Taking a road trip saves you a lot of money and you get to see some pretty interesting things. You also really get a chance to bond with the people you are driving with. But, there are many things you need to be careful of and I’d like to offer four pointers.

1) Don’t pre-plan who is driving

My Car "Old Blue" Courtesy autobug.com

Irene and I had planned to switch drivers every four hours. Despite what some sites may say, this did not end up working because there are many things you don’t think about. First, we were driving my car, so I found that I had trouble sleeping when my friend was driving and conversely, she nervous to be driving my car. That being said, I ended up driving a lot more on the first stretch of the trip while Irene spent less time driving and more time getting used to handling my car. On the way back, however, I found that I was so exhausted that I was able to sleep a lot more and Irene was so anxious to get back home, so she drove a lot more return trip. Keep in mind your planning might not work and don’t be afraid to adapt.

2) DON’T push yourself to keep driving if you can’t

This is so important, because safety is key on a road trip. I remember two particularly scary moments. At one point, I thought a person was in the middle of the freeway and started to slam on my breaks. Second, there was a huge sign that said a freeway exit was closed and I thought the sign was in the middle of the freeway and that we were going to fall off the road (think the bus jump scene in the movie Speed). Clearly, I was WAY too tired to be driving. I woke my friend up and told her what happened and she was more than willing to switch off with me.

3) Get gas when you hit ¾ a tank

While we went during the winter time (meaning a lot of nighttime driving), I feel like this always applies. You never know when the next gas station will pop up and if it will be open. Once you see you are at ¾ a tank, look get off an fill up at the first station you see. It prevents you from being nervous.

4) MapQuest and your GPS might not be the same 

Me and Our "Cactus"

Much to my dismay, after finally falling asleep I was smacked awake from my friend and she was panicking wondering why we were in Missouri. We had studied the MapQuest directions and Missouri was not a state we were supposed to be traveling through. Obviously,

the GPS got us there but I question if it was the best route. We traveled a lot on two lane freeways with little to no street lamps and a lot of trucks. Talk about scary! So think about this before you embark.

Overall, I am glad I went on this road trip. I must say though, I think I would prefer to spend the extra cash next time to keep me calm. Taking a road trip really isn’t how they make it seem in the movies!