Land Trips – Page 3 – Wanderlist Vacations

Driving a Supercar

Earlier today I cashed in one of the presents I got for Christmas: a Living Social deal for a 3-lap driving experience from the folks at Motorsport Lab. While it’s not travel, I figured I’d throw out a quick review on it. Note that my review is for the Charlotte event, I can’t speak for any other location.

When you register on Motorsport Lab’s web site, you get to choose the type of car you want to drive. For this event, there were 3 options when I registered in late December:

Lamborghini Gallardo
Ferrari 360 Modena
Ferrari F430 (upcharge for this one)

Being a life-long Lambo fan, I chose the Gallardo. After you register, you’re sent a link to the participation form you need to fill out and bring with you to the event. As I saw called out in the many Yelp reviews of this company, this is a rather long form (16 pages), filled with all kinds of scary language warning about possible charges for things like damage and exceeding various RPM levels among other things. They offer insurance for each possible problem at the charge of $20/$30/$50 per waiver, depending on the item. That, and the form calls out suggested tip levels very clearly, which I admit is something I find a bit tacky. I’m fine letting people know the instructors work off of tips, but suggesting amounts like that can be a bit of a turnoff. After reading a few of the Yelp reviews, I see I’m not alone in that. I also saw a number of people mention that the added insurance wasn’t needed for most locations, so when I filled it out, I declined all of them. I’m glad I did.

Several of the reviews I read were negative, with some people even saying they skipped the experience entirely after being scared off by the language in the form. This is completely unnecessary in my opinion. Even if you don’t believe me, go early and watch a few people run the course before you sign in so you can get an idea of exactly what is going on, you might be surprised. With all the negative reviews, I figured it was only fair to throw in a positive review since we enjoyed the event.

First, did I spend any money beyond the cost of the Living Social deal? Yes. Totally by my own choice and it was worth it. I asked about getting a ride along for Bayley, who is home for spring break, and took him up on the offer to get her laps with the instructor for $50. That fee and the tip were the only added costs for us. They weren’t being pushy with anything, and were up front in saying that people should tip what they were comfortable with. When I checked in, the guy at the table looked over my forms, saw I’d declined all optional insurance, and moved on without trying to change my mind. I even heard him tell the guy in front of me that most of it wasn’t needed for a course like this. Don’t be scared or turned off by all the language in there around damage, I assume most of it is to ensure that people thinking they’re going to treat these things like rental cars are talked down off that ledge. There were a few other complaints in other reviews that could have been addressed by people doing a little research beforehand, so I’ll call a couple of them out here:

(Note: If you want to read those reviews, just search for the company. I’m not a big fan of Yelp so I’m not linking to them)

This experience is on an autocross course. It has the words ‘autocross’ and ‘agility’ in the experience name, so arriving to find a course of cones shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s not going to be on an oval or on city streets, even if the event is held at a track, like it is in Boston. You’re not getting the cars up to 100MPH. Even the straight on our course was too short to get up over 50MPH-ish (had it been dry) unless you’re really experienced on these types of courses. If you want something faster, maybe try the IndyCar or NASCAR experience. I’ve done the IndyCar one, and you definitely go a lot faster with that, but you’re on an oval.
The Lambo wasn’t put in to automatic transmission mode as some reviews mentioned, but we never got out of 2nd. You do get to shift, but basically only from neutral to 1st to get going, and to 2nd pretty quick after that. Once in 2nd, you stay there the rest of the way. You’re not getting close to the 6500RPM limit in 2nd on this course unless you’re planning on exiting over some cones and paying the price.
Scheduling can be a pain. I don’t disagree. Once you buy the deal, register as fast as possible to ensure you have options. I’ve learned this the hard way with other LS/Groupon deals in the past (namely my IndyCar one), so I registered shortly after opening this present. Even with that, the list of available dates was limited, but I got something that worked for me.
Some people said your time in the car isn’t that long, and that’s true. The deal is for 3 laps, and being an autocross course in a parking lot, that means a relatively small track. They do offer more laps as an add-on, or if that’s not enough, you might want to check out one of the companies that use real road courses or take you out on streets.

Back to the review: After checking in, we hung out under the canopies they’d put up (due to rain) and waited for the event to start. There weren’t a huge number of people for our 9am session, I’d say 7-8 for each of the two cars at most. Those driving the Ferrari got a nice upgrade at no cost, as the 360 was in the shop, so all they had was the F430 (both the F430 and Gallardo are 2006 models, BTW). They take you out based on the time you checked in, which they’d written on your wristband, so I was 3rd for the Lambo. With the ground being so wet none of us in that first three pushed all that hard, but I really did enjoy it. I’ve driven some fast stuff, but never something so well balanced in the corners. The instructor (or ‘sherpa’, as they call it) who was with me was really good, too. Very nice and talked you through the whole thing, and was far more helpful than the spotter I had with the IndyCar experience. He gave me pointers on corner entry/exit, and when to give it power exiting a turn. It ended faster than i’d have liked, which wasn’t a big surprise. Three laps is a bit short in my opinion, but I knew what I was getting in to, and I’m sure if I’d asked I could have upgraded to six for a little more. It was enough to give me a taste of what a well balanced supercar felt like, so it was worth it to me.

After I went, my daughter was up for her ride-along. When I bought it, the guy said that the cost is $50/lap, but they normally go ahead and do two laps for that. She actually got three, and he seemed to really be enjoying himself behind the wheel out there (who wouldn’t?), intentionally kicking out the rear in a few corners. Just for fun I gave him a heads-up that he had her past experiences to live up to, as she’s done an IndyCar 2-seater ride as well as the Audi ride-along at Daytona. He definitely pushed it, and she loved every second of it. I’ve got video of her laps up on YouTube if anyone wants to see it.

When it was all over, we both agreed that we had a blast. All of the employees were very friendly, and the car was a blast to drive, even in the rain. For the Living Social price it was definitely a fun morning, but I wouldn’t have done it for the listed price of $549. Not really sure if anyone actually paid that this morning, though. I do think Jen made a bit of a tactical error in buying this for me, as now I want to move up to one of the events on real tracks, like this one. There are a couple of cars on their list I’d absolutely love to get behind the wheel of, like the McLaren, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for deals with them, too 🙂

Renting Camera Gear

I know in my last post that I said I was done until after my trip this weekend, but after a package came today, I figured I had one more in me 🙂

I love to take pictures when on vacation, as most people do. I started shooting with DSLRs about 9 years ago when my daughter started in competitive cheer, but would say that even today, I’m an amateur photographer at best. While I used to lug my gear around any time we went on trips, I only really enjoy shooting with it under the right circumstances these days. Over the past few years, my interest in using the DSLR gear on vacations has waned, and while I do still take it with me, it serves as a backup camera to my point and shoot, which also happens to be my phone, currently a Nokia Lumia 1020 with the camera grip. While each has advantages and disadvantages, being able to carry such little weight when using a decent point and shoot is enough for me to leave the DSLR in the bag. Most of the time.

The main exception to my rule would be auto races, the one place I really enjoy shooting. Over the past few years, I’ve rented gear to haul to the following:

2008 Grand Prix of Long Beach: Rented a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR to mount on my D80
2010 Grand Prix of Long Beach: Rented a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR to mount on my D80
2012 Rolex 24 at Daytona: Rented a Nikon D7000 + Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
2015 Rolex 24 at Daytona: Rented a Nikon D750 + Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
Oh, and I also rented a Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR to use with my D80 on a work trip to Yosemite in 2010.

The D750 and 70-200 arrived today, just in time for our departure tomorrow. I’ve used a couple of different services for this over the years, LensRentals.com and RentGlass.com, and have had nothing but good experiences with both of them. The majority of those listed above, however, have been with LensRentals. My main reason behind this is because they allow me to schedule well in advance what I want and when I need it, vs just waiting until a few days before the trip and hoping what I want is in stock. For this trip, I reserved the gear on the 7th for arrival today. I’ll keep it 4 days, and send it back in the packaging it arrived in on Monday on my way home, only needing to have some packing tape on hand since the return shipping label is included.

Both of the services do an outstanding job packaging their gear, which I would completely expect considering how much this equipment would cost to replace. Today’s box was no different:

The main reason I’m willing to rent and lug heavy gear around with me is that it’s next to impossible to get a decent shot of a race car at speed using a P&S. Shooting a moving vehicle is a mix of stable panning, fast glass, perfect shot settings, and good location. The professionals generate some awesome images. Me, I’m just happy to get pictures to use as desktop backgrounds, to be honest. The other challenge will be the number of pictures I take. I leave it in burst mode the whole weekend, and usually max out the camera buffer when I’m shooting a passing car from the fence line, and am guessing I’ll easily come home with somewhere between 2500-3000 pictures to sort through this trip. Most of that will likely be throw away, too, but the ones that turn out good will occupy my computer screens for quite a while.

Back to the rental services. Honestly, I find this to be a great way not only to try new gear, but to avoid paying the price of buying something you may only use a couple of times. I’ve always received solid, perfectly working gear, and the few times I did have to contact either company’s support for something, they were always very friendly and helpful. For anyone who’s never used a camera rental service but isn’t interested in renting DSLR gear, most of them aren’t limited to that, some have point and shoot cameras and GoPro gear, too.

One last recommendation for anyone renting high-end gear: Get the insurance for anything you’re not willing to pay replacement cost on. On our 2010 trip to Long Beach, I dropped my camera while it had the 18-200 rental lens on it. As soon as it left my hands, my heart sank. I didn’t even want to pick it up. When I did, I could tell that the lens was a bit jacked up, as the focus ring was loose, and the lens itself wasn’t 100% secure on the mount. We were at the car getting ready to head to the hotel on day 2 (of 3) when it happened, so I wrapped it up and waited to asses it further until we got to the hotel. When we got back to the room, I went ahead and emailed RentGlass to let them know what happened and ask for next steps. Long story short, after we got home, I sent the lens back as scheduled and waited to find out how much the repair was going to cost. Fortunately, none of the glass was damaged, and Nikon’s price to repair was only $125. That was the one time I skipped insurance, and I was sure I was going to have to pay for a new lens, so I was pretty happy with that outcome. It was a lesson for sure, and is still the only time I’ve ever dropped a camera.

Well, I’m off to finish packing since we’re off to Daytona in the morning! For now, here are a handful of my favorite shots taken with rental gear over the years:

Grouponing A Vacation

First off, two of the three deals I mention here were actually through Living Social, but “LivingSocialing a Vacation” doesn’t have the same ring 🙂

While in Orlando over Thanksgiving, we didn’t visit any parks for anything other than food. Not one. That was a first for us, as we’ve been down there a handful of times over the years to visit Disney and Universal for cheer competitions and for vacation. I honestly had no idea what was planned for the trip until the 17th, when I got my birthday (and late anniversary) presents. My wife had been planning the trip for a while, and found several deals for stuff to do in the area. This just goes to show that sites like LivingSocial and Groupon can be very useful when you’re going on vacation, not just in your local area. So what did we do? Let’s review:

Space Coast Segway Tours: This was an absolute blast. The kid and I had done this once before, but this was a new experience for my wife, and she loved it just as much as we did. It was just the three of us with the guide, and while it was cold that day, we loved every minute of this tour. It takes you through the port area in Cape Canaveral, with several scenic stops along the way. Our guide was great, and it’s something we’d definitely do again.

Groupon deal price: $25/pp for a 75min tour. The Groupon claims a value of $65/pp, no idea if that’s really the normal price.

Dolphin Paradise Tours: We did this the same day as the Segway tour since both are in the Cape Canaveral area, and apparently chose the coldest day during our time down there, unfortunately :). Regardless, it was another fun tour. We did the 1:00pm tour, and really enjoyed it. We had several dolphins swim by, had one following in our boat’s wake (picture below), and saw a couple of manatees. Both the captain and the guide on the little island were awesome, and this is one we really want to do again in the spring once the water is warmer.

LivingSocial deal price: $76 total, but note this was actually the 4 person price. The only LS options for this deal were for 2 or 4, and with their regular price for one person being $40, it made more sense to buy the deal for 4 than it did to buy it for 2 and pay separately for the 3rd person.

Air Force Fun Helicopter Tours: Our Living Social deal was for 3 people on tour 1. This was a ~6-7min tour that took us over Sea World, Aquatica and Discovery Cove. My daughter and I had done one other helicopter tour (in Grand Turk, mentioned here) and had a blast, so this deal was an easy pick for my wife. Our pilot did a great job of pointing out all the sights along the way, and we had a nice smooth ride with clear views in all directions. One of these days, we’ll pony up for longer rides 🙂

LivingSocial deal price: $75 for all 3 of us, with the full photo package included. The normal price for the ride is $25/pp, so we basically just got the $25 photo package free.

That covers all of our deals on the trip. We also saw Jim Gaffigan at the Hard Rock Live on Saturday night, but there was no deal on that, it was sold out, and it was a great night of comedy between Gaffigan and his opening act Ted Alexandro. Honestly, I’d never heard of Ted before, but he’s a really funny guy, I’d definitely go see him again.

The whole point here is, when going on vacation be sure to check sites like Groupon and LivingSocial or deals on stuff like this, it’s a good way to help save money on a trip!

Our New Adventure!

As I’ve alluded to in my last couple of posts, our trip to Ft Lauderdale wasn’t really a vacation. Throughout my daughter’s final year of high school, my wife and I had talked about her going back to work after the kid left for college, she just had no idea what she wanted to do. After returning from our Bermuda cruise, I was looking for ways to get more involved in the travel industry, and happened to come across CruiseOne’s franchise program. I brought it up to my wife, and she was sold right away. Having not been a fan of the franchise model in the past (especially after watching my dad’s experience in owning a 7-11 franchise while I was growing up) I was skeptical, so I spent the next couple of months doing a bunch of research on the company and reading anything I could on their franchise program.

The end result was that I found very little in the way of negative info, and came away pretty excited about the possibilities. My wife signed up for a prospective franchisee webcast, and away things went. Fast forward to October, and we were headed down for our new franchisee training and starting this new journey. I admit that prior to doing this I felt travel agents were a thing of the past, but as we learned, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The way the service is delivered is definitely changing, but I’ve come to see that the need is very much alive. Many people don’t really enjoy all the research and planning that goes in to it the way we do, and there are still plenty of deals to be had that aren’t visible when just searching a given agent’s site.

Since we got back home last month, she’s been hard at work with the business. She’s even booked a couple of trips, and has a few more she’s researching for different people. It’s fun to watch, as I can tell she enjoys it. She’ll be upstairs in her office all day focused on travel planning and making her way through the sea of training we now have access to, and eventually come downstairs for dinner all nice and relaxed, a feeling I rarely have when I leave work :). There’s still plenty to be done, especially on the marketing front, but that will come in time. One of the nice things about this setup is that it isn’t our primary source of income, which has multiple benefits:

If things are slow with the business, it doesn’t add to our stress levels
We’re able to take the time off to visit some of the places and ships we’re selling to our customers, so we get a chance to ensure what we’re selling is up to snuff
The commission isn’t the priority, ensuring that her customers are booked with the right cruise line / land tour / resort that matches their taste.
We control the number of clients she’s juggling at any one time to ensure that she’s not overloaded and has plenty of time to properly focus on those clients she does choose to take on.

This doesn’t mean anything changes with my blog, I’m still going to call it as I see it in my trip reviews. Transparency and honesty are hard to find in reviews these days for various reasons, and I have no intention of letting up with my opinions.

That said, I will take this one opportunity to pitch the business :). If anyone’s looking to take a cruise, land tour, or book a resort, feel free to contact Jen, she’d love to help you!

Jen Cron
888-416-3182
jcron@dreamvacations.com
http://www.wanderlistvacations.com
Facebook: WanderlistVaca
Twitter: @wanderlistvaca
Instagram: @Wanderlistvaca

Just some of the things we can help plan/book:

Cruises on any line, including river cruises, luxury cruises, and more traditional contemporary cruises
Land tours, including trips with Globus Journeys, Adventures by Disney, and Apple Vacations
Group travel

and a whole lot more!

Another Trip to Florida, Part 3

I wanted to be sure to cover the food we had on the trip. Being that we were there for training, we only had to cover dinners for ourselves. Breakfast was covered by hotel vouchers, and lunch was catered at CruiseOne’s facility. One pitfall of travelling for me is that I take full advantage of being able to eat out. I love food, but that’s not to say I’m a foodie. Far from it. I’m very much a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and I don’t stray from that formula often. That combination, when travelling, often ends up in me consuming more calories than I should, which is never a good thing when I’m trying to keep off the 60+lbs I worked hard to drop a couple of years ago. You only live once, though, and I do like to try new places.

So what did we eat that was memorable? I’ll leave Tsunami off, since I covered it in part 1, and just move on to what we had in Ft Lauderdale:

1. Moonlite Diner. Interesting little place, with plenty of choices. This was within walking distance to our hotel, but we ended up driving since we had other errands to run. I had the Ultimate Grilled Cheese with hash browns, and that side lived up to my standards. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s soggy hash browns, and this place served them up crispy, as they should be. The sandwich was good as well. My wife had the veggie burger with hash browns, and she enjoyed her burger quite a bit. The service was fine, and while the guy who initially served us was nice, he seemed like he’d much rather be somewhere else. About half way through the dinner, a friendly waitress took over and took good care of us. It’s somewhere I’d eat again if we were in the area, but it wasn’t my favorite of all the places we went.

2. Carlucci’s Italian Ristorante. This is some of the best lasagna I’ve had in a while. Few places seem to use real ricotta these days, so tasting that in Carlucci’s was a nice change of pace. The garlic bread was pretty good too, but that garlic really had some kick to it. I accidentally dropped a chunk on my salad, and when I ate that bite, wow :). That reminds me, they have a really good balsamic vinaigrette, which is a dressing I normally don’t enjoy. I decided to give it a shot at our waiter’s recommendation, and was glad I did. My wife had the baked ziti, a dish she freuently judges italian restaurants by, and loved it. A definite winner of a choice in our opinion.

3. Umberto’s. Later in the week (Friday) we were looking for some pizza, and one of the people in our class from Florida recommended this place. My daughter had driven over from St Pete to hang out with us, and joined us for dinner here. She got some alfredo dish, which she really liked, and my wife and I split a pizza. Delicious, and well worth straying from the hotel. Afterwards, we went across the street to Alice’s Ice Cream Emporium for some gelato. Really good stuff, highly recommend stopping if you’re in the mood for a tasty treat.

Our last dinner in Ft Lauderdale was at a place along the water taxi route. We’d been given free tickets to ride it, and held on to them until Saturday night. It was fun to hang out on the boat and ride around the area, seeing some nice houses and yachts along the way.

When we finally got hungry, we got off at stop 4, 15th Street Fisheries. Having never been there, we weren’t sure what to expect, but looking over the menus, decided to eat upstairs overlooking the water. We ended up with an incredible sunset view to go along with the meal:

As far as the meal goes, it was spectacular. Staying true to my roots, I had meat and potatoes, or more specifically, the prime rib. I really wasn’t prepared for just how big that thing was. I wish I’d taken a picture, but it’s safe to say it was a very delicious monster that I wasn’t able to finish. My wife had the Ahi Tuna, and really enjoyed it and the mashed sweet potatoes that came with it. The service was stellar as well, and contributed to our decision to spend a little extra to share a couple of desserts. I chose the Ghirardelli chocolate brownie, which was spectacular. Cooked perfectly, and still gooey on the inside, we really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

I think that about covers it. I did leave a couple of nights out, as one was a trade show night with catered snacks, and the other we just hit the local Longhorn, and I really didn’t feel it was necessary to talk about a national chain. My next post, covering our tour of the Norwegian Getaway, will include a review of the lunch we had on-board. Our one cruise on NCL, back in 2006, left a lot to be desired food-wise, so it was definitely nice to get a sampling of how their food quality has evolved.

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