Heres a little TR from my day trip to ATL this past Sunday.
I like to get away with the family between camp and school but couldn’t get away from work this year.
My boys love baseball games, the Yankees, and who doesn’t enjoy checking out new stadiums?
I checked out the Yankees schedule and saw that they’re playing the Braves in ATL on Sunday August 30th.
So I decided on a day trip for the game with my 6 & 10 year olds.
Southwest flies LGA-ATL. I originally booked the 10:05am flight that was scheduled to get in around 12:45 (after a few reprices cost ~6200 miles ea.)
For the return I booked the latest flight back which was 9pm (cost ~9500 miles ea.)
The game was at 1:30 and I figured that would be enough time to get to the game, enjoy, then go somewhere for dinner with enough time to get to the airport for our return flight.
Then as I read this thread, I realized that my kids would probably love the Coke Museum, but how was I going to fit that in? I needed an earlier flight.
The earliest flight was the 8am DL flight also out of LGA. It arrives at 10:30 and that should give us enough time for the Coke museum. It was bookable for 10k miles ea. Even though this is much more that the 6200pp I was paying with WN (plus CP), I figured it was worth it for the Coke museum and to get more out of this one day trip. But before I booked with 10k DL, I decided to check out the new Amex Business Plat benefit of 30% back on pay with points at Amex Travel.
Turns out, to book with Amex travel, it would only be 26,901 (8967pp or 1.43cpp for those who keep track) + the few miles Ill earn for the flight. I’d have to transfer MR-DL anyhow, so this was obviously cheaper.
All in, aprox 46,000 points for 3 tickets (with WN CP) for the flights.
For the Yankees-Braves tickets, I bought tickets right next to the Yankees dugout a few rows up from the field on Stubhub for $65 each (thank you Amex Staples $75 off $250 offer where I loaded up on some Stubhub $50 gift cards) . Sure beats Yankee Stadium prices!
I wanted to make sure I had a decent parking spot for the game and saw Ticketmaster was selling parking for $10. Perfect. Or so I thought. Guess which $10 event didn’t have Amex checkout? I guess my other credits will have to pay for that one
Kids were extremely excited once I told them about the trip a few weeks in advance. The “If you want to go to ATL, you have to….” worked amazingly well!
The night before the trip I started checking the weather forecast which was kind of unencouraging. 60% chance of rain basically the whole afternoon. I wasn’t about to cancel. I figured if the game gets rained out we’d find something else to do.
Day of:Parked my car at ‘The Parking Spot’ at LGA. Had a few minutes to go to Delta lounge where the kids ate some cereal we brought and some fruit. I had some coffee. Flight was uneventful but fine.
I had reserved a car for the day for $26.52 at Payless car rental via carrentals.com. Ive used these discount rental places in the past without any problems. When I got to the counter in ATL I had to wait about 10 minutes until it was my turn. I said I have a reservation. After about a minute pause the guy tells me that my reservation was for 9am, they only hold it for 2 hours, so now they gave it to someone else and Ill have to pay $10 extra for a bigger car. I told him that Ive been waiting here for 10 minutes already and that its only 11:01 on my watch which is fast. I said I don’t care what type of car it is, he can give me the smallest one he has but theres no chance I'm paying an extra $10. He was magically able to waive this fee. Then he tried to get me to sign for the extra insurance charge after I told him no insurance. Then he finally printed a contract for $27.02. I commented that its only 50 cents more than my confirmation so Im not going to make a big deal about it but I rent cars all the time all over the country and this is the first time this has happened. He commented under his breath that I am making a big deal. Whatever.
It was still raining a bit when we got to the World of Coca Cola. As others have commented it is really one big Coke ad but the kids really enjoyed it. Admission was $16 for adult and $12 for kids.
There’s a few short shows and a bunch of memorabilia from Coke’s history. There’s also a vault room and you can see the vault that they claim holds the real recipe. I’m skeptical. There’s also a 4D theater. They give you 3D glasses and the seat also has this thing stick something in your back shoulder to make it feel as if you’re being stung. I wasn’t a fan of that particular trick, but the kids liked it. My 6 year old was a little scared at one point from the sudden seat movements.
In the tasting room at the end.
The kids sure drank a lot of soda and they even give an 8 oz glass Coke as a souvenir on the way out. I told the kids they’d have to finish those before we got to the airport.
When we left World of Coke, it seemed to have stopped raining and was still cloudy. On the radio in the car on the way to the game they commented that it’s about 20 degrees cooler than it usually is at the end of August. It turned out to be the perfect day for a baseball game in ATL. About 70 degrees, mostly cloudy and a few spots where the sun came out.
In the car we ate sandwiches we had brought with us. Turner Field has a Hyundai lot (Hyundais only) and a Delta Medallion lot. I had a Kia with no status so I parked in the Gold lot I reserved without Amex Checkout.
Inside Turner Field:
We had great seats right next to the Yankees dugout on the field level. We went between innings to say hello to Brett Gardner and CC Sabathia which was pretty cool.
Ultimately we ended up sitting in the 2nd row and seeing all the Yankees players in the dugout and on the filed right in front of us.
Yankees destroyed the Braves 20-6. It also seemed like there were more Yankees fans in the park than Braves fans. Clearly the case in my section.
When the game was finally over (seemed like the Braves couldn’t buy an out), it was kids run the bases day. When we realized how long the line was, my boys said they’d rather just go to dinner than wait to run the bases (which they’ve done before at SI Yankees).
We went to Pita Palace which was fairly decent. Although the menu seems like they only have sandwiches and pita/laffa, none of us wanted sandwiches or pita so we ordered a schnitzel plate and a schwarma plate with fries and plenty of self-serve salads. I wouldn’t call the schwarma great like the wiki but definitely good enough for my needs at the time. Shnitzel was better IMO. Spent under $30.
It was starting to get late and I really wanted to shower my kids at the airport and get them into PJs since I knew that wasn’t happening when we got home. We drove back to ATL, returned the car, and went to Terminal E which is the only Delta lounge in the domestic terminal with a shower. I had no problem using BP from the morning flight to access the lounge. Nice lady gave us the large handicapped shower room.
Nice and clean:
We then hurried up, jogged back to the tram, got to Terminal C just after 8:30 when Southwest began to board. No assigned seats+kids= really try to get to the gate before boarding unless you like asking someone to sit in the middle seat.
The biggest problem was all that soda they drank. At World of Coke and the giant one at the ballpark. They kept having to go to the bathroom. It was really getting annoying while we're rushing at the airport. Not exaggerating- probably 15 trips to the can that day.
The flight was overbooked with 2 college girls’ soccer teams on their way back from a tournament in Florida. After boarding they were still offering to bump people. My kids wouldn’t have minded but I had work on Monday.
I really don’t understand this route. The flight was supposed to be 2.5 hours long but we took off at 9:15 and landed at 10:50. That’s just over 1.5 hours. But I wasn’t complaining.
Just when I thought it was a beautiful ending to a perfect day in ATL, I picked up my car at ‘The Parking Spot’, sat down to drive away, and my tuchis was soaking wet. I felt around and the seat and door were soaked on the drivers and passengers side. Apparently it had poured about an hour earlier and they had left the windows open. I spoke with the manager who assured me it will be taken care of if I call the day manager. I also told him that he should have notified me before I sat down since they clearly knew about it, and I wasn’t the only one. I said I wasn’t leaving without something guaranteeing me that I would be reimbursed for this. 40 minutes later and I had that written guarantee. By this point I felt bad for the kids just waiting patiently in the back seat but couldn’t wait to get home. I had to drive home with garbage bags on the seats.
The next day I dropped off my car for a full shampoo detailing job. I don’t even get this type of treatment before Pesach. Cost about $80 after tax. When I spoke with the day manager he was very apologetic. He offered me 3x 3-day parking coupons good at any ‘The Parking Spot’ location or full reimbursement. I took the reimbursement which I am now waiting for.
(ended up coming out a lot longer that I initially anticipated)
But I hope you enjoyed, I sure did
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