Head Tale

Shea, the kids and I are planning to go on a winter holiday with my parents next February.

My folks and I went in to talk to the CAA Travel Agent earlier this week (my thought: “People still use travel agents?”  My parents’ thought: “You book all your travel online?”) 😉

Going in, we had basically decided on a completely different resort in a different country that hit our usual checkmarks – lots for kids to do, a mix of interesting restaurants, a swim-up bar, a few unique features we hadn’t enjoyed at other resorts before.

My parents had already talked about options with their travel agent and this visit was mainly to be a quick one so my parents could book their vacation.  I decided to tag along since the travel agent’s office is near my branch and I was planning to go for lunch with mom and dad after they booked their trip.

We made some small talk then the agent got down to business and had even started typing in the reservation information for my parents.  

But then mom ended up having a conversation with my sister (who was on the phone from Melfort) to confirm some details with her.  While they were chatting, I started making small talk with the travel agent – how many resorts have you been too?  Which countries do you like?  Have you ever been back to the same one twice?  In your line of work, I guess it makes sense that you wouldn’t but if you could leave tomorrow, where would you go back to?  

And she reached over and pulled out the brochure for the Moon Palace Cancun which she said is, by far, the best resort she’s ever been to and probably the only one she’d really love to go back to.

My parents had finished talking to my sister at this point and overhearing myself and the travel agent talking, were suddenly intrigued by this new option.  The travel agent gave them a quick summary of the resort and offered to pull up a quote, just to see how it would compare in price to the resort we’d chosen.

It turned out it was going to only be a small amount more money for *way* more than the original resort that we’d picked could offer – more pools, more restaurants, an amazing kids’ club, a cool surf simulator, they even give you a generous “Resort Credit” that you can use to pay for various excursions and services around the resort (if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and further research shows that this is a new way resorts have come up with to encourage customers to spend more money – they give you a few hundred bucks in Resort Credits and then either allow you to only put a portion towards your excursions or jack up prices so much that whatever you buy ends up costing what it would anyhow due to a 16% “user fee” on every Resort Credit Dollar you spend.  But still will be a cool option and if you’re smart about it, you can still get some good deals/make it work for you.)

So anyhow, with every librarian bone in my body was twitching as I thought “But…I haven’t fully researched this new place!”, we kind of all looked at each other as if to say “Should we?” (and joked about booking this new resort in a new country on behalf of my sister and not even telling her until she got to the plane!)

But anyhow, we talked about it a bit more (and I did some super quick Googling on my smart phone just to get the most basic info about how it’s reviewed on TripAdvisor and some of the amenities it offers) and we made a very spontaneous decision to book it.

Mom and dad and my sister have all put down a deposit but Shea and I haven’t booked yet.  But as of today, it’s 99.9% sure that this is the resort we’re going to next winter and now, the only question left is whether Shea and I do a week like we have for every one of the previous seven all-inclusive vacations we’ve taken?  Or do we splash out and take advantage of the slight cost saving you get booking a second week (the reason it’s less than double the cost of a single week to book two weeks is because you only pay for your return flight once, whether you stay one week or two) and the fact that this new resort we picked is a mega-resort – three huge hotels in one really – it will likely be the biggest property we’ve ever stayed at so there will be no shortage of things to do, even in two weeks.

Tough decisions, eh?