I'll start with the request first, in case you don't want to read my ramblings. (But if that's the case, why are you here at all?)
Yes, I want to watch Star Trek in IMAX. Here's the question: would you fellow readers prefer a late-night weeknight showing? Or, a mid-day weekend showing? I fear everything else will be sold out, and I would like to watch the flick sooner rather than later. Leave a comment with your thoughts.
Update on crazy-travel:
The 3-weekend crazy-travel extravaganza has wrapped up. Hooray! However, it did not work quite as I would have thought. For starters, American is several days in arrears in terms of posting their flight info. So, even though I knew on a certain flight I'd be "going gold", that won't be reflected on my account for several days. Boo.
The other downside is that the special double-point promotion designed to make me Gold the second weekend and Platinum the third doesn't kick in until the end of June. That is, the bonus points won't post until then. So while I will be Gold sometime this week, it will be a while until my Platinum status is active. Mrs. Bart will likely rocket from Gold to Executive Platinum in one fell swoop around the same time.
The flights and trips generally went well. Munich was a delightful place. I would be fine not seeing Frankfurt again, although many of the little towns surrounding it deserve some exploration. But while Munich's transit system is as delightful as the city, Frankfurt's is screwy due to it being on the border of two provinces. So if I did a Frankfurt-area exploration, I would need to rent a car, breaking my longstanding ban on driving in foreign countries.
Only one major travel snafu: last night, our flight from Boston to Dallas was canceled. This was especially vexing because prior to boarding our London to Dallas flight, Mrs. Bart had asked about the possibility of getting on a London to Dallas direct flight. It would have required major $ to get on, so we opted for our original itinerary. Which then got screwed.
Not to go on too much of a jag, but here's the way I see it: American wanted to make some revenue from us in exchange for the convenience of having just one flight. I can dig that. The price was too high, though, and we rejected their offer. So American had empty seats on their London to Dallas direct flight. Best-case scenario is that we lost some time, and American lost some revenue. However, when we got to Boston, we found that the last flight to Dallas for the day had been canceled. So American put us up in a hotel, gave us meal vouchers, and put us on the 6 AM flight to Dallas. So what had been a rather neutral event in London turned into a major screwing for American - they not only lost out on our revenue by pricing their London to Dallas ticket change too highly, but they lost money in Boston by putting us up in a hotel, providing meal vouchers, and losing out on seat space on the 6 AM flight that they could have sold to someone else (I know this because the 6 AM flight was way overbooked).
So here's my question, American: would it have been so much trouble just to let us fill some of those empty seats and getting us to our final destination? Heck, I would've paid $50 per head for the convenience factor, but not $250 per head. Instead, you probably lost more than that on the hotel, vouchers, and seats we were taking from potential customers. We should have demanded two hotel rooms; that would have been awesome. Multiply that by several hundred thousand passengers, and I can see why they're losing money.
The worst part is that I love Boston. If we had planned to spend the night in Boston, it would have been awesome. Instead, we were stressed the hell out and ate in the hotel. (The food was fine, mind you, but I could've gone for a hot lobster roll in town.)
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