Edmonton Celebration III

Okay so two companies got back to me today and here's the news:

Bi-West Translines is $10,500 and that's just for THREE days (I asked for a week but they quoted me three days) and the bus seats 47 people (two drivers).

Golden Arrow charges $11,000 for a whole week plus the drivers (two) accomadations. The bus seats 40 and it has a 'sleeper' whatever that means.

Now, doing the math that works out to 275 per person if we got a full load (40) people and:

$315 / 35 people
$367 / 30
$440 / 25
$550 / 20

(Before driver accomadations)

Which is still a lot cheaper than a flight and a lot more convenient than just taking the greyhound since it goes straight there, leaves when we're ready and we'd be travelling with friends. I think if we could get some people from Calgary and B.C. to get on board with this it would defintely be viable. I'm also pretty sure there's a washroom on-board. I can double-check but I'd be willing to guarantee that myself.

 

It will cost $159-$185 return to fly WestJet to Toronto. There is special discounts for groups of 10 or more.

According to Greyhound it will cost about $190 or less round trip from Toronto to Indianapolis. ($119 for advanced ticket purchase.)

So you're looking at a maximum of $375 (more like $300), and duration of about 20-25 hours.

 

Well regardless of how you guys decide to go I will be driving. Even if I'm just taking my car by myself. I refuse to fly again.

 

Looks great Berx, thanks for checking...

Does that "week" include the driving time as well?

I know I would rather drive in one form or another... it would be MUCH more fun...

 

That's all driving time.

 

Sweet... then that is definately affordable if we can get a big enough group... even if not, it's still a reasonable cost for what we would be getting...

Indy

EDIT: I am going to talk to the CRs for Vancouver and Victoria, as well as check with YJN or CrazyMike to make sure it's okay to post a proposal for this in the Canada General forum, the BC General Forum, and the Prarie General forum.

 

You might want to post something in the convention forum too if there are people who check there but not any of the canadian forums. liann

 

Good plan, Liann!

 

I have set up a new email address for the FanForce for this Mega Event.

c3tripinfo@edmontooine.com

If you speak to people, you can either direct them to the messageboard, or get them to email that addy for information.

I plan on keeping a mailing list updated with progress as our trip planning progresses.

Indy

 

Good, good. I still think a meeting is necessary, however to see who from Edmonton is onboard. I think we should try and have it before we meet with Dave's friends (after the comic & toy show) from Calgary so we're all on the same page then.

 

There's a forum on the boards now specifically for celebreation 3. Here's a link to it if anyone wants to check it out.

Also here's The Official FanForce Party link

 

you beat me to it. finally a celebration III forum, they've been working on it for a while. I've never been to a convention before what all is there usually to do, besides seeing celebrities and getting their autographs. a year is too far away. liann

 

People who have been there could probably answer better than me. Aside from the celebrities there's some gaming, a lot of merchandise for sale, dinners, demo's, I think there were some previews for the movie there last time. Plus a lot of people in costume

 

I finally got it in my head to check the Greyhound website. There's an information request form on the site which I'm filling out right now. As soon as they get back to me I'll have some prices to post. They probably won't get back to me until sometime tomorrow or the day after.

 

Okay, Greyhound finally got back to me. I gotta say I'm not too impressed with the way they run a business since I've been trying for close to a month now.

Anyway, They gave me a price of $1400/day for one driver (even though I asked for two ). The driver can only be on the road for 10 hours/day and checking map quest it's 32 hours from downtown Edmonton to Indianapolis. Taking into account rest-stops I figure it will take close to 8 days round trip ( not counting actual time in Indy) It comes to a grand total of around 12 days. There's also driver accomadations, OUR accomadations while on the road (no, we can't sleep on the bus).

Now, this works out to be $16,800 not counting accomadations which I bet you can guess is a heck of a lot more than the other company charged.

I have actually called every charter company in the phone book and all but three couldn't do charters outside of Canada (some not even outside of prov.) So I guess this is as much as we're going to get here in e-town. If I were to get a calling card I could try a few charter companies in Calgary which I could do come summer if everyone feels like shopping around some more. I don't think we're going to find much of a better deal than the $11G (with two drivers it would be way faster, and personally I think it's a steal if we can find enough people)

Here's some of the math if we go through Greyhound:

(@ $16,800 [before driver accomadations])

57 people (max cap.) - $294.74
50 - $336
40 - $420
30 - $569 (I really doubt we can get more than this)
20 - $840 (at this point its more than a plane ticket)
15 - $1120 and so on... (you have a calculator, use it )

Any questions? Comments? Anything?

 

Doesn't seem like a good way to go.

 

Hi Guys,

Just an fyi. For CII my sister and I took advantage of the Greyhound GoAnywhere Fare.

It is super cheap at $200CDN return, I believe the only restriction is that you have to purchase your tickets 14 days before you would like to depart. And as long as you make sure that you all buy tickets on the same route...it would be a pretty stress-free way to travel.

Good luck with the planning!
JawaGirl

 

Thanks for all of your work, Berk!

 

Yup, thanks Berx!

That is a great price Mindy, the only problem is that trip probably took 2.5 days because of all the stops... but it is definately worth looking into at that price...

Indy

 

yes, thanks for all the hard work. $200 is pretty cheap, I guess it depends how long it takes and how many bus changes you have to make etc. So did Golden Arrow work out to be the best looking deal?

 

If I remember correctly, it took right around 48 hours.
I think we stopped, switched buses around 4 or 5 times:

Saskatchewan
Winnipeg
Fargo
Chicago

I think I'm missing one...hmmm...

JawaGirl

 

Yeah Golden Arrow was the best deal. Like I said though that isn't our only option. There's charter companies in Calgary, maybe in Regina I could try but I'm not in much of a rush right now. Around the middle of April after I've written my finals I'll be able to concentrate 100%. Until then we do have some time. The tickets aren't even on sale til Aug last I heard.

The $200 route doesn't sound too bad. It'd be great if we could all get seats together & stuff too.

Anyway for the next month Liann is going to have to shoulder a lot of responsibility for this stuff. Finals coming up in 20 days

 

Hey guys/gals psycho Imperial fan from Victoria BC here. There is a void in the force on the Victoria boards, so I just wanted to let you all know that there are a bunch of fans in Vancouver and perhaps a few in Victoria besides myself and girlfriend who will be interested in a bus trip to Indy, when you figure it all out please send me a line, you may also wish to post a note in the Van and Vic boards.

Thanks for the hard PI work!

Randy
TK-0773
501st.ca CDN garrison

 

That's great to hear. The more seats we fill the better. We'll certainly do that as soon as we've figured it out.

 

The Celebration III logo was released yesterday! Very cool! Check it out here.

JawaGirl