So as of now we have good information on both Mpls and NO. Mpls seems to be just a bit of a price leader at the moment.

KC has the lowest prices we've seen so far, but we are somewhat without a local point person at the moment.

John Sweden is working on getting us the Toronto information.

KC posts:

NoiseDesign "F2F 2: Is there anybody here that hasn't slept together?" Aug 22, 2004 7:52:50 pm PDT

NoiseDesign "F2F 2: Is there anybody here that hasn't slept together?" Aug 25, 2004 5:10:38 pm PDT

Hotel info here:

Nicole "F2F 2: Is there anybody here that hasn't slept together?" Sep 8, 2004 7:23:41 pm PDT

Original KC pimpage:

Erin "F2F 2: Is there anybody here that hasn't slept together?" Jun 10, 2004 1:30:36 pm PDT

Original Toronto pimpage:

JohnSweden "F2F 2: Is there anybody here that hasn't slept together?" Jun 12, 2004 11:41:34 am PDT

JohnSweden said that there were problems with the Toronto Tourism site, but they had promised the info to him ASAP....

I'm all for ranking choices, but we know how well that plays here.

I do think we should ask people to indicate, for each city, if they
a) almost definitely would attend
b) might attend
c) probably would not attend
d) almost definitely would not attend

If a city has a plurality of the vote, but a high negative score, and another city is a close second but with a much lower negative, we should maybe consider the second place choice.

The next question then, has anyone done some basic checking on airfares in and out of all these cities? The cost of travel usually comes up as an issue so we should talk a bit about it before we roll into the final voting.

A question--experience has taught me that Minneapolis is extremely expensive to fly into--is anyone checking that info? (Even though I know it varies a lot, we can look at averages.) That would definitely affect my decision.

ND, get out of my brain!

Okay, I just ran some quick dates and flights through Travelocity and here's what I came up with.

I used the travel dates on 5/18 and 5/25 since those are when I'm planning to travel.

LAX

to Mpls $257
to KC $172
to NO $234
to Toronto $260

JFK

to Mpls $245
to KC $247
to NO $192
to Toronto $245

These are the the cheapest fares, but rather the most common fares that Travelocity pulled up.

experience has taught me that Minneapolis is extremely expensive to fly into

It must depend on where you're flying in from. My tickets to Minneapolis for juliana's wedding were $70 less than my tickets to Seattle for Halloween, nonstop, Northwest Airlines.

I'm not sure about driving either. I know that when we hit Mpls and KC that we might actually be driving distance for a lot of folks. I'm not sure how many folks are driving distance to NO.

It's not as bad now that I'm looking. I was basing it on experience booking for my ex-boss who wasn't good about booking in advance.