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E L L I O T T' S TRAVEL NOTES
Travel news, opinion and analysis

June 28, 2004

Theme Park Prices On Rollercoaster
Going to the amusement park is getting trickier. In an effort to boost slumping attendance figures, theme parks from Kings Island in Cincinnati to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va., are rolling out or expanding their ticket discounting programs. Many parks this summer, including Paramount’s Great America in Santa Clara, Calif., and Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, are aggressively moving into online sales and offering special prices to people who book on the Web and then print out their tickets at home. Busch Gardens even lets online customers buy tickets on an installment plan. Complicating the equation, the rash of discounts comes as many parks have raised their gate price this year. Wall Street Journal | Posted 6:30 a.m.
-- Forbes: Theme Park Insider is 'Best of the Web'
-- Olympian: Plan ahead to avoid theme park disaster

• Whatever happened to an affordable vacation? The fact that a theme park vacation is getting so expensive that guests pay for all the fun in installments is a little difficult to swallow. Am I missing something here? Send us your comments.

Renting 'The Dregs of Detroit'
Anyone whose identity is wrapped up in the car she drives is a shallow, insecure person with low self-esteem. I’ve said that many times. Believed it, too. Until now. After four days in an unspeakable rental car – a dung-colored, dime-store excuse for a motor vehicle – I longed for something, well, slightly more stylish. Like an AMC Gremlin. Four days of lurching down the road in a car whose steering wheel seemed curiously disconnected from its tires and whose windshield wipers sounded like cheese graters turned me into a glum recluse. This car was the dregs of Detroit. Pilot | Posted 6:45 a.m.

Airlines Lack Government Support
The political skies over the nation's capital have turned unfriendly for the nation's airlines. Consider that the Air Transportation Stabilization Board has twice rejected applications by United Airlines Inc. for a loan guarantee, this time for $1.6 billion. And consider that the Republican chairman of a key House aviation committee has told the airlines to sink or swim. "Let me make it clear that Congress is not going to underwrite losing airline operations," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee. Indeed, the industry, which received two taxpayer aid packages in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, may have nearly drained its account of political capital with lawmakers and the Bush administration. Dallas Morning News| Posted 7 a.m.

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• And finally ... the Houston Chronicle picked up my commentary about fees yesterday, and the response was pretty predictable. "It's quite apparent you never earned an honest nickle in your life. Your concept of cost distribution and assumption must have come from Uranus," wrote Edward A. Ross, Jr. "Not once do you offer a solution, just criticism. What a stupid article." Sounds like another fan to me. Posted 7:10 a.m. | Send us your comments.

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