<p>Just got our AAA membership cards renewed - weird to look on them and see we have been members for 32 years!!! </p>
<p>Admittedly we are not huge consumers of the AAA services available. We have used them for car issues (dead batteries, broke down) and we. Keep our hound adult kids on our plants a gift to them. We have used the triptics (sp?) in the past for trips but these days would not bother much with them with GPS and Onstar on our cars.</p>
<p>However we are planning a June big trip for our family - a rare occasion- and I’m wondering if/how I should consult with AAA to help us with any of the planning since I am not a Trip planner expert. Can they help with finding or tracking good airfare prices?? Rental cars at reduced rates (better than Costco ?). Or helping us find places to stay in a desired area(coast of Oregon ) ???</p>
<p>I remember stopping there once to look into a Disney trip (a trip we never took) and I wasn’t too impressed. </p>
<p>Trip planning is tough when you’re a novice and wanting to save$$$!!!</p>
<p>One thing I’ve found with AAA lately is the surcharges on plane tickets, etc. that price them out of the market for trips, etc. I’ve had more luck just using Travelocity and the fare watcher along with using discount codes, etc. for Rental cars. I actually find the codes and tricks on the Mousavers.com website to be the best for getting cheep rental cars. I use rental cars frequently, pretty much any time we are traveling more than 3 hours away to save on mileage on our cars. I use National almost exclusivly since their last minute deals are hard to beat. The Visa code on Mousesavers is also usually very good. A Saturday night keep is a must and I’ve found that 5 days is the sweetspot for rentals–less expensive then 2-4 days for a rental. I love the Emerald Aisle option where you just get to pick whatever car you want too. The short of it, if you have the time, you can almost always find better deals not going through a travel agent.</p>
<p>We use our AAA card for hotel savings, although if we pick Southwest Airlines preferred partners, often it’s the same amount of savings… a certain percentage.</p>
<p>A friend of mine was driving from our area out to Washington State a couple of months ago, and is not very technological savvy (doesn’t have a smart phone), so I stopped in AAA and picked up a bunch of books and maps for her. The books are great if you’re on a long driving trip, for all sorts of uses, including finding hotels, points of interest, etc.</p>
<p>We have AAA and it’s worth its weight in gold for the break-down/towing assistance alone. It has paid for itself every single year. While I don’t see the need to use them to find a route-Mapquest or another such site would do as well, nor FIND a hotel, the membership certainly gives better discounts than other options. We have a local high-end hotal where we stay overnight on romantic getaways. They offer AARP, government employee and AAA discounts. AAA beats them all. </p>
<p>But then, I’m a planner and a researcher of all things travel online for the fun of it. For our first ever big family trip next summer (I’ve done several with just D or on my own before I met H), I’m already doing the research.You could START with AAA and go from there. What I do is start with Mapquest, look at tourist and city visitor sites for ideas about where to stay. I look up the discounts or black-out times, check websites specific to my reason for travel. I look at public transportation in the area and decided if I’m even going to need a rental car. </p>
<p>Last year D and I went to Daytona Beach and found a little beachfront studio apartment for less than $50 a night, walking distance from a grocery store. We cooked there for all of our meals, and since we planned on sticking mostly to the beach, just used taxis for the couple of off-beach trips. It was a week after spring break so we had the place almost to ourselves and the weather was perfect.I’ve spent more going back to my hometown and staying free at my sister’s because I HAVE to rent a car there and we do a lot of eating our.</p>
<p>FWIW, my dad used the Triptics and I loved being the one honored to flip onto the next page as we drove along. Good luck planning.</p>
<p>Our AAA office is always my first stop before a big trip. They have lots of tour packages that will give you useful ideas for routes and possible hotels. In the end, I do my own booking because the packages are never a perfect fit. I keep hoping though!</p>
<p>My favorite car rental website is <a href=“http://www.vroomvroomvroom.comI%5B/url%5D”>www.vroomvroomvroom.comI</a> hope there are the righ number of brooms in there. For flights and hotels I start with [KAYAK</a> - Cheap Flights, Hotels, Airline Tickets, Cheap Tickets, Cheap Travel Deals - Compare Hundreds of Travel Sites At Once](<a href=“http://www.kayak.com%5DKAYAK”>http://www.kayak.com)</p>
<p>happymomof1–I just checked that website-the prices there are VERY high compared to what you can get on the individual websites alone. The price for the car we are renting in Jan is 115 for 5 days, same car class was $800 on that site :eek: I’ve checked KAYAK and Cheap Tickets before as well and have never found less expensive tickets on those sites then I have on Travelocity or directly from the airline sites.</p>
<p>I like kayak for finding times and connections. Then I book directly with the airlines. I should have specified that. I find the kayak website less visually distracting than orbitz and travelocity.</p>
<p>Then, once you find the best fare for when you want to fly, book through the airlines. The only downside is this website does not include Southwest Airlines and if using SW is a possibility, you should always check them out and take into consideration how much you’d save flying SW by not having to pay for your first two checked bags. Some airlines are now even charging to carry on bags so you can have substantial savings by flying SW.</p>
I think you must have made a mistake - there’s no way a car rental will be over $100/day unless you do something very unusual, like rent a Corvette, accidentally type in an extra digit for the number of days, or sometimes return to a different rental location.</p>
<p>GladGradDad–no, I didn’t do anything wrong–there were less expensive car options but compared to the National Car site I rented from and that site the numbers I quoted were correct. Try for yourself. I rent cars frequently. I know how to use the quoting sites.</p>
<p>Abasket, since you said that you are not (yet!) a trip planning expert, I recommend posting on the forums of Trip Advisor.com. Someone on this website has already done it!</p>
<p>We researched and purchased our own plane tickets (I love the Matrix website teriwtt posted above to identify least expensive routes, dates and carriers) but we did use AAA to book hotels and daytrips on our trip to Itlay. Using AAA seemed like using any travel agent. Fortunately the person that helped us was very good and familiar with where we were going, so we also got some helpful advice, but your experience could be different. Also, I felt that AAA was a bit limited with their hotel choices as compared to a travel website. But maybe that was good if they filtered out a lot of not so great places. I don’t think they saved us much money but service was great.</p>
<p>Stevema - I did try it before I posted but just put in a random rental location (Chicago). I also tried JFK. I still don’t see how anyplace can possibly come up with $160/day for a normal rental car for 5 days being returned to the same rental location. There must have been something unusual about the rental parameters entered.</p>
<p>I’m not defending the site - I’d never heard of it or used it except to test what you had in your post because it didn’t make any sense.</p>
<p>Did you scroll down through all the options? Like I said, some of the other companies had lower prices but I use National, I have VIP status with National, I rent cars all the time. I put in the same dates, times, pick up location, everything. I just pulled it up again, some of the prices listed were for $450/DAY. I just put in Chicago, same results there–scroll all the way down. Maxed out at $1,627.26. Economy cars at Alamo, however, came up to $88 for the rental period, if you want to drive a bread box vs a standard size car.</p>
<p>^^ Yes - I saw some of the prices at the bottom but didn’t pay much attention to them since I can’t imagine anyone would select a $450/day option over $45/day (or whatever) option unless it’s a very special vehicle but some of these were for normal vehicles rather than a Ferrari or something. I didn’t know you were referring to only the costliest of choices it presented as opposed to the much less expensive options the site presented. I don’t know why they have those high priced options listed on the site - it’s pretty weird. Maybe they have something wrong in the algorithm they’re using.</p>