Some Mistakes I Made On My Recent Final Four Trip
A few weeks ago I had a post about using miles and points to make sports dreams come true. In that post I talked about two trips I have made over the last few years that were only made possible because of miles and points. On the most recent trip, the final four in Minneapolis, I made some mistakes that cost me points and money. I wanted to share those with you so you don’t make the same mistakes. It is possible that I may have let fandom cloud my judgement this time around.
Tickets
The first mistake I made was buying tickets right after the elite eight win and while I was riding the high of beating the Duke Zions Blue Devils. The prices were pumped up at this point compared to where they were a few days before the game. For the most part, prices drop in price the days before events as sellers start to panic. I was worried about the fact that there were two teams in the final four for the first time that the fans would be more likely to go than if it were more traditional teams.
I also thought MSU had a great chance to win it all so I bought the package for both games. At the time there was a discount purchasing the tickets this way. But when I went to resell the championship game tickets after MSU lost the market was a lot lower. That is because there were only two fan bases left that really wanted to go to the game.
I should have waited until the game got a little closer to purchase the tickets, while closely watching to make sure the prices didn’t go up. This could have ended up costing me more in the long run but the odds were on my side that the prices would drop. I also should have bought the tickets one game at a time. Fandom got in the way and I thought we would need tickets to both games. I should have waited to see if that was the case and the championship game tickets probably would have been cheaper that way anyway.
The Hotel
I did book the hotel as soon as I knew we were going. In my previous post I have already said I should have secured a room with points further in advance since I could cancel it. But I made more mistakes than that when I booked it last minute.
I let fandom get in the way here too and booked the hotel until Tuesday. To be fair the hotel was only showing availability if I booked it until Tuesday but I should have checked other options. We ended up leaving Sunday night so I paid for two nights I didn’t use and then had to pick up another night in Madison, Wisconsin on the way home. We left early to break up the 10 hour drive.
I probably should have booked until Sunday or Monday and waited to see if we needed more nights at that point. It may have been hard to locate a room last minute but I think a lot of people cleared out on Sunday so I think things would have opened up.
Conclusion
Hindsight is 20/20 but I will keep these lessons in mind next time around. The mistakes probably cost me $100-200 in cash and 16,000 Hyatt points. Not the end of the world by any means but it still hurts a bit. At least I got the Hyatt nights for status I guess :).
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Go Duke
Love you are a sports fan this post useful to me
I am gonna ignore the first part of your post and just admire the second part haha 🙂
I was there just for the finals (UVa guy here). I saw quite a few MSU folks at the finals – guess many had trouble selling their tickets or just decided they might as well watch it to the end.
The tickets to the game were definitely far cheaper, but deciding last minute to go and buying my planet tickets on Sunday cost me an arm and leg. Skymiles costs were sky-high as well.
I bet they had flights booked home. If we were flying (which was sky high for the weekend too) then I would have stayed till Tuesday. Not sure if I would have gone to the game or not but I would have hung around for sure. If I had never been to a championship game I might have stayed too but I went in 09 when it was in Detroit.
But all worth the cost to see your team win it all 😉
Why not stay the extra two nights and do non basketball stuff? Minneapolis is a great city to explore.
I had to be back Tuesday and didn’t want to do 10 hours straight unless I had to.
Curious…what were tickets going for
I paid $550 a ticket for upper bowl for both games.