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I’ve always loved a good vacation, who doesn’t. But vacations take time. Time to plan. And time to take. Why not just take a day trip, you say. Why not to drive somewhere for a day, you ask. I live near DC, so a day trip is going down to DC for the whatever-ith time.
The Idea 🔗
The plan started with my friend texting me. Asking if I wanted to take a trip to Atlanta. Why? He wanted to get out of something1. The idea was a day trip, fly down first thing in the morning, see some things, and fly back after lunch. Now that’s a day-cation.
Planing 🔗
So why Atlanta? Well, neither me, nor my friend have been there. And the flights were cheep. Like $50 round trip cheep. There’s just one catch, we’d be flying on Spirit. More on that later. Now we just needed something to do there. Easy, they have a big aquarium, and the Coca-Cola HQ. Buying the airline tickets was pretty straight forward. The Work of Coke tickets we would just buy at the door. The aquarium tickets on the other hand, oh man.
Buying Atlanta tickets, from California, In Maryland 🔗
Buying the aquarium tickets was an absolute pain. No matter what I did, it would just give me an error. Didn’t matter the card, time slot, or billing address, it just wouldn’t work2. Then I had an idea. I fired up a VPN to California, and bought the tickets… I don’t know why that worked. The problem continued. I couldn’t add the ticket to Apple Wallet3. So I tried the same VPN to Cali trick. Boom I had my ticket. I forwarded the email to my friend so he could grab his4.
The Trip 🔗
The Flight 🔗
I mostly fly on South West, so I didn’t really know what to expect from Spirit. I didn’t expect much, but damn did they fly under that. Here’s a quick breakdown of the two.
| South West | Spirit | |
|---|---|---|
| Checked Bags | 2 Free | Extra Charge |
| Cary on | Free | Extra Charge |
| In flight WiFi | Extra Charge | Extra Charge |
| Free Messaging | Yes | No |
| Soda | Free | Extra Charge |
| Alcohol | Extra Charge | Extra Charge |
| Movies | Yes | No |
| Tray Table | Yes | Lol, No |
Damn, that’s not great. And that’s not even the end of it. The seats, oh god the seats. I’d describe South West’s seats as, fine. They get the job done, they recline a bit, and the aren’t painful over a long flight5. Spirit’s on the other hand… Our flight was 1H 50M. After about 90min, I wanted out, they were that bad. They also didn’t recline6.
Atlanta 🔗
We landed at ATL, and took a neat, but simple train to the aquarium.
The Aquarium 🔗
The aquarium was really cool, and quite big. Not much else to say, check out my flicker album of the trip
World Of Coke 🔗
As a lover of Coca-Cola, I was super looking forward to World Of Coke. We started out by going into a waiting room, filled with tons of old coke signs. After being told they had a BBQ flavored soda in the tasting room. We moved into the main theater. They showed a three minute Coke ad, then in Wonka style, the theater screen moved up to reveal a entrance to the main floor7. There was a ton of stuff. A photo op with the polar bear, A smelling room, that I determined wasn’t working8. The vault9. And the main tasting room. Filled with Coke brand sodas from around the world. They also had what I was looking for. Fresh Coke. It was fantastic.
Lunch 🔗
After World Of Coke, we stopped off at the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall Of Fame for a quick bite10. Then walked around the Olympic Park for a bit.
Flight Home 🔗
We took the train back to ATL, and waited for a couple hours in the TSA line. ATL was a neat airport, we took a little train like bus to our terminal11. For some reason, Spirit wouldn’t give us boarding codes on our phones, instead telling us to see a gate agent. They already had a paper boarding pass waiting for us. The flight back was exactly the same as the flight down, so just re-read that section. There and back, just in time for dinner.
Thoughts 🔗
This Day-cation was fantastic, and one I highly recommend to my co-workers. As for my friend, he had to find a new excuse to not go to his thing. As we changed days to get the flight down from $80, to $50. We just couldn’t not take a $50 round trip flight.
Check out my Flicker Album of the trip.
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Sorry, I cant be at the thing, I’ll be in… At… lanta, sorry. ↩︎
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You couldn’t buy tickets at the door, you had to buy online in advance. ↩︎
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Or load the PDF ↩︎
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And told him to VPN to Cali to grab it ↩︎
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They also have a tray table, you know, like normal planes. ↩︎
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Or have a tray table, wth! ↩︎
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If you’ve played The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, think of when you are showed the main floor for The Stanley Parable 2 ↩︎
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I don’t have a sense of smell. ↩︎
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So they claim. ↩︎
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The line was crazy. ↩︎
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My dad told me the hell that ATL was before the train like bus was installed. ↩︎