Nov 24, 2008

Catch Thirty Five, Naperville IL - 11/22

ok, so it wasnt a bidness dinner, but it was excellent. In fact, they now have a special menu, soup/salad, entree, desert for $24.99. I had the 'special" and the salmon was the same size as the regular entree (along with 2 beers), Katie had the grouper special and 2 wines, total bill $103. About 1/2 of what we normally spend
Rating 8.7

Nov 21, 2008

AA 1996 11/19

American has a surprising nice Admirals club in Atlanta, located right by the main departure gate. Flight was on time and not very crowded. Smart Car home was excellent as always

Locos for Dinner in Buckhead 11/18

Went to dinner at LOCOS and it was a GREAT sports bar/wings/beer spot. Excellent service and awesome wings!! Beer was good also, $110 for a group of 4. Rating of 9

Nov 17, 2008

BrickTop's, Buckhead in Atlanta

11/17- 3280 Peachtree Rd, adjacent to the Grand Hyatt - sat at the bar to have dinner and watch Monday night game.....crappy place to watch the game (1 tv on that, other on something else)......had 1 Blue Moon, and the grilled salmon for $30.24.....crummy service from the bartender, decent food. 6 rating

Don't think I would go back

11/17 - Atlanta

AA 1359 - ORD to ATL - plane was about 1/2 full......no meal service, only drinks and small snack bags. AA terminal in ATL is awful and it is hard to get to rental car buses.

Hertz - sucks again, no upgrade of car.

Grand Hyatt Buckhead- hard to find entrance to hotel, but service is excellent and rooms are nice. 9 rating so far!

Hertz Sucks

Nice message from Hertz......being in the "Presidents Circle" is no big deal anyway, there were only a few airport locations where I would get upgraded. You have to have 40 rentals in a year to qualify. In this tough economy, its not surprising that this message would come from a company that was owned by Ford....


It has been our great pleasure serving you as one of our most valued members. We hope you have enjoyed your year of elite Hertz #1 Club Gold® President's Circle® benefits. We have reviewed your rental activity and unfortunately, you did not qualify for another year of President's Circle membership and you are scheduled to be assigned Five Star status effective December 1, 2008.Before that date, we want to give you the opportunity to purchase an upgrade to extend your President's Circle benefits through December 31, 2009. An e-mail will be sent within approximately ten days with instructions on how to do so. We hope you decide to remain a distinguished President's Circle member. We thank you for your continued membership and for making Hertz your #1 choice for car rentals worldwide.

Nov 14, 2008

11/13- Midtown to LGA

Steal of the day in a hard rain with a long line at the Hyatt Grand Central, I asked the doorman if they had any cars for LGA and I bypassed the line for a town car at $45 + $10 for tolls (way too much for tolls but who cares in the rain) and made it to the airport in 1/2 hour after leaving at 1 pm.

AA - flew standby on the 2 pm flight and almost every middle seat was open.

Smart Cars home - easy trip, they are awesome

Nov 13, 2008

NYC Dinner - 11/12

RARE Lexington - 303 Lexington Ave - Really cool bar/restaurant.....got there just after 7 and got lucky with a table in the bar. There were 4 of us. Menu is burgers, but they also have a "prime rib" burger, it is basically ground-up prime rib served as a burger, it was good, but too much food. For an app we had the fry basket - really good.

Beers were a bit much at $7 a pop for a bud, and total bill for the 4 was $200. Great place to have a few after dinner.

Rating 8

Nov 11, 2008

Grand Floridian - Nov 4 - 10

Fox Valley limo to the airport - very friendly, older lady driver who could not carry bags from door step to the car, or load them into the trunk. $96 for the stretch with the 5 of us. 8 rating

AA 1562 - ORD to MCO - on time and easy flight. AA has a new entree for dinner - a cheese burger that was excellent. 9 rating

Hertz rental - bus ride sucks, its about 10 minutes and off the airport property - I prefer when you can walk from terminal. Didn't have my name on the board and had to go inside, great service and put me in a town car. Rental rates are CHEAP in Orlando, so that was great. Overall rating of 7 because of service at gold counter.

Grand Cypress (Hyatt) - front desk help really made me mad. I asked for a room on the Regency (club) level, but was told I couldn't have one because I was using my points for a free night. WHAT HORRIBLE SERVICE, made all the worse by the fact that the staff told me they were 14% occupied, and had a conference that put total occupancy below 50%. The least a hotel can do for its Diamond members is put them in the best room possible. Instead we got a small, crappy room with old yellow wall paper. The staff is friendly, property is very nice, but I wont EVER stay there again, and I hope you avoid it also. 0

Grand Floridian - AWESOME. Beautiful property, great people, awesome service. Loved being able to take the monorail 1 stop to the park, and take the ferry directly back to the hotel. Excellent food in their 24 hour cafe (breakfast there every day). Pool is kind of weak, but there is a nice white sand beach next to it. More to come on parks and dinner places. 10 rating.

Disney Magical Express - transport from the hotel to the airport - easy to use since we checked our bags at the hotel in the morning prior to heading to the park. Really rude customer service who would not allow me to get on a later bus (they had us leave 3 hours prior to departure). Easy because the GF is the last stop before the airport, and at 12:55 departure there were only 2 other families on board. Because of the awful customer service they get a 6 rating.

AA 1299 from Orlando to Miami (that's a free ticket for you) - the Orlando airport sucks if you fly AA. Looks like terminal is under construction and that's good because the current is a mess. Especially if you want to buy Mickey items, wife and kids had to take the train back to the main terminal and go back through security to get a wide selection of items. The flight was crowded and full.

AA 1253 MIA - ORD. The service sucked at the Admirals club and especially at the gate. The three agents were crabby, nasty, women. The flight was delayed for 30 minutes due to the crew getting in late. Service was ok on the flight, the dinner selections horrible (cheese tortellini or some chicken-thing), and the dessert was worse (some frozen chocolate thing) or decent cheese plate.

Fox Valley Limo - when I called from the airport they had our reservation for the next day, and told me there was no way their "triple check" program could have had the date wrong. After holding for 6 minutes, they found a ride for me. Good driver (he didn't talk), and $95 on the way home. Pretty good service, 8 rating

November 11 - NYC

Smart Car to the airport. They are GREAT, always 15 minutes early and best of all they DON'T TALK on the ride to the airport!! Always a 10

Scheduled on American 360, but caught stand-by AA 366 (first class seat still open - 4E);
actually arrived 25 minutes early (surprising since it was light rain in Chicago).

Taxi to Hyatt Grand Central (midtown)- 35 minutes, $36 with tip.

Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Nice room on the Regency level. Great rate due to 21% off offer from Hyatt (had to prepay in full).