Aventura Spa Palace
AVENTURA SPA PALACE
01/05/08 to 01/19/08
This was our 4th trip back to Aventura Spa Palace and we both agree that it was our best.
Mind you we say that every year.
We are not Palace members and just do MANY hours of research to find the airline we want, at the time we want and especially at the price we want.
So in October 07, we found and booked our January 2008 vacation back to ASP.
We used Itravel2000 (a Canadian travel agency) as in previous years. We did not book online but instead called our agent there, who we have used in the past, and got a fabulous deal, 1st person flies for regular price and second person flies for a loonie ($1.00.)
The vacation was through Sunquest flying with Westjet airlines from London, ON with a 6AM departure. Later as with ANY charter company Sunquest changed the departure time to 2PM. But even though we were disappointed we got over it and prepared to get excited about our upcoming vacation.
Itravel2000 had a promotion (LET IT SNOW) that if you booked and paid for your vacation from a certain date to a certain date you were eligible to win back the cost of your vacation (minus the taxes.) They choose four different snow points in Canada.
Western customers had Calgary as their snow point, Ontario had Toronto, Qu?bec had Montr?al and Eastern customers had Halifax. How it worked was, if more than 5 inches (12.7 cm) of snow fell at your snow point airport on January 1st, 2008, you were eligible to win the cost of your trip (minus the taxes.) When our agent told us that we were eligible for this promotion, we both laughed because we knew the odds were not in our favour for Toronto to have more than 5 inches of snow on that day.
Well imagine our surprise when Environment Canada announced a MAJOR winter storm for all of Southern Ontario including Toronto and the province of Qu?bec for January 1st.
Needless to say both of us spent a lot of time online tracking the storm.
When the snow started to fall where we lived we were cheering it on but, as in the past, our bad luck continued and Toronto airport received only 9.4cm on that day.
So we continue to tell everyone that we were this close to winning our vacation.
But the lucky people in Qu?bec who booked through Itravel2000 got 14.8cm at the Montr?al airport on January 1st so they got their money back. Kudoos to you all, you lucky people. Calgary airport had no snow that day and Halifax had only a trace.
To be continued
Nick and Nora.
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