Flying

[nippyfrog]

I plan to fly in from Massachusetts. I'm wondering if anyone has had good luck finding cheap flights.
I also and wondering how one gets to the con without a car from the airport. :)

Comments

[nippyfrog]

Thanks!

[noelleleithe]

The MARTA station in the airport terminal will take you to the Peachtree Center station, which opens into Peachtree Center Mall (the "food court" area). You can access the Hyatt and Marriott directly from there, and the Hilton through the Marriott. Other hotels will require you to actually go outside. ;)

[kyndig]

This is good advice. Also, when you get to the airport you can take any MARTA train. The airport is the furthest south the train goes, so they all go north and don't split off until after Peachtree Center. Peachtree Center is the 8th stop from the airport and is right after 5 points (where you'll likely see a lot of people getting on/off the train.).

[nippyfrog]

Thanks both of you for the specificity! :)

[kismet76]

Marta is under $5 round trip...I have been taking it for more than 8 years...

I fly every year since my first year...cannot book flights more than 350 days out or something, but I usually put out a search on sites like Kayak and they alert me when they go down...I always get a feeling that this is as low as I am going to find it and book then...I got this years flight for $99 (from NC)...I usually figure if I can get it less than the expected cost for gas/parking, that I am doing good...Parking this year was over $100 and gas would have been around $80, so I was willing to pay $150 give or take...I do usually figure in airport parking as well...I got this one through priceline, but have had luck booking through the airlines as well...

this was the first time my flight home was cancelled due to weather...luckily, I had friends driving back this way and got a refund on the ticket (or am supposed to)...not upset as this was a first in 8 years...and would have stayed the night had I needed to...

[nippyfrog]

Thank you, I didn't even know about Kayak. :)

[pocky_slash]

I've flown in from Boston the last two years. The best way to do it, as said in the comment above me, is to put a price alert on Kayak. It will email you once a week with the current price of the flight and a chart of what it's been recently and what it's projected to be in the near future.

I paid about $180 (round trip) for my flight in '10 and about $200 (round trip) this year. AirTran usually has the cheapest flights, but sometimes other airlines do deal or whatever, so keep your eyes peeled. Usually it's cheapest to book the flight about three or four months before con. Booking super early generally just means you'll be paying a little bit more, and you're more likely to have your flight times shifted around.

And, again, MARTA's the way to go for getting from the airport to the con. You can take the MARTA straight from the airport to Peachtree Center, which is right where the con is.

[nippyfrog]

Wow, yeah those prices are definitely better than I was expecting- since I thought booking earliest was your best bet. I really don't ever fly, so my knowledge on how it works is very low. hah

I will definitely try that. So, Kayak is something you can specify times on as well, or no?
I would ideally like to arrive in ATL in the afternoon on Thurs and leave Monday afternoon/early evening.

[pocky_slash]

If I remember correctly, you can't select your time, but usually the costs are the same for a range of mix and match times, so once you go through to book you can pick when you leave from each airport and generally get the lowest price on a range of times. This year I left Thursday at around 7:30p and came back around 4pm and still managed to snag the lowest price available at the time.

Also, I just remembered, AirTran frequently does special sales a few times during the year (there was one around Mother's Day this year) when you can get tickets for whenever very cheap for a very limited time. You can sign up for their newsletter (their website is AirTran.com) to get alerts when stuff like that happens.

[nippyfrog]

Done! :) Thanks!
I really appreciate the timeframe advice to look for the best flights as well :)

[arasirsul]

By the time next year's Con rolls around, the Southwest-Airtran merger may be sufficiently complete that Southwest will have (Airtran) flights to Atlanta, so be sure to check their website as well, since they don't use the same reservation system as everyone else so Orbitz and Travelocity won't find them

[nippyfrog]

Thank you so much. I'll check Airtran/Southwest as well :)

Thank you for the train advice too!

MARTA

[badseed8]

We did the Breeze card and sprung for the 'hard' card. The card was $1 and since we were staying at a hotel out by the airport we needed 10 trips at $2per trip. The hotel did a shuttle to the airport every 30min so we caught that to the airport and rode the train to Peachtree Center. We aren't big partiers so we caught the train at about 9:30 every night. There were enough other DragonCon people on the trains everynight so we didn't worry about security. And there are a lot of police and security around during the con.
The airport hotel was nice and quiet, but then you can't run (so to speak with the wait to get an elevator) up to your room in the middle of the day. We don't do costumes so we didn't need to touchup or change.