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How To Tell The Difference Between Good Daily Getaways And Bad Ones

We’re just about two weeks into the Daily Getaways deals and there have been plenty of both good and bad offers.  Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but there are a few things that seem to be firmly placed in either category.

Just like last year, I had circled last Friday’s deal involving Busch Gardens and SeaWorld.  I’ve recommended in my Daily Getaways posts that you be ready right at 1pm EDT if you’re interested in a particular deal.  I had two computers out and ready right at 1pm because I needed to score 7 Busch Gardens tickets (limit per transaction was 6) as well as 4 SeaWorld tickets.  My wife and I both have American Express cards, so there’d be no problem placing orders in both of our names to get all the tickets.  It seemed like there might be a few less tickets for sale than last year, but there were still hundreds.

I started out booking the Busch Gardens tickets on both computers, grabbing the required number right at 1pm.  I quickly completed one of the transactions and refreshed the page to go back for the SeaWorld tickets.  It was 1:02pm (thanks 1password for making it easy to fill in info quickly).  I clicked the Buy Now for SeaWorld and got:

Daily Getaways

Note the “1 Night at a Super 8” deal they were trying to convince me I might like.  Honestly, if Wyndham had drafted their descriptions a bit better, it might be more apparent that they’re just selling points and they might get more buyers who want to use them for Wyndham and not Super 8.  No offense to Super 8, but it’s not terribly surprising that the Daily Getaway target demo who carries an AMEX card or three isn’t the core Super 8 customer.

As I’ve also coached folks on, I hit the refresh button a few times and someone chose not to complete their SeaWorld transaction and I was able to snag 4 tickets.  I reduced my quantity to 2 for each transaction and was all done in less than 10 minutes, scoring the 7 Busch Gardens and 4 SeaWorld tickets.

Incidentally, you can still purchase a bunch of the Daily Getaways that didn’t sell out right away.  You can find all of the deals still on sale here.  At the time I’m writing this post, I see:

Diamond Resorts

City Pass

IHG

Alamo

Wyndham

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