Well, the first little adventure of the 2025 Season is in the Books. As is the case most years, I start my travel season with a trip to the First and Second Rounds of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Every year since attending my first tournament in 2001 in
Greensboro, North Carolina, I have made it a point to attend the tournament.
Some years I turn it into a one or two-week vacation by traveling to places like
Dallas, Oklahoma City, Orlando or Tulsa. Other years I stay close to home by
traveling to sites Greensboro, Charlotte, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Greenville.
I did miss the year that the tournament
was cancelled due to COVID and the following when the entire tournament was
held in the Indianapolis Area.
This year was one of the stay close to home years as I
traveled just a little over 3-hours from home to the Lenovo Center in Raleigh,
North Carolina. I have attended the tournament here in Raleigh on two other
occasions when the Arena was known as PNC Arena.
For the past 15 years I have been receiving a code that
allows me to purchase my ticket before they go on sale to the general public.
This allows me to more often than not buy tickets on the end line or in the
corner of the lower bowl. Before I was receiving the early buy codes, I had to
wait for tickets to go on sale to the general public which just about ensured
that I would be in the upper bowl or at best the mezzanine level.
I received my early buy code in my e-mail back in October about
2 hours before tickets went on sale at 12-noon. I logged into my ticket account
and was 247th in line. Which wasn’t too bad. They limit the number of people in
the buy area to keep the site from crashing. At 12:15 p.m. my number came up
and I was admitted to the buy area where I was able to select my ticket. After looking at the available seats I
selected a seat in Section 125, Floor Row 10, seat 3.
Immediately selecting and paying for my ticket I received an
e-mail with a link to my tickets. By clicking on the link, I was able to
download my ticket directly to my phone. It should be noted that most NCAA
Venues require a digital ticket and no longer accept paper or printed tickets.
After purchasing my ticket, I started the process of finding
a hotel for my time in Raleigh. I am a reward member for several major hotel
brands including Drury Inns, Choice Hotels (Sleep Inn, Comfort Inn), Hilton
Honor (Hilton, Hampton Inn) and Holiday Inn.
For many Years I stayed almost exclusively at Comfort Inn or
Sleep Inn. But after COVID I noticed that the cleanliness or the quality of
service had gone drastically downhill. Since COVID, Comfort Inn – Sleep Inn has
become a last resort choice.
Drury Has become my favorite Hotel for a number of reasons.
First, all the Drury Hotels are Company owned. There are no franchises. Second,
they feature something called an evening Kick-Back. This is basically a limited
buffet that like breakfast is included in the price of your room. The food is good,
and it rotates depending on the day of the week.
But There are only about 150 Drury Inn’s nationwide, so they
are not available in every city. That was the case in Raleigh, so I searched
for a Hilton or Holiday Inn. One thing
that I quickly found out was it appeared that special event rates were already applied
to the Hilton/Hampton Inn’s reservation system.
It appeared that Holiday Inn still had their regular rates
on their reservation site so after checking several I settled on the Holiday
Inn in Cary which is only about 4-miles from the Arena. The average nightly
rate including taxes ended up being $141. Compare that to the Hampton Inn’s
$188 nightly average.
A week later, just for kicks, I checked the Hampton Inn and
Holiday Inn reservation sites and found that both Hilton and the Holiday Inn
had substantially raised their rates. The Hilton/Hampton Inn average daily rate
for a 4-night stay was $205 and the Holiday Inn – Cary was $176.
So, now all I had to do was sit back enjoy the season and
wait for Selection Sunday which was still over 5 months away.
