Considering Wiscon and seeing information/advice

[redbird]

If I'm going to Wiscon, I should get plane tickets soon. They are already looking expensive, but I'm not sure whether that's timing, this year versus last, or flying out of Seattle rather than New York. The thing is, a lot of what I'm finding involves getting up unreasonably early (6:50 out of SEA) meaning getting up I don't know when); is this just an artifact of stupid software that will let me specify "depart between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m." but not "anything that leaves between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m." (in which case I will take a deep breath and run umpteen searches and scribble notes on paper) or is it really showing me what's out there and/or halfway affordable, given that I'm looking at flying a significant distance east and making at least one connection?

Also, if there's anything non-obvious and useful that you know about this route, please tell me.

Comments

[vera_l]

You may already be doing this, but have you considered flying into Chicago (or maybe Milwaukee)? Those airports both have pretty good bus service to Madison (check the Wiscon travel page for details), and flying into a larger airport often makes it easier to find cheaper flights and/or nonstops.

(here via /network)

[tim]

The Empire Builder is really nice :-)

[redbird]

So I hear, but it has the same disadvantage as flying to Milwaukee: I would need to then either take a bus or get a friend to give me a lift, since (alas!) Madison has no passenger rail station.

[cme]

Hi! r_ness mentioned this post to me and that you were looking for advice.

I moved to Seattle from Boston about three years ago, and my experience has been that getting to Wiscon from here just sucks, and you have to choose what you're willing to put up with. There doesn't see to be an ideal time/money optimization.

The major cities you can fly into are Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis (in order of distance).

Madison is always expensive and there are no nonstops. The itineraries seem to be painfully timed. Delta is your best bet here, and if you have an Alaska Airlines frequent flyer number (which I strongly recommend- this is their hub and the perks are great), I suggest using it instead of your Delta number, because those two airlines have an agreement where Delta honors Alaska's perks, like being able to select your seat. Since I have strong spoon constraints, I picked Madison and paid more money for it. I'm on Delta 2214 and 5807, leaving SEA at 8:10am and arriving in Madison at 4:05pm, transferring through Minneapolis (return trip through Salt Lake City). I bought it in March and paid $542 including fees. Madison has high agony in terms of flight scheduling but is the least fuss after you're underway.

Milwaukee has more trips, and Delta may have one or two nonstops. AirTran used to do one nonstop per day each direction, but they were bought/discontinued it. Milwaukee Is probably the best option if you're willing to take a bus- the bus trip is relatively short, the trips are relatively frequent, and you're not too likely to be caught in a horrific holiday-weekend traffic jam. This is probably the best average of total elapsed time and flight timing.

Chicago is a short plane trip, everyone goes there, and they go there cheaply, often, and with decent timing. But you're flying into ORD (probably) along with half the rest of the country, so you have ORD's chance of delays to consider. The bus or car trip to Madison is longer (I think about 2 hours), and if you it at the wrong times of the day, there are giant holiday weekend traffic jams on the highways getting in or out of Chicago. I don't have firsthand information about this, as I've always avoided it. This is the lowest flight agony (flights are cheap and plentiful), and probably the cheapest monetarily, but all of your agony is spent on buses/cars/traffic.

Delta does more than one nonstop to Minneapolis per day, and they do it pretty cheaply. But the trip by car or bus to Madison is more like three hours. This is probably the highest time-commitment option, unless you get caught in a Chicago traffic jam. I flew into Minneapols one year and carpooled with friends, but the ground travel logistics were too much for me.

I think you are also more likely to see last-minute fare deals to Chicago or Minneapolis than the other two.

If you have other questions, I'm happy to try to answer.

(As an aside, hipmunk.com is probably the current winner in terms of sites with a good UI for selecting flights. I shamelessly stole the idea of measuring itineraries by "agony" from them.)

[redbird]

Thanks for the analysis, and the pointer to Alaska Air (I think I put in for Air Canada miles on my only recent Alaska Air flight, because I hadn't gotten around to setting up an Alaska number).

My feeling is that nonstop to Chicago, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis and then taking the bus is about equivalent to a one-stop flight to Madison, because the bus is a connection (and one the airline won't wait for or make allowances for my missing). That assumes the one-stop flight to Madison doesn't involve a ridiculous connection; when I was looking for New York City to SEA and back it kept coming up with connections in Phoenix.

[cme]

Yes, the layovers to Madison can be horrific- Dallas is frequently an option, and I might once have seen Atlanta.

I feel like the bus connection is a little worse, because you have to find out if the bus stops at the airport or across town, and you have to get your luggage between airplane and bus. (That latter was a bigger problem for me after I got my CPAP, so maybe it would be less annoying for you.)

Best of luck!

Edit: Let me know if you'd like to meet up sometime, or if you'd like to talk Seattle transplant stuff or anything. For instance, cabs are cheaper here, and the flat rate cab companies are pretty good and can be summoned via text message.

[redbird]

That sounds like a good idea; I'm in downtown Bellevue, if that's relevant (and handy to the 550 bus, so downtown Seattle is pretty easy for me). I have a variety of local friends, but most of the ones who didn't grow up here have been here a long time. My sister-by-choice, who moved here a few years ago, is being both helpful and informative (as well as just cool to hang out with).

[ckd]

Are you using either Google Flights or the ITA Matrix search engine? Those will let you specify "anything that leaves between 9 am and 7 pm".

That said, flights from BOS to MSN were pretty crazily priced and I finally went ahead and paid with miles because I could either leave at 0 dark 30 or pay a several hundred dollar premium on top of an already not-very-cheap fare. So yeah.

[redbird]

Thanks, I will have to try those.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Just recently I had a conversation about Seattle-Wiscon travel with a friend who's going this year. I can give her a call and put you in touch if you like. Or I can just ask her and let you know her thoughts on this.

[redbird]

That would be helpful, thanks.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You could get the train to Chicago and then a bus to Madison. It would be very reasonably priced but it does take a while.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

A lot of the cost difference you're seeing is because Seattle to Madison is farther and less heavily travelled than New York to Madison. We generally fly through Minneapolis rather than through Chicago, with Detroit as the second choice for changing planes, because those airports are less affected by midwestern weather than Chicago.

We haven't tried the bus from Chicago to Madison, but if you fly Southwest to Midway rather than anybody else to O'Hare and are willing to risk Chicago weather-related cancellations, that could work.

[redbird]

I thought so, but it's worth knowing that this isn't just "you should have booked in March."

(I took the bus from O'Hare once, when my connecting flight was canceled; this is part of why I made a point of taking Midwest to Milwaukee a year or two later, for the shorter bus if necessary.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If I were willing to leave any time between 9 am and 7 pm, I'd just search for the whole day and throw the exceptions out myself.

However, there are two big differences about flying to Madison from Seattle rather than from New York that I hope you're taking into consideration (aside from the question of whether there are nonstop flights from New York, which I don't know, but there certainly aren't from Seattle). One is that it's a lot longer trip - over twice as far - and the other is that you're going east, and thus the time change is not in your favor. If you want to get anywhere in the midwest or east coast anytime before around midnight, you have to leave the west coast in the morning, and early morning if you're changing flights. That's just the way life is out here.

[carbonel]

If SEA-MSP is a lot cheaper, you could fly here the day before, stay overnight, and ride with me on Friday. Ditto Chicago (not me, of course, but lots of fans in Chicago go to Wiscon).

[redbird]

Thanks for the offer. Can I have a few days to think about this? And how long is the car trip? (All I actually know is that there is scheduled bus service from Milwaukee and Chicago but not Minneapolis, but that might be about demand rather than distance.)

[carbonel]

Sure, no hurry. The car trip is around five hours each way.

Not sure what you mean about schedule bus service, though. There is scheduled Greyhound service between Minneapolis and Madison, though just one trip a day, and several Megabus options daily.

[redbird]

My information on the buses is clearly out of date.