Mike FriedmanWe’re back with our weekly TWIT (This Week In Travel) notes, a peek around the travel industry to see what’s new, unusual or interesting. This week, we discover that it’s been 34 years since 1985, Southwest route adjustments and a “hidden” game from Starbucks.
This Week In Travel
1985 Was 34 Years Ago, and Disney’s Okay with that
It was 1985. A young Michael J Fox went back to the fifties and didn’t buy any baseball cards. Freddie Mercury ran a sing-along at Live Aid. And Coca-Cola tried the worst chemistry experiment ever with New Coke.
Most importantly, however, a 14-year old Tamia Robinson won a free pass to the Happiest Place on Earth. Since that time, Mr. Fox has made gone back to the future at least twice more, Coca-Cola switched back to the original and Freddy Mercury had a biopic made about his live. But until last week, that pass simply sat, lonesome and unused, like a broken toy in Doc McStuffins’s closet.
That all changed, though, when the lucky lady presented the 34-year old pass at the Magic Kingdom ticket booth. While there were a million reasons that the park could have rejected the prize, they did what Disney almost always does: The Right Thing. The ticket taker said, “Walt bless you please, Mrs. Robinson. Disney holds a place for you today,” and in she went, with her two daughters.
A visit to Disney World will cost a family a small fortune but, in return, they will almost certainly be guaranteed a lifetime of memories. Everyone smiles, the employees are always “on” and employees cast members have wide discretion to do the right thing to make guests happy. This moment is simply another example of that.
Southwest Airlines Rearranges the Game Board
Many moons ago, Southwest formally announced the worst-kept secret in the airline industry: It was going to start flying to Hawaii, as well as intra-Island. Given Southwest’s structure, this was a pretty easy movie. Southwest tends to fly a lot of point-to-point passengers, meaning those who are taking one flight from here to there without a connection. That model keeps their planes in the air and gives them a lot of flexibility.
The downside is that, whenever a new route is born, another one has to die. I’ve always thought that it would be cool if they did it like a game show. CEO Gary Kelly could be the host and eliminate contestants one-by-one, until all the planes were accounted for. Sadly, they probably just do it based on the profitability of individual routes.
The airline recently announced which routes would be biting the dust. Fortunately, there was no Las Vegas on the list, but there were some remaining legacy routes from the AirTran acquisition years ago, such as Boston — Atlanta.
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The Starbucks Summer Game: Win a Trip to Costa Rica
When we started this site, the purpose was to include select shopping programs as well that would appeal to travelers. Starbucks is one such scheme. Of course, the only post that we’ve done on them has been to point out that they were gutting the rewards program (which turned out to be the exact opposite of the truth; sorry about that, guys).
The Summer Game is typical Starbucks: Win an instant prize or a symbol each spin. Collect the right symbols and you’ll win a prize, whether that’s free drinks or, in this case, a trip to Costa Rica.
For reasons that I can never understand, Starbucks buries these games deep in their app or website, so if you don’t know about it, use the link above. You’ll earn one spin for each purchase, and the game appears to run through September 10.
