My wife and I traveled to Las Vegas last year from the Los Angeles area. When planning our trip, I wasn’t thrilled to have to put up with the nonsense one had to at the airports these days. We decided to drive.
When you start adding up the time involved to get there and back, it doesn’t take much longer to drive.
Super-shuttle to airport. Early check in. Waiting for the flight to board. Boarding. Flight time. Waiting for your luggage at the destination. Taking it over to the cab loading zone. Traveling to your hotel. Tipping of three different individuals.
The travel time works out to be a bit more. The cost works out to be better, if you drive. The quality of your experience is much better. And in addition, when you get to Vegas, you have a vehicle to drive around to different places you want to go.
I don’t like the airport experience any longer. The mystique of flying has turned into more of an eastern block checkpoint experience. Ah, no thanks. If I can avoid it, I do not fly.
Driving only works for trips of a certain length. I looked into driving to Vegas, but the trip is nearly 2000 miles each way.
It was 3 1/2 hours flying at $190 round trip or 18 hours of driving each way with at least one night in a hotel and $300 gas for the round trip.
Until these new rules came into effect, flying was still relatively painless. There was no wait at security, and apart from the idiocy of taking off shoes, it wasn’t overly invasive.