I just walked in my door after parking my car next to a nine-foot snow berm, gingerly walking across a sheet of ice spreading across the parking lot, trudging down the snow-covered path to my house and despondently looking at the new ice that formed on my stairs from the day-long steady drip of melting snow off my roof.
My computer greeted me with this Disney headline when I woke it from its sleep — Epcot Landscape Dons Spring’s Vibrant Colors For 17th Flower & Garden Festival Beginning March 3. Now, I’m not a flower loving guy nor that big into landscaping, but just the thought of flowers after my snowy reality seemed almost blissful.
The press release was unrelenting.
While much of the country’s landscape hibernates to escape winter’s chill, spring arrives on butterfly wings for the 17th annual Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival beginning March 3 at Walt Disney World Resort. Besides browsing the popular Fawn’s Butterfly House at Pixie Hollow, guests can flex their green thumbs and gather bouquets of ideas for their own spring and summer gardening projects.
This year’s festival, which continues for 75 days through May 16, promises to be “a gardener’s dream-come-true,” says festival horticulture manager Eric Darden, because the early opening features more brilliant color and greater opportunity to soak up gardening tips for successful home plantings.
Though I knew there was no chance to go, but I checked on kayak.com to see what airfares were like down to Orlando. I shouldn’t have. Can you believe $200 round trip! That only made it worse.
As I scanned my email there was another headline from a Baltimore paper — Baltimore-area travel agents hear: ‘I want to get away now.’ I wasn’t alone.
The amazingly reflective copy read:
Expedia, an online travel Web site, said bookings to warm weather destinations from BWI are up significantly from Nov. 1 to Feb. 14, compared with the same period last year. That includes a 124 percent jump in flights to Montego Bay, Jamaica, an 88 percent rise in bookings to Los Angeles, and a 67 percent increase in trips to Cancun.
Florida is another popular destination with bookings to Miami and West Palm Beach up 65 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
While Expedia attributes some of the increase to travelers feeling more secure about the economy since last year, it says the three major snow storms since December have also pushed Baltimoreans to want to head somewhere warm.
I am not alone.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
