TravelHacks.iExploreFlorida.com

Its well known that airlines like Southwest and Jetblue don’t usually allow travel meta-searchers to query their databases, forcing you instead to go direct to the airlines own websites to search and buy flights, rather than through a third party like Sidestep.

Southwest have a weekly ‘Hotfares’ page and an email newsletter but no RSS feeds. They do have a little downloadable application for your desktop though called ‘Ding’. It might be worth the download.

Spirit Airlines is a United States low-cost airline operating nationwide scheduled and charter flights. The airline is headquartered in Miramar, Florida. About a quarter of the airline’s flights are to destinations in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Latin America.

The companies main hubs are Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and Detroit Metro.

If you’re always on the look out for crazy bargains its worth signing up for the airlines $9 fare club. For instance tis past week there has been $9 (each way) fares to Puerto Rico from Fort Lauderdale.

Look at some of the deals that came out today! The only thing is you only have 24 hours to book the flight when they publish the deals but still very cool deals and these are only a few of the deals they have weekly in their $9 club.

Fort Lauderdale To: Fares From Dates Available
Atlanta $9* Each Way 4/19, 4/23, 4/24, 4/25, 4/28, 4/30
Atlantic City $9* Each Way 5/8, 5/13, 5/16, 5/23, 5/26, 5/29
Cancun, Mexico $9* Each Way 4/14, 4/25, 4/27, 4/28, 5/20, 5/27
Columbia, SC $9* Each Way 5/27, 5/28, 5/31, 6/7, 6/13, 6/15
Freeport, Bahamas $9* Each Way 4/8, 4/15, 4/23, 4/27, 4/28, 4/29
Islip, NY $9* Each Way 5/21, 5/22, 5/23, 5/25, 5/28, 5/30
Myrtle Beach $9* Each Way 4/7, 4/8, 4/21, 5/5, 5/23, 5/29
Nassau, Bahamas $9* Each Way 4/12, 4/14, 4/22, 4/26, 4/28, 4/29
Orlando $9* Each Way 4/17, 4/23, 4/24, 4/28, 4/29, 4/30
Ponce, Puerto Rico $9* Each Way 4/15, 4/16, 4/24, 4/26, 4/28, 4/29
Port Au Prince, Haiti $9* Each Way 4/8, 4/22, 4/23, 4/27, 4/28, 4/29
Punta Cana, DR $9* Each Way 5/9, 5/11, 5/18, 5/27, 5/30, 5/31
San Antonio, TX $9* Each Way 4/26, 4/27, 4/29, 5/15, 5/28, 5/30
San Juan, Puerto Rico $9* Each Way 4/13, 4/15, 4/20, 4/23, 4/27, 4/30
Santo Domingo, DR $9* Each Way 4/9, 4/19, 4/20, 4/25, 4/26, 4/27
Tampa $9* Each Way 4/9, 4/16, 4/23, 4/26, 4/29, 4/30
Boston $19* Each Way 5/9, 5/19, 5/22, 5/24, 5/30, 5/31
Washington, DC (Reagan) $19* Each Way 4/10, 4/11, 4/26, 5/3, 5/11, 5/24
Lima, Peru $69* Each Way 4/17, 4/18, 4/27, 5/23, 5/25, 5/26

Related Links

Spirit Vacations

The Florida Keys are perhaps better known for their diving but there are spots all around the Florida coast, in particular Miami. In order to protect the area’s natural reefs from the stress of excessive human interaction while encouraging recreational fishing and sport diving in coastal waters, ‘artificial’ reefs are created out of a wide array of objects ranging from steel hulled ships, to army tanks, to commercial aircraft, to specially designed reef modules.

Related Resources

Personal Scuba Instruction
Dive Miami
DiveSpots.com
Visit Florida Diving Resources

Ouch, there’s a major Php issue on the main iExploreFlorida.com directory right now which we sorting out at the moment but it does mean the site has been down for over a day, though we should be back up later today. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Its been an age since we posted on the blog mainly since we’ve been redesigning our Florida travel directory for a while now and its finally taking shape and also getting recognition with the ‘big three’ search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

We’ll be posting again here next week and highlighting the better resources we’ve found for the directory, we’ve also got a bunch of articles coming next week on Orlando travel resources and finding Florida diving resources online. Keep your eyes peeled!

Spirit Airlines have a bunch of flights on offer for little over 24 hours from today at the basement price of one cent.

Outbound from Florida there are flights from Fort Lauderdale to Kingston and Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Orlando to Nassau, Bahamas. Going the other direction there is Nassau, Bahamas to Orlando, Detroit to Tampa and Atlantic City to Fort Lauderdale.

The deals are up until 11.59 EST tomorrow or until they sell out.

The National Motorists Association have an excellent user submitted resource of nationwide USA speed traps. The ‘Speedtrap Exchange’ is searchable by state and includes a large database of Florida areas where cops tend to clock motorists. The site also lists articles, laws, even ways to fight your speed trap ticket.

Read more at Johnny Jets Blog and Digg.

Related Reading

Florida Speed Traps (FloridaDrivers.com)

Not a typo but a limited offer with Hertz’s Florida “Drive Out” Program. If you’re going to be in Florida sometime between April 8 and June 30, you can rent a car and go on a northerly road trip for as little as $1 a day. The deal is you have to drive the car out of Florida to follow the snowbirds north. There are 35 cities on the list you can choose from. The program includes economy through full-size cars and SUVs, as well as unlimited mileage, and no drop-off charges. Pick up locations in Florida are: Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Orlando, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, Miami and Tampa.

Read more at: Tim Leffels Cheapest Destinations and Hertz.

Being from England my knowledge of Baseball is limited to movies that have featured it heavily. That would include ‘A League of Their Own’, ‘Fever Pitch’, ‘Field Of Dreams’ , ‘Major League’, ‘Bull Durham’ , ‘The Babe’ and the like.

Nevertheless this week saw the start of what is nicknamed ‘the Grapefruit League’ in Florida, or to give it its official name, ‘Spring Training’. In Major League Baseball spring training is a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season.

So, if you’re in Florida you have the chance to see teams like the New York Yankees (in Tampa), Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins (in Fort Myers) and current World Series holders St. Louis Cardinals (in Jupiter) not forgetting Florida’s own Tampa Bay Devil Rays (in St. Pete) and the Florida Marlins (in Jupiter).

If you’re looking for game schedules and the best up to date ‘Grapefruit League’ news check local Florida papers and the teams own Spring Training pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Joining in the fray of predictive holiday and flight search is Hotwire, following on the heels of Farecast and Fare Compare. A Fare Prediction shows if the lowest fare is rising or dropping over the next seven days for the specific dates and cities searched (according to the Farecast website). So, in laymans terms they basically ‘predict’ when its cheapest to go.

Hotwire’s offering is called Trip Starter and my seaching for a trip to Las Vegas from my local airport at Fort Myers returned a graph showing airfare and hotel price fluctuations by the month.

Best time to fly, according to Trip Starter is January, February and September. Best time to stay, July, August and December. They advise to avoid the crowds, go during the first three weeks in December or on weekdays in July.

One advantage Trip Starter has over its rivals is that by plugging in the results to Hotwire affiliate Trip Advisor they are able to offer local guides, events and maps, something Farecast and Fare Compare dont offer right now.