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I have been researching our next vacation probably to the Mayan Rivieria in the fall and I have heard lots of travellers on past trips talk about Apple Vacations. So I have been checking similar packages (we usually fly out of Toronto) booked through Apple Vacations flying out of Buffalo airport and they seem to be a fair bit less expensive than the same trip out of Toronto particularly now that the dollar is moving closer to par. I have noticed that children’s pricing is quite a bit less (we have two; one of which we usually have to pay adult fare for) and taxes seem much less than out of Toronto.Just wondering if anyone else has flown out of Buffalo airport using Apple Vacations and if I am missing some hidden costs?Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks
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I am also interested in any answers to this question. Looking at booking Mexico next spring and the price to fly from NL is 1,500 dollars more then using Apple Vacations from Halifax. We would have to use aeroplan miles to get to Halifax and even with having to overnight in Halifax it still is a significant savings. If anyone has done this and could list the pros and cons it would be appreciated.
Thanks
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We live in Winnipeg, Manitoba and used Apple Vacations last summer to go to the Mayan. We flew from Fargo, North Dakota.Overall, we saved over $1000 by booking through them. We had a few issues but all worked out in the end.The first issue was the girl who took our booking spelled our last name wrong. All our documents had the wrong last name on them. When we called to have them changed (our pkg told us to read over all the information and to contact Apple immediately if there were any errors) we were told that the names are now permanent and cannot be changed. We were also told that there was a chance that one of the airports wouldn’t accept our tickets because the last name spelling varied from our passports. We were livid! After calling Apple about 10x we finally spoke to someone who made a notation with our file about our last name. We were still apprehensive about travelling with the wrong last name but had no problems.Our other issue was that because we were Canadian, we were thoroughly searched at every airport we entered. (We had a layover in Chicago both ways.) We were searched in Fargo, Chicago and then we pressed the red light in Mexico. On the way home we were searched in Mexico, Chicago and again once we arrived in Fargo. It was pretty humorous but annoying.
Other than that, we have decided that we would certainly book through Apple Vacations again.
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I’ve been on the Apple site multiple times and honestly the difference in prices with the Apple Super Specials compared to the best deal I could find in Hamilton/Toronto area were negligible. These were exact same resort/same room cat. within a day or two. Some a bit lower, some higher. When you take into account the 3% Visa/Mastercard are going to hit you with for converting $$$ (in addition to exchange rate) it’s a maybe at best. Of course, ya gotta find the best deal on the Cdn. side to make it fair. My comparisons were with tripcentral.ca because I like their all-taxes-included pricing. There are lower prices if you search though.
To be fair, prices fluctuate widely every day so you need to compare within hours.
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We are Canadian and usually fly out of Toronto, but we have used both Apple and Funjet in the past. Sometimes they’re MUCH cheaper than the Canadian operators (especially for Mexico), sometimes not. In the instances where we used Apple/Funjet, we saved a considerable amount of money. Everything was fine, no problems whatsoever. No hidden costs – what you see on the website is what you get…taxes are added on the final pricing page, and transfers are included. One thing we really like about Apple & Funjet is the flexibility they offer in terms of trip length – they aren’t as rigid with 7 & 14 day packages as most Cdn operators are – you can easily book 8, 10, 12 days…whatever you want (depending on the flight schedules, of course). I also like being able to select my own flight time through Apple and Funjet.One thing to keep an eye on – when you search for a price, watch the flight that is selected for you in the system…sometimes you get a much higher price quote if the flight is scheduled air, e.g. American Airlines. If you select your own flight on, say, the next day, and are able to find a charter/budget airline, that’s where you’ll find the big savings. We have an AMAZING American travel agent based in Texas who handles our trips any time we book through a US Operator – PM me if any of you would like her contact info. I’ve recommended her to other forum friends in the past and all sing her praises. She gets us online pricing AND we still get the perk of her awesome service. |
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I’ve never used Apple – I suspect that some of the price difference comes simply from flying out of the US (much lower airport taxes in general). Another company that interest me is Costco – they sell vacations out of the US but I think not out of Canada. And in my experience, Costco generally offers real good deals. Does anyone have any experience with them?
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