For those of you reading along with each post on our journey to FI, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m still catching up on documenting our travel hacking adventures, and today’s post is yet another in our long line of exploits from earlier in 2021. I promise that some non-travel content will follow if you’ll bear with me for another post or two here.
With my birthday at the beginning of March, we made a last-minute decision to book a trip to Phoenix, Arizona for the last weekend in February. Little did I know, this would be just the first in a series of pivots. After a rough start, we had an enjoyable stay that included one of my favorite pastimes: Baseball! What was the total cost and how much did we save? Check out my Travel Hack Recap of Phoenix, AZ below!
Where We Went
We spent 3 days and 3 nights in the Phoenix area, including the suburbs of Tempe, Scottsdale, and a day trip to Peoria (more on that later). Mrs. FIby35 had spent the prior 2 weeks visiting family in Florida, so we actually both flew solo to PHX. I flew out of Minneapolis on a Saturday morning with a layover in Denver; Mrs. FIby35 flew from Daytona Beach, FL to Phoenix with a layover in Atlanta. As we tend to do, we escaped the frigid Minnesota winter in search of warmer weather and local delicacies.
Flights
This was a rather spontaneous decision on my part to book a trip just 2 weeks in advance of departure. Trust me, accountants aren’t known for their spontaneity (at least not the ones that stay out of jail).
As mentioned above, Mrs. FIby35 was making her own way to Phoenix after living 2 weeks of the snowbird life in Florida, so I drove myself to the MSP terminal 2 parking garage. My Southwest flight departed around 6:00am local time. After a brief (but long enough to have a birthday beer) layover in Denver, I arrived in Phoenix right around noon. In case you were wondering, morning beers are always acceptable on vacation.
Mrs. FIby35 flew Delta from Daytona Beach to Atlanta to Phoenix on points gifted to her by family, and arrived right around 12:30pm local time. All I had to do was navigate one terminal over and our rendezvous would be complete…
Here’s the deal: I don’t travel solo very often. Mrs. FIby35 and I both love to travel, so we usually do it together. Makes sense, right? As a much more experienced globetrotter, I typically follow her lead until we get to our destination. On this particular occasion, I arrived at Terminal 4 and needed to take the tram to Terminal 3 to meet up with her. I followed the signs and got on the tram, no problems. Until the tram went the opposite direction of her terminal and took me 10 minutes out of the way to the end of its route at the PHX Sky Train Station.
By this point, I’m pretty annoyed at my own stupidity, racking my brain for signage I must have missed. The tram then began its trek westward towards the airport terminals, so things were looking up. It stopped at Terminal 4…and then went back eastward towards the Sky Train station.
Unbeknownst to me, the tram on the south side of the platform only travels eastward from Terminal 4 to the Sky Train Station, while another tram on the north side of the platform travels westward from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3. Not sure if that’s always the case or if they just did it to mess with me.
The fiasco mercifully came to an end (but not before my suitcase tumbled down a 2-story escalator) and I met up with Mrs. FIby35. I was NOT a happy camper. After a short Lyft ride to our first hotel in Tempe, we headed straight to a brewery.
Thankfully, we were scheduled to take the same flight home from Phoenix, avoiding any additional airport shenanigans.
Transportation
As with our trip to Las Vegas, I decided to park in the MSP airport terminal rather than hitching a ride from home. Since our typical Lyft fare from our home is $45-60, we parked in the ramp for about $15 day. Our plan once arriving in Phoenix was to Lyft to/from the airport and between hotels, since we were staying in 2 separate areas of town.
Accommodations
The first night we stayed in Tempe, just a few miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, at the AC Hotel Phoenix Tempe/Downtown. The hotel is located on the south bank of the Gila River, just minutes from the Arizona State University campus. The surrounding area is full of college town nightlife spots, which we did not partake in – we tend not to make it much later than sunset, even on vacation. Decent hotel in a decent location and the price was right, since we booked using a Marriott free award night certificate.
Nights 2-3 were spent at the Scottsdale Marriott Old Town, again booked using free award night certificates. The Old Town area was what we were planning on exploring during our 2 days in Scottsdale, so the location was perfect for us. The area is extremely walkable, and there are plenty of restaurants, bars, saloons, and cafes mixed in among the obscene number of art galleries and trinket shops.
Entertainment
Here’s where the trip takes another turn.
Back story required: Up until about a week before our trip, most of the Major League Baseball teams had not determined whether or not they were going to allow fans to attend Spring Training games in Arizona. We are in the midst of a pandemic, after all. Just days before our arrival, my beloved Seattle Mariners finally announced they would be allowing up to 2,000 fans at their games – only one of which fit into our tight travel schedule.
After a couple hours of repeatedly refreshing my browser window, I was not able to get tickets – sold out. Resigned to the fact that baseball was out of the question, we filled our itinerary with other activities: hiking through Papago Park, exploring Old Town Scottsdale, and of course testing out the local brewery scene.
Lo and behold, while on our morning hike through Papago Park (walkable from the AC Hotel in Tempe, by the way) I decided to check for tickets one last time. There were 2 tickets available for the game that afternoon! After consulting Mrs. FIby35, I snatched them up. Unfortunately, we would need to take a Lyft all the way across town to Peoria and back, about 35 miles each way. Too bad we had decided to ditch the rental car when it was looking like tickets were sold out…
Budget blown. But it was my birthday, damn it, and I wanted to see some baseball!
Don’t let the sunny skies fool you, it was freezing. But I was thrilled just to be there – it might seem silly to others, but I realized this was one of those things I truly missed during 2020 when most of the world was closed due to the pandemic. Well worth the cost in my opinion.
Food & Drink
We do a fair amount of research on highly-rated establishments before our trips and rarely eat at chain restaurants that we could visit any time back home. Unfortunately, we didn’t experience any hugely memorable meals in our time in Phoenix. I’m sure there are plenty of great options that we missed, but there’s only so much you can do and see in one weekend.
We did, however, spend an entire afternoon and evening at the Rusty Spur Saloon in Old Town Scottsdale. According to its website, the Rusty Spur is Scottsdale’s oldest bar, located in a building registered as a historic landmark. Better yet, they had live music! Coming from a relatively cautious state COVID-wise where live entertainment was forbidden, this was a great find for us and we had an awesome time.
How Much We Spent (and Saved)
I alluded to blowing the budget with our last-minute baseball game audible, but how did we end up overall?
| Category | Budget | Actual | Notes |
| Flights | $22.40 | $16.80 | $5.60 per person each way (1 route gifted) + just 8,385 Southwest Rapid Rewards miles |
| Hotels | $0.00 | $0.00 | All 3 nights covered by Marriott free award night certificates |
| Food/Drink | $265.00 | $342.97 | Got a little loose with the purse strings at the Rusty Spur |
| Entertainment | $0.00 | $54.75 | 2 last-minute tickets to Spring Training baseball game |
| Transportation | $168.00 | $198.77 | $68 MSP airport parking; Lyfts to/from PHX, between hotels, to baseball game |
| TOTAL | $455.40 | $613.29 |
As I’ve said before, it would’ve been cheap to pay cash for the flights, but I tend to lean towards using points so we can spend money elsewhere on our trips. The cash price MSP-PHX was $101 for me, and PHX-MSP was $122 for both of us (basically 1 free using the Southwest Companion Pass).
Hotels were completely free using the rewards certificates that we accumulate once a year from our various Marriott credit cards. The AC Hotel Phoenix Tempe/Downtown was going for $132 for the Saturday night we booked, while the Scottsdale Marriott Old Town would have been $532 for 2 nights – a total of $664 saved on accommodations.
No other discounts that I can think of, just some good, old-fashioned birthday fun. All told, we saved $887 by travel hacking our trip to Phoenix.
Conclusion
Phoenix is a solid destination for a quick, relatively cheap trip with warm weather. While we didn’t explore the downtown area, I think we saw enough of Scottsdale and Tempe to last us a while, so it probably isn’t high on our list to return to. Though I could be convinced if it involves more baseball…
Oh yeah, there’s one more plot twist to this trip. As we packed our bags in our hotel room, just hours before our flight home to Minneapolis, we decided to call another audible….
…and went to Las Vegas instead.
