Trip Review: DC to Cape Cod (BWI to BOS)

This past weekend I took a trip with some buddies up to the Cape to a friend’s house in Orleans. Obviously with the Cape being the best vacation spot in the contiguous world, that part was awesome. This review will focus on the travel portion of the journey.

Westin BWI Parking - Outbound

On Thursday evening we drove up from DC to BWI. Parking at the airport is $10-$12 a day, and with the long weekend being 4 parking days, onsite parking could have quickly made BWI cost-prohibitive for flying. When traveling out of Dulles I had previously used AirportParkingReservations.com to find offsite parking a number of times with great success (FYI the Hilton Dulles has a great lot and shuttle system for getting to and from IAD), so I used the site again at BWI. Make sure to search “Airport Parking Reservations coupons” on Google before booking to find a code to get the $5 booking fee waived. You can use any airport code’s coupon, not just the one you’re flying out of.

We found parking at the Westin BWI for $6.50 a day, and this included an on-demand shuttle to and from the airport. Parking and payment at the front desk was very quick, and the shuttle was literally waiting for us when we walked outside. The driver was courteous and took us directly to the airport, which was about a 5 minute drive.

AirTran – BWI-BOS

We used our Southwest miles to book this flight for Friday, but at the last minute switched to Thursday for the same price. The no change fees on Southwest make their miles some of the most valuable to me. With the switch to Thursday, we were also switched from a Southwest to an AirTran flight, which I loved because the one thing I hate about Southwest is that they don’t assign seats and our flight on AirTran would have assigned seats. Seriously though, the cattle-rush onto Southwest planes to grab seats is one of the least enjoyable things in all of air travel. When you book an AirTran flight with your Southwest miles, you’re assigned a seat when you check in, and you change it once you get to the airport.

Even though our flight was at 8:55pm, when we arrived at the gate at 8:10 we were rushed onto the plane. I asked the agent whether the flight was leaving at 8:55 and if we could move seats and he told me they were going to get us out in the next 10 minutes and that it was a completely full flight. Assuming we were some of the last passengers to board since we were only 10 minutes from departure, I was surprised to see a nearly completely empty plane when we walked on. I was also surprised to discover that not only were we not departing at 8:20, we in fact were going to be departing after our 8:55 scheduled departure time to make sure the late-connecting passengers made it on this last flight of the day. Surely the gate agent must have known when he rushed us onto the plane that we were going to be waiting for those passengers. I was pretty pissed to have to sit on the plane for an entire hour before we pushed back.

The plane itself was another story. For those unaware, AirTran was purchased by Southwest a couple years ago. At the moment the AirTran planes are being phased out, either being converted to Southwest planes (737s) or being sold to Delta (717s). If you had to guess, which of these planes do you think they’d take better care of? If you guessed the planes they were keeping, you’d be right. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t on one of those. This 717 was about as decrepit as a Western-built jet gets. My left armrest was disgorged like someone was digging inside the plastic, and my seat was reclined and wouldn’t come upright. On final approach the flight attendant asked me to bring it up. When I showed her it was broken she didn’t believe me and made me press the button again to see if anything would happen. As if I’m trying to pull some huge prank on AirTran by getting an extra 4 minutes of reclining in…

Hertz – BOS

I don’t know what it is about Hertz, their shuttles just seem to take forever. We waited about 20 minutes for ours to arrive when we got out to the ground transportation area of Terminal E. What makes Hertz look even worse than it maybe should though is that every other car rental company’s shuttle passes by 2-3 times while you’re waiting. I wonder how many people have switched reservations mid-wait on a whim. The car we got was a 2014 Nissan Versa, which was clean and functioned well, so no complaints there.

Southwest – BOS-BWI

While I might hate Southwest’s boarding process (and the fact that you have to check in exactly 24 hours before your flight to get a good boarding number), I do love their product. Nearly every employee I interact with is always courteous and friendly, and I appreciate that they’ve got a sense of humor about how sucky the travel process can be sometimes. The flight went off without a hitch, and we even enjoyed some Sour Patch Kids along the way thanks to our tall friend Sam. Awkwardly though our short friend Sam was very mean to the flight attendant, which seemed unnecessary given how nice she was being. But this is neither here nor there.

Westin BWI Parking – Return

The Westin claims its shuttle is on-demand, so I phoned the front desk when I landed and asked them to send one. The attendant said it would be there in 10-15 minutes. 10-15 minutes later there was no shuttle, so I called again, and was told there had been some sort of accident but the shuttle was now on its way. Another 10 minutes passed and I called again. Apparently it was right around the corner from us now but there was a ton of traffic at BWI. This was hard to imagine because we had seen many other hotel shuttles pass multiple times. Finally after another 10 minutes it arrived.

Personally I was furious not at the wait but at being straight-up lied to by the hotel. It was a good parking rate but at 10 on a Sunday night I’m not interested in waiting an extra 30-40 minutes to get my car. I will not be using the Westin next time, nor do I recommend doing so.

For those traveling to BWI from DC, I recommend the MARC. It runs a train every hour or so from Union Station on the Penn line. It costs $6 each way and takes about 25 minutes, plus you have to take a 2-3 minute shuttle bus from the station to the airport. This is definitely the way to go on weekdays, but unfortunately it doesn’t run on weekends. You can still take the Amtrak Northeast Regional on the same route, but this costs $15+.