Feeback from the girls on San Antonio

I did a few things to help me get feedback on our San Antonio trip.  I asked individual girls away from the others what they thought of the whole thing.  I asked the other parents how they thought all had gone and what they would improve.  I also gave the girls a survey at our next meeting.  Things like “was the food good,” “rate the activities,” “did you like the house.”   

Yes – they liked the house and would not have changed for a hotel.

Everyone said they got plenty to eat and the food was excellent.  (Even Adrienne’s mexican rice that her mother helped with over the phone.)

Sea World and shopping were everyone’s favorite activities.  A few would have liked to do more site seeing.  (And some wanted more time with the cute waiter at the restaurant on the Riverwalk.)

Suggestions for our next big trip were Disney World, Six Flags over Texas, and Lego Land.  We’ll see.  We may have some other really great idea three years from now.

If you read about any of our adventure, please send me a comment.  I’d like to know if it was helpful to anyone else in preparing for a group trip.

Part IV – San Antonio Trip – Lessons Learned

Overall, it was a good trip.  We all had a great time.  But there were some points that should be noted:

1. Use the cone of silence.  Plan for quiet time, particularly through major cities and heavy traffic.   Girls could read, whisper, listen to music, anything but talk loudly and giggle.  If anyone was asleep, the cone might last a little longer.

2. Impose bathroom breaks.  Our schedule included break stops about every hour and a half.  At each stop, I made the girls go to the bathroom, despite protests of “I don’t have to go”.  I would tell them to just try.  This really is a safety issue.  This rule got broken and we ended up looking for a bathroom on a stretch of lonely state highway with only a few biker bars along it – and it was getting dark.  Needless to say, we had to hold it until we reached our destination.

3. Watch out for the oil and the water.  Some personalities just don’t mix well.    I made the big mistake of putting two opposing personalities into the same bedroom for sleeping arrangements and things got pretty ugly at one point.

4. Stick to your agenda.  I didn’t keep things moving along while we were on the Riverwalk, and, as a result, we had do drop some things off the back end of the day.  While some girls were okay with the flexibility, others were not.   Don’t let the cute little jewelry stalls lead you astray.   I should have stopped and informed the group when we started falling behind and let the group help drive our time.

However, sometimes those plans get changed for you.  We were shocked when we saw the huge line outside the Witte.  There was no way we were going to get in that evening.  So we had to turn around and re-write plans on the fly.   

5. Be sure to have down time.  By afternoon of day three, most of us were worn out.  We had been to the San Juan mission and were supposed to go the Market Square for some site seeing and shopping.  Instead, I gathered the group and asked them if they would like to change plans and go back to the house for a break.  We were lucky to have a place where those of us who needed to could rest, while the others had plenty to do outside.  That evening, with our spirits restored, we had a great evening without bickering.

6. You don’t have to be a group all the time.  When you have a large group (12) of people confinded together for a while, the personalities start to clash.  Some time in smaller groups (with their friends) is a necessity to diffuse tempers.  For instance, we had to stick together on the Riverwalk, but when we were at the mall section, the girls broke into groups of three and went shopping with an adult.   At the same time, make sure you have some group activities so that the girls have time to bond, rather than click.   After our big shopping day, half the group did make overs on the other half.  Adults got to ooh and awe over the big transformations.  Everyone had a great time. 

7. Give them eight hours of sleep – no quarter given.  I wanted to let the girls have lots of fun, which – once we got some ground rules understood – we did.  But come night time, I had to turn into the big bad witch.  I HATE that.  This is probably one of my biggest Lessons Learned.  Every major clash we had was caused by a lack of sleep.  From now on – no matter where we go – we start bedtime activities on time – no excuses.  They get some settling down time after going to bed (30 minutes) and then mouths are closed.  Next time, I’ll have the curfew breakers do all the dishes the next day or ground them from activities. 

Despite the few hiccups, mainly caused by a group of diverse people suddenly living together, the trip was a success.  And I learned a lot for the next time.  We are already starting to plan for our next big adventure to Disney World (three years from now).

Part III – Trip to San Antonio – Ordering Tickets

Now that I had an agenda, I started seeing what I could order ahead.  I was able to order our all-day pass trolly tickets online so that we could step out of the van at the free parking area and ride the trolly into downtown.  One of my parents tired easily, so this proved to be a good idea.  We were able to ride the trolly from the end of the riverwalk back to our vehicle without the long walk back to our starting point. 

We got our Sea World tickets from Tinker since my husband is in the Air National Guard.  That was a big savings!

I did go ahead and also order Sea World all-day meal pass wrist bands online.  We printed the voucher off of the internet and redeemed it inside Sea World.  Each one was $30.00.  This turned out to be a huge rip off.  It was supposed to cover meals, snacks, and drinks.  However, it could only be used in the major cafes where it took an hour to get through the lines.  And then, as the day wore on, they started running out of food items.  The only place I found that we could get into fairly quickly had only two items available (more were on the menu, but only 2 were stocked).  I know we did not use nearly $30.00 because we could not get to the food.  We ended up paying out of pocket on drinks and snacks.  The only good point was that I did not have to give girls money that they might use for other things.

The other item that I pre-purchased online was tickets to the Witte museum’s dinosaur exihibit.  Those were to be picked up at the museum ticket desk when we got there.  This proved to be a big mistake as well.  We left the Riverwalk to drive up to the Witte.  There was a policeman blocking the parking lot entrance and a line into the museum that stretched two blocks.  It was free Tuesdays and we couldn’t get in.

So in summary:  Pre-purchasing transportation tickets – good
Pre-purchasing Sea World Tickets – good
Purchasing Sea World meal vouchers – bad (I’ve been to Disney and I would purchase meal vouchers there. Never a Bush Garden location ever again)
Pre-purchasing museum tickets – bad (you don’t know what the local crowd may be like).

Part II – Trip to San Antonio – Agenda

The next step was to start getting the details of what we were going to do down in an agenda.  I made a list of all  a lot of fun things to do in San Antonio and brought it to the girls.  This list contained the potential cost of each activity along with an idea of the time that it would take. 

Each girl took the list and rated each item with 1 being the first thing they wanted to do, to the last number which would be the last thing they wanted to do.  I then took all those and tallied them up so that we knew what the group majority was most interested in.  Not surprisingly, shopping came out on top. (By the way, this did not include our Sea World day which was already planned.)

We took the list and then the leaders modified it a bit to include a little history (a mission) and our service project (painting out graffitti).  The girls then took a copy of a blank agenda and drafted out each of the main activities and determined what was going to be possible.

We ended up with a full day at Sea World, a half day of service project and the other half at the mission with maybe some shopping at Market Square in the afternoon.  The third day we would go to the Riverwalk and shop, eat, and do the river boat.  That afternoon, we would go to the Witte Museum.

Three full days of fun.

Our Trip to San Antonio – Part II

I set the budget this time around because I wanted to make sure that my first time to plan such a trip was fairly accurate.  I was very anxious about getting a few months away from actually leaving and then realizing that I was way under budget.  I had nightmares about having to go to parents and say, “Whoops, I need more money.” Or – worse, having to tell the girls that we were going to have to wait another year. 

When we plan our next trip, I’ll have the girls outline the budget.  For this trip, I had judged that $25.00 per girl would get a decent hotel room, given 4 girls per room.  I had a couple of girls pair up and research hotels within our price range in the area.  I had another couple of girls look at possible vacation homes in San Antonio.  The girls with the hotel assignment came back with their homework assignment and gave a really good report of what they had found.  Uhm – the other two forgot. 

Spring Break was not very far away and I really wanted to see what we could find in a vacation home, so I got online the next day and found some possibilities and sent out feelers to the owners.  Sure enough, vacation homes were going fast in the area for that time period.  Vacation homes are a great alternative to hotels and the costs are comperable.  I had budgeted ($25.00 per girl x 4 girls (+ adults) per room x 4 rooms) $400.00 per night.  The rental house that I found is $350 a night.  The benefits are:

1. I won’t have to fight the pool battle.  Safetywise clearly states that a life guard must be present near any water.

2.  They would have space to run around in without disturbing hotel guests.

3. We could really reduce our meal costs by cooking in.

I found a great house on the south side of San Antonio on 30 acres with 4 1/2 bathrooms.  The idea of having all those bathrooms and all that acreage to let them run around in was too good to pass up so I just went ahead and booked it.  Executive decision.

Our Trip to San Antonio – Part I

Last year, I introduced the idea of going on some kind of trip to my troop.  Some of the girls had been getting wishy-washy about whether or not they wanted to stay in girl scouting, and I thought a trip would be a good goal that they could put their energies into.  It worked.  At the time, my girls were between 11 and 13 years old, so we talked about a long-term goal, a big destination that would take several years to raise money for, and a short-term goal, which could be achieved in a couple of years.

The girls went off and brainstormed up some places within a day’s driving distance.  When the groups got back together, we narrowed it down to 4 possibilities.  I then took those four and did some general cost analysis  of each place.  The next meeting, I brought the results and let the girls decide what was best. 

And that is how we set our sights on San Antonio on Spring Break of 2010.  We spent the past year raising money.  Our goal has been between $450 and 500 per girl to cover transportation, lodging, meals and events.  Parents would pay around $100 and the girls would raise the rest.  The majority of the money was raised with cookie sales.  We then held 2 garage sales (with some really good stuff) and painted a fence for a friend.  We’ll wrap up the last amount of funds needed with this year’s cookie sales. 

Here are some of the sticky points so far:

First, some girls did not participate in any of the fundraising events.  I had to start a tracking system of who participated in what.  I’ve kept it pretty flexible.  For instance, I had one girl whose heath kept her out of cookie sales last year, but she helped at the garage sales and her mother is a huge help with the troop overall.  But for those families who did not support us much, I let them know they would need to pay half of their child’s expenses, and I expected to see some support over this next cookie season.

Second, we thought we would take the train down and stay close to downtown and use the trolley.  It is possible, but it also takes over 10 hours to get there.  Ten hours with 9 girls who need to stay fairly quiet and polite.  I just couldn’t see it happening.  I’m pretty sure the decibel level at some of our meetings reaches past safe levels.  These are good kids, but 10 hours is a lot to ask.  So we looked at flying (security check in, transportation problems once there, and it was a little pricy for our budget.).  Then we looked at a bus (wow – very expensive.)  Then we looked at renting a van.  This gave us full freedom to move about and allowed us to look into getting a house, rather than having to be tied to downtown.  It also happened to be the cheapest solution.  The sticky part to that is that we thought we were going to need two vehicles, which meant two drivers per vehicle to be able to switch off.  Girl Scout policy only allows the troop to pay for the number of adults needed for Safetywise.  It gets hard to ask people to pay $500.00 to be your chauffer.  But we got lucky and some of the girls chose not to go which got our numbers down to one passenger van.

Finally, we had some communication problems.  Despite sending out a lot of emails, a few flyers, and discussing this project for over a year with the girls, I had parents  who did not realize that we were going on this trip over Spring Break.  Fortunately – I asked for a deposit and written consent 2 months before the trip and got some of those conflicts worked out.  If I had waited any later, family plans would have been solidified. 

The next blog will cover how we determined housing and set up rules.