Road Scholar Trip to Red Sox Spring Training

[ohyes]

DH (retiring in May 2011) and I (May 2012) have booked our first Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel) trip. It is in March 2011 Red Sox spring training (DH's choice this time - next time I get to choose).

Just in case anybody has been on a Road Scholar trip (or Red Sox spring training games), i would love to hear about it. Using the search feature for this forum turned up some interesting information. This is our first Road Scholar trip.

Funny how you can go from Oh my gosh, i hope i never get so old as to think that is fun to Wow, we are finally old enough to try this!

 

[freebird5825]

Can you provide a link to the Red Sox spring training program? Mr Boston (my boyfriend) would go absolutely CRAZY for this.

 

[ohyes]

Road Scholar : Spring Training Baseball With the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins - Florida - Social Science & Culture


Be sure to check the Daily Schedule to understand better what is included....and somewhere in the description there are bios of the instructors. DH had only heard of a couple of them.

We are going on the March 20 trip (wait list only now).

My DH is from Boston area (Topsfield). Let me know what you guys think!

 

[freebird5825]

Lowell MA for Mr Boston (obviously not his real name )

This just may turn into an early Valentines' Day surprise. I have enough miles for a free JetBlue ticket. Heeheeheee

 

[Moemg]

You can see the Sox play without the elder hostel option . You just need to find out when the box office opens for selling spring training games and be ready . I would print out the seating chart and decide on acceptable seats before calling . It's also sometimes easier to see the Sox play a lesser team . I know they played the Pirates last year at Bradenton and there were tickets available . Food & drink in the stadiums are ridiculously expensive. The elderhostel trip does look like a dream trip for a baseball enthusiast . If you can take a side trip to Sanibel .

 

[ohyes]

I hope that it does turn out to be a dream trip for DH!! He has talked about going to spring training games for years. and we always said....someday....


It took several days for me to commit because I felt certain we could do this more frugally. This is his birthday/happy retirement present - and I justified going through Road Scholar so that we can take a test drive.

I have "met" another person going on the same trip through the RS website. She is also a teacher and retiring this year. Her DH is retiring in 2012. They do a lot of traveling apparently (hiked all around Scotland last year), but this is their first RS trip.

I will look into the Sanibel side trip. We have friends in Boca Raton and may stay a day longer in order to spend time with them. Staying a day longer for any reason we can make up sounds good.

 

[Mmm Rrr]

I did a "test drive" with Elderhostel 2 years ago, a train trip in the Copper Canyon in Mexico. I travel a lot, on my own, mostly in the States and Europe. I figured that as I get older, something like Road Scholar would be a useful alternative to independent travel.

The trip I did was really great, not the kind of thing I could have (or would have) done on my own. The group was friendly and interesting (ranging from late 50s to some really active 80-somethings), the educational components were really interesting and fun, and the transport, food and lodging were good. All in all a great value, I tried to figure it out afterward and I don't know that I could have done the trip for the price.

I'm going to do a Road Scholar hiking trip in Glacier National Park this summer and am planning to do a trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with them the following summer.

 

[Nords]

Just in case anybody has been on a Road Scholar trip (or Red Sox spring training games), i would love to hear about it.

My parents-in-law have been on over a hundred Elderhostels/Road Scholars, and they love it.

The bigger ones, for example at national monuments like Gettysburg or at big cities, will get great speakers who you'd never have access to on your own. You generally can't recreate the events they manage, let alone at the price you pay for them.

Their idea of a good trip, though, is spending a lot of time sitting in a conference room or lounge for a formal talk followed by hours on a tour bus. They also enjoy all the activities like hikes and demonstrations and shows, but the structure of the schedule can be an uncomfortable constraint if you're accustomed to exploring on your own and making your own plans.

My FIL has actually met a man who referred to himself as the Wandering Jew-- back in the early 2000s he'd gone more than eight years away from home by creatively scheduling Elderhostels at various towns with enough travel time to get between them.

 

[OldGuy]

We went to the Red Sox first night Spring training game last year - in Ft Myers against the Twins. Got to see both of our favorite teams at the same time. I started checking with the Red Sox web site
http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/spring_training/home.jsp?c_id=bos
about this time of year, and eventually they put up tix for the games and we jumped on six of them. Relatively easy, but you'd better jump quickly, because we sat all the way down the left field stands after buying the tix the first day they were publicly available. Charge 'em, and they'll mail the tickets to you well in advance of the game.

Getting to the games is usually easy (check the web site for directions), even with all of the members of Red Sox Nation in FL during the winter. Good stadium eats, smooth suds, but it dropped to 44F in Ft Myers that evening and we froze our dupas off. Like your mama said, dress warm...

ENJOY - pitcher & catchers report in less than two months!