@craspedia … In theory, that’s a 5 hour drive. Totally do-able.
How are your winter weather skills? Or nerves I should say? 65 from Indy up to NW Indiana can be VERY dicey in a winter storm. Lots and LOTS of accidents. (To be fair, it’s an accident prone stretch of road even in good weather.)
With that being said, I’d still drive. I too have control issues. =))
We live California and I haven’t driven in the snow since I was a teen in the 80’s. So I would be terrified to drive in those conditions. But if my husband goes instead, he is more confident, but no more experienced.
It’s a tough decision for sure. And a long drive.
@Joyfulmama, I didn’t write that to make you more nervous…sorry! My D and I were traveling every weekend between the second weekend in January and the first weekend in March. Every. Single. One. (NYC Unifieds was in there, but the rest were all on-campus auditions). 20/20 hindsight…we should have cancelled everything after her first acceptance in early February, b/c that’s where she ended up…but…we didn’t. Not sure what your list of schools is, but it starts snowing in upstate NY in October many years (if you live in NY, you know that!). And March can be icy in the southeast. So you never know…
I guess my advice is this. If your child has a few favorite schools, try to time those so you can get there no matter what. Planes are cancelled? Take a train. Be prepared to be creative. And you have advanced warning with the weather. If the audition to your child’s favorite school is coming up, and the weather service says that there’s a blizzard coming, change your tickets and go a day early. Or even two days if you have to. Just be prepared to be flexible. Be prepared to miss school. You do what you have to do. I never use a travel agent in real life, but I used one for auditions, and boy, did it come in handy. Much easier to call my travel agent from the tarmac of a grounded plane than try to stay on hold to a ticket desk that 3,000 other people are trying to reach. Just keep an eye on the weather. You’ll be fine. Oh, and make sure your kid - and everyone in your family - washes their hands. Constantly. No sharing food or drinks. Use Thieves spray. Sanitize everything with alcohol-based or herbal-based sanitizers (don’t use the anti-bacterial ones). When you get on a plane, wipe down the tray table with alcohol wipes, the buttons, etc. Spray Thieves on the air vent. And if you can avoid going to the airplane bathroom, do. Just be really, really cautious.
@craspedia, I would fly. And if there is a blizzard coming, or ice storm, cancel CCM and just go to Unifieds, early if you have to.
When you’re driving you have a little bit more control over when you leave. You might be able to get out before a storm hits or wait until it’s passed…with a flight, you go when your ticket says you go. But yeah, I live in NH and do NOT want to minimize the scariness of winter driving. Good snow tires make a huge difference.
We are in Texas so we drove to Texas State, OU and OCU and flew everywhere else. We were somewhere every weekend from middle of January to the last weekend in February. We did OCU early in November and then attended Moonifieds in Dallas(also in November) which was the final audition for several schools (BW, Otterbein, Pace, Point Park). Attended Unifieds in Chicago which knocked out 5 more (Penn State, Michigan, CMU, Ithaca, Western Michigan) and auditioned on campus at Elon, OU, Texas State, Florida State. It was crazy busy but we survived. S missed about 8-10 school days all together. Getting into Chicago was an adventure because of the blizzard. We were oine of the last flights in Sunday morning. Travel a day early if you can but we could not as my S had a show that closed on Saturday night.
I would book flights on Southwest. If you decide to cancel and drive instead you can get credit to use for later flights. That gives you two options for getting there. Keep in mind that if you drive you will have to pay for parking at the Palmer house and I think it is quite expensive.
In addition to all of the sanitizing of the plane, we also sanitized the rental cars and the hotel rooms from top to bottom every time we arrived (wiped down light switches, headboards, doorknobs, faucets, counters, desks, toilet, curtain pulls, etc). Also, you can put the TV remote inside the ice bucket bag, knot it, and it still works
@dusing2 Your plan makes a lot of sense, but we’d have to drive back to Columbus in order to fly to Chicago on Southwest. That drive only looks like 2 hours, so that could work. If we drove, we would ditch the car upon arrival into Chicago so we wouldn’t have to pay for parking.
Southwest flies out of Dayton, which is only 50-60 minutes from CCM. They also fly out of Indianapolis and that is about 90 minutes or less
Oddly, there are no flights to Chicago from Dayton. There are 2 flights from Indianapolis, so that may work, also considering it’s partway to Chicago in case we need to switch to a rental car.
If you do that, reserve your rental car ahead of time as well and do not book one that is non-refundable. That way you will have all of your bases covered.
Right! Thanks.
We live in the Midwest and my S did most of his auditions on campus. All of his schools were North of the Mason Dixon and East of the Mississippi so we did not have long flights to deal with. His first was on a Saturday and close to home so no problem missing school. U of M was during the week (missed school) but it was a day trip and drivable. The next two groups were bunched and required flights (scheduled the Boston schools Thurs-Saturday one long weekend; New York - Fri-Sun and picked up Ithaca at NY Unifieds). The final (CMU) on a Saturday and again - drivable. He was able to get auditions/campus visits done with relatively few missed school days. The only weather-related issue we ran into was a record cold snap during the NY trip. Other than that, we were very lucky. In hindsight (and foresight as my D is doing it this year), I would have had him do Unifieds (or at least add some schools at NY Unifieds). I prefer to drive if the weather is being unpredictable since flights will cancel even if the destination city is not besieged. My D will be doing Chicago Unfieds and we will drive (350 +/- miles). I think the distance between Cincinnati and Chicago is a little less (+/- 300 miles) so driving it wouldn’t be bad if you don’t trust the flights. Unfortunately, given the unpredictable winters in the Chicago/NY areas, it’s a crap shoot!
Speaking of snow, and driving during audition season (we drove to everything - schools were heavily midwestern - we live in the midwest - and we did the schools on her list that weren’t in the midwest at Unifieds) I will say - once you cross the Illinois border - Chicago does an EXCELLENT job of keeping the freeways clear. D auditioned at Indiana and then we headed to Unifieds. Originally were going to do some more campus touring at Indiana - but weather reports showed nastiness heading in - so we opted to start our drive early. Roads in Indiana were quite dicey - but the moment we crossed the border into Illinios, it was a completely different story - I was completely impressed! Our other snow story was - we auditioned for UMich on a Friday, and then drove to Bloomington IL for Illinois Wesleyan audition on Saturday. Friday night drive was a bit of a white knuckle affair - but we made it… coming home through lower Michigan was a nightmare… and we ended up pulling off the freeway and booking a room at a hotel and starting out again in the morning. Moral of this story - pack an extra outfit just in case you decide you can’t do the white knuckle bit two days in a row like me!
During the winter, if at all possible get to Northern/Midwestern audition cities the night before the audition. We drove to Pittsburgh the night before S’s Saturday audition at CMU. We awoke to a few inches of snow and fortunately only had to “slide” a mile or so to get to the school. S’s friend and her mother were driving across Ohio in the same snow storm on Saturday morning and got delayed for two hours by overturned FedEx truck on the highway. She missed her scheduled audition time, but fortunately CMU allowed her to do it when she arrived. The tension of that stressful drive had mother and D snapping at each other for most of the way. D was not in the best of audition shape when she arrived and mother had to leave the site for a while to get her balance back. If you can afford the time and the overnight stay, try to take advantage of the “breathing” time in the audition city the night before. Perhaps make the “stressful” drive/flight AFTER the audition.
@toowonderful - I have been told by a couple of schools that they actually hate unifieds in a way because it is such a cattle call. But yet, they still do it. Wish they had them for voice programs!
I guess it’s all perspective @CollegeDadofTwo, as I have heard schools comment that they like it b/c they are way and more focused. (as opposed to giving up their saturday etc)
This is all such excellent info and advice. Thank you!
@mom4bwayboy - I second that notion of arriving the night before. D had such an audition routine going that we even booked a hotel room in Ann Arbor the night before her UMich audition… even though we only live about an hour away. Did it for a couple of reasons… a) to get into the “audition zone” and b) she’s much more a night person than a morning person - and I knew that extra hour in the morning for the drive she would much rather spend sleeping.
Just to repeat a mantra that I picked up during our audition year “Know your kid - and plan accordingly” Some kids would be better off in their own bed the night before an audition that close to home… my kid was better off in the closeby hotel. So take all of these anecdotes of our prior audition experiences to help you decide how to tackle the audition year in a way that works for you!
Break A Leg 2020!
We planned at least an extra day before every audition to allow for travel disruptions and to get rested after traveling. It also gave us a chance to find the exact audition space, locate parking, etc so our mornings weren’t as hectic and rushed. Worked great for us.
Love the suggestion about sanitizing the plane! With all the delays at airports I am leaning toward driving everywhere midWest and East Coast within an eight hour radius of home. Grew up driving in snowy winter weather and have the sense that extra flexibility and my D’s ability to sleep in car may make it a better bet than flying. Downsides anyone?