Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Costa Rica through cheapOair - review and warning

We just got back from our Honeymoon in Costa Rica and had a great time, despite problems with the company we booked our flight and rental car through. I had never heard of this company before cheapOair, but when I was trying to book a flight to Costa Rica, their prices were less than the rest of the well known travel sites such as expedia and travelocity. So I booked the flight, LAX (Los Angeles) with a layover in MIA (Miami) and finally to LIR (Liberia). Everything was fine, except I don't like American Airlines and won't be flying with them again if I can avoid it because of problems getting an assigned seat at LAX, but that's another story. Anyways, relatively smooth trip until we landed in Liberia and tried to find our rental car. We booked a car through cheapOair and I choose the cheapest option for a rental car, this company called "NU" turns out that there is no rental car company called "NU" in Liberia and they are probably in the capitol city of San Jose instead. So we just land in Costa Rica and about 20 different people are trying to rent us a car and nobody has heard of this company NU, "You want a new car?." After trying to call customer service with no luck, and the phone calls costing $30 we give up and choose Thrifty, and instead of costing $250 for the trip our car cost over $800! That kinda started the trip off on the wrong foot to say the least. With the difference in price I should have just gone with a more reputable company instead of this cheapOair in the first place and I would have saved money and hassle. I'll never make the mistake of booking with cheapOair again.

Many people have had similar experiences, just see these pages:
cheapoair.pissedconsumer.com
ComplaintsBoard

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Space Strategy Games Sector

Recently I discovered the site: SpaceSector.com, Adam Solo has really created a great site for blogs, reviews, and a community forum for the types of games I love to play: 4x space strategy games! Since the early days of my gaming persuits my favorite games were space strategy games. For the Amiga I played Overlord and Stellar Conflict, for the PC I loved Star Reach and for the genesis (and other platforms) I loved playing Star Control. Probably my favorite game of all time is MOO 2 (Master of Orion 2), it was completely addictive and has infinite playability. Newer games that come close to the enjoyment of MOO2 include Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations. I am especially grateful to Adam for writing a great blog post about Astriarch: Ruler of the Stars, my own space statrategy game that I've developed in Silverlight and am in the progress of releasing on other platforms.

If you love space games as much as I do, head on over to SSGS!