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If it's more than an hour drive or so I just fly out. If I'm already paying for a hotel for a weekend GT, tacking on an extra hundred or two isn't an issue in comparison to the exhaustion from driving. I've carpooled to a few events that were 4-6 hour drives and it's always been horrible.

Flights are fairly cheap right now within the US. I cannot say if trains or flights for the EU is viable

stroller wrote:
It's no good. No matter how many times I see this title, I still read "Time travel tolerance". Sorry.

Right!? Even after reading through it, I keep seeing it in the index and thinking that

 Stevefamine wrote:
If it's more than an hour drive or so I just fly out. If I'm already paying for a hotel for a weekend GT, tacking on an extra hundred or two isn't an issue in comparison to the exhaustion from driving. I've carpooled to a few events that were 4-6 hour drives and it's always been horrible.

Flights are fairly cheap right now within the US. I cannot say if trains or flights for the EU is viable

Train ticket prices in the UK, usual response upon seeing the price: "eh? I want to travel on it, not buy the flipping thing". Top gear a few years back did a challenge, go London to IIRC Manchester, buying a car etc, for less than the price of the train ticket.

they managed it

easily

Some bod did the same trip and found it was cheaper to fly via Belgium

leopard wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
If it's more than an hour drive or so I just fly out. If I'm already paying for a hotel for a weekend GT, tacking on an extra hundred or two isn't an issue in comparison to the exhaustion from driving. I've carpooled to a few events that were 4-6 hour drives and it's always been horrible.

Flights are fairly cheap right now within the US. I cannot say if trains or flights for the EU is viable

Train ticket prices in the UK, usual response upon seeing the price: "eh? I want to travel on it, not buy the flipping thing". Top gear a few years back did a challenge, go London to IIRC Manchester, buying a car etc, for less than the price of the train ticket.

they managed it

easily

Some bod did the same trip and found it was cheaper to fly via Belgium

Yeah train prices are totally nuts. There "are" "Deals" out there but they only work to certain destinations and if you book well in advance and if you hunt around a multitude of websites and buy a whole host of tickets and take an odd route. That said there appears to be a very slow move back toward bringing them under the council/government again (ergo nationalising them once more).

It's even worse if you travel in a group, the costs go up fast so its no shock that Top Gear managed to buy a car, tax, insure and fuel it for less than a train ticket. Plus till the car breaks you can take it to more places.

National Rail website:
Manchester airport to London Liverpool (that's not even central London) £175 per person if you take a train between 6 and 9am; after and its £88.

 Rolsheen wrote:
If there's an open bar and adult entertainment 30 mins travel, if not 20 mins

30 minutes wouldn't even get you to Maitland from newie.
Kinda narrows down where you could get to.

I've found that for Me, about 6 hours is a tolerable length of drive for a multi-Day Event, more than that and the drive gets to be a real drag. One Day, got to be in 2 Hours or less.

 chromedog wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
If there's an open bar and adult entertainment 30 mins travel, if not 20 mins

30 minutes wouldn't even get you to Maitland from newie.
Kinda narrows down where you could get to.

Why in god's name would anyone want to go to Maitland?

 Peregrine wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
15mins tops. Occasionally make the effort to Warhammer World or London for salute and they're about an hour. Any more than 15 and no, not worth it for a game

The UK is so weird. 15 minutes is really the longest you'd be willing to drive? 15 minutes is a short trip in the US, even 30 minutes to get to a store (whether a game store or something else) is just an average day.

That's not the UK, just a couple of areas with a bunch of medium sized towns clustered together. Makes people lazy about travel.

 Overread wrote:

leopard wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
If it's more than an hour drive or so I just fly out. If I'm already paying for a hotel for a weekend GT, tacking on an extra hundred or two isn't an issue in comparison to the exhaustion from driving. I've carpooled to a few events that were 4-6 hour drives and it's always been horrible.

Flights are fairly cheap right now within the US. I cannot say if trains or flights for the EU is viable

Train ticket prices in the UK, usual response upon seeing the price: "eh? I want to travel on it, not buy the flipping thing". Top gear a few years back did a challenge, go London to IIRC Manchester, buying a car etc, for less than the price of the train ticket.

they managed it

easily

Some bod did the same trip and found it was cheaper to fly via Belgium

Yeah train prices are totally nuts. There "are" "Deals" out there but they only work to certain destinations and if you book well in advance and if you hunt around a multitude of websites and buy a whole host of tickets and take an odd route. That said there appears to be a very slow move back toward bringing them under the council/government again (ergo nationalising them once more).

It's even worse if you travel in a group, the costs go up fast so its no shock that Top Gear managed to buy a car, tax, insure and fuel it for less than a train ticket. Plus till the car breaks you can take it to more places.

National Rail website:
Manchester airport to London Liverpool (that's not even central London) £175 per person if you take a train between 6 and 9am; after and its £88.

used to cost me £5,500 a year to get to London, and thats the full on season ticket discount, £47 a day return otherwise.

yes its cheaper to book in advance, but then you hit that most events are at weekends, and the rail service, indeed public transport outside London at weekends is hopeless.

To me I care more about parking at the venue

There's gotta be more there than a game to play. I need some other amusements for more than an hour and a half of driving.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
There's gotta be more there than a game to play. I need some other amusements for more than an hour and a half of driving.

Used to be very lucky in having "campaign" in Milton Keynes as my local event*, held in the main shopping centre, so between games even if the trade stands were not that interesting there was a whole shopping centre to wander round (even a GW to go in and tease the staff if you fancied it), plenty of places to grab food etc.

If you were staying overnight the event venue was near what passes for a town centre so other amusements nearby, a very good venue in fact - and good at exposing games to the general public, wonderful seeing the younger kids with seriously wide eyes.

not saying such are needed for me, but they never hurt


* if you can call leaving near MK as "lucky"

leopard wrote:
If you were staying overnight the event venue was near what passes for a town centre so other amusements nearby, a very good venue in fact - and good at exposing games to the general public, wonderful seeing the younger kids with seriously wide eyes.

When I make my voyage to the UK, I intend to play in several locations. Fortunately, I have a ladyfriend that intends to accompany me once I arrive (she's driving) and she knows a lot of good spots to grab a bite and a beer.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

leopard wrote:
If you were staying overnight the event venue was near what passes for a town centre so other amusements nearby, a very good venue in fact - and good at exposing games to the general public, wonderful seeing the younger kids with seriously wide eyes.

When I make my voyage to the UK, I intend to play in several locations. Fortunately, I have a ladyfriend that intends to accompany me once I arrive (she's driving) and she knows a lot of good spots to grab a bite and a beer.

Now that sounds close to perfection

leopard wrote:
Now that sounds close to perfection

If you saw her, and knew her attitude toward my hobbies, you'd label it 'absolute perfection'.

 infinite_array wrote:

Jangustus wrote:
For a one day event 1-2 hours each way

Multi day event probably 4-5 hours.

More than that and for me not really worth it, though tht may be because in the UK you very rarely have to travel further than that

See, that's my problem. Where I'm located, I'm set for the big 3 historical conventions (Historicon, Cold Wars, Fall In). But it seems like any other events are either up in New York or down in Virginia - and that's a long trip either way.

You can gripe when you live in Kansas. The horror.

I'd rather have less travel time than gaming time.

Normally about 1-2 hours each way to a convention is my maximum (makes it a long day otherwise).

It'd need to be something special to get me to travel further and stay overnight, and I'd need to roll it into something else too.