OK, the YMCA contract has been signed and we can now start making our room reservations. Here are a few things to know about booking your lodging:
· We’ve reserved an initial block of 50 rooms and 4 cabins. This complex is huge (over 860 acres). They have several different lodges to choose from – each with slightly different amenities and prices. We’ve reserved a few rooms in each lodge so that people can choose what they want. At $87.00 per night single occupancy, the least expensive rooms are in the Mt. Ypsilon Lodge (25 of the 50 rooms we reserved are in the Mt. Ypsilon Lodge). The other 25 rooms are we reserved are scattered among the other lodges which are newer & nicer and therefore more expensive (approximately $160 per night, singe occupancy).
· The cabins are very popular and are difficult to get. Consequently, we were only able to reserve 4 of them - 2 of the “Two-Bedroom Basic” at $124 per night and 2 of the “Two-Bedroom Mid-Sized” at $154 per night. These cabins will go fast, so if you want one you better act quickly.
· The rates we’ve negotiated for the rooms & cabins include breakfast on Saturday and Sunday morning.
· A 35% deposit by credit card is required at the time you make your reservation. If you subsequently need to cancel your reservation, if you cancel more than 30 days before the arrival date you will receive 75% of your deposit back. If you cancel within 30 days of the arrival date you will forfeit 100% of your reservation. If you never cancel and you just plain old don’t show up, they reserve the right to charge you 100% of the total amount of the cost of your stay. These cancellation policies and charges can be waived in the event of accident or illness with proper documentation.
· To make sure your reservation gets credited towards our contracted block of rooms, PLEASE MAKE SURE TO REFERENCE OUR CONTRACT NUMBER at the time you make your reservation. Reservations can be made online or by phone. The attached document contains our contract number and the instructions for making a reservation. These same instructions will also be available on our official Cannonbird Run website when it goes live within the next couple of days.
· If you have questions about any of this, please feel free to email me directly at scott.everson@comcast.net. If you think your question and my answer would be helpful for the entire group to see, you can post your question on this list.
One final note. Although it’s way too early to know how big of a turnout we will have at Estes Park this summer, we would not be at all surprised to have over 100 cars/attendees. However, since this is our first event and we’re working without a formal budget (translated means we’re spending our own money to get this thing off the ground!), we didn’t want to go out on a limb and book more rooms than we were comfortable being financially on the hook for. So we only reserved 54 rooms – which we expect will get booked fairly quickly. If you wait too long to book your room, you might be out of luck, and it is VERY UNLIKELY you will find anything else in Estes Park with rates as low as these. You’re next best option will be hotels in Loveland about 30 minutes away. On June 29, if any of the rooms in our block have not been reserved, they will be released and returned to inventory for reservations by the general public.
Click here to download a nice brochure about the YMCA and their facilities and lodging options. Hope to see you all there. Scott
