Indianapolis
 

Hello, all:
I am assisting a group of people traveling for a gymnastics meet in January. The meet is downtown, but they wish to avoid paying downtown hotel prices. Can someone recommend an alternative area to stay? They stayed near the airport last year, but it seems like there might be other areas that might have more to offer while they are there. They will be driving to town so staying near the airport offers no advantage. Something reasonably close to the downtown area with decent (mid-range) hotels and restaurants. Any thoughts?

(P.S. People often recommend Priceline, but I can't use Priceline to book a block of rooms.)
THANKS SO MUCH!

There are more affordable hotel/motels on the Northside of Indianapolis, around 86th and Michigan Rd. There are plenty of chain-type restaurants in that area and if you go further East on 86th there are very nice restaurants and a very nice mall, The Fashion Mall, and you can take the interstate downtown in about 20 minutes. There is a Holiday Inn there with an indoor waterslide park if children will be going. I live in that area and work downtown, so if you have more questions I should be able to help you.

I don't think you should rule out Priceline. You can bid on 4 rooms at once, and I can tell you I got a phenomeal bargain bidding for San Francisco (Fisherman's Wharf) that way(it was over a year ago now).

How many rooms do you need? Even if you don't get them all at the same price, seems like you could make an executive decision to cost average them.

Make sure and study biddingfortravel.com well before starting.


Best wishes,

Rex Bbickers
Floyds Knobs, Indiana

We used the Residence Inn on the canal for meets. They used to block rooms for gyms.

I see Carol Liedtke is still Region 5 Judge Director. Just hope your child doesn't get her if she has just been judging elite's the previous weekend. She is tough but consistent. What level is your gymnast?

Hi, and thanks for all of the wonderful info. We will need about 15 rooms for the meet, so it's easiest if I can coordinate it with a hotel upfront.

My daughter is a Level 4 gymnast, and actually won't be attending these meets where the team travels. I'm just helping out with the planning since I work as a travel agent as sort of a "hobby." But group travel is fairly new to me since I mostly specialize in leisure family trips. What level is your gymnast? Does she compete in these types of meets regularly? My daughter loves meets, but I don't know if she will stick with it to the later years. Any advice?

I love the great advice you can find in these forums! Thanks again.

My daughter was training level 10 when she quit several years ago. She had just turned 12 and decided the 25 hours a week of workouts were getting old. She competed in meets from New York to Florida. Gymnastics was our life for years.

I helped score meets many times and got to know many of the judges. The owner of my daughter's gym was KY state meet director and his wife was KY head judge for several years. Carol Liedtke was and is Region 5 (KY,IN,OH,Il,MI)head judge.

Adam's Mark is another hotel we used, It's downtown and very convenient to the mall which has walkways that connect to the meet. Very handy in January when it's freezing outside since the warmups most gyms use aren't actually very warm!

I can also vouch for the Residence in on the Canal. It's a good hotel for the money in downtown. A positive of staying downtown is that your group would have access to walking to the meet and groups could come and go as they please to the hotel. Plenty of restaurants downtown.

The airport hotels are cheap but there is NOTHING to do around there (not even restaurants).

If you have kids check out the Indianapolis Children's Museum--or even if you don't. Great Museum. There's a review at wheretogousa.com