Bittersweet oranges: OSU football fans less eager to travel to Florida

Source: The Lima News, OhioJan.mini storage 03--LIMA -- For Ohio State football fans, Florida does not seem to have the same luster as California did, according to area travel agents.With the Ohio State Buckeyes playing in the Discover Orange Bowl at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens at 8:30 p.m. today rather than the national championship game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Monday, interest in booking travel packages has waned. People who were eager to watch the Buckeyes play for a national title are not as interested in a consolation prize."Quite honestly, I had a lot of interest for the BCS National Championship game, but once that didn't happen, I haven't had anyone call about going to the Orange Bowl," said Chris Seddelmeyer, of Lima's Travel Concepts. "If the Buckeyes didn't make it to the championship game, a lot of people just weren't interested in going anywhere else."Cindy Nelson, manager at the Lima AAA branch, mentioned that AAA offered a special package for people wishing to take in the game, including airfare and hotel accommodations, as well as tickets to the game."In this office, we had a group package that included airfare out of Columbus, or people could make their own way to the game," she said. "We've had a few people who took a couple of weeks off to drive down and enjoy themselves down there, too."While six people from the area took advantage of that package, there was a drop in calls to AAA Lima regarding watching the Buckeyes play after their loss to Michigan State at the Big Ten Championship game on Dec. 7."We had received a lot of calls before that game because I think everyone just assumed they were going to go, and then when they didn't end up going to self storagehe national championship game, we didn't get quite as many calls," Nelson said. "I think it did deter people. More people might have gone had the Buckeyes gone to the national championship rather than the Orange Bowl."Despite not getting any calls for packages, Seddelmeyer is confident that Ohio State fans will be well represented in Florida."I know people are going down, but I'm not getting the interest to actually buy a package that I would have for the national championship," she said. "I'm sure there are going to be a lot of Buckeye fans down there, but I think people just figured that this would be an easier and less costly ticket to get going to the Orange Bowl, and they could maybe put their own package together."Kimberly Schwind, senior public relations manager for AAA Ohio, noted that despite the Buckeyes not playing in Pasadena, the company's travel package did sell out in a short period of time."We partnered with three other central Ohio travel agencies to fill a plane, so it was around 200 packages that we sold, and those sold out in less than a week," she said. "We were surprised that there was still as much interest as there was given the circumstances."Another consolation prize for Buckeye fans is that watching their beloved football team play its last game of the season will be a lot easier on the wallet."Airfare is a whole lot less to Florida than it is to California," Nelson said. "Some people even went to the Orange Bowl who weren't planning on going to the national championship game because of the cost."Copyright: ___ (c)2014 The Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Visit The Lima News (Lima, Ohio) at .limaohio.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉