Less than a month for Pitchers and Catchers to report to Fort Myers so
it is about time for you to make your arrangements to go to Fort Myers and it is about time for the third annual
Fort Myers Guides, which will be updates from last years' guides. Also, as a retrospect after I return, I will do a "bargain guide to Spring Training in Fort Myers" to really try to give hints on how to get there, stay there, eat there and attend Twins' games and spend as much as possible. Will make this an annual feature as well. But there will be budget minded features in every one of the main guides.
Last season there were three Spring Training Guides: Last year's logistics' guide is
here, baseball guide
here, and the food guide
here. This season there will be three guides and will be different than
last year's based on my experiences from the last season. This is the first guide:
The Spring Training Logistics Guide,
where the area is described and the best and least expensive ways of
getting to the Twins' Spring Training home. Knowing what I know now
last season, I could have saved at least a couple hundred dollars in
airfare, at least that much in a hotel and about that much in a car
rental, money better spent watching the Twins and buying Twins' (and
Miracle) gear. As a bonus, I will list the official Twins' hotel,
which is the place where a lot of Twins' people stay and a great place
to rub elbows with Twins' players and staff.
The second guide will be all about baseball. What is going on at the Training Complex, tips
and tricks about watching the games at Hammond Stadium (based on my
fresh experience from last year and the changes in the ballpark) and other ballparks you might want to
visit. This with be the
Spring Training Baseball Guide.
The third guide will be a
Food Guide to Fort Myers and will be a fusion of the last 2 years guides, with additions.
These guides are mainly from the Twins' perspective but useful for Red Sox' (and soon Nationals') fans
How to get to Fort Myers:
Unless
you want to have a non-rental car with you (a good choice if you are a
player or will be there for a month or so, or you live close to Fort
Myers) flying is probably the best choice. There is a local airport
(Southeast Florida International, code: RSW) served by a variety of
airlines, but there are a total of about 75 flights a day into and out
from there. Alternative airports are the larger Tampa International
(TPA) and Miami International (MIA), about 2 and 2.5 hrs drive
respectively as is the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (SRQ) is
slightly over an
hour drive from Fort Myers and slightly larger airport than the
Southwest Florida International at Fort Myers. Fort Lauderdale (FLL) is
also an option, and a potentially fairly attractive one if your home
airport has airlines like Frontier, Spirit and Allegient and you are
willing to fly them, because they have inexpensive and relatively
frequent flights there. Flying into Fort Myers is probably the most
expensive option in the list but you do not have to drive far. Also,
the TSA checkpoints in the return trip are a mess. Budget an extra hour
to go through. My favorite option:
Orlando.
Orlando International (MCO) is about 3 hrs away from Fort Myers, but it
offers the benefit of having the lowest airfare and lowest car rental
prices in Florida, in combination to more that 60 mainstream carrier
flights daily. Plus, as a bonus, if you have a family, you can spend a
few days there with the kids, which will help them palate more 8+ hrs of
baseball-related stuff that you would do once at Fort Myers. As far as
airfare prices go and where to find the best ones, go to the
ITA Matrix software portal,
chose the "show a calendar of lowest fares" and play with it. This is
the tool that travel agents are using. Once you find a flight, go
online to the airline or an online travel agency and reserve it. My
fares in and out of MCO have been in the $150-200 range from the North
East, but fares change depending on departing city. Another Orlando alternative is Sanford International Airport (SFB) that is preferred by several low cost carriers, such as Allegiant. You might also want to look at neighboring airports to your home town within driving distance for potential lower fares.
As far as rental cars go (and you do need one since the public
transportation in Fort Myers is non-existent,) the best value in Florida
is Dollar. And here is a trick: Go to the
Dollar web site
and register to be an express member for free. This way you will have
the car waiting in a predetermined spot and you by-pass the counter.
Next, make your reservation, by selecting view all car types and picking
the least expensive option. Once you make your reservation, check it
often and early and "modify" it to see if there are any lower prices
posted. Dollar is notorious of dropping their car prices, especially
close to the reservation dates. I usually rent cars at about $12-16 a
day. But you have to check and change those prices a lot. Refuse the
automatic toll machine ($8ish/day) and the GPS ($13ish a day) and deal
with the insurance as you normally do (i.e. if you refuse because you
are covered by your own car, refuse it.)
If you want
to drive down there, the fastest was to get there is via I-75 that goes through
the town. From most points of the Midwest or Northwest, the best way is
to catch I-75 around the Metro Atlanta area. From South and South
West, I-10 hits I-75 in North Florida about an hour east of
Jacksonville. From the East Coast, the best bet would be I-95 all the
way to Daytona Beach, then I-4 through Orlando and catching I-75 at
Tampa. If you live at the Twin Cities area, Minneapolis is about 1700
miles away from Fort Myers, which means about 3 days of 8 hours driving
each, each way. Enjoy :)
If you are planning to fly to Orlando and drive south, do not go through Tampa and take I-75. Take I-4 to I-17 south, through Winter Heaven (the abandoned now former Spring Training home of the Red Sox) to Arcadia, to Port Charlotte (Spring Training Home of the Rays). It is a great ride through orange orchards (and road side stands to purchase them) and small farming towns. Will give you a totally different perspective of Florida.
This is a map of South & Central
Florida, to let you see where Fort Myers is situated in Florida (all
maps and satellite images used in this post are screen shots from Bing
maps) :
The Metro Area and the City:
Fort
Myers (and, btw, it is not Ft. Myers) is the smallest of 3 cities in
the Fort Myers-Cape Coral Metropolitan area. It has about 62,000
people, whereas the Metro has about 650,000 people most of them living
in Cape Coral, a city planned and started in the late 50s as a huge
retirement community. Interestingly enough the planners wanted to make
every property close to water, so they created and extensive system of
Canals. Cape Coral has more miles of navigable waterways than any city
in the world, including Venice (Italy, not FL) and Amsterdam. About 400
miles of canals. Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel Island and Pine Island are
popular beach front communities with a lot of beach-related tourism.
Here is a photo of the Cape Coral- Fort Myers metro:
An
important note, especially to people from northern climates: Average
temperatures in March are 80 for high and 60 for low, so make sure that
you pack sunscreen, hats, glasses, shorts, t-shirts and a swimsuit, if
you are so inclined. And if you get sunburns, you
will get a sunburn there, so please plan accordingly
The city of Fort Myers itself is very
easily navigated. Here is a map of the City with the Twins' Spring
Training Headquarters noted with an orange Marker:
You can click
here for a larger picture in a new window.
Really important note if you have not been in that part of the world before, and you like to do outdoor activities like running:
Be diligent around bodies of water, like ponds, canals, lakes etc. Those floating things that look like branches are not branches, they are alligators. And there is a ton of them.
Where to Stay:
The
Fort Myers Airport is about 6 miles due west from Hammonds Stadium and the Spring
Training Complex. Daniels Parkway (that becomes Cypress Lake Dr in the
City) will take you from the Airport to the town and the Twins' complex.
If you are on a budget and looking for a hotel, the ones on Daniels
Parkway and that area west of I-75 offer good bargains and are fairly
close to the Twins' Spring Training Complex. Another area for
reasonable accommodations is the S. Cleveland Avenue North of Page
Field.
Mostly everything can be found within a large
triangle defined by S. Cleveland Ave to the West, Colonial Blvd to the
North and the Ben C. Pratt Pkwy going Northeast to Southwest. The
Twins' Spring training complex is on the South part of Ben C. Pratt
Pkwy, just South of Daniels Pkwy. Traffic, other than when the games are over, is not an issue at Fort Myers.
If you want to rub elbows with Twins' players and staff, the Twins' official/unofficial hotel in the Fort Myers' area is the
Hilton Garden Inn Fort Myers (not the one by the airport, but the one "in town").
Alternatively you can stay at Naples (offers more things to do at night)
or Port Charlotte (offers less expensive rooms and it is the Rays'
Spring Training Home). Both are about half an hour easy drive away.
The best bargains for Hotels (unless you are a frequent guest and can use points for free rooms) are either
Hotwire or
Hotels.com,
but the establishments are sometimes name-less so it can be a gamble.
On the other hand, if you stay pretty close to the ballpark and away
from the downtown area, there are not any seedy places.
Budget pick for a hotel:
Knight's Inn Arcadia, at around $50 a night. About 45 minutes away from Hammond Stadium. In town,
Crestwood Suites is around $70 a night (stay away from hotels cheaper than that price point at Fort Myers).
The Twins' Spring Training Complex:
Here is a satellite image of the Lee County Sports Complex:
More about the complex, how and when to get there and all the things about the Twins' Spring Training home in the next guide.
