Roadtripping

When do you get the best price for a rental car?

When is the best time to reserve a rental car? I'm planning a road trip in Arizona in the spring and wondered whether I'd get a better rate if I locked in a price well in advance, or if I'm better off waiting until the last minute. Do rental car prices fluctuate as much as airplane tickets?

I called some experts but didn't get a definitive answer. Rich Broome, spokesman for Hertz, said rates fluctuate "right up to the last minute." Others said car rental rates fluctuate very little.

Instead, I got advice: Reserve a car well in advance if I find a rate I like -- most agencies don't make customers pay in advance when they reserve a car. Then as my trip nears, check last-minute deals. If I find a better rate, I should take it and cancel my earlier reservation.

The downside, said Mark Kahler, About.com's budget travel guide, is that if I want a big car or a specialized vehicle like a SUV and wait until the last minute to reserve, the agency may be out of that particular vehicle. That's particularly true this time of year, when a lot of people travel and rental agencies run out of cars – or charge premium rates,

I often rent through Priceline.com. There's no trading for a better deal once my bid has been accepted, so I usually make my reservations no more than a week before I travel.

"If you’re a bit of a gambler," said Brian Ek, Priceline.com spokesman, "then wait until the last minute and try Name Your Own Price. When rental car companies see that they’re likely to have vehicles sitting on the lot un-rented, that’s when they’ll make them available through Name Your Own Price at discounts of up to 40 percent over published rates."

One online agency, Autoslash.com, says it will regularly check rates on behalf of customers who have booked rental cars in advance with them and get them the lower rate if the price drops. I haven’t tried Autoslash.com, but the Los Angeles Times said it regularly gets lower rates for its customers who reserve a car well ahead of time.

Now I'm intrigued. How much do rental car prices change? I've looked up rates through several agencies for my Arizona trip and will check periodically on whether they've changed. I'll let you know what I find.

Eating what's on the road -- literally.

The ultimate road food landed on my desk Monday.

Bugs.

BBQ-flavored worms. Sour cream and onion crickets. Chocolate-covered insects, variety unspecified.

The gifts were from the Travel Channel, promoting the new season of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods, which premieres in January and will focus on America instead of ranging around the world. Did you think that only people on other continents ate bugs? Nope, these bugs are from California, and they came with a website where I could order them if I wanted, say, to serve a bowlful at a party.

In the interests of research, I invited my colleagues to join me in tasting these edibles. Only a brave few accepted the invitation. We were quick to reach a consensus. We couldn't taste anything but the chocolate on the chocolate-covered bugs. The sour cream and onion crickets had no flavor at all; they were dry and splinter-y, like chewing on a dried-out Popsicle stick. The worms had the most character; they were crunchy, their taste faint, even with the  BBQ seasoning.

I consulted with Fred Tasker, The Miami Herald's wine columnist. "Well, you drink white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat, but what do you drink when the meat is green?" he pondered. He spotted the package of BBQ-flavored worms. "A nice Zinfandel goes well with barbecue," he suggested.

The Travel Channel also sent along rough cuts of the first two episodes, so I watched the program shot in and around New Orleans. Zimmern sampled alligator stuffed with sausage and roasted whole. Smoked raccoon and turtle. Frog piquante. Swamp food cooked Creole-style. I'll bet they've even got a way to make those crickets taste better than old popsicle sticks.

Photos: Boxes of worms and crickets, above left. A bug covered in white chocolate, above right.

A blow-out is not the kind of road-trip adventure I look for.

 If I'd followed the road-trip tips in this article from the Austin American-Statesman, this tire might not have blown out on the interstate near Columbia, S.C., last month.

Holidays at the Florida theme parks

If your travels take you to Central Florida between now and Jan. 1, here's what the theme parks are doing for the holidays.

Photo: Christmas on Ice at Busch Gardens

Ariel and more: What’s coming to Disney World

Homework, homework. To preview what’s coming to Florida’s theme parks, I visited California Adventure Park at Disneyland in Southern California and rode The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. The ride opened there in May and is under construction at Magic Kingdom in Orlando, scheduled to open next fall as Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid.

It’s a sweet ride, targeting girls who love Ariel and anyone who loves the music from the movie. Mechanically, the cars and track layout are set up much like the Haunted Mansion, with clamshell-shaped cars that move relatively slowly – but with no hitchhiking ghosts. We’re welcomed by Scuttle the Seagull, and soon head for the first big scene, "Under the Sea." It’s a dark, indoor ride but not a scary one, and the scenes with scores of animatronic characters are set to the music of the movie.

The ride is part of the expansion of Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom, a project that will be completed in phases during 2012 and 2013.

A truly fabulous attraction at California Adventure Park is World of Color, a light show in which classic Disney scenes and characters are projected on a wall of water created by a thousand jets of water. The effect is stunning. The show opened in California in 2010, but Disney World so far has no plans to build it there. C’mon, Disney, bring it to Florida!

What Disney World is getting as a first is a theme-park "land" in Animal Kingdom based on the movie Avatar, tentatively scheduled to open in 2016. The attractions will be based on the film’s fictional world of Pandora. Construction is expected to begin in 2013 and is projected to cost about half a billion dollars.

The rendering above, from Disney World, shows the Journey of the Little Mermaid ride now under construction.

Road food? These aren't your father's mashed potatoes.

Just in case the thought of food isn’t already weighing on you on this traditional day of gorging, here are some predictions about the food trends we’ll find on our travels next year.

2012 will be the Year of the Custom Potato, says a San Francisco consulting firm. Andrew Freeman & Co. predicts that some restaurants will allow guests to select the mix-ins for their mashed potatoes (Cheddar cheese and chives? Truffle oil? Roast garlic and crème fraiche?), choose the cut and crispness of their French fries, and order custom cut chips with their choice of dusts and dips.

Another new twist on comfort food: Grilled cheese sandwiches will be the new hamburger, the company says, with some restaurants creating a signature sandwich and others devoting their menus to them.

The hot new ethnic trend: eastern European cuisine.

Remember how Mom used to disguise vegetables or sneak them into other foods? Mom is apparently influencing a lot of restaurant chefs because the study predicts they’ll be serving more desserts than carrot cake that have vegetables as ingredients. And if that’s not enough in the way of vegetation, cutting-edge restaurants will offer dishes flavored with infusions of pine needles, Douglas fir and eucalyptus.

Finally, some hot IN-gredients: Stroop, a Dutch treacle-like syrup; Yuzu Kosho, a Japanese spice; Isaan sausage, a Thai sausage that is allowed to ferment or sour; homemade flavored marshmellows; bone marrow; goose eggs; currywurst; lamb belly; crispy animal skin; date syrup; and Parisian gnocchi, made with pate choux dough instead of potatoes.

Better let the belt out another notch.

Tommy's: Best chili burger in Los Angeles

I got a taste of nostalgia when I was in Los Angeles last week: I went to Tommy's for a chili burger. Mmm mmm good.

When I was in college, we’d go to Tommy's at 3 a.m. after a long night of studying or partying or football or any of those other things that not-quite-adults do to excess.

Two things are special about Tommy's. One is the burger itself, topped with a thick tomato slice and lots of dill pickles and chili. No beans, no big pieces of meat but a sauce that is more like a condiment laid on thick. It's not spicy-hot but is laced with cumin and adds plenty of flavor. There's no point in going to Tommy's if you're not going to have the chili, which is also served on Tommy's hot dogs, enchiladas, breakfast burrito and of course the chili cheese fries.

The second is the ambiance of the original Tommy's, which opened in a shack in 1946 in a not-great neighborhood near downtown and is open 24/7. There is no seating, just a couple counters where people eat standing up.

After college, I used to make the trek to Tommy's every time I visited L.A. But as my friends and family spread further into the suburbs, Tommy's became more and more out of the way. All of a sudden, 15 years had gone by since I'd last been to Tommy's.

A few months ago, my dad, who now lives 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, mentioned that he'd had a burger from the Tommy's near his house.  What? When did this happen? There's a Tommy's in San Bernardino County? In fact, I learned, Tommy's now has 33 locations in Southern California and in and around Las Vegas.

Going to a new Tommy's felt a little like sacrilege. It was in a shiny new place with a drive-through — no old shack, no outdoor counters, no long line snaking around the kitchen, with people watching burgers being assembled to order. But the burger was as good as it ever was, the sweetness of the tomato, the tang of the pickles, the mellowing influence of the cheese, and the chili blessing it all.

Here’s info on Tommy’s.

Seabourn Quest luxury cruise ship arrives in Fort Lauderdale

The Seabourn Quest, the only new ship arriving in South Florida for the 2011-2012 season, sailed into Fort Lauderdale Monday for inaugural festivities and will embark on its first Caribbean cruise Wednesday.

The ship, the last of the luxury line's three new 225-suite vessels, made its maiden cruise from Barcelona in June and spent the summer and early fall doing European cruises, so the festivities at Port Everglades were relatively modest. Even so, it’s hard to beat a flute of champagne on the pool deck of a cruise ship – any ship, but a luxury ship even more so – on a warm (77 degrees) Florida evening. Back in Seattle, Seabourn’s corporate headquarters, the temperature was 45 degrees.

Noteworthy guest: Heat President Pat Riley, who has some time on his hands right now, accompanied his boss, Micky Arison, chairman and CEO of Carnival Corp., Seabourn's parent company, and majority owner of the Miami Heat. Dinner was a six-course tasting menu that started with tuna tartar with Malossol caviar and lemon sabayon and ended with a Napolean of berries and vanilla custard cream.

Seabourn Quest's vital statistics: 65 feet long, 84 feet wide, 11 decks, capacity 450 guests. Except for some of the art, it is nearly identical to the two other ships in its class, the Seabourn Odyssey and Seabourn Sojourn. But they are beautiful ships, with striking architectural details like the spiral staircase and Observation Bar pictured here, and all-suite staterooms, most with verandas.

After its Caribbean cruises, the ship will sail a 109-day world cruise out of Fort Lauderdale starting on Jan. 5, with the first leg to Cape Town, South Africa.

For information, click here.

Photos, starting from the top: the Observation Bar; verandah stateroom; spiral staircase, looking down; "Too Too Far," by Peter Clark, one of the original pieces of art on the Seabourn Quest.

Asia road trip: I wish!

Who makes me jealous? My friend Georgia Tasker does. Georgia, former gardening writer for The Miami Herald who is now at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, is on a six-week trip through India, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan. Now THAT is a road trip! I was envious when she told me about her itinerary, but now that she is posting gorgeous photos from the trip on her Fairchild blog, I am as green as anything in that garden.

In Utah, Colorado, California, western Canada, many ski resorts open early

For those of you who can stay upright on skis -- a subset that does not include me -- heavy snow allowed a number of western resorts to open in the last few days, a week before their official opening was scheduled. Most have only a limited number of runs and lifts open, which usually means discounted lift tickets.

Among the newly opened resorts:

Utah: Snowbird, Alta, Park City and Brian Head. Solitude and Brighton had opened earlier.

Colorado: Vail, Snowmass, Breckenridge. Already open: Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, Wolf Creek, Copper Mountain and Keystone

California: Heavenly opened this weekend; also open are Mammoth and Northstar.

Canada: Whistler Mountain opened Friday. Sunshine Village and Lake Louise also opened early.

Those are just the highlights. Look here for detailed reports on dozens of North American resorts.

Don't look for me on the slopes. I'll be the one in the bar with a book and hot buttered rum.

Top photo: A snowboarder at Whistler (Credit: coastphoto.com). At right: Snowcat at Jackson Hole, which is preparing to open Nov. 26 (Credit: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort).