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New Year's Nightmares
The Travel Critic · November 8, 1999

When I heard about FAA chief Jane Garvey's Y2K publicity-stunt flight from Washington to San Francisco, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't one of the reporters booked to go along.

Take a long transcontinental flight with a cabin full of other journalists, throw in a mandatory stopover at Dallas/Fort Worth and the chance that wherever we land could be paralyzed by a Y2K computer blackout, and you end up with the New Year's Eve from Hell.

Guess I'm not the only one who didn't think it sounded fun - American Airlines had to reschedule the flight because of low bookings. The whole reshuffling affair got me thinking: Where else, besides an airplane, would I not want to be at the turn of the millennium?

The pressure to go somewhere is immense. "You have two powerful motivators: Fear and guilt," explains Anthony Mora, the Los Angeles-based author of The Alchemy of Success: How to Utilize the Media. "There's the fear that this could be Armageddon, so go somewhere safe, like a hotel. And guilt - that this comes along only once in a thousand years, and you should do something special."

I can take the guilt. In addition to not flying cross country Dec. 31, here's a list of other things I won't be doing:

Cruising "Back to the Future." Leave it to Royal Caribbean to figure out a way to stage two New Year's parties. How so? By having one of its ships, the Legend of the Seas, cross the date line near New Zealand twice. "It's almost a movie plot," says Jim Antista, a k a The Cruise Man, a Garner, N.C., cruise agent."On Dec. 31, its 'Royal Journeys' cruise will cross the international date line - and then they'll go back and cross again. They're going to play with your mind and go from one millennium to the next and back. It's time travel."

Well, kind of. My problem isn't the two New Year's fetes, but the fact that out there in the middle of the Pacific, there's nothing to look at and nothing to do except hit the all-you-can-eat buffet and the roulette tables. I'd prefer dry land, thanks very much.

Watching the ball drop in Times Square. Every year it's pretty much the same thing. A million or so people - most of them tourists - squeeze into a few Manhattan city blocks to count down the New Year. This time, the ball will be bigger and flashier, and there's gonna be lots more people. Oh, and it'll be cold, too.

Reason to avoid the Big Apple around the 31st? Clearly. But for every one of us travelers who know better, there's another one who will say, "Oh, come on, let's go! We can tell our grandkids we were there for the millennium." To which I say, go for it.

Shelling out major dollars. Just because it's the millennium, suppliers think we've temporarily lost our common sense. Would I spend $500 a person to attend the Beverly Hills Hotel's Millennium Celebration Gala on Dec. 31, where guests will, among other things, enjoy a six-course Dom Perignon champagne dinner? No, thanks. Would I plunk down $4,250 per couple to attend the Grove Park Inn's three-day Grand Millennium Celebration in Asheville, N.C.? Sorry. Would I blow $39,800 for a charter flight on the Concorde in order to experience New Year's in Paris, New York and then Kamuela, Hawaii? Not in a thousand years.

So, you may ask, where will you be this New Years? Not to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but I'm not leaving Annapolis. If it's Armageddon, I want to be right here with a good supply of batteries, bottled water and beer, with a front-row seat to the end of the world.

If not, then at least I get to relax while those of you who didn't heed my advice fight your way home on the first day of 2000.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.