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Publication: USA Today [US]
Perhaps you're too busy plotting this summer's vacation to worry about where you'll commemorate the dawn of the next millennium. But consider this sobering news: With 999 days still to go before the biggest bash in history, Disney World's 27 hotels already report "no general availability" for Dec. 31, 1999. Crystal Cruises, one of several lines hawking millennium cruises, has enough wait-listed passengers to fill its ships two times over. Maupintour's "once in a lifetime" millennium tours to Kenya and Egypt, announced two months ago, have sold out, too. Even St. John's, Newfoundland - not a destination one normally associates with hordes of winter tourists - is tightening up. More than a quarter of the rooms at the local Holiday Inn are already booked, thanks to the northeastern Canadian town's vantage point as the first North American city to greet the new age. Never mind that since there's no year zero in the Gregorian calendar, the 21st century doesn't actually start until Jan. 1, 2001. Or that many of the eager beavers who've snapped up spaces on Abercrombie & Kent's "Thousand and One Nights" Morocco trip and at Manhattan's Rainbow Room may bow out long before the big event. "There's a lot of power in those zeroes, (and) a lot of people are saying, 'I want to be somewhere memorable' " when the clock strikes midnight for the first time in the year 2000, says Edward McNally of the Washington, D.C.-based Millennium Society. The group is hosting simultaneous shindigs at such locations as Egypt's Great Pyramid of Cheops, China's Great Wall, Japan's Mount Fuji and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Indeed, in a recent survey of just over 1,000 visitors to Everything2000, a Web site that bills itself as a "one-stop resource to prepare for the millennium," international travel topped a list of 20 ways people plan to celebrate. (Least popular option: Watching a movie at home, followed closely by sleeping.) But just because you haven't plunked down a $500 deposit for a maharajah's banquet at the TajMahal doesn't mean you're relegated to a video and bowl of popcorn in the family room. Most travel companies and city visitor bureaus are still mulling their millennium options - and so are their customers. "It's all pretty iffy. The cruise lines are taking deposits, but they still don't know where they're going or how much it will cost," says Cruise Week editor Mike Driscoll, who plans to ring in the millennium at California's Death Valley. "There is a huge myth that New York City is sold out (for New Year's Eve 1999), but I don't know of any hotels that have even started a waiting list," adds Jennifer McGuire, spokeswoman for the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. That said, the Big Apple is making big plans. In Times Square, where a Sunday parade kicked off a 1,000-day countdown to the millennium, a bank of giant TV screens will broadcast live New Year's Eve celebrations from each of the world's 24 time zones. The city's cavernous Jacob Javits Convention Center will host "the world's largest New Year's Eve party" with fireworks over the Hudson River. To keep would-be revelers in the loop, the visitors bureau promises to send a periodic list of restaurants, hotels and attractions accepting millennium reservations. Cost for this year's updates: 2,000 pennies ($20). New York's chief rival in the party hearty sweepstakes is adapting a more laid-back approach. "I know there will be something incredible," assures Rob Powers of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau, "but I just don't know what it will be." At Circus Circus Enterprises, whose six Las Vegas hotels represent about 15% of the city's 101,500 rooms, "my sense is there aren't many people beating down the doors for (millennium) reservations," says spokeswoman Sarah Ralston. Adds Ralston: "We're still trying to top ourselves from last New Year's Eve," when the company blew up its Hacienda Hotel & Casino at the stroke of midnight; the famed Las Vegas Strip was jammed with 400,000 revelers. In the South Pacific, meanwhile, Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga and Kiribati are vying for bragging rights as the first destinations to greet the new millennium. Particularly ambitious is Tonga, where a Tonga 2000 Project promises a "world sand castle-building contest" and "the biggest beach party ever." Rhapsodizes tourism spokesman Peter Davidson: "I'd like you to imagine thousands of schoolchildren lining the shoreline, all simultaneously lighting their coconut sheath torches on the stroke of midnight . . . (and) massed traditional Tongan dancing displays involving countless people." One small catch: All 700 of the island nation's hotel rooms are booked, thanks to an enterprising English tour operator who arrived several years ago, hefty deposits in hand. Which isn't to say those Tongan dancers and coconut sheath torches are out of reach. "A lot of things can happen in two years," explains Ralph Cesena of Vagabond Cruise & Travel, a Stockton, Calif., travel agency that peddles several millennium tours on its Web site. "People get divorced. They die. They get poor." Tracking travel options for the big bash The countdown may be under way, but it's not too late to plan a millennium voyage. Most hotels and airlines won't take reservations until 1998, and companies already accepting bookings say cancellations are probable and itineraries and prices could change. For a well-researched list of events, check out the Everything2000 Web site at http://www.everything2000.com. A sampling:
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