Jeromakazi's "FRZNRED" ED adventure... Finished updating

[Jeromakazi]

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Intro
I would first like to thank my loving wife for letting me get the car of my dreams and allowing me to go Europe with 3 of my closest friends while she stays home taking care of my 2 rambunctious boys. I promise not to get the loudest, most annoying exhaust in the market (crossing fingers).

I would also like to thank the bimmerpost community for educating me on: Negotiating ED, vehicle options, ED destinations, etc. Special thanks to Bluex, OneYourLeft, FrozenM4, and Powaup for answering all the questions I had regarding the car and the ED trip.

I’ve heard that the 8-10 week wait is brutal, thus I will work on this thread to reduce the torture. I will start a Build thread around the holidays.
1. Car
2. Itinerary
3. Flight to Munich
4. Oktoberfest
5. BMW Welt
6. Nurburgring
7. Cologne/Frankfurt
8. Heidelberg
9. Stuttgart
10. Zurich
11. Fussen
12. Munich
13. Lessons learned
Before I start boring you with the ED trip, let me post some pics.

Saw a glimpse at the Premium lounge. I was speechless!


Profile


Paint code. Sorry it came out blurry


Official BMW photo


Love the fenders


Front

PSS!


At the Ring

Trackside


Castle shot

[Jeromakazi]

Car Info
I began looking for a 1/3 life crisis car around April of this year. I narrowed it down to C63 AMG and the M3/M4. One May afternoon, I test drove both of them back to back. The C63 507 Edition (2015 model) felt sluggish. The shifting felt slow and the rear tires were too skinny to tame the 507 hp under the hood. The m4 was a lot more fun to drive, I was able to mash it without worrying about losing traction.




The first car I made with the configurator was a stripped down M4, I don’t need all those gadgets, I said to myself. After finding out the m4 was only a 4 seater, I changed my mind to a M3. I have two boys with a remote possibility of a third kid, that M4 wouldn’t be practical.


Now the color, I’ve always been a fan of matte cars. In 2013 when I was helping a friend shop for cars, I fell in love with a matte white E class. It just looked so different, yet so classy.



One Monday during this summer, I found out the BMW SF actually was selling a frozen red M3. I had to see it that day, I couldn’t wait till the weekend since it might get sold. The color looks great, but it didn't knock off my feet, but it still ranked top 5 for sure. A week later someone watched Gone in 60 seconds too many times and destroyed this car.






After intense negotiations between friends, I called my dealer and asked if I could get Frozen Blue. I haven’t seen this car on the F8X platform and I would have loved to create a post saying “1st Frozen Blue F80”. A couple days later my SA said it was denied by BMWNA, there’s goes that dream.

Late June, I pulled the trigger and put a deposit down on an M3 with the following options. The options I chose was mostly based on the opinions expressed in this forum. The one option I wish I checked was CCB, every time I see gold brake caliper, I get a lil jelly inside. I can see upgrading to Brembo’s or Stoptech’s in the near future.



Itinerary
Here’s my itinerary. It was aggressive, but at least the drive times were reasonable.

[Jeromakazi]

Flight to Munich

I decided to arrive in Germany a day before the pickup to enjoy Oktoberfest and to lessen the risk of missing the car delivery due to flight delays. I chose an Air Canada flight that left SFO for Toronto at 7:30 am + 5.5 hour layover and would arrive in Munich 10:05 am. There was a later flight to Toronto but only had a lli over an hour layover. I heard from my co-workers that Toronto Intl. was like O’Hare but north of the border, so we decided to wait out the 5+ hours and be risk averse.

Terminal 1 was fairly small, we were able to tour the shops in 30 mins. We headed over the Plaza Premium Lounge at around 4pm (EST) for some food and relaxation. I was able to use my corporate Diner’s club card to get in, and paid about $30 ea for my “bros” to enter.


The bottles were 75% when we got there!


After 4+ hours of chillaxing, we left the lounge full, relaxed, and a lil tipsy.



Time to sleep for the 10+ hour flight.



Nice Boeing 787 feature


Rhine river?


We left the carousel and customs to a sea of suits holding Ipads or pieces of paper with people’s name but mine. After a few minutes of walking around our Sixt driver finally arrived short of breath. I was expecting a 7 series but got a nice MB van instead. I wouldn’t mind being a soccer dad with this van.



Bayern Stadium




Munich Accommodations
We stayed in Courtyard Marriot located blocks from Oktoberfest. The cost was € 500 a night, we booked two rooms for two nights. Currently a room cost about € 125 a night, that's a huge markup! You could find rooms for € 300 a night during Oktoberfest, but it would require a taxi or a 20-30 minute subway ride. Since we didn’t trust taxis and was afraid of navigating the subway drunk, we chose this hotel since the Oktoberfest tents were a 10 minute walk away. Was it worth it? I don’t think it was since Munich did offer Uber service which was very cheap.








Day 1: Oktoberfest

We ventured out for Oktoberfest around 2 pm. I would describe Oktoberfest as a state fare on steroids, actually on a LOT of beer. Tents and tents everywhere. Lot of cleavage from the ladies wearing Dirndl young, old, and very old. Also a lot of loud drunk, yet peaceful, Europeans. Getting a seat inside the tent is the ideal way, but those are hard to come by. Reservations are taken the year prior or you can snag a seat when the tents open. The atmosphere inside the tents was out of this world. I never seen so many drunk people. I’m not sure if it’s worth getting there early and staying there for most of the day. We found a table outside on of the tents, enjoying our € 20 Liter of beer, huge pretzel, and a rotisserie chicken. We left the tents after a couple of hours, I needed a nap.











After an hour or so nap, we hit Oktoberfest again. The peaceful drunks now became a lil more aggressive, and somehow louder. After a lap around the tents and a stop at the souvenirs shops we called it a night. I didn’t want to miss my pickup window.

[Jeromakazi]

Welt Pickup

7:00 – Uber ride to BMW Welt

7:15 – Took pics outside of BMW Welt




7:30 – Toured inside BMW Welt. Best time to go, we had the place to ourselves, minus the security guards














8:15 – Took escalator to Premium Lounge




8:20 – Moved pickup time from 9:40 to 9:00





8:45 – Finished paperwork and ate as fast as I can







9:00 – Walked down the “stairway to heaven” (shouldn’t it be going up?)

10:30 – Took 3 victory laps

10:35 – Valeted the car

10:40 – Got keychain engraved and picked up 2 safety vests

10:40 – Back to Premium lounge for a non-rushed breakfast

11:15 – Back to the gift shop

11:30 – Went on Factory tour. One of the best tours I’ve been on, a threat for all the senses.

1:30 – Back to the Premium lounge for Lunch

2:30 – Went to the BMW Museum











3:15 – Back to the Premium lounge for drinks LOL




4:00 – Took car pics outside BMW Welt




4:30 – Drove back to the hotel. Timed it wrong, we hit rush hour traffic
5:15 – Parked
6:45 – Walked to Marienplatz
7:00 – Tried to pick up watch from Bucherer but was closed
7:15 – Took pics of center square





7:30 – Ate at Ratskeller which located on the right side of the famous town hall.

[Jeromakazi]

Nurburgring
Left Munich at 5:00 am for the 6+ hour trip to Nurburgring with little to no sleep. The festivities at Oktoberfest closes at midnight, thus all the drunk bastards are hollering down the street (one negative for staying close to the tents). I was somewhat worried about my car, even though it was nicely tucked in a garage next door. For those staying at Courtyard, do not park your car in Hotel Cristal’s parking lot, the ride up the ramp increased my blood pressure to new heights.
The trip was Nurburgring felt like my trips to LA, empty roads and high speeds. Being still in break-in mode, I limited myself to 100 mph and no WOT. We stopped by McD’s for a quick bite halfway through the trip. I took a quick Iphone pic of the car in the sunlight. Little did I know, this is the last time she saw sun in Germany.



We booked two rooms at the Linder Congress Hotel which is located by turn 1 of the GP course. The room cost about €200 a night per room, the parking fee was €15 a night. The parking lot felt like a mini car show.















Love the plates on this one.





We finished checking in around 2:00, missing the start of the VLN race by a couple of hours. VLN race series is mixture of amateurs and professionals racing sports cars ranging from Scions to GT3s. It’s also an endurance race, so being late meant we only missed the opportunity to walk down the pits pre-race.
Of all the cars there, the Lexus RC-F sounded the meanest.








Taking a couple for the road






That night we ate at Pizzaria Pisteklause, an Italian restaurant the Drive host ate during their stay in Germany. The Argentinian steak was delicious. Sorry for the bad pic.

[

When I first planned the trip, I really wanted to run drive my car around the ring, both of my friends who did ED raved about the experience. I wanted to take a Taxi around the track to get a better feel of the track, to judge if I had enough huevos to drive my car around the Green Hell . Countless laps on Gran Turismo was not able to simulate this feeling of fear since I wasn’t able to press start/re-start race when The next day we got drove to RSR to check out what Taxi’s they had. For my birthday present my friends paid for my taxi ride, Nissan GT-R. Another friend chose the Corvette, and the other two shared an E92. It started to sprinkle when we got to the track, which sealed the deal for me for not take my car out there. The track is scary enough dry, adding a wet track was near suicide for someone who just got their car a mere 48 hours earlier. I wasn’t able to check off this bucket list, but at least means another trip to Germany is in the works.

Local guy took at nice pic of my car.

[Jeromakazi]

Koln
Cologne (Koln) is about an hour way from Nurburging. The main attraction of the city is the Cathedral. If you have a couple of hours to spare, it’s definitely worth the trip.



Frankfurt
After a couple of hour driving around the heavily forested German foothills, we came upon the modern Oasis known as Frankfurt. There’s really not much to see here, it was a convenient place to stop and recharge after a hectic 4 days. We stayed at Hotel Kempinski which by far was the best hotel we stayed at. A night here only cost us $125, which was actually the cheapest accommodations we booked.

They also let me park in front by their Maserati.



We ate dinner downtown. The meal was also fairly cheap, the plate below cost about $50 which fed 3 people.




Heidelburg
We left Frankfurt pretty late, so we decided to skip Heidelburg. On our way to Stuttgart we realized that the BMW and Porsche museums were closed on Mondays, just like BMW’s. We back tracked for a few miles and got on the freeway for Heidelburg.















Stuttgart

If you’re a Mercedes Benz guy, Stuttgart will be Paradise for you. It felt more MB than Porsche during my visit. We stayed at the V8 hotel which had its own museum of classic cars. The car motif was also prevelant in the hotel rooms. One my friends thought it was tacky, while the other one loved it.









View from my room


V8 Museum









MB Museum

[Jeromakazi]

Zurich

All the things people say about Zurich in this forum is true, it’s expensive, expensive, and expensive. We spent an hour circling the city trying to get to our Hotel. Perfect timing for the USB Navi to crash. Only 3-4 cars were able to cross on each green light which made me wonder why I chose to get a manual. Well at least the chocolate here was as good as advertised.





Fussen

The drive from Zurich to Fussen took about 2 hours. I couldn’t wait to get back on the on the Autobahn. We got to Caste Neuschwanstein at around 2:30 pm. There was barely a line at the ticket office, most likely due to being a weekday. We got the second to the last English tour at 4:45. We were gonna grab a quick lunch but the lady at the counter suggested to take the bus right away. The bus runs every 20 or so minutes, which on a busy day could take hours. It is possible to walk up to the castle, but we were lazy. We killed time eating at the foot of the castle, 5 Euros for a burger and a soda was a great deal. Enjoy the pics.













We stayed at Hotel Richti in Fussen. This was the first time we stayed at the local inn instead of one of the major hotel chains. The hotel is about 15 mins from the castle and about 5 mins from downtown Fussen. There were a lot of tourist in Fussen, so we decided to eat in. The lady who checked us in was also our waitress, this was no Marriot/Hilton but we weren’t complaining.

[Jeromakazi]

Munich airport
Fussen to Munich took about 2-3 hours through gorgeous countryside. We drove to BMW Welt for a quick bite at the Premier Lounge, I’d bet I can still use my card today. I managed to get a free parking pass from the check-in desk at the lounge (Score). After buying more souvenirs, we took the train to Marinplatz to get my free stop watch. The fair was about 3 Euros each and it took about 20 mins to get to the town square. After picking up the watch we shopped a lil more and then headed back to BMW Welt.
After getting a couple of more drinks at the lounge, we booked it to the airport. We stopped by Agip for a quick wash, vacuum, and fill prior to dropping off the car. For those dropping off at Munich, I suggest staying at the Hilton by the airport. The drop off spot is about a minute walk from the hotel lobby. The terminals are 15 minutes from your hotel door. Also beware of the buffet at the Hilton, they charged me 11 Euros for 1.5 L of water, beer would have been a lot cheaper.





2 SO and one FR







Ireland

I also stopped by Ireland to visit our Cork Facility. This was the first time in my life when I dreaded driving. The next picture should tell you why.













Lessons Learned

1. Test fit your suitcases before your flight. I had to buy a luggage a couple of days before the trip when I found out that our big luggage would not fit in the trunk.
2. Bring a coin purse, at the end of the trip, I had about 30 Euros in coins
3. Pack light = more room for souvenirs
4. If your Navi craps out on you, leave the car for 10 minutes. The system should reboot itself.
5. When turning right in Ireland, make sure you look right not just left.
6. If you bring a power strip that has a built in surge protector, make sure its rated appropriately. I blew mine at our first hotel room
7. Bring multiple power adapters. We only had 2 between the 4 of us
8. On your first day, find the nearest grocery store and stock up on snacks and drinks
9. Make sure you have small bills for tips
10. Beer is cheaper than water.

[rekkk]

Very cool! How much is the total trip+car?

[Jeromakazi]

Originally Posted by rekkk

Very cool! How much is the total trip+car?

My goal was to spend less on the trip than what I saved on ED. The Trip cost about $3100, $1500 for airfare. $1100 on hotels, and $500 on food. The trip was from 9/30-10/10.

[Deja_Vu]

God I love the frozen colors. Can't wait to read about your trip.

Originally Posted by Jeromakazi

My goal was to spend less on the trip than what I saved on ED. The Trip cost about $3100, $1500 for airfare. $1100 on hotels, and $500 on food. The trip was from 9/30-10/10.

That's about what I spent for both my wife and I on our trip. I don't see why someone wouldn't pick ED when buying a BMW. Even if it was a wash, it's basically a free trip.

[GOLFFRR]

can't wait for more pics when you get to them, first impressions is that color looks amazing! congrats!

[catch]

great looking colour!

[mike@x-ph.com]

Looking forward for more updates

Originally Posted by Deja_Vu

I don't see why someone wouldn't pick ED when buying a BMW. Even if it was a wash, it's basically a free trip.

Some people dont have the luxury to take 10 days off

[Deja_Vu]

Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com

Looking forward for more updates



Some people dont have the luxury to take 10 days off

True enough. Though if you really wanted to save a few grand you could always just fly out there, take delivery, drop off, and fly back. Would cost you flight + food.

[Mark's M]

That is a truly stunning colour, waiting for the rest of the pics. And congrats!!

[Kr3st]

Originally Posted by Deja_Vu

I don't see why someone wouldn't pick ED when buying a BMW. Even if it was a wash, it's basically a free trip.

Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com

Some people dont have the luxury to take 10 days off

This! I wish I could of. I'm actually kicking myself for not doing it.

[Jeromakazi]

Originally Posted by GOLFFRR

can't wait for more pics when you get to them, first impressions is that color looks amazing! congrats!

Car arrives in Port Hueneme 11/11. Hopefully it wont take long in customs and VPC.

Originally Posted by catch

great looking colour!

Thanks, for some reason it looks better than SF BMW’s frozen red M3 I saw last summer.

Originally Posted by Mark's M

That is a truly stunning colour, waiting for the rest of the pics. And congrats!!

I have a few more pics and videos that I’m processing. Editing video is 1000% harder than pictures.

Originally Posted by Kr3st

This! I wish I could of. I'm actually kicking myself for not doing it.

What’s stopping you from doing ED on your next BMW purchase?

[shigeru]

Congratulations and that color is gorgeous!

[supremepower]

Congrats! That color choice is beautiful!

Can't wait for more pics.

[Kr3st]

Originally Posted by Jeromakazi

What’s stopping you from doing ED on your next BMW purchase?

Absolutely nothing. I will 100% do ED on my next ride!

[idocm4]

Sick color! Congrats!