Well Friday night we packed up the kids in my wifes 2006 Hyundai Santa Fe and began our road trip out to Pittsburgh. We decided to stay in a little town called Bedford which is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house. Between a late start and the numerous downpours we didn't get into Bedford until about 11:30pm Friday. Saturday morning was a much easier 1 1/2 hour drive to the dealership and everything went smoothly. It was by far the easiest, most satisfying experience ever at a dealership. We got the Entourage from Power of Bowser outside Pittsburgh (and so far they get two thumbs up from me). Then after signing on the dotted line, we took our new (used) 2008 Entourage up to the Children's museum of Pittsburgh where our kids had a great time. After the museum we went to the Hard Rock cafe for dinner, where we felt a little out of place because almost everyone was wearing Steelers jerseys (and we're big Eagles fans). Apparently there was a preseason game Saturday night. After dinner, we started our 2 hour drive back to the hotel and sat up and watched a movie in the room. Then Sunday morning we got up and drove past Fort Bedford and Old Bedford Village. After that we took a little drive to a spot called Gravity Hill. Its this little country road where water runs up hill and if you put your car in neutral it rolls uphill. It was pretty crazy. Both my wife and I felt a little weird standing there. Definitely something weird is going on there. Then we took a 1 1/2 hour drive north to go see Penns Cave. We took a nice boat ride tour through the cave. After that we started our 3 1/2 hour ride back home. Overall it was a fun road trip and the van handled and drove great. It was definitely a pleasure to drive!

Now a little more about the Entourage. It is a 2008 Entourage Limited with the DVD/sunroof package. The color is Green Meadow Gray with the gray leather interior. We have dual power sliding doors, a power rear tailgate, backup warning sensors, Infinity stereo system, dual automatic climate control for the front (which is great cuz I'm always hot and my wife is cold), separate rear temp controls that we can either control or switch to let the kids adjust when they get a little older, heated seats, dvd player, sunroof, alloy wheels, power pedals, mirrors and seats with memory settings, etc. Basically everything and then some! It technically has a used title as it was sold at auction from a dealership that went out of business in Georgia. However, since it is a certified pre-owned model, we still get the powertrain coverage to 100k miles. It had 200 miles on it when we picked it up and now has a couple hundred more after our roadtrip. My only complaint is that I already miss driving it! Well here are some pics of the road trip and various stops along the way!

Childrens Museum and Hard Rock:

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Sunday Morning in Bedford:

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Gravity Hill:
We started here in neutral:

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And coasted to the end (uphill) here:

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Penns Cave visit:
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Misc. Pics on the road

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Hey Alex, love the story and pics... Is your daughter sitting in a Britax car seat? It looks like the ones my kids have, we have 3 and they all have the same seat..

Funny, I think I actually drove your car! LoL It was the same color with grey leather and 200 some miles..You dont have to worry, i went over it with a fine tooth comb.. I reved it up to 6k RPM's and dropped it in Reverse.. I then sped up to about 70 MPH and slammed ont eh breaks forcing the ABS to kick in.. I then took it behind the dealer throught the winding roads and and just flogged it.. The sales man was a little nervous..

We almost bought it after all that but my wife liked the blue one.. Arent they nice?? They ride like nothing else I have had.. Have you tried the surround sound? Put on a nice song or DVD and then hit the surround sound button, its the last option when adjusting the bass, trebble, etc etc..

Glad you like it, wait till you wash it and you will see how nice they look all clean with the tires armor-alled..

By the way, Im pulling your chain, i did drive it but was very carful so you dont have to worry about me beating on your van..

P.S. We orderd personalized plates: 4Rbeans... cant wait to get them in.. Also Im looking into chrome Entourage wheels, tinting the front windows and adding HID headlights..we will see.. here is the link to the wheels.

Chrome 17 Entourage wheels.. they look sweet..

We will see. Congrats ALEX!!!!!!!

^^^ hahaha, you had me going there for a second (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grin.gif) . . . Those chrome wheels are really nice and with the other chrome exterior accents would look pretty sweet. I haven't played too much with the stereo, but I will say when we put in a DVD and had it play through the speakers while we were getting the headphones set up it sounded pretty sweet. I'll have to check out the surround sound. And yes my daughter is in a Britax (marathon to be exact) car seat. It was definitely worth the trip out there. Heck for the price we could have either gotten a used Honda or Toyota with 30-40k miles, or a brand new Entourage. . . Hmm wasn't exaclty a tough decision (IMG:style_emoticons/default/banana.gif)

Glad I looked into Bowser more after seeing your topic. It definitely seems like the pieces fell into place nicely!

Congrats... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)
Nice pix and lovely kids you have there... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

Ahaha, I told my wife what i wrote on the form and she laughed... yeah im trying to get those wheels for my wife as a surprise..if i get them i will deff post pics.

my kids are still small, 2, 4 and 7 year old.. My 7 year old has special needs so none of my kids are into the headphones or antyhing.. they watch Dora, Diego, Blues Clues, spider man, Elmo and Cars..

Yeah i looked at the new Honda's and they were 43k!!!! Could you imagine.. and I paid 22k or something, I mean yeah the honda's are nice but not 20k dollars worth of nice..

Im trying to decide if tinted front window would look good?? Thoughts?

I would think tinted front windows would look good. Not sure how anal cops are where you live though? I have my Sonata tinted 20% around and so far (*knock on wood*) haven't had any problems with cops. I can't imagine cops profiling a mini-van either! IMO if I were to tint them, I would probably get 20% on the front. Anything less and it would look really light compared to the tinted rear windows.

On a side note, what color are your pinstripes? I saw another south pacific blue that they had on the lot and I wasn't really fond of the pinstripe color. It appeared to be a goldish brown, which would sound like it would match nicely, but for some reason I just thought it stood out too much for the van. I only drove by it, so I didn't stop and stare, but just curious.

Alex,

can you tell me what the sticker price was and what you ended up paying? I am looking for the same model and I am curious about what discount to expect when negotiating. Thanks

The list price was $25,973 which is what we "paid" for it (sticker or MSRP was like $34k or something new). I put that in quotes because we got a pretty good trade in value for my wifes car. We had it appraised at several dealerships and the values we were being given were consistently coming in around 9k which is what KBB said for our car in good condition. We got 10,500 as a trade. From looking around for the past few months for one, that was about the best deal I saw. Plus we got the exact color we wanted, every feature available, and floor mats. The dealership was easy to work with and they didn't try to screw us over at all (which was important as we took a 5 hour drive to get there). I would definitely buy from Bowser again without a second thought. They get two thumbs up from me!

I'm pretty sure 4Rbeans paid the same price (from the same dealership) and got a $4k or so trade for his old van. I'm not sure what his trade was really worth though.

This post has been edited by alex2006sonata: Sep 17 2009, 11:14 PM