BUFFALO, N.Y. — The NFL's regular season is over — the postseason begins this coming weekend — and your Buffalo Bills are first up on Wild Card weekend as they take on the Houston Texans Saturday afternoon.
Bills Mafia are a breed known to travel well. Who knows, Saturday could feel like a home game only in a dome.
On this Monday before Wild Card weekend, Bills fans who are Texas bound are feeling pretty good.
"Looking forward to it and it should be a good time," said Brian Grove who's from Eden and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's heading to Houston with friends.
He got his ticket and booked his flight Sunday.
"I booked everything actually before the game, little bit of chance that we could've ended up going to Kansas City but it's just easier to book a little bit ahead of time and the prices weren't too bad," Grove said.
He says he spent about $350 for his flight early Saturday morning out of Charlotte, that's a bargain considering the prices out of Buffalo.
"Right now if we can get it around $800 that will be okay," said Chuck Teal, the owner of Teal Travel in Pendleton.
Teal Travel has been very busy selling travel packages for the Bills-Texans game. When we spoke to Teal Monday afternoon, he was almost sold out.
"I think like 100 dollars you can get tickets, so the tickets aren't the issue, the hotels aren't the issue, the airfare is the issue," Teal said. "So, it's just drying up as we speak hour by hour. We're at the point now that there are double connections the one single connection flights are pretty much dried up there are some flights that are halfway decent price wise but you're going to make two stops."
"The good news is with hotels there are some really good rates out there right now," said Elizabeth Carey, the director of public relations for AAA of Western and Central New York.
If you choose to drive instead of fly, Carey said it will take you 22 hours to drive the 1,500 miles to Houston and would be significantly cheaper.
"In a 2015 Ford Escape, a typical car, it’ll cost you about $130 in gas," she said.
There's no doubt fans this year have had more time to think about their plans for the playoffs than they did a couple years ago, when Andy Dalton and the Bengals in their season finale gave the Bills the exact type of help Buffalo needed to get into the postseason.
This year...
"I think there's more of a confidence factor with this one as you talk to everybody they're like where's the next trip," Teal said.
If the Bills win, they could end up playing either Baltimore or Kansas City on the road in the divisional round.
Teal Travel says a lot of fans are looking outside of Buffalo, in Rochester, Pittsburgh and Cleveland for flights to get to Houston.