Need a word for it?

February 5, 2012 9:32 AM

The Lonely Planet has come up with a list of thirty travel terms that aren't in the dictionary.
posted by gman (70 comments total)

below see level prep.

When you’re seated directly below the drop-down movie screen on an airplane and the other screens are all too far away to view comfortably.

What third–rate carrier are they traveling with not to have individual screens?
posted by Jehan at 9:39 AM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well this is Lonely Planet, so in theory it should be whatever carrier gets them there for the lowest price.
posted by Mercaptan at 9:44 AM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

Travel is absurd
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 AM on February 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

What third–rate carrier are they traveling with not to have individual screens?

I flew United SFO->LHR last year; no seat-back screens.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:48 AM on February 5, 2012

Jehan: "What third–rate carrier are they traveling with not to have individual screens?"

What airline do you fly on that has individual screens? I fly three or four times a year and have never seen that.
posted by octothorpe at 9:51 AM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

JetBlue, Virgin, etc, all have individual screens.
posted by The Whelk at 9:53 AM on February 5, 2012

What third–rate carrier are they traveling with not to have individual screens?

In my experience when flying back to the States, a large percentage of the US airlines. I avoid them if at all possible; flying just about any European airline usually gets me slightly better food, free wine and drinks, hot hand towels, individual screens and just better service overall, including a anecdotally lesser chance of my luggage going missing. (I fly economy always.)
posted by romakimmy at 9:55 AM on February 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

Sadly, I have often fallen prey to "farflunk." This year I'm going to Peru, I swear!

What third–rate carrier are they traveling with not to have individual screens?


I fly all the damn time and almost never get a plane with individual screens. The most annoying thing is that JetBlue flies frequently to my most common destination, but only redeyes.
posted by lunasol at 10:02 AM on February 5, 2012

Anyone else remember Rich Hall and Sniglets?
posted by briank at 10:03 AM on February 5, 2012 [11 favorites]

It's been said before, but Cat & Girl's class and authenticity obsession must be completely exhausting. It must take her forever to order at a restaurant.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:03 AM on February 5, 2012 [5 favorites]

Lonely Planet needs to coin another term. I propose "travoidologue," for travel guides that were written without the author ever setting foot in the country he his writing about.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:05 AM on February 5, 2012 [5 favorites]

Backaract: the temporary blindness that one's rucksack has added another 2ft to one's width and will knock anyone nearby.
posted by MuffinMan at 10:05 AM on February 5, 2012

grabbagger n.
A traveler that clings like a barnacle to the baggage carousel and won’t budge until their bag appears.

So, everyone? I mean, what else do people do? Have people been secretly having fun at some secret fun place at airports, while I have been staring at the carousel?
posted by vidur at 10:06 AM on February 5, 2012 [7 favorites]

Lonely Planet needs to coin another term. I propose "travoidologue," for travel guides that were written without the author ever setting foot in the country he his writing about.

I believe the term you are looking for is "WikiTravel".
posted by vidur at 10:07 AM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

What airline do you fly on that has individual screens? I fly three or four times a year and have never seen that.

Last flight I took was with Etihad, but I've seen them on most planes since 2008, except very short flights. In fact, all of the flights were international but one inter–US which didn't have individual screens, so maybe it's more common there. Still pretty third–rate though.
posted by Jehan at 10:10 AM on February 5, 2012

Lonely Planet needs to coin another term. I propose "travoidologue," for travel guides that were written without the author ever setting foot in the country he his writing about.

Or what about a term for an up-their-own-arse travel guide author who accepts bribes to include a locale? I used to call them "pretentious assholes" myself, but I'm sure someone else can come up with a better portmanteau than my flu-fogged brain can....
posted by romakimmy at 10:15 AM on February 5, 2012

... slightly better food, free wine and drinks, hot hand towels, individual screens ...

I usually get "the opportunity to purchase" a dry turkey sandwich for $8 and a can of Budweiser for another $7 and then try to eat them on a tray table that won't go down all the way because my legs are too long.
posted by octothorpe at 10:21 AM on February 5, 2012

All of these kind of put me off the thought of traveling anymore.
posted by emjaybee at 10:21 AM on February 5, 2012

What airline do you fly on that has individual screens? I fly three or four times a year and have never seen that.

Air Canada has individual screens (with multiple movies and TV episodes to choose from) on most of their fleet now (at least on the larger planes for flights over 1-2 hours). And Air Canada kind of sucks.
posted by asnider at 10:24 AM on February 5, 2012

What's the word for having first-world problems in a third-world country?
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:27 AM on February 5, 2012 [12 favorites]

Re: TheWhelk's link and leotrotsky's comment, Cat and Girl overthinks EVERY plate of beans so you don't haveto...
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:32 AM on February 5, 2012

In 2010, the first time I flew in a while was US Airways, transatlantic; there were screens! It was awesome! I slept through so many movies on the red-eye.

Then a month later I flew US Airways, transcontinental. I had thought there would be screens - my mother, who flies a lot, said there might be. There weren't. Just fake dark blue leather. It was disappointing. Even though I know how to read. I just wanted to look at the back of that seat for six hours and be mad that it was not entertaining me.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:43 AM on February 5, 2012

Australazy - The inability of an Australian person to learn the language of the country they are traveling in. See also, United Kingdumb and United States of Americ-uhhh
posted by cloeburner at 10:49 AM on February 5, 2012

I flew Lufthansa Frankfurt - Hong Kong and they did not have individual screens. They did however have a man next to my wife who put his Guns and Ammo type magazine long enough to snore loudly most of the way.
posted by John Shaft at 10:50 AM on February 5, 2012

meddle detector n.

One skilled at predetermining who will hold up the line unnecessarily at a security checkpoint.

Yep, me, it's my own waiting-in-security-line game!

grabbagger n.
A traveler that clings like a barnacle to the baggage carousel and won’t budge until their bag appears.

So, everyone? I mean, what else do people do? Have people been secretly having fun at some secret fun place at airports, while I have been staring at the carousel?
posted by vidur at 1:06 PM on February 5 [1 favorite +] [!]

One stands back a few feet, so that others whose bags are coming 'round don't have to elbow in and then awkwardly maneuver their bags past the barnacles who won't stand back!!
posted by thinkpiece at 10:51 AM on February 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

Plasshole: A Lonely Planet travel writer that makes up annoying words.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 10:57 AM on February 5, 2012 [7 favorites]

TSAcrobatics - juggling two laptops, a coat, and your shoes without slowing down the line.

Taxicaboaster - someone who can't stop bragging about the prices they haggle for from taxi drivers.

Evianewbie - Real travelers drink the water.
posted by Nothing at 11:13 AM on February 5, 2012

Terminalabye - The sound of flight announcements at 4am when you don't board until 8.
posted by Nothing at 11:16 AM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

carbungle n.

Embarrassment caused by trying and failing to start, find reverse, or otherwise operate an unfamiliar automobile in a foreign country and having to ask someone for help.

I am proud to say that I once drove a stick-shift car from England to Wales and back. But many times when I wanted to shift, my right hand would automatically reach out and slam into the door before I could remember that the shifter was to my left. Fortunately, the foot pedals were all in the normal places.
posted by A dead Quaker at 11:23 AM on February 5, 2012

The most annoying thing is that JetBlue flies frequently to my most common destination, but only redeyes.

You kidding me? I love the redeye. After getting in the rhythm of travelling I can sleep anywhere, but pop a gravol at takeoff and you're usually good until landing. Then, all you have to do is stay awake until it's time to go to sleep at your destination and you're golden. I find it's much easier to be tired and to force myself to stay awake than it is to try to sleep when I'm not tired.
posted by jimmythefish at 11:35 AM on February 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

As a former Lonely Planet devotee ( you should see my shelf of old travel books!) am I alone in thinking that something happened in the early mid 00s that made them completely unusable and unreliable? Even the maps started to get wonky and inaccurate.
posted by The Whelk at 11:48 AM on February 5, 2012

bratpacker n.
Someone who believes they have a revolutionary system for packing luggage and insists on explaining it to anyone who will listen.

I'm a bratpacker inasmuch as I'm good a packing shit. I just don't feel the need to explain it to everyone. If you know me, you know I can pack, and so there's this unspkoen rule that it's my job to pack everything. Camping? Moving? Traveling? We all carry things down to the car, and everyone else returns to get more things, and I just stay and load/pack. It's never really discussed.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:07 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

rack rate n.

A discount on a hotel room for having a large bust.

Wait, what? Is this a thing?
posted by craichead at 12:10 PM on February 5, 2012

As a former Lonely Planet devotee ( you should see my shelf of old travel books!) am I alone in thinking that something happened in the early mid 00s that made them completely unusable and unreliable? Even the maps started to get wonky and inaccurate.

A common topic of discussion among my traveling friends. The ugly truth: Lonely Planet got old at the same rate we did. Their demographic is now 40-somethings.

What they missed is that as Lonely Planet readers we were all hip and ageless and didn't grow old. Right? RIGHT?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:13 PM on February 5, 2012

trambunctious adj.

Overly excited by riding trains, funiculars, and other forms of public transport.

Also known as usenvious. As in, if you're from the US you're totally envious.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:15 PM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

bratpacker n.
Someone who believes they have a revolutionary system for packing luggage and insists on explaining it to anyone who will listen.

Yeah, I'm with FirstMateKate. I can't help it if you poor fools haven't read OneBag, but I certainly won't be ashamed of my superior packing skills.

*defensively pets RedOxx Bag*
posted by leotrotsky at 12:20 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah for some reason the public transport in Chicago and NYC are billed as fun activities for tourists. I guess it's a novelty for some folks.
posted by bleep at 12:20 PM on February 5, 2012

As a former Lonely Planet devotee ( you should see my shelf of old travel books!) am I alone in thinking that something happened in the early mid 00s that made them completely unusable and unreliable? Even the maps started to get wonky and inaccurate.

When I began using them in the late eighties--several years after their landmark publication, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring--they were all about wearing the hippy jersey with pride. They'd touch on the higher-end hotels in, say, India (higher end being above $50 a night) with the briefest reviews, and include longwinded paragraphs on how to legally or illegally obtain drugs. The crudely penned, mildly racist illustrations provoked curious stares when the book was passed around by other passengers on Indian trains.

The page has turned on Lonely Planet.
posted by Gordion Knott at 1:07 PM on February 5, 2012

On the one hand, I'm trambunctious in the sense that I'll stubbornly refuse to rent a car while traveling in Europe. On the other hand, I'm not above sneering at the other tourists who are waiting to ride a specific streetcar in San Francisco just because of how very iconic it is, which doesn't seem very trambunctious.
posted by jepler at 1:10 PM on February 5, 2012

With apologies to This American Life:

JackassJournaling: Describing in exquisite detail to your travel companions the architecture, cultural significance and socio-economic history of whatever is in from of you despite not having a friggin' clue except what you may have read in LonelyPlanet.
posted by webhund at 1:11 PM on February 5, 2012

The Lonely Planet Encounter guides are really good. I've looked through ones for cities I know well such as London, Paris and Madrid and the recommendations are pretty close to what I'd recommend. The neighborhood division is a great way of organizing it, too.

That said, we almost never use travel books. When visiting a new city we just do research beforehand on the types of things which satisfy our very specific interests (its a long list though which includes things from Neolithic sites, medieval churches and literary sites to cheese shops and to bars selling local liqeurs), land in the city and wander aimlessly to our destinations, picking up a local map only if we happen to see one. Smartphones etc are forbidden. We've found the best things by taking that wrong turn into that alley.
posted by vacapinta at 1:45 PM on February 5, 2012

I was all geared up to snark at the Sniglit-lite overreach here until I hit this one:

egotourism n.

An approach to travel that purports to serve the local culture, environment, or further personal growth, but in reality only artificially inflates a traveler’s sense of self importance.

I've met a lot of egotourists in my day. Probably even been one from time to time. Well played, LP. And I'd add this related term:

concern trollveler n.

Someone who lectures other travellers at length on the myriad ways their actions are diluting the ecological or ethnic purity of the place they're all staying in.
posted by gompa at 1:51 PM on February 5, 2012

As a former Lonely Planet devotee ( you should see my shelf of old travel books!) am I alone in thinking that something happened in the early mid 00s that made them completely unusable and unreliable? Even the maps started to get wonky and inaccurate.

No, you're not alone in thinking that.

For a start, as others have mentioned, LP has shifted upmarket. Or rather, they've broadened their market, from the original shoestring backpacker, to include flashpackers, and then devoting equal amounts of space to the upper midrange & five star markets. More hotels & luxury experiences to cover means researchers are spread ever more thinly. Along with this, the restaurant suggestions became pathetically western-centric, mostly about where you can get OK pizza, burgers or banana pancakes. Local food only generally gets a look in at the higher end of dining.

Next up, they became obsessed with producing a guidebook for every single country, 'updated' annually, when in the past there were more regional guides, say, for the entire Middle East, Southeast Asia or Central America. Again, this increases the effort needed from researchers, as chapter-length sections have to be padded out into full books that people might think look heavy & thick enough to buy.

Then the internet stepped in, with tripadvisor or even LP's own Thorn Tree making the detail about hotels & transport connections in the hardcopy books instantly obsolete & largely redundant.

I still normally carry an LP, because the format is easy to flick through to get an overall view of a place, but mostly I'm happy just to pick up a 2nd hand copy up to 10 years old, for the background info, maps, cultural tidbits & so on. But don't get me started on the maps...jebus, they'll often put even the most prominent landmark in town on completely the wrong street, leading to hours of frustration & wasted trudging around. Better to grab whatever touristic maps you can from wherever you can find them.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:26 PM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

LP books are really hit and miss. In recent experience I've used ones that were full of up-to-date, relevant, accurate information and maps and others that were completely useless.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 2:52 PM on February 5, 2012

I would say the vast majority of intra-US flights do not have seat-back screens, sadly. United/Continental, AA, and SW do not have them in nearly any planes, for example, and they have close to half of US market share. I don't fly Delta very much, but I don't think they have 'em either.

The only place I have run into seat-back screens on a US flight is Jet Blue. They have less than 5% of the market.
posted by Mid at 3:14 PM on February 5, 2012

As a former Lonely Planet devotee ( you should see my shelf of old travel books!) am I alone in thinking that something happened in the early mid 00s that made them completely unusable and unreliable? Even the maps started to get wonky and inaccurate.

Hi, former LP editor here! Not a long-term one, unfortunately, and it was a while ago: I was hired in early 2001; then You Know What happened, and the traveling-for-the-helluvit market keeled over and died; then in mid-2002, I got laid off.

LP moved nearly all of its North American editorial and cartographic jobs from Oakland to Melbourne. They were hurting bad for money, and keeping a big stable of eds and cartos in one of the most expensive urban areas in the U.S. was just not on. We were laid off as the books we were working on (covering the Americas, the Caribbean, and both poles) went to press. My last day was the day I sent my first solo project (Hawaii: The Big Island) to press.

So, if you recall some rough books from that period, I'm going to educated-guess that it was at least in part because the Melbourne staff was suddenly expected to do waaay more work; LP did hire some of its former Oakland employees as contractors for a few months after the OAK office closed, but then all work shifted to Oz.

And, honestly, the books have always been kind of uneven. Some of the Shoestring guides take so long to go from author-turns-in-manuscript to book-hits-shelves that at least some of the info in them will be a good year or more old, and therefore invariably unreliable.

I was fucking obsessive with my maps, so any book I worked on, the maps I edited were as perfectly representative of reality as I could make them without getting on a plane and walking the route myself. Pretty sure some of my cartos hated me sometimes.

I did once catch an author who was "updating" from the poolside of a nice hotel in Montevideo. There was just stuff that wasn't adding up. I took it up the chain to my senior editor, who rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath and then waved me off. I don't know exactly what happened, but I started getting new files from the author within a couple of weeks.

I loved that job. Great people, great location, excellent work. I miss it.
posted by rtha at 3:26 PM on February 5, 2012 [7 favorites]

charlie don't surf and romakimmy nailed it. One of my closest friends wrote various Lonely Planet guidebooks for years, and he'd be the first to tell you what a fuckin' scam they are, if he had an account here, that is. There are indeed "updated" books put out without the author having set foot in the country. If the person writing the book has done that country a couple times before, they have locals they depend on for their information and they simply give up a small piece of their pay to procure the misinformation they then put in the book. Other authors do actually go to the country, but also use locals they know for their information. Some, not all, accept bribes to include places in the book. And let me tell you, the authors are not paid a small sum for this crap. The last book my buddy did, netted him 13k for a six week "job". You couldn't update a guidebook properly for a country that size in six month, let alone six weeks.

And then there's the fact that a lot lot good places become shit once they are included in the Lonely Planet. Why? Because travellers will flock to the LP's recommended spots regardless of how a place is currently operating. Shit food, crappy rooms, whatever. Doesn't matter, the Bible told me to go there. Because of this herd mentality, establishments no longer have the incentive to keep up their standards. The punters will come.
posted by gman at 3:28 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

And then there's the fact that a lot lot good places become shit once they are included in the Lonely Planet.

So Lonely Planet books are still valuable, as they give you advice on where not to go.
posted by madcaptenor at 4:33 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah for some reason the public transport in Chicago and NYC are billed as fun activities for tourists.

I think in Chicago it's more passive-aggressive entertainment for residents. Signage? Maps? Really, you should know that "Howard" means "North" and "95th/Dan Ryan" means "South." Sure, taking the green line to Garfield is an excellent way to get to the Museum of Science and Industry. Absolutely take the #4 bus to Hyde Park. Don't forget to bring your valuables!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:39 PM on February 5, 2012

Yeah for some reason the public transport in Chicago and NYC are billed as fun activities for tourists.

So in San Francisco, there's the F line, which runs from Fisherman's Wharf to the Castro. It is an ordinary light rail line but they run it using historic trolleys from around the world.

The tourists do not seem to understand that some people are using this as, you know, actual transportation, and the proper way to ride is to just pay your damn two bucks and sit down. Something like the second day after I moved to the Bay Area I had a reason to ride this line; despite still practically being a tourist I still wanted to kill the tourists who did not seem to understand that the proper way to ride public transit is to hand the guy at the front of the car your two bucks and just sit the hell down.

I hope some of them get on at Fisherman's Wharf, get confused about where they're supposed to get off, and end up in the Castro having to explain to their kids things that they really don't want to explain to their kids.
posted by madcaptenor at 5:06 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

wow, I got kind of repetitive in the second paragraph there and then I repeated myself a lot.
posted by madcaptenor at 5:09 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was thinking more like "Ride the El around the Loop and look at the buildings! Wow, buildings from mid-height instead of from above or below!" and "Take the free ferry back and forth from Staten Island! Buildings from a different angle! The only fee is having to be on Staten Island for a short time!" This is the kind of advice tourists get. Go look at AskMe and it's full of these two tidbits.

Honestly I don't know why anyone travels anywhere if the funnest thing to do is look at the outside of buildings from various angles.
posted by bleep at 5:14 PM on February 5, 2012

Because those buildings are bigger than the buildings where they came from, I guess.
posted by madcaptenor at 5:18 PM on February 5, 2012

Seriously? You think the Chicago skyline and the Statue of Liberty are just like what you have at home, only bigger?
posted by craichead at 5:35 PM on February 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

to be fair there is that hard turn in the Loop in Chicago where you're eye-level with the office windows and it feels like a roller coaster for a few seconds. That's pretty fun.
posted by The Whelk at 5:40 PM on February 5, 2012

Overly excited by riding trains, funiculars, and other forms of public transport.

I totally ride the NYC subways as if they were an amusement park ride. It's the closest thing in the real world to being a tardis; you get in in one part of the city and magically get out somewhere else.

I've probably lived in Pennsylvania too long.
posted by octothorpe at 5:41 PM on February 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

I run a tour of Buenos Aires and part of it involves showing people how the public transport system works. We plan the route and then catch 2 public buses and the oldest rolling stock in the world still in operation on Line A of the Subway. I show people a lot of buildings too, but for most people standing in the front carriage of a wood-lined train built in 1913 looking out of the window with the same view as the driver is far and away the highlight.

Oh and for the overhead screen vs personal screen thing, most of the airlines (Iberia, Delta, Alitalia, Lufthansa & Air Europa) that fly to Buenos Aires do not always have personal screens in economy. For flights that take up to 13 hours.
posted by jontyjago at 5:58 PM on February 5, 2012

Because those buildings are bigger than the buildings where they came from, I guess.

Not even, really. There's just more of them.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:20 PM on February 5, 2012

It's the closest thing in the real world to being a tardis; you get in in one part of the city and magically get out somewhere else.

Airplanes are like that, too. I go back and forth between thinking this is awesome and being freaked out by it.
posted by madcaptenor at 6:34 PM on February 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

Modern air travel feels like very slow teleportation. ( sit in the room, go to the other room, wait, come out into other room, leave room, you're someplace new)
posted by The Whelk at 7:07 PM on February 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

With the advent of fairly ubiquitous wifi and netbooks/smartphones/iPads, I don't really see the point of toting around a LP. The last several trips I took (a week in Malaysia, two-week honeymoon in Europe, a week in the Philippines) I didn't have one and didn't miss it.

Hotels? Now that I'm married and have a wife who won't put up with arriving in a foreign town at 4AM and having no idea what hotel you're going to, I book whatever accommodation in advance on whatever hotel comparison site. Even if you're still doing the whole "finish the 8-hour bus ride and choose the $5 room with shared bathroom and cold water over the $8 room with private bathroom and hot water because you're a broke backpacker thing," usually you're heading towards a Khao San-type neighborhood where there are dozens of those sorts of guesthouses or there will be a dozen local taxi drivers waiting to take you to the same several places that they take every other foreign backpacker.

Restaurants? I have long given up following recommendations in an LP book. Eat whatever street food that you walk by that looks delicious, whatever restaurant that's reasonably packed with locals, and maybe do research on the Internet to find a fancy restaurant for a special dinner.

Culture backgrounds? Give me a fucking break. You'll learn a lot more just by browsing the Wiki entry on that country.

Language guides? Never needed to use one.

Major tourist sites/maps? Free or extremely cheap tourist maps are available anywhere. Again, there are plenty of Internet sites to do research in the comfort of your hotel room with free wifi.
posted by alidarbac at 7:43 PM on February 5, 2012

I love the zooming in experience of flying into a new city. First it's a dot on a map, then it's a bunch of indistinct cities and streets, then it's the oversized world of the Tarmac, and finally it all expands out to human scale.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:24 PM on February 5, 2012

I suffer from fearenheit right here in the United States.

Like in Tidewater Virginia in the summer.

Where I lived for 7 years.

It was freakin' hot man!
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 9:48 PM on February 5, 2012

Most of those terms sound too contrived even by the standards of invented words, but I really like the last one.
posted by blue shadows at 10:15 PM on February 5, 2012

Yeah, I was mostly rolling my eyes, but the last one saved it for me!
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:54 PM on February 5, 2012

Australazy - The inability of an Australian person to learn the language of the country they are traveling in.

Did you come up with that one in Me-hee-co?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:57 AM on February 6, 2012

grabbagger
They really need have a two-foot wide colored line around the baggage carousel and signs that tell you not to step into the colored area until you see your bag.
posted by soelo at 7:51 AM on February 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

The ugly truth: Lonely Planet got old at the same rate we did. Their demographic is now 40-somethings.

So true. I'm going to Istanbul in a few weeks and downloaded the relevant Lonely Planet (mainly because they do ebooks while Rough Guide does not). Not only is it garbage in general, but they've really cut down on the number of hostels and upped the cutesy boutique hotels that are way out of the price range of budget travelers. I was wondering if their age range was tripping upwards.
posted by Sara C. at 11:22 AM on February 6, 2012

I usually fly Delta (As an Atlanta resident that's pretty common) and when you look for flights on their site, there's a little icon that tells you whether the aircraft scheduled for each flight has in-seatback screens. I imagine other airlines do this too. It's kind of handy.
posted by pointystick at 11:24 AM on February 6, 2012

They really need have a two-foot wide colored line around the baggage carousel and signs that tell you not to step into the colored area until you see your bag.

And some sort of taser system to enforce it.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:01 PM on February 6, 2012