A Time of Magic » Travel

Where to go in Orlando

admin — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:15:20 +0000

The problem with planning Orlando vacations is that that there’s just too much to see if you’re going for anything less than a month and even then you’d have trouble packing it all in.

As usual, the front runner for the kids is Disney World of course though that’s largely down to the massive advertising spend that’s put into promoting it. The big downside of it is that there’s so much packed into the place that you really need to pace yourself and anything longer than two or three days is going to be extremely tiring for young children even though that’s far too short a time to see it all. And each year it just gets “worse” with more and more attractions added.

Around the Orlando area there’s heaps of other things to do with a very high density of theme parks but there’s also a fair amount in terms of natural attractions too with great beaches and wildlife to be seen.

Basically though there’s so many attractions that you need to plan on going back several times over the years.

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Tidying up for the winter?

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:53:48 +0000

We all dread the cleaning off of the lawnmower and assorted other things that need doing before everything is packed away for the next season, don’t we?

One of the more easily overlooked things to tidy up is 5th wheel insurance. Sure, you’ll get around to cleaning everything out, but I’m sure most people just let the insurance on their rig just tick over from one year to the next. That’s just as much of a mistake as not getting quotes for your car insurance. More so in fact as you’re probably paying a good deal more on the RV insurance so there’s that much more to save.

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Recording the holidays for posterity

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:42:46 +0000

Just about everyone has a camera phone these days but they’re not really up to recording your memories of a holiday as they basically don’t have enough memory nor have they the flexibility to do that.

For that you need to start trawling through the camcorder reviews where you’ll come across a whole new world of acronyms and technologies. However, it’s not nearly so complicated as it first appears.

To begin with you need to think about whether you want to use a card, DVD or tape based camcorder. The DVD ones get quite bad press sometimes basically because not all DVD players can cope with the small DVDs that these camcorders use and there’s the issue about how long they could be expected to last. The tape based ones have been around a long time and use the miniDV standard which will hold about an hour of video. They’re larger than the card based devices and you’ll need to use cables to copy the movies on to your computer.

The other consideration is whether to use standard or HD video. In practical terms there’s not much of a difference in cost these days and HD will almost always be your best choice. This will use up more cards but doesn’t require any space on the tape as compression is used with the miniDV standard.

Finally, there’s the issue of what to do with the used media. With miniDV you may as well keep the original tapes as they’re very cheap but the cards can become quite expensive. If the only copy you’re keeping it that on your computer, don’t forget to keep backup copies as otherwise you’re sure to lose your movies at some point in the future.

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Would it be worthwhile looking at a secondhand RV?

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:22:44 +0000

An RV purchase means some serious cash no matter what size of rig that you’re looking at.

That being the case, if you’re in the market for one it seems only sensible to try and reduce the cost by looking at used motorhomes, but is that a sensible thing to do? The snag is that RVs vary a LOT in how they’ve been used. You can find one that’s basically only been used a couple of weeks per year over a number of years but then what about the mileage that was ran up during those couple of weeks? Actually, the mileage is rarely the problem but where the rig was taken might be: low mileage on unpaved roads would usually be worse than high mileage on paved roads. Finally, there’s the usage of the equipment inside although you’ll generally not have too many issues on that front.

It’s definitely worthwhile having a look but make a long checklist of questions before you begin.

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How come there’s no website to list volcano flight cancellations?

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:25:14 +0000

I was puzzling over that today and there’s no really good reason why there shouldn’t be such a thing and yet there doesn’t appear to be one.

On second thoughts, one reason does spring to mind and that’s the sheer level of uncertainty about it all or rather the uncertainty about how long it will continue. After the initial week or so of cancellations it seemed like air travel was at an end within Europe but that changed very suddenly in the second week. Then the prognosis flipped to the other extreme with us seemingly being able to ignore the volcano until we found that airports were suddenly closed.

The problem now is that nobody really knows whether this disruption will continue for a few weeks more or whether it’s going to be the norm. If the latter is the case, a one-stop website would really clean up in terms of advertising. On the other hand, if it’s the former then there’s a lot of effort that would need to be put in to collect the information and with little prospect of payback for that effort. There’s also the accuracy problem as airlines and airports seem to make decisions at very short notice which is a recipe for lawsuits.

The only real certainty in all this is that it seems crazy to think about booking a holiday this summer that involves any kind of air travel.

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Just how long will Europe be grounded for and what will the effects be?

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:00:18 +0000

That’s a question with no easy answer. Last time there was a similar eruption it ran for over a year which isn’t exactly a reassuring precedent.

That was way back in the 1820s though and I suspect that it didn’t make a whole lot of difference to activities within Europe even for those that were aware of it. This time it’s quite different and we find ourselves forced back into the transport technologies of the 1800s once more. Thus the many daytrips made for business and pleasure every day throughout Europe have all been cancelled. No more is it possible to get from London to Prague and back in a day, or at least not for a while anyway.

Out too probably are those relatively long distance holiday flights. For those that haven’t booked already, I suspect that consideration of a week on a Greek island is probably out for this year even if the dust does clear up which I’m sure is less than welcome news in Greece in its current economic woes. As far as the UK goes, I suspect that holidays in France will be the order of the day or at least in parts of France that are relatively easy to get to by car. Some people do drive all the way from England to southern Spain for their holidays every year and there will be more of them but it’s probably safe to say that the numbers going on the cheap flights to the same places will be severely curtailed: it just ain’t viable to drive to t south of Spain and back within the confines of a one week holiday.

If it goes on for the months that seems likely it would be easy to see some travel insurance companies going bankrupt unless they can get out of payments through an “act of God” provision. Will the budget airlines survive at all? They don’t have to pay out for the hotels but they do have to pay out for a lot of operational costs that aren’t easily cut quickly and despite what people may think of the rip-off tactics of, say, Ryanair those tactics are merely a sign that they’ve not been doing overly well economically in this recession: add an extended grounding and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if they didn’t survive.

Holiday cancellations are a shame but Europe has become quite integrated over recent years and it’s business that will be hit quite hard were the grounding period to become quite extended. Clearly holiday companies will be the most obvious ones to feel the pain but many other companies have operations spread across Europe with corresponding meetings requiring air travel on a regular basis. It’s one more blow that we could all do without.

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How come almost everything seems to be going down in price?

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:43:26 +0000

We all know that electronic things have been going down in price for a long time and that house prices have been going down for a year or two but what about everything else?

You might not think of books as something that would go down. After all, they need authors to write them and their salaries aren’t going down, plus they need seemingly perpetually increasing amounts of paper to print them on. Yet, whilst way back in 1981 the Encyclopaedia Britannica retailed for Â£600, you can buy the latest one (if you look around) for Â£450.

Houses might be dropping in price but surely house improvements would be more expensive? Well, we’re in the process of updating our kitchen and bathroom. Both are around the same price as the original cost some 30 years ago. And the new one will be much higher quality too.

It seems almost a case of looking around for things that aren’t decreasing in price.

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Gearing up for the summer holidays?

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:33:53 +0000

We’re into the planning season for summer vacations now so it’s time to start assembling all the little bits & bobs that you need for whatever holiday you’re intending to go on.

As well as all the happy things, don’t neglect the possibility of the downers. You might not want to think of motorhome towing but just about every year I’ve been out on the road I’ve seen someone who’s needed it. Don’t think that it’s a one-off event either as I’ve needed the RV towed twice so far.

The snag with RVs is that they’re both pretty big and likely to be used a long way from anywhere which is a bad combination if/when things go wrong. An expensive combination too.

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Booking your vacation out of season

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:53:44 +0000

Although it might sound crazy to even be thinking of summer holidays before Christmas, that’s one of the best times of year to be doing just that.

Places like keystone lodging have loads of accommodation options available at the moment but that situation changes very rapidly just after Christmas. Even as soon as Boxing Day you can find that there’s a noticeable reduction in availability for some resorts.

Which reminds me that I’ve some flights to book myself…

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Readying the RV for the coming season

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:07:30 +0000

Getting the RV into shape for the new year is a major task if you’ve been doing a lot of travelling around during the year.

Not only do you need the truck side of things sorted out but the accommodation can take quite a beating too, and then there’s all the plumbing to consider. One thing that’s also worth reviewing too is the rv insurance. That insurance is usually somewhat more complex than normal car or truck insurance given the usage profile of an RV ie lots of long journies with often little or no travelling between vacations in it. That complexity in turn means that there are often lots of ways to sensibly save money on the insurance: many more than you’d find with your car.

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