Show Open And Purpose

Todd Carlson 0:15

Explore your world. It's The InsideTravelTalk Podcast and Radio Show. Presented by BluePlanetVacations.com. Call or text The show now. 801-649-3700. 801-649-3700. And check out The podcast at Insidetravalk.com. And now, here are your hosts, Patrick Wiscombe and Mark Faldmo.

Patrick Wiscombe 0:51

Coming to you live from The Whiskam Faldmo radio studio right here in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. This is The world-famous inside travel talk podcast and radio show. Hello there! I am Patrick Wiscombe, The Vacation Nerd. And The entire purpose of this travel podcast radio show is to help you plan and book your next vacation. And we're also going to give you our listeners The latest travel news as well as The best travel and cruise deals designed to help save you money. So we want you to consider this your must-listen personal daily travel briefing. If you love to travel or if you want to start traveling, and this show is presented by BluePlanetVacations.com. Mark Faldmo is making his way into The studio triumphantly with this week's Hot Travel Deal of The Week. So coming up in this first segment of The show, we will have The hot travel deal of The week. But let's first start with The most important travel news from this past week. As Mark puts on his headphones, okay, you settled in? I'm in, I'm here. All right, let's do this. Let's get right to The travel news.

Kilauea Eruption Closures In Hawaii

Patrick Wiscombe 2:05

I don't know if you've been looking at this on social media, but it feels like Kilauea. That's The volcano on The big island. What are they calling The big island right now? What was The name? Oh, just Hawaii.

Mark Faldmo 2:17

Just Hawaii. Causes confusion. Yes, it does. So it's The island of Hawaii, but within The state of Hawaii.

Patrick Wiscombe 2:24

So I don't know if you've seen this on social media. Kilauea is going berserk right now. It feels like something huge is just imminent, but it is prompting closures. How far do The closures extend? Is it just into Volcano National Park?

Mark Faldmo 2:39

Yeah, and so it's trails within The park. So they've closed just under two miles of trails. There were trails that allowed you to go down into The caldera area and walk around, but they've closed all of that. Right now, since Kiloway started erupting in December of 2024, it's been The longest break between lava fountaining episodes. But this past week there have been more than 200 shallow earthquakes. the volcano is really pressurized right now, and so they're preemptively closing things down. the viewing platform has been closed. There's some worries about The ability to evacuate if a larger eruption were to happen. And so that's why they're closing this down. When I was younger, we took a helicopter ride over and saw some flowing lava, but it wasn't The fountains of lava like we've seen The last two years.

Patrick Wiscombe 3:30

It's been throwing rocks into The air, obviously, but it's been landing in The parking lot where The cars are. On camera, it looks like they're not that big. P sized, maybe tennis ball sized. That's pretty big, actually, if it's a rock. Coming down on cars just in The parking lot, I'm like, ooh, wow, that's getting a little more serious now.

Mark Faldmo 3:48

Yep. Yeah. So Volcano National Park is one of my favorite places to visit. They used to have The road that went all The way around The crater, but now it doesn't. You can only go about a quarter of that road because The latest eruption has totally lava float over The road and everything.

Patrick Wiscombe 4:06

So feels like an episode of Dante's Peak is starting to happen just a little. Yeah.

Faster TSA PreCheck Lanes Ahead

Patrick Wiscombe 4:12

the TSA is working on pre-check. That's TSA pre-check improvements. What improvements are they?

Mark Faldmo 4:19

They're looking at doing new lines, not really any new technology, but they're looking at combining three different technologies to help The lines move faster. the TSA pre-check enrollment has flattened at around 50 million people. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And they are hoping that these new faster lanes will help boost that membership by an additional 20 million people. They're going to use a combination of The E-Gates where there's not a TSA person there where you just scan your boarding pass and go through. And that's how it scans you. So they don't need an actual person to do that. Oh, interesting. Looking at some advanced technology imaging and then also some AI supported luggage screening to help agents recognize things quicker and move The lines quicker. We're always talking about The technology on this show to help people move through airports. It's really good right now. And you know, I hope with these improvements it'll really move that TSA pre-check line along faster. They'll also roll this out to The regular lines, which will hopefully shorten those lines and help people just overall move through security faster at US airports.

Patrick Wiscombe 5:30

Well, sometimes The pre-check lines are longer than The regular lines. I've seen that on occasion where it's like, maybe we should just go through regular security.

Mark Faldmo 5:38

Yep. Yeah, it's and that's why every frequent flyer program that's eligible, I've signed myself up for The digital ID, which you still need TSA pre-check, but you do get to go through a separate line, which is often a lot shorter than The TSA pre-check line.

American Ends Involuntary Bumping

Patrick Wiscombe 5:54

American Airlines is ending or has ended bumping passengers involuntarily off flights. That's good to hear.

Mark Faldmo 6:02

That is. A few weeks ago, we talked about one of my experiences several years ago where I was on standby, I was like number 65 on The flight, um, but made, and that's how many people didn't show up for The flight. I mean, it was a smaller plane that held like 130 people, I think. With technology, airlines have gotten better at predicting this, but there still are cases where they involuntarily bump people from The flight because they don't have enough volunteers. So I'm not exactly sure how American Airlines is going to do this. I think what that would mean is they're just gonna have to up The compensation they offer to get people to voluntarily bump themselves off The flight. Um, but they they do say that they're not going to involuntarily bump someone. I think a few weeks ago we did a thing about when to check in. Because if you're The last one to check in on most airlines, if you're The last one, you're that person that gets involuntarily bumped. But that won't be happening on American now. So hopefully other airlines will follow this. I remember one time I volunteered to get bumped off of a flight. So they put me on The next flight, which is an hour and a half later, and gave me a $600 future travel voucher. Yeah, that's a pretty good deal. So yeah, you know, if they're gonna start upping that, that's uh a pretty good thing.

Halloween Travel Countdown Begins

Patrick Wiscombe 7:26

Let's get to The hot travel deal of The week. This is a Halloween-inspired hot travel deal of The week. So we're gonna be counting down The top five Halloween-related travel experiences, ending at number one, of course, with The hot travel deal of The week. But let's start with number five, which is what?

Mark Faldmo 7:44

And this is one I enjoy doing when I'm in London. It's a Jack The Ripper walking tour in London. This is for travelers who enjoy a little bit of mystery along with history. It walks you through London's West End, where a series of unsolved murders terrified Victorian London in 1888. So along The way, you'll hear about The crimes, you'll hear about The police investigations. There are a lot of theories out there on who Jack The Ripper was, but it's never been actually solved. This operates year-round, but it is kind of a fun thing. One thing I like about it is it is at nighttime. And so as you're walking through this, especially if there's that London fog, it does really make it kind of The perfect Halloween kind of scary experience.

Patrick Wiscombe 8:30

What a great atmosphere if The fog is rolling. Wow.

Mark Faldmo 8:34

Yes. Yeah.

Patrick Wiscombe 8:35

All right, what's number four on The list?

Mark Faldmo 8:37

Number four is a haunted tour of New Orleans. We talked about New Orleans, I think, two weeks ago. Yeah. You know, New Orleans famous for jazz food, but it also has a reputation of being one of America's most haunted cities. Ghost tours, especially through The historic French Quarter, are very interesting to do. There's lots of haunted mansions, vampire legends, a lot of folklore that kind of comes along when you're in New Orleans. Voodoo. Voodoo. Yeah. You know, lots of things. They have haunted pub crawls, evening, nighttime cemetery tours. Just just kind of a fun experience to do those.

Patrick Wiscombe 9:16

Do you do anything in Jackson Square?

Mark Faldmo 9:18

There's a restaurant in Jackson Square. It's called Muriel's, and it is haunted. And I've eaten there several times, had a couple of functions there as well. They actually have a table that is permanently reserved for a ghost. So every evening they put out a table with bread and water for The ghost, and nobody is allowed to sit in that table. And according to The legend, it's The building's former owner who lost that in a game of poker. They said The restaurant is haunted to this day with that former owner. And so rather than trying to get rid of him, they embrace The ghostly resident and put out bread and water for him. And then also upstairs, they have a seance lounge. They have a couple of different interesting things at that restaurant. So New Orleans has a lot to offer in way of haunted evening tours. I also like taking The carriage rides around in The evening where they also can talk about that. And much like London, New Orleans kind of has The perfect setting for a haunted ghost tour.

Patrick Wiscombe 10:22

So when you go to The restaurant, you go to The back room, draw a pentagram on The floor and say, I summon thee three times. No. What's number three on this list of top five Halloween-related travel experiences?

Mark Faldmo 10:38

So this one we're going back to The UK. I'm going to The Edinburgh Underground Vaults, which is a ghost tour. Edinburgh is a city that's just built one layer on top of another. So you can go down under into old buildings, old tunnels. And so The Underground Vaults Ghost Tour. You explore dimly lit chambers while hearing tales of unexplained footsteps, shadowy figures, paranormal encounters. Just a really interesting place. And Edinburgh is one of Europe's most atmospheric places for haunted experience. Between London with The fog or Edinburgh is which one would be a better experience. But they're both pretty good.

Patrick Wiscombe 11:19

Number two on The list is what?

Mark Faldmo 11:22

Yep. And this one's a little bit more fun, and it's Disneyland at Halloween time.

Patrick Wiscombe 11:28

the pendulum has swung to The other side.

Mark Faldmo 11:31

To The other side. Okay. Yeah. So a little bit more family friendly. I love The haunted mansion where it's changed to The character's Nightmare Before Christmas, The takeover The Haunted Mansion, Mickey-shaped pumpkins. Just a really good time to visit Disneyland. And personally, I like Disneyland better than Disney World, but Disney World also does that as well. And as always, it focuses on Disney's famous storytelling and family-friendly fun.

Patrick Wiscombe 12:01

They do a great job. What's number one on The list? And this is actually The hot travel deal of The week. This is a

Romania Dracula Tour Hot Deal

Patrick Wiscombe 12:07

tour.

Mark Faldmo 12:08

It's by a company called Exotica. And first I'll introduce Exotica because we haven't talked about them on The show before. No. They're a tour operator. They focus more on affordable packaged vacations to interesting destinations around The world. They don't have a lot of your typical tours like we've been talking about. They do go to some of those places, but I think these are a little bit more interesting places. So Exotica is a really good option. They also leave a lot of free time in a lot of their tours, so it's not quite as organized. You have organized without being organized, I guess, is how I would describe their tours. And this tour is called Dracula and The Treasures of Transylvania Tour. So it's a tour in Romania. It's a nine-day tour through Romania. the tour visits medieval villages, Gothic castles as you drive through The Carpathian Mountains. It includes Bran Castle, which is The castle that's associated with The legend of Dracula. You explore other places like The village where Vlad The Impaler was born.

Patrick Wiscombe 13:20

How would you like to get that nickname? My name is Vlad The Impaler.

Mark Faldmo 13:24

Impaler? Yeah. Romania is fascinating. I've been to Bucharest before, did not make it up into The Carpathian Mountains or near where Brand Castle is at. But I think this would be just a fabulous tour. And again, you know, we've talked a lot about a lot of those Eastern European countries are just fascinating to visit, Romania being one of them. This particular tour starts at $2,099 per person for a nine-day tour. And what Exotica is offering is 60% off tours around The world. And something that I that I like about this is it's not like a lot of other suppliers where they mark The tour up and then mark it down 60%. This is a legitimate 60% off tours. So they have tours all around The world with this Romania tour being one of them, but they do go to pretty unique destinations. In The show notes for this podcast episode, so you can go to blueplanetvacations.com or InsideTravelTalk.com. I am going to post a link to Exotica to this particular tour and also a link to Exotica so you can look at all of their other tours to get that 60% off. You can book directly on through that link or by calling me.

Patrick Wiscombe 14:42

Okay. Let me give out The numbers. We go to break here. 888-718-7717. 888-718-7717. And Mark said he'll put The link to this particular tour on BluePlanetVacations.com and Inside TravelTalk.com, which is of course The very podcast that you're listening to. 888-718-7717. I always kind of like Halloween. Just kind of fun to see all The kids dress up, have a good time, come to your door, hand out candy.

Mark Faldmo 15:21

Awesome. It is. Although my house, I think I posted this online. I've had kids say that house never does anything for Halloween. And then I got another one The same night that says, let's go to somewhere that looks more Halloween-y. So I guess I'm kind of a Scrooge of Halloween, but I love Halloween.

Patrick Wiscombe 15:39

I love Halloween. Call Mark. Take advantage of it. One more time on The phone number, 888-718-7717.

Cruise Segment Tease And Break

Patrick Wiscombe 15:49

When we come back, it is time for The world famous, The infamous just cruising segment. the segment of The show that has made us famous around The country and around The world. It is only about cruise news and it's only about cruise deals. Coming up, we'll be talking about MSC holding a groundbreaking for their luxury private island. Holland America is continuing to expand, and Royal Cribbing even going bigger into Alaska. That's next. When The InsideTravelTalk Podcast radio show continues, alongside Mark Faldmo, I am Patrick Wiscombe, The Vacation Nerd. Thank you so much for listening. We will be right back. Give us about two minutes.

Todd Carlson 16:31

Taking you to destinations around The world. the InsideTravelTalk Podcast and Radio Show is presented by BluePlanetVacations.com. America's Best Travel Advisors. Call or text The show now. 801 649 3700. 801 649 3700. Thanks for listening. We'll be right back.