Travel Booking is a Pain!

[Jim Koepke]

Trying to arrange a flight for four kids from two households from OAK to PDX and back.

It seemed like one of the kids needed to travel back on a different day.

Of course there is the Guardian forms to fill out and have at both ends.

Then all the miss communications and total lack of communications going on. Usually our S-I-L does the booking, but for some reason this year he wasn't able to get it done. So if G-ma & G-pa want to see some G-kids this summer guess who gets to fight the computer booking demons.

We didn't have all the info on the one G-kid who might need different travel plans and his father has some separation issues and other flakiness.

I booked three flights last night and sent the information by email last night. Learned this morning the fourth could travel on the same dates. Fortunately there was a seat left, and it was a few bucks cheaper. Then came the confusion, last night the flights were booked using Safari which allows a web page to be saved as a .pdf. These are easier to deal with when sending in an email.

Today the flight was booked using Chrome, no way to save as a .pdf, YIKES!

Okay, clamed down, saved the page to the desktop, then opened in Safari, VOILA! Now it could be saved as a .pdf.

No coffee yet this morning, but my body is feeling like it just had a triple espresso.

jtk

[Malcolm Schweizer]

My wife is not allowed to book travel. She has booked flights for the right day, wrong month, and even wrong year, and booked a flight to some city in the US named Madrid instead of Madrid, Spain. It's a running joke with us.

[Bradley Gray]

Jim, You can save anything as a .pdf on a mac by choosing print, then save as pdf from the print menu.

Happy travels. We're trying frontier airlines for the first time this tuesday.

[Jim Koepke]

Jim, You can save anything as a .pdf on a mac by choosing print, then save as pdf from the print menu.

Happy travels. We're trying frontier airlines for the first time this tuesday.

Thanks for the tip Bradley, I think I tried that and it didn't seem to work with the Chrome browser. I have used that feature a few times in other applications.

Ok, just checked and got this:

363518

Now that things have calmed down a bit I clicked on the "Change" button that I thought was to change the printer and that then has a selection for converting to the .pdf format.

Looks like there is an "Open PDF in Preview" option that could likely have been saved.

Live, panic and learn...

Does kind of indicate there is usually more than one way to skin a cat.

jtk

[Brian Tymchak]

If you were needing to just capture a single screen image or less, Windows includes a Snipping tool that will quickly generate a .png. However, if you needed to caputure a full web page that scrolls beyond the screen dimensions, you would have to take multiple "snips".

[Jim Koepke]

If you were needing to just capture a single screen image or less, Windows includes a Snipping tool that will quickly generate a .png. However, if you needed to caputure a full web page that scrolls beyond the screen dimensions, you would have to take multiple "snips".

Happily I do not have Windows. Macintosh has had screen shot & snipping tools since before Windows 3.1.

jtk

[Wade Lippman]

We used a travel agent for a complicated trip 10 years ago. I think they still exist.

[Edwin Santos]

My wife is not allowed to book travel. She has booked flights for the right day, wrong month, and even wrong year, and booked a flight to some city in the US named Madrid instead of Madrid, Spain. It's a running joke with us.

It's nice to know I'm not alone

[Shawn Pixley]

Arranging travel is a pain. LOML and I divy up the responsibilities. For international destinations, I make the air reservations and she makes the hotel and train reservations. She is great on the research on hotels and the best ways of getting around. We are both comfortable in subways and trains and we travel light.

I have a lot of flight experience and navigate airports, customs, etc. well. Luckily, we have a pretty good agreement as to what we wish to have in a hotel.

For domestic arrangements, I do it all.

I compile all into both a complete version and a compact highlight version for transit. I print a copy and she and I will have a copy on our smart phone as well with maps that do not require data. Lots of experience with this.

[Mike Circo]

We used a travel agent for a complicated trip 10 years ago. I think they still exist.

Yep. the magic of a travel agent is they handle the fuss, you just say yea-or-nay.

I'm a AAA member and their travel folks are great. One call and the trip is handled.

[Rich Riddle]

I tend to book travel in stages, not all at once. We make travel itinerary booklets for all travel and it ensures you have confirmation numbers, flight numbers, dates, places, etc. When booking trips gets overwhelming, do something relaxing for a while. You can likely get the travel arrangements at less money doing the leg work yourself than having someone else perform it.

[Matt Meiser]

Jim, we had something complicated like that attempting to use Southwest points from 2 accounts to pay for tickets for my wife, daughter, and I. I called Southwest and an agent helped me get it done as she had tools I didn't. I think she actually was having fun getting it all figured out.

We only used a travel agent for a cruise. Her services were free since she got s commission from Disney. Actually now that I think about it, that might have been the same trip as the Southwest thing--travel agent couldn't do it because I was using points. Almost no one I work with uses the one we used to be required to use anymore.

Tripit is a great way to keep track of everything and is super easy to use. You just forward the booking emails to the site and Tripit builds your trip itinerary off that. You can add additional details--for example on our recent California trip I added meals at some restaurants people recommended to us. And you can share itineraries with others as desired so they have your details. If you have a smart phone, the app gives you access to everything on the fly.