Boat ride through forgotten Florida at Wakulla Springs State Park

by Melanie Renzulli on




Most people who visit Wakulla Springs go for the gators. Still others want to check out where Johnny Weissmuller swung through the “jungle” as Tarzan in the 1930s and 40s or the dark, swampy thicket where the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” was said to lurk. Above all, travelers come to see the pristine tangled wilderness that is becoming rarer to find as Florida develops.

This is Wakulla Springs State Park, one of the most popular day trips from Tallahassee, Florida’s capital. A three-mile pontoon trip down the Wakulla River is the park’s biggest draw, giving visitors the chance to spot wildlife and plug into nature for the 45-minute ride.

On a sunny day, alligators can be spotted lazing on the banks of the Wakulla River or grimacing among the reeds and cypress knees along the shoreline. If they’re out, alligators make for splendid photography subjects, unlike the myriad fowl – great blue herons, white ibis, anhingas – which fly off right as you get them in your camera cross-hairs, or the manatees, which swim slowly just below the water line, never surfacing for their close-up. The park claims that between 20 to 30 manatees can be spotted swimming in the springs and river each day. I was satisfied to have seen a herd of about seven sea cows (another name for manatees) when I visited the park in December. There are only about 4,500 of these aquatic mammals left in the world and the estuaries and backwoods springs of Florida are one of the premier places to see them, especially in winter.

Wakulla Springs doesn’t have to be a day trip. On site is the grand Wakulla Springs Lodge, built in 1937 by Edward Ball, the financier and conservationist who owned this stretch of north Florida from 1934 until the mid-1960s when he sold it to the state of Florida for the establishment of a state park. The 27-room, Mediterranean-revival-style lodge is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and the surrounding park is a National Natural Landmark.

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Image by wilsonb/Flickr

Major hotel brands band together to launch RoomKey.com

by Melanie Renzulli on




What do you get when six of the world’s leading hotel brands come together? You get RoomKey.com, a new hotel search engine that launched on Wednesday.

Choice Hotels International, InterContinental Hotels Group, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Marriott International, and Wyndham Hotel Group form the group of six that created RoomKey.com, a simple search tool that allows travelers to search for hotels by date and location, then delivers results that can be sorted by price, distance, hotel name, and star rating. Room Key users can toggle search results to view them on a grid, in a list, or on a map.

At first glance, Room Key’s format appears to be modeled on Google Hotel Finder, the hotel search engine that Google unveiled last summer. Like Hotel Finder, Room Key results link to the hotels’ websites rather than a third-party booking site, thereby ensuring “a personalized and welcoming experience that offers flexibility, accuracy, and benefits of booking with the hotel companies’ proprietary sites,” according to Shafiq Khan, senior vice president of ecommerce, Marriott International. Choice Hotels International’s Senior Vice President of Global Distribution Robert McDowell added, “We at Choice are thrilled to be a part of Room Key alongside these five other global hotel companies. In the face of a staggering number of online booking options, our goal is to make the experience of finding the right hotel as personal and enjoyable as the experience of staying in one.”

Room Key’s beta launch includes only U.S. hotels, but that should change in a future iteration of the site given the vast inventory of properties available under Room Key’s six partners. Also look for the site to expand with more user reviews, comparison tools, and social sharing of travel plans.

Video of the Day: A tour of 1955 San Francisco

by Jessica Marati on

Today’s featured video offers a rare glimpse at the city of San Francisco as it looked in 1955. Filmed by amateur filmmaker Tullio Pellegrini, the video provides a narrated tour of the city and its surroundings, complete with a gloriously vintage soundtrack. Pellegrini was also an inventor and tinkerer, and the video’s quality is due to his merging of a 16mm Bell & Howell Cinemascope lens with Kodachrome film. This gem was recently discovered in the Prelinger Archives‘ collection of more than 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films. Watch and wait as the nostalgia hits you.

[via StreetsBlog]

Is this the year hotels become more autism-friendly?

by Melanie Renzulli on




It isn’t easy traveling with a child with autism. In every piece of literature I’ve read about autism and sensory disorders and in every daily decision I’ve witnessed in my own son, autism is driven by routine. Travel is anything but routine. The fact that so many facets of travel are left up to chance makes many parents of autistic kids, as well as many adults living with autism, uneasy about leaving the comforts of home to explore new cities, countries, or cultures.

Since Gadling first reported on the Clinton Inn Hotel, a property in Tenafly, New Jersey, that re-designed its Alpine Suite to cater to families traveling with autistic children, more hotels are (slowly) starting to reach out to autistic travelers with autism-sensitive accommodations and amenities. The Center for Autism & Related Disorders, or CARD, a Tampa-based clinic, is ushering in many of these changes by working with local hotels to establish a standardized criteria by which accommodations can be deemed “autism-friendly.” In 2010, CARD designated the Wyndham Tampa Westshore as the first autism-friendly hotel in Tampa. Since then, five Tampa-area hotels and resorts, including the Tradewinds Resorts on St. Pete Beach, have earned “autism-friendly” status.

So, what makes a hotel “autism friendly?”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that, in 2011, 1 in 110 children in the United States have Autism Spectrum Disorders. The neurological disease can affect everything from speech to emotional development to fine and gross motor skills. As it is “spectrum disorder,” autism affects every child it touches in different ways. But there are some easy steps that hotels can take to make accommodations more inviting for special needs travelers and more secure for the parents or companions who travel with them. These measures come from my own experience, suggestions on autism forums, and practices already in use at some autism-friendly properties. Many of these tweaks can be implemented easily at modern hotels, else a hotel can retrofit a room or rooms to accommodate guests with autism.

Measures to Make Hotels More “Autism Friendly”

  • Make all lighting adjustable with dimmers to accommodate travelers who have light sensitivities.
  • Provide temperature controls in rooms.
  • Ensure that all guest room doors have locks on the inside. Put alarms on all exit doors.
  • Many children on the autism spectrum are on restricted diets, whether because of food sensitivities (to taste, texture) or because of allergies. Provide mini fridges in guest rooms so that parents can store their own food and drinks.
  • Bolt down some decorations and amenities, such as lamps, televisions, and telephones.
  • Outfit balconies and/or windows with locks and/or keypads for safety. Many children on the autism spectrum have difficulties with spatial recognition, which could reduce their fear while on a balcony or near a window.
  • Avoid using harsh chemicals or cleaning products and provide frill-free decor. The more basic, the better.
  • Provide extra blankets and pillows. The extra weight simulates the feeling of a “hug” for some on the spectrum, and thereby ensures a more secure and restful sleep.
  • Bathtubs in guest bathrooms are preferable to showers.

As part of its “autism-friendly” services, the Wyndham Tampa Westshore provides kids with an overnight toolkit, which explains visually what to expect during a stay at the hotel; visual schedules have been proven very effective – whether at home, in class, or on the road – with autistic children who need to know what their routines will entail. The Wyndham has also enlisted CARD to train its staff to understand autism and how to cater to guests with autism. In addition to those services, the Tradewinds Resorts touts its recreational activities, such as Splash Island Water Park and the bungee trampoline, as highlights of its autism-friendly services.

Speaking as a parent of a five-year-old with autism and as a travel enthusiast, I would love to see more hotels work to attract travelers with special needs. With every 1 in 110 children in America living with autism, the market for autism-friendly hotels is enormous. And given that families touched by autism are bound by tedious daily routines, I foresee thousands of potential travelers in search of accommodations that will simplify the transition from home to hotel.

Do you know about more autism-friendly properties or hotel amenities? Please let us know in the comments below.

New budget travel magazine debuts: Off Track Planet moves into print

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Off Track Planet, a Brooklyn-based online budget travel publication, takes its f-bomb dropping idiom into print today with the debut of an eponymous magazine.

Off Track Planet, for the uninitiated, is geared toward the 18-30 set and is particularly focused on undergraduates.

Accordingly, the publication directs its attention to several subjects of primary interest to college kids; among these: partying, volunteering, and hostels. This online article, which claims to have located a Buenos Aires “party hostel” that is also “clean and comfy,” ensnares two of these themes simultaneously.

Sample articles at the Off Track Planet webzine include an overview of Mumbai volunteerships, a guide to culturally-specific insults, a Berlin club primer, and tips for getting stoned in Vancouver.

This is, in other words, one publication that knows its market.

It is a tough time to launch a print magazine, though Off Track Planet sets off into print with a built-in audience and ambition to boot. The Off Track Planet empire is also developing a trip planning mobile web platform to debut later this year.

[Image: Flickr | frontlinefreddie]