Travel

Disney Parks has announced that it has met its promised goal of giving away 1 million free passes to people who donate a day of volunteering. Now that the target has been reached, the program will end.

And what a massively successful program it was. As our incisive sister site Gadling pointed out, Disney gave away about 100,000 tickets a month, or 1.2 million total, in 2009, when it let guests in for free on their birthday. But its 2010 program created a much wider frenzy, with 100,000 being given away every seven days.

Just a month ago, it was announced 600,000 passes had been given away, which means that nearly half the allotment was distributed in the space of a mere four weeks.

New Yorkers finally got an answer recently to what hotel will be included in a massive mixed-use development currently under construction in Manhattan's bustling theater district: The Yotel.

Bloggers speculated for months about the design and makeup of an $800-million hotel and residential development at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue in Times Square. Curbed NY even went so far as to post leaked plans for the 60-story complex that developer Related Companies claimed were inaccurate.

Do you want to go on vacation...tomorrow? Then book this deal IMMEDIATELY.

Jetblue is selling a bunch of airfares for $10 each way until 11:59 p.m. MT today to celebrate its 10th birthday.

The $10 fares for flights departing Tuesday-Wednesday, March 9-10, 2010. I highly doubt these fares will last for more than a few hours so book now.

Adventurous vacationers who don't mind sleeping in the cold can save at least 60% over peak season rates on weekend nights through the end of this month at one of Yosemite Valley's most popular attractions.

Travelers' wallets would be $34 lighter, for example, if they spent a recent night in one of Curry Village's unheated canvas tent cabins. The cabins go for $92 a night during peak summer months and sell out for this period within minutes when they become available a year and a day in advance.

Kemper doesn't have a job, but he does like to stack things up and knock them down. He knows his letters, but can't read -- certainly not credit card solicitations. But he gets them nonetheless. A curious thing to send to a 2-year-old.

His mom, Frances Sayers, was none-too-happy to read a recent offer for Kemper for a Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards credit card from Chase.

"I was surprised and a little bit angry," she said. "Kemper's only two, after all. He has a piggy bank, not a credit history. But I'd already received similar offers myself since enrolling in Southwest's frequent-flier program, so it began to feel like less of a surprise and more of an inevitability."

Today, WalletPop takes you to San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, where inside an unassuming shed facing Alcatraz Island, you'll find one of the most unique attractions in the country: Musée Mécanique, the "mechanical museum." It's both a virtual temple to spare change and the product of thrift where a pocketful of quarters can transport an entire family to the early 20th century.

Not only can you see the Musée on a dime, but it runs on one, too.

Given our limitations in vacation time and geography, it's already hard enough to get Americans to venture out and see the rest of the big, wide world.

The State Department apparently isn't concerned about helping us integrate into the global village, though, because it's on the verge of pulling the trigger on giant passport fee hikes that far outstrip the rate of inflation.

If the fees go through, first-timers will pay $135 to get their passports, up from $100, and kids will pay $105, up from $85.

Renewals will cost $110 (instead of the current $75), and Passport Cards, which are good for non-air travel, will rise by 50%, from $20 to $30 if you already have a passport book, and to $55 from $45 if you don't.

We've all seen them: The people who clog the aisle while boarding an airplane. Why, oh why, don't they just sit down so the plane can take off on time?

In a slight turn of the tables, I thought I'd take a look at what makes the worst type of airline passenger from the standpoint of people who work on a plane or in the travel industry. After recently detailing the worst ways to interview for a job, it seemed like an interesting way to look at a profession from the other side.

We've all probably had the worst flights of our lives, and these are the types of passengers that can make them a lot worse for employees, as well as passengers:

Sure, the Olympics are pretty big, but for most of the world, the year's biggest sporting event is the World Cup of soccer, which will be held across South Africa in June.

If you're looking to go cheap and you haven't laid any groundwork, forget it. It's a precarious quadruple hurdle of airfare, hotel, car, and tickets. Scrounging tickets to the matches is the least of your problems. At the New York Times Travel Show, WalletPop's Jason Cochran met Terry Von Guilleaume, whose company Destination South Africa puts together World Cup vacations for Americans.

Last weekend at the New York Times Travel Show on the Hudson River in Manhattan, WalletPop cornered Pauline Frommer, the first female editor of a major guide book series, to ask her for the biggest travel bargain of the year.

It's Las Vegas, where rooms can be had for as little as $10 a night, followed closely by cruising, where cabins are going for $42. As Arthur Frommer confirmed during an address to the crowd on the same day, there's a very good reason why both of these vacation destinations are going so cheap, and surprisingly, is the same reason for both.

Anyone using the electronic kiosks to check in for a United Airlines flight now must learn how to navigate three more added fee hurdles. That's because United has rigged its check-in procedure with a onslaught of three pitches to load up more extra costs.

If I had pressed the wrong buttons on a recent cross-county flight I took, I would have accidentally paid another $523.68. How did I know they were the wrong buttons? Simple: They were colored and placed to look like the correct buttons.

If summiting Half Dome is on your bucket list of the things to do before you die, better book the hike now.

Alarmed by the deaths of four climbers on the world famous granite monolith since 2006, the National Park Service yesterday started requiring hikers to reserve permits to climb to the top of Half Dome on busy summer weekends and holidays.

"This has become a serious safety issue," said Kari Cobb, a park spokesperson.

The result: Permits for weekends and holidays in May and June sold out in 15 minutes after being put up for sale yesterday morning at 7 a.m.

Aspiring climbers can reserve permits for similar periods in July and August starting April 1 -- and for September and October starting May 1 -- by visiting the park service's online reservations service, or by calling 877-444-6777.

Park officials recommend that travelers set up a profile on the site several days before permits go on sale and sign on immediately at 7 a.m. the day the permits become available. There is a $1.50 processing fee.

Serious climbers who summit Half Dome routinely said they've been surprised in recent years by increasing crowds on the mountain.

New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport is already prone to delays, with most frequent travelers being able to recall at least one horror story about being stranded at the facility for hours awaiting news of a rescheduled flight.

With JFK's longest runway closed for repairs starting this week, the delays, and air fares to fly into one of the nation's busiest airports, are likely to soar. Fares on some summer flights from New York to Los Angeles, for example, are already double what they were last year.

And impacts of the Bay Runway's closure won't only be felt by travelers flying into JFK, but by millions of others at airports across the country.

"No good will come of this," said George Hobica, creator of Airfarewatchdog.com. "It will probably cause cascading delays. A plane that goes from London to New York will probably not go back to London. If it's American, it will probably go to Chicago and then Los Angeles, so other flights will be delayed too."

Nowadays, an Icelandic road trip is both unique and affordable to a good many college students. Though Iceland once had a reputation as one of the priciest European countries, since the island's bankruptcy in 2008, the dollar goes much further in Iceland now than in most of Europe.

As the closest European country to the States, Iceland's also a quick ride (a 5.5-hour flight from NYC). A cornucopia of affordable excursions await students on a budget.

This week, a fleet of 150 brand new full-body imaging scanners, devices that use "millimeter waves" to see through clothing to detect hidden weapons, were shipped out to airports across the country. The first devices of this batch will appear at Boston's Logan and Chicago's O'Hare. So if you happen to be flying out of one of those cities, you can plan on two things: all the departing flights will be totally safe, and a random stranger might be closely examining your naked parts on a computer monitor.

Until the last couple of months, these devices were never really discussed. In fact, without much fanfare or opposition, 19 airports in the United States were already equipped with body scanners years before the infamous Underpants Bomber attempted to blow up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day last year. Some of the airports already sporting body scanners include Los Angeles, Denver, Baltimore, Albuquerque, New York (Kennedy), Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, and Washington, D.C. (Reagan National).

Incidentally, I'm flying round-trip to Los Angeles later next month, and I never look forward to the endless and infamously long security lines at LAX. Now I get to look forward to a potential body scan at the end of the insufferable and soul-crushing rainbow.