New technology as handy as road map

Leah Zanolla | Posted: Jul 24, 2006 | Updated: Oct 19, 2014 - 9:25:27 AM

Cox News Service - ATLANTA - The Graham family summer vacation was a big hit. Their weeklong Disney-themed Florida excursion featured plenty of sun, lots of rides and hardly any bickering over what to do next. And it was due, in large part, to an $18.95 piece of computer software. "I'm not an amusement park guy. But it was phenomenal. I'd go again," said dad Marcus Graham of Alpharetta, Ga., who used a program called RideMax (www.ridemax.com) to route his family's path through Disney World - almost eerily guiding them to popular attractions when wait times were at a minimum. The Grahams are one of countless families all over the country who've learned that technology isn't necessarily one of the things they need to get away from on vacation. In fact, while families have been toting cell phones, cameras and other gadgets on vacation for years, new technologies are taking the experience to a different level - making it easier than ever to tune a vacation to a family's precise pursuits. Web sites are springing up with audio tours of attractions for people with particular interests. There's a John Steinbeck-themed tour of Cannery Row and a tour of coastal California focused on sailing, said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting in Belmont, Calif. Widespread high-speed Internet access is making it easier for vacationers to post detailed live accounts of their trips online for friends, family and sometimes the public. There's even a bikini to tell you when you've had too much sun (the Solestrom SmartSwim UV Meter Bikini, $190). And while that might seem a little gimmicky, emerging wireless technologies aren't, travel technology analysts say. Such tools stand to make travel information almost absurdly easy to find at your destination. " 'It will find you' is a good way to put it," said Henry Harteveldt, a travel technology analyst with Forrester Research. Already, guests at the Luxor resort in Las Vegas turn on their cell phones after landing to a text message asking if they'd like to check in using their phones. "That's just a harbinger of what's to come," Harteveldt said. Someday, you'll likely be able to use a mobile device like a cell phone as your airline boarding pass, hotel room key and charge card. Rose said cell phones equipped with GPS technology will soon be able to recommend nearby restaurants and attractions to vacationers, make reservations and lead them step by step to the front door. For Mark Winters, the creator of RideMax, technology is a pragmatic solution to a problem he saw on his many trips to Disneyland in California with his amusement-park-loving wife's family. "You see a lot of people just standing there with their hands sort of buried in the park map," he said. "You're spending thousands of dollars to be there. I guess my philosophy is, why waste that time?" Winters, a software engineer, released the first version of the program in 2001, covering California's Disneyland. This spring, he expanded the program's coverage to Disney World in Orlando. Technology is also helping to change the way we remember vacations. Mike Johnston, of Dallas, Ga., took a small electronics store worth of equipment with him on a recent family vacation to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where he spent part of each day posting photos and a summary of the day's events. The effort was in part a way to keep relatives back home updated on the trip, but it was also a way to preserve the trip for his 3-year-old daughter. "I can't even remember the last time I watched a videotape that I shot," he said. "Even though the technology is getting better for that sort of thing, a Web kind of presence will really be something we can look back on and remember."