Atlas Obscura Podcast Mailbag: Long Lines, Budgeting With Friends, and Accidental Adventures

Johanna: Let’s get into it. Tee us up, Dylan.

Dylan: I’m Dylan Thuras.

Johanna: I’m Johanna Mayer.

Amanda: I’m Amanda McGowan.

Dylan: And this is Atlas Obscura. Today is a listener mailbag episode where we answer all of your questions. Your travel questions, your life questions, your esoteric questions.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Johanna: OK, first question: This is from a listener named Frank. Frank asked: “What is the longest line you have ever waited in? What was the experience like and was it worth it?”

Amanda: I hate waiting in lines. I used to be the kind of person that was like, if there’s a great pastry or something from a bakery, I’ll wait for an hour for that. And now—you know, a decent pastry is just as good as an excellent pastry, sometimes.

Johanna: I could not disagree more. I feel like I have the type of personality where a lot of people would think that I would be really against waiting in a line, but I absolutely will wait for certain things. And, my answer to this question—it’s a little embarrassing. Do you remember the cronut?

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Dylan: Yes.

Johanna: I waited in the cronut line not once, but twice. And I did get on that line at five o’clock in the morning.

Dylan: No!

Johanna: Twice.

Dylan: Tell me, how long were you in the line for?

Johanna: I think like three hours.

Dylan: Are you kidding me?

Johanna: Maybe I got in line at 6 a.m.

Dylan: When I see a line like four people deep, I’m like, nope not interested. On the other side of that line, it’s like an important thing I really need, I’m just like, “Oh, I don’t need you. I’m not doing this.”

Amanda: I’ll file my taxes after the deadline.

Dylan: Yes, 100 percent. I refuse.

Johanna: You don’t think there’s something fun about the communal experience of everyone being like, “We are excited about this thing, we are putting aside a day,” you kind of mix it up with the other people in the line—you don’t find anything appealing about that?

Amanda: Now that you say that there is a feeling—

Dylan: If it’s the right cultural event.

Johanna: Like the release of the cronut.

Dylan: I don’t think I’ve ever been—honestly, it’s at a theme park. I probably waited for like an hour and a half to ride a roller coaster.

Johanna: Which roller coaster?

Dylan: Probably the longest line was for Kingda Ka at Six Flags.

Johanna: Closed, now. Famously now closed.

Dylan: Yes, now closed. But yeah, it was the tallest roller coaster in the world for a while.

Johanna: Why was it closed? Any arm dislocations or anything?

Dylan: I think it was just always breaking. I think people were getting stuck on it. You’d be stuck up at the top. Amanda, what’s your longest line?

Johanna: Any line stories, Amanda?

Amanda: This is also probably not particularly cool, but I’m a little freak for the band U2. Maybe you’re familiar with the band U2? They obviously did a big thing at the Sphere. I went with my sister and I got general admission tickets to be on the floor, and we ended up really close to the front. We waited in line for probably like an hour and a half.

Dylan: Oh, that’s not bad. That’s normal. Honestly, I have never done what you were talking about Johanna, where you’re like, “It’s gonna take six hours, the line is part of the experience.” I guess there has not been the kind of occasion where I had something where I was like, “Oh, I really want to do this.”

Johanna: OK, next question. This is from a listener named Ashley. It came in via email. She says: “I love taking trips with friends and family, but we’re all in different financial places in our lives. How do you manage planning a trip with people you love and care about who have mixed budgets?” It’s a great question.

Amanda: That is a good question.

Johanna: Yeah, tough.

Dylan: I think there’s a straightforward way to do it. You have to be a little bit comfortable talking about money right out of the gate, but—

Johanna: That’s the answer, is just having a conversation.

Dylan: And you don’t even need to get into your full money picture. You can just say, “We only have $2,500 for this kind of vacation right now.” I think just agreeing, being upfront about what your budget for a trip is is a good place to start. And it might mean not knowing where you’re going. It might be like, “Hey, look, I would love to take a trip. I only can spend two grand. Where can we go for two grand? And you could do a lot of stuff, you know what I mean? Cheap flights to Florida or Las Vegas are very cheap often, and you can kind of come up with some fun trip like, “We’re gonna fly to Vegas and drive out to the desert and we’re gonna camp for three nights.”

Amanda: Wait in line to see U2 for four hours.

Dylan: Yeah, we’re gonna go to the Sphere. That’ll be a thousand dollars of the budget.

Johanna: Well, that’s what I was gonna say also is: If you’re in the pre-planning “Where are we going?” stage, outdoors things are often a very great selection for a lower budget. But also, once you’re there, something that I feel like I’ve kind of realized as I get deeper into my 30s is: If you’re going on a trip with a friend, it’s OK to not stay together. You can get different accommodations, sometimes it’s even better. You don’t have to eat every meal together or anything. You can just be on these kind of parallel trips that you link up for certain things.

Amanda: I totally agree.

Dylan: Actually, it’s a really good idea to not assume you have to spend 100 percent of your time together. That is a recipe for everyone getting very grouchy with each other. I mean, I also think there are some strange scenarios with friends and family—and this is more comfortable with family than a friend, but someone might say, “Oh, well, whatever, let me cover the hotels.” Or, “I’m buying the flights. I want to do that.” And I honestly think in that case, it depends person to person, but just say, “OK.” You know what I mean? Be gracious. Be like, “OK I appreciate that.” And maybe put boundaries on it. But if somebody wants to pay I think that’s fine, you just have to sort of be clear about where those boundaries are.

Amanda: I think those are both really good suggestions. The only thing I have to add is if there’s something that you have in mind for an expensive component of a trip or a big activity that’ll cost a little more money, it maybe helps to kind of put feelers out ahead of time. My friends and I go on a trip once a year and we make a Google Doc. This is not for more spontaneous travelers. We make a Google Doc and we’re like, “Hey, we want to do a haunted horse beach tour,” or some accursed thing. And then you’re like, “OK I expect that this is something people want to do and I can opt out of it in advance or not.”

Johanna: Amanda, you actually brought this question up the other day. Do you know what question I’m talking about?

Amanda: I do, yes.

Johanna: You want to ask that?

Amanda: I would love to ask that. My question is, “What are some places that you weren’t supposed to be in, but ended up really enjoying?” And I asked this because I am a person who books crappy flights all the time. I always book all my travel last-minute and I always get stuck in a layover somewhere that I wasn’t supposed to be on my itinerary. I have an answer as well, but I’ll let you guys answer first.

Johanna: I freaking love Indianapolis. A couple of years ago, my partner and I drove from New York to Missouri where I’m from and we ended up driving the first 12 hours and stopping in Indianapolis for the night and it rocked. There were so many outdoor breweries. There were people playing music outside. It felt very much like a place that a lot of people were decamped from Chicago or a bigger city and came to this more affordable place where there’s more space and they brought a lot of cool stuff there. Had some really good barbecue. We loved it. I was ready to move to Indianapolis after that.

Amanda: That’s my list. I want to go to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum.

Johanna: Oh, we did not go there. I did not know that that was there.

Dylan: Just a plus one to mid-sized Midwestern cities. Your Kansas Citys, your Cincinnatis, your Pittsburghs.

Johanna: What’s yours, Dylan?

Dylan: I have two, kind of. I mean, one of them I made a whole podcast episode about. But, I got stuck in Las Vegas for four days. And I know that’s a funny place to—you know, because tons of people travel to Las Vegas as a major destination, people want to go. But I did not want to be there for four days because I was like, “What am I gonna do with all this time?” I’m not much of a gambler. I’m not against it, I just lose all my money. I didn’t have the money to lose.

But then I just ended up having this wonderful experience. I rented a car and I drove out to Death Valley and I was off in the desert and at the weird Amargosa Opera House where this woman painted all the walls with murals of people so she could perform in front of an audience. I just went all over the place. I went out to this big land art place called Double Negative and I just really explored all the non-casino Vegas stuff of which there’s a ton.

It’s such a weird quirky place. So I ended up—that trip, that period where I just had four days to kill, I really fell in love with the place. I was like, oh, OK. This is a good reminder of if you’re willing to look you’ll find stuff that’s delightful.

Johanna: Amanda, What’s yours? You said you had one.

Amanda: It was like Christmas travel and I had a layover in Fort Lauderdale. And of course my connection got canceled. So, it was me and a plane full of people coming from Connecticut in Fort Lauderdale at this airport hotel and nobody had any weather clothes. So everyone was sitting around this pool in winter coats and winter boots just sweating, and eating food from the gas station at the hotel. So, everyone’s in that kind of mood.

And then we’re at the pool and this iguana the size of Plymouth Rock lumbers over the pool and everybody just stops and is like, “Oh my god, what what is that?” And the guy who was working at the hotel was like, “Oh, you know, he’s chill. He comes here every day. He bites but he’s fine. Just give him space.”

Johanna: Did he have a name?

Amanda: For some reason in my head, I’m thinking his name was Ivan, but I don’t know if I just made that up. It was amazing. I think about that iguana like once every couple months. We had a cosmic connection, man.

Dylan: There’s something a little bit magical about falling into a block of unstructured time. It’s slightly panic-inducing at first, you’re just like, “Oh no, what am I doing?” You could look at your phone the whole day, whatever, you can fritter away that time no problem. But like there’s just something kind of magical about being like well, I guess I gotta go take a look. You know and like and then it ends up being such fun experiences because there’s no stakes. You didn’t mean to be there.

Johanna: You’re free.

Dylan: Yeah, totally.

Johanna: That’s all I got for you guys.

Dylan: That was fun.

Amanda: Thanks for letting me share my special friendship with the airport hotel iguana. Shout out to Ivan.

Dylan: Thank you for sending your questions in, too. The next mailbag episode will be next month, so if you need any questions answered, advice curious about our opinion on whatever, send us your questions. You can email us at hello@atlasobscura.com or record a voice memo and send it to us at hello@atlasobscura.com. You can also just call us and leave a message. We will put the number in the episode description.

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Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming.