[CharlieDigital]

The founder of Viator had an interesting take on this in an interview (How I Built This [0]).

The gist is that the people who deeply research and plan, they create this perfect vision of the trip in their head. When you actually go on the trip, things can go wrong; weather is bad, destination was crowded, you got sick, etc. But years later, the perfect version of the trip and the actual version of the trip get mixed up in your memories. People who didn't plan, didn't have this "idealized" version imprinted.

I find this to be true so my spouse and I plan our trips meticulously and research everything.

We also capture a detailed log of our trips. And I think this combination really helps to highlight and reinforce the good memories while letting the not so good ones fade.

[0] https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-via...

[dangus]

I think this if taken too far sounds a lot like work.

One of my favorite trips involved planning as far as a train trip and booking a hostel. But beyond that my group basically blew off every plan we had and hung around the hostel because they had a really nice free pool table and really good cheap food and booze.

That is probably one of my top three trips of my life. I find my memories compressed because it was basically 5 days of Groundhog Day but it was a great time.

Making a daily log sounds miserable to me but then again I strongly dislike journaling.

Then again the phenomenon you bring up might contribute to what people love about Disney World so much. You have to do a lot of planning to get a lot out of it, and therefore you remember everything you did clearly because so much time was spent planning. I think I could tell you every restaurant I went to on my last trip since I had to fight for reservations and I was setting each day’s plan months ahead of time.

[CharlieDigital]

It is work!

My wife and I were struggling with this doing it in Google Docs; it was absolutely a chore!

So I ended up creating a small (free) app to do this: https://turas.app

The Chrome extension[0] is particularly good (also free) because it lets you just do it all in Google Maps. I'd definitely recommend that you start with the extension if you're curious since it's really easy to use (the full web app is definitely more "power user" focused).

    > Making a daily log sounds miserable to me but then again I strongly dislike journaling.

This is one of those things that I think we regret later because it's always so hard to remember the details of those trips. So part of the goal of Turas was to make it easy to take a planned itinerary and make it into a "story". Here are a few examples: https://turas.app/s/japan-x-taiwan/BtEjycbA and https://turas.app/s/6-days-in-terceira-portugal/naAag5s3StTM... Basically, I made Turas so I could do the planning and then write the story using that same plan.

I'm in my 40's now and remember very little of the trips that I took in my early teens with my dad (who has now passed). Where did we go? What did we see? Where was this cool place that I only vaguely remember? Everything is kind of haze now. So the hope with these stories is that my kids can look back and really recall these adventures and places that they went. Not just in small snapshots in a social media feed, but as a singular , encapsulated story like this. If people ask how our trip was or they ask for tips and ideas, I just share these with them.

[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/turasapp/lpfijfdbgo...

[stavros]

It's great that you had a fun time hanging out with friends, but spending a few days with friends around a pool table and bar isn't really a trip, it's a gathering. Trips tend to be centered around the place you're going to, with experiences you can only have at that place, and nowhere else.

[CharlieDigital]

    > Trips tend to be centered around the place you're going to, with experiences you can only have at that place, and nowhere else.

I think this is a great delineation.

For me, because I'm traveling as a family of 4, the cost of any trip is significant. We did a Japan/Taiwan trip this past winter and the total cost with flights was probably in the $12-14k range. At this level of expense, I'm going to plan as many of the high level details as possible to really maximize that experience and reduce headaches in the moment of travel.

[dangus]

On the other hand a lot of people who book expensive trips to places like beach destinations, resorts, and cruises want to escape the daily grind of planning out and organizing their daily life. They want to just show up and relax and that is completely valid.

Also, I find that a lot of times planned activities ahead of time look a lot different than what you find when you get somewhere.

[CharlieDigital]

You do the planning beforehand so that you can minimize the thinking while there :)

[dangus]

Are you gatekeeping my definition of a trip?

It was definitely a trip. We spent three days on a train and saw scenery. We saw some local sights but were relaxed about it and yes we spent a lot of time chilling in the hostel.

We couldn’t have had that experience elsewhere.

We also met other travelers.