Sensory Friendly Solutions

Experienced traveler Elaine Shannon shares travel lessons and the genesis of Fundy Vortex Tours.

• Sensory Friendly Solutions • Season 1 • Episode 6

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In this episode of the 55+ Travelers: Arriving & Thriving  Audio Conference join Sensory Friendly Solutions Founder Christel Seeberger, and guest hosts Sophie Yang and Christopher Basmadjian, occupational therapy students, as they take a deep dive into the extensive expertise of experienced traveler Elaine Shannon.

Be inspired by the travel insights from Elaine Shannon as she shares how she spent her first paycheck on a cross-country trip and has been traveling for over 3 decades since, culminating in her launch of curated experiences for mature travelers at Fundy Vortex Tours. Elaine Shannon provides first-hand experience

Episode Guide

0:25 Welcome to guest Elaine Shannon

1:15 Elaine shares how she spent her first few pay-checks

1:45 Changes in Elaine's travel preferences

6:15 Preparing for your trip

8:08 How Elaine begins planning her travels

10:41 Pinterest: Look Books

13:25 Utilizing Social Media

16:15 Elaine's experiences with tourism operators

19:00 Customer Service

21:05 Operators should provide information in different forms

23:11  Fundy Vortex Tours

28:12 Elaine's approach for creating tours for mature adults

29:44 It's Important that everyone is able to hear or be heard

30:45 Appropriate wardrobes

33:02 There always has to be food!

35:17 Thank you, Elaine Shannon!



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Sophie Yang: [00:00:01] Welcome to the 55+ Travelers: Arriving and Thriving audio-conference brought to you by Sensory Friendly Solutions. I'm your host, Sophie Yang. In this episode, you will also hear the voices of co-host Christopher Basmadjian, my fellow occupational therapy student, as well Sensory Friendly Solutions founder and CEO Christel Seeberger. This is our special bonus episode, our guest for this podcast is Elaine Shannon. Through her work from Fundy Vortex Tours and as a mature traveler, she will be providing a valuable perspective to us based on her years of experience with traveling. It is great to have you here, Elaine. Would you like to start us off by telling a little bit about yourself and what you do?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:00:44] So, my name is Elaine Shannon and I... Oh, my gosh. So I would be one of your 55 plus people who... who's interested in travel. So I'm just over 55. But I have been a lifelong traveler. I remember when I had my first job at a bank in 1986, so I was 21 years old, and my mother said: “what are you going to do now that you have a job?” And I said: “well I'm going to go to Calgary to visit my aunt.” So that was the first thing I did probably with my very first few paychecks was I... I got on a plane and I went by myself to... to Calgary, Alberta when I was 21 from the East Coast. That's a... that's a big trip for a 21 year old girl. And, so... but, you know, I have had the travel bug my whole life and... but as I... as I age and mature, the things that I look for in travel are a little different.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:01:44] So throughout the ages, what kind of changes do you see in your travels and what changes in your preference too?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:01:51] So... so that's a good question, Sophie, so what... what happened when I was young was I would take whatever was put in front of me gratefully. Right? It's like, oh, I'm going to have a squishy seat on the plane, and I'm very short, I’m four foot ten and a half. Oh. So... sure, my legs are going to be cut in two for the next, you know, four, five, six, eight hours of my plane ride. Oh, that's the food you're giving me. Like, like every little thing along the... along the way I would just take whatever people gave me. And so what happens is when you... when you mature and so when you go from the first half of your life to the second half, and I think for women we have three acts, so, you know, I’ve raised my children and now I'm my third act, I'm a little bit particular about my travel. So I will... I will bring... and Christel knows this because we've cruised together a couple of times and we’ve had very long flights. Is that because I'm short, I bring a very large knapsack which goes under the seat in front of me so I can prop my legs up. So I actually have a footstool when I travel and so it's there. I can put my legs up, you know, I can sit and my legs are... probably an occupational therapy thing. So my legs are at a nice 90 degree angle. I'm not going to get deep vein thrombosis from sitting for very long and that has made my air travel much better. The other thing was I used to like, hey, I need the window seat because I want to see the world go by. But then I thought I'd like to go to the bathroom frequently when I travel. So now I've become an aisle... you know, I book... I book the aisle now. So it's like, OK, so these are things, you know, that we do with flights. Although I haven't been on a flight in... in about, you know, a year and a half post pandemic. But looking forward to that. Then... so there's just things that, you know, preferences that... that I like. My husband and I enjoy tenting. We used to enjoy tenting before we had children and then when we had children and one of our... as I... as I mentioned in our pre-call is that one of our child is on the autism spectrum and the other one has severe allergies. So we had to move from tenting to trailer camping because there were just too many variables I couldn't control in a tent. And so, you know, we trailer tented and it was great with the kids and then they didn't want to go any more. So then we got rid of our trailer. But then a couple of years ago, my husband and I are like, well, but we still like tenting so... so what are we going to do about that situation? So off we went. We rebought all the camping gear. But we rebought camping gear that suits our current lifestyle. So, you know, we have nice hammocks that we can hang, you know, in the trees so that, you know, we can have our afternoon siesta and reading time. But we also bought an air mattress that has a stand. So I'm not rolling onto an air mattress from the ground. I'm actually... it's like a bed. So it's an air bed with an air mattress. And... and I take blankets. I don't sleep in a sleeping bag. I take blankets because that's how I'm most comfortable and my husband, too. So it's not just about me, it's both of us. So everything that we do now with travel is that we've modified it so that we're happy, so that when we go camping, when we travel, we enjoy the experience from beginning to end. And then with each trip, what I usually do is I kind of do a little sort of post trip analysis and I'll be like to my husband: “so what did you think about this? What did you think about that?” And it’s like, yeah, we'll just... we'll do that a little different, and I always keep notes in my phone. So it's like, OK, when we book a hotel again, for instance, the hotel that we stayed at, we just came back from a three day vacation to… to Nova Scotia and so we got in the room and the TV was on the wall, not at the end of the bed, but beside the bed. So we like to watch a little TV after a busy day. While the two of us were trying to figure out how to... and there's one chair. So I had to sit in the room, but we had to lay in the bed but sideways to watch the TV, which, like, was awful, like my neck was sore, not good ergonomics. So my neck was sore. And so I said, OK, next time you stay at this particular hotel, we are going to ask them where the TV is in relation to the bed.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:06:13] That was some very insightful comments. I see that you really try to prepare things in advance, kind of see things like what's available, right, and like things are kind of fit what you want.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:06:26] Well, that's... I think that's... Sophie, that's the second half of life thing. I think when you look at people who are... who are 55 right, so we've, you know, we've... we've done all the, you know, every accommodation we can do for our kids. Right? So for people that have children we accommodate or people that have dogs like you're accommodating your dogs, you’re accommodating your children. But I think if... you come to a time in your life, where you need to accommodate yourself. Like, so if you're going on vacation, you don't want to come back with a sore neck, a sore back, you know, deep vein thrombosis in your legs, you don't want to have gained 10 pounds because you didn't eat the food you normally eat. Right? Even searching out restaurant. So it's like, OK, I mean, we're in Nova Scotia. You can only eat so much seafood. Right? Although we tried to eat our weight and Digby scallops, but anyway, we didn't... we didn't quite get there. But it was like, for lunch, we'd like a salad at lunch. Like, so I don't want to go and have fish and chips at lunchtime. So... so we were in Lunenburg, and we found the dearest little restaurant, a little deli that had beautiful salads, like amazing. Throw a couple of Digby scallops on there. And they had hand done pizza. So we shared a pizza, share the salad. So it was like a sort of a small plate lunch. Yeah. And so we really... so that is the top of my mind when I travel. Like that is how I... and I'm a very organized person. So, you know, you mentioned that Sophie, that... that's organized, but that's my nature. But I think that organizing, and this used to be my mantra back in my days when I was a professional organizer, it's organizing today saves time, money, energy and frustration from happening tomorrow.

 

Christopher Basmadjian: [00:08:05] Yeah, definitely. And in terms of you're saying like you guys have your own preferences, and could you tell us about how that goes into your planning from the get go? Like, how do you start planning for your trip? You know, you have all these different preferences that both of you and your husband have in mind. So how do you guys go about getting those accommodations or getting those preferences in your planning?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:08:26] Good. Good question, Christopher. So, I mean, we kind of know... we've been together for almost 30 years, so we know each other pretty well. My husband and I, we are fantastic travelers. Like we travel so well together that there's just things that we know. Right? And he's really tall and I'm really short. So there's, you know, so there's accommodations for those sorts of things that we look at, like when we rent a vehicle, when we travel, it's like, can we both drive it? Right? Is it like... does it work for both of us? The food, like I know what kind of food we like. And so he's driving and, you know, I'm on the Google, right? Looking for like the restaurants that would have the food that we liked or activities that would suit us. Right? Like we like to go see things. So we really... like it's really knowing yourself. And I think that's part of, you know, when we look at the 55 thing.... so when Christel asked me it was like, oh good, I'm 55 plus. Right? So now I'm like... I'm in the old person travel... but it's... but it's actually we're in a sweet spot in our life where we can do that, like we have time like, you know,that we're in a thoughtful place in our life that... that... that we do that. Right? And if there are people that are listening to this who are 55 plus and aren’t doing this like hello, why are you not? Like who... who are you traveling for if you're not traveling for yourself and for the joy, you know, of traveling and, and going to see new places and having new experiences? Like that's what it's all about. It's all about the adventure.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:09:55] Venturing into the unknown. Right? Just finding...

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:09:58] Well exactly! I mean, there's things that you plan for. So, so that to me is.. like, you know, a part of my world... I'm... I'm a producer for film and television. So... so it's all in the preparation. So the more work that I do in the pre-production, the better it's going to be during the production. So in my life, everything kind of, you know, and I pivoted from organizing to production because the skill sets are the same, right? It's like you do all this work ahead of time so that when the actual thing happens, you're like, hey, and then you're... and then when the... when the... the wonderful, magical extra things happen, you're so present to be able to just soak that all up and enjoy it.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:10:41] Out of curiosity, I was wondering where... if let's say you want to visit a place like a new place that you're not really that familiar with, where is the first place you usually go to in order to gather that information about the location where... like what kind of services they offer? I think that's something travelers would be really interested in knowing.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:11:01] So I go to Pinterest. So I have a Pinterest... I know, so I can see Christopher right now, because we're actually part video and you have the look... Well people are like: “what? Pinterest?” So Pinterest has everything. And so because I'm such a visual person, I do a lookbook for all of my vacations. So if you go to my Elaine Shannon Pinterest, you can sort of see my travels through my boards. It's like, oh, you've been to Florida. Like who in Florida... who goes to Florida and visits the Botanical Gardens? Did you even know that there's a botanical garden there? Most people go to Florida and they go to... they go to Disney, they go to Universal. But they don't know that there's an amazing 50 acre botanical garden in the center of Orlando. So my husband and I have been there. Did you know that there's a lake in downtown Orlando that has a sculpture installation and there's eight pieces around the lake? So my husband and I had this on our phone and we went around and we found that it was like, oh, I think an hour, an hour and a half. So we parked downtown, did the walk like... so, to me, there is so much out there and it's like had it like... it's like drinking out of a fire hose. There's like oh how do I know what to do. But when I go to Pinterest it's like OK, things to do in Orlando or things to do, well now that we haven't traveled much, things to do in New Brunswick, Canada. Right? So what do I do in New Brunswick? What do I do, you know, here? I live at the... at the entrance to the Fundy trail. OK, what's going on at the Fundy trail? And so Pinterest has everything. And then what I do is I gather everything in a board, you know, label it up, write things. And I have a board: things to do in New Brunswick. So when the pandemic hit last year, it was like, OK, what can we do in our own province? And so there's a whole board full of ideas. So... and I used to go back to when the kids were little, it's like... it's summertime and they're bored. It's like I got a chore list on the fridge there, which would you like to do first or something. So you just have these lists. So, OK, it's summer, you know, and we still have some travel restrictions. So what are we going to do? Oh, let's go to the board and see what I've got there. It's just oh, I could talk about Pinterest forever. It's so much fun.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:13:22] I feel like I'm really surprised too at, like, how you use Pinterest because I feel like a lot of companies, they will kind of advertise things onto their websites. I mean, social media also plays a pretty big part of it. But I was also thinking, like, what about things like Twitter or Instagram, for instance, is that also... other... or what kind of social or other social media content do you also look for?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:13:48] As part of my strategy. So for me, like so to be quite honest, I've jumped off Instagram recently. In January, I did a social media, a hiatus. And so I kind of went off everything for a bit in February. And then when I came back, I thought, OK, where are my people? Where are the people that I'm going to connect with and the people that are going to look for me... look to me for future things like, you know, like the vortex tours that I'm planning to do here in the St. Martins area. And I thought... so those people are probably not on Twitter because my Twitter people... that's mostly it's a global thing. So I see Twitter as a place where I would go to look for news. Like what's going on in a particular topic. I'm not on Twitter as much. Instagram is beautiful pictures. So there's a whole... like my daughter who's 25, she's absolutely on Instagram. She wants to look at all the pretty pictures of the places. Well, you know what? I just want to go to those places like I... I'm... I'm, you know, 56 so I only have so many summers left. When you're 25 you have all the summers. You have all the summers in the world.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:15:04] Right? But once you hit 50, you're going, oh, I have half... like I'm halfway through what a normal, well not even halfway, it's over halfway. So it's like I don't want to spend my time sitting, looking at other people's pictures of the fun stuff they're doing. I want to actually experience it. So for me... so I moved Instagram aside as well. I have a YouTube channel, but I don't post as much there. For me, I'm really living in the presence of Facebook is the place. For me, if you look at that 55 age bracket, you're probably going to see that, as far as social media goes, that's... that's where they're sitting. And these are people that I know personally, a lot of them or know of me because of, you know, the work I've done in the past. And they're watching and observing. And it's like, wait, what's Elaine doing? Oh, wait. She's down at the beach on a full moon and she's got, you know, she's doing something. So to me, there's a higher level, I think, of engagement for that, getting out and getting the action happening in your life,

 

Christopher Basmadjian: [00:16:09] Earlier you mentioned that you've been traveling for under... almost 30 years. During this entire time and all of your experience traveling, how often do you usually interact with tourism operators or... and like what has been your experience with them? And could you offer some tips to those... about good experiences with operators? Like what... what should they be doing? What should they be looking for in terms of helping their clients?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:16:34] So that's a fantastic question, Christopher. And... and so... and that's important to me, because as I'm working on creating these vortex tours out here and St. Martins, I will be sort of on the other side of that. But I'm one of those people that I've... I've bypassed all the tour operators. Right? And so I go to Pinterest, I build my own tours. And... and so I've... I haven't had that experience other than, in the city of St. John with all the cruise ship passengers that we've had over the years, you know, working with people like Beth Hatt from Aquila Tours, that's been my experience. And I mean, they have a center for cruise ship excellence here. And so they really have done a great job. So living in the city of St. John, you know, seeing the pink buses go by with... with all of the people dressed in their loyalist, you know, costumes, taking people for tours, to me, it's... it's... as a tour operator, you want to immerse, you want to bring your people into the experience. Right? You want them right from the beginning to the end. And I think that for me, and I guess what we've done cruises, Christel, I've done a couple of cruises, it's that immersive experience. So if you get somebody leaving you, you want them to be the expert. You want them to know little tidbits of information. Right? They... they need to know more about the area than you do. They need to know, you know, here's where the best scallop is or here's where the best this is. Or, you know, , you know, it's going to be a rocky beach that you're going to walk on here so you might want to have some special beach shoes, because I see people coming here to the caves in St. Martins and they're in high heeled shoes and they are not prepared for what is in front of them. Like you're going to the beach, you're going to actually traverse through a river. You know, when the tide goes out, it's still a river to get over to the caves. And they're standing there and they don't know what to do. Right? I don't have the proper shoes. You know, I don't have sunscreen. I don't have a hat. I need the tide tables. I need to make sure I'm not going to get stuck around those caves on the other beach. So, I mean, and I think that that's what... that's what tour operators do, right. Is that they have all the information. But... but the bridge to me, there's always a bridge. How do you get people who are interested in traveling across the bridge and comfortable to speak to the tour operator?

 

Christopher Basmadjian: [00:19:00] What if we think about more the attractions themselves? Let's say if you go to restaurants and museums and concerts or any kind of individual attractions, I'm sure you've got to interact with a lot of customer service representatives or how has your experience been with them? And what do you think in terms of what have you learned from them?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:19:21] Ok, well, I'm just trying to think like so in my, as as a younger person, like we took our kids to Washington, to the Smithsonian Museum. So, I mean, that is quite a thing. There were places everywhere to get maps and information like this is a well thought out place. Right. It's very busy. And we wanted to maximize. So we said to them, here's what our kids are interested in. They want to see the dinosaur. They want to see the story from the movie they watched right, night at the museum, like all those things. And they're like, OK, you want to go to this one? This one. This one. And you have four hours. Well, in four hours, here's what you can do. You can walk down the mall to the Lincoln Monument. So they gave us a framework that absolutely did that. And then fast forward to traveling without children. Right. So on a cruise ship, it's like, OK, here's your tour. Right. You're going to go and do this and you're going to, it's going to happen in this amount of time. And people need to know these, especially as you get older because it's like, OK, I need to know where that goes in my calendar or what I'm going to do. I also need to know where the meals are around that, because that's important. A lot of people who, you know, as we age, like our tummies are kind of used to having food at a certain time, but also washrooms. Right. It's like where's the washroom breaks? So all of these things are super important information. Bits to have from your tour operators.

 

Sophie Yang: [00:20:52] For this information that are kind of given to you, would you prefer them verbally told to you, like in person, or would you prefer them in like a pamphlet form or like a written format?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:21:03] That's a loaded great question, Sophie. So when I do workshops and in my life, there's your four types of learners, right? So you've got your digital, your kinesthetic, your visual and your auditory. I think operators need to have something for everybody. And so I was actually speaking to somebody today who's going to be in a trade show, and she was like, yeah, we're going to do this really tactile thing and people are going to come by the booth. And I said, well, I'm going to go right by your booth because I don't want to stand there and do tactile things. Like I'm very visual. So you need to give me something to look at that's going to attract my eye. So I think that that's part of it. And what happens is as humans, we tend to speak to people in the language that we are most comfortable with. So if I'm visual, I speak in visuals like you should have seen this, like it was amazing. The colors were like this. Right. But somebody who's auditory, right. It would be like, oh, that restaurant was too noisy or it was great.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:22:03] Right. And tactile. It's like how we were able to walk around a maneuver. So I think for tour operators, we need to get outside. And I think of that for myself or for what I'm planning is like, how can I have something that's going to attract the interest, pique the interest of all the people that might be there. Right. And then and give them all something not that you need to have, not that you're spreading yourself out, but you just need to have something there that is going to get them. Like some places you go, like they might have a pen or a pencil, like with their company name on it, or they might have, I don't know, stress balls or I'm trying to think like or luggage tags. Right. So what are the things that are going to resonate with the user? And so that's also important to have somebody on your team is you're creating these things who understands the different love- it’s not even love light. It's the different languages of learning communication for your operators.

 

Christel Seeberger: [00:23:10] Elaine that's wonderful information that I just, so important to be reminded of that both as the person who experiences those things and also as the person who's developing something to offer a very special experience. I’d like to give you an opportunity just as we have a little more time in our call here today to talk about Fundy Vortex Tours and to talk about how, you know, what you've learned as a traveler and how that's informing a special experience that you're designing and planning right now.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:23:50] Thanks, Christel. And this is exciting to talk about it. And it's a little scary because seriously, people I've had this dream for so long to do this and now that it's here, so literally, I visited Sedona, Arizona, my husband and I were there like 12 years ago, and we were like, what is this place? Somebody said, you need to go to Sedona, we were at a conference. And so we had attacked on a couple of days from our conference, went to Vegas, rented a car, drove to Sedona. And it was like, this place is amazing and beautiful and the energy here is great. And we loved it. And then we went back two more times and every time we would go to Sedona and then we would come back here to New Brunswick and especially out here to St. Martins, New Brunswick, we were like, wait, the red rocks are even the same, the energy that has a very similar, very spiritual, peaceful, relaxed vibe. And years ago, I would say to my husband, like, there's some, there's a connection. I feel very drawn to this place. I feel drawn. I felt drawn to Sedona and I feel drawn to St. Martins. And I just kept saying, like, someday I'm going to live there, sometime I'm going to live there. And so here we are. Last September, we purchased this property. And it's like, oh, my gosh, my dreams are coming true. So here I am.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:25:07] What do I do now? What do I do now? Because all the things are lining up for me. And then I met other people here in the area who are also here because of the beautiful energy. So now we have synergy, right? We have synergy. We have cooperation amongst people. We have all of these things. And to kickstart stuff, we created a yoga in the park series right here at Harbor Park in St. Martins. So you're basically doing yoga by these giant red rocks with the river flowing by, like, so amazing and blissful. And so as I'm looking at these vortex tours, I'm like, well, let's take all the experiences that you've had in the past and then kind of bring them here. But it's basically it's a startup. I'm giving birth. I'm birthing this new entire thing at 56, and I have no idea what it's going to look like in a year, but I'm so encouraged that you guys reached out and you're interested and you're curious about how I'm doing this. And so right now, I'm literally in research and development phase. So what I did was we have a map that they did up here for the Fundy trail and they sold advertising on the back. And I thought, well, gee, you know, it's not very much so sure I'll buy an ad. So I bought an ad and Fundy Vortex Tours and I started a Facebook page and have somebody helping me with the marketing around the language around it.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:26:42] And oh my gosh, somebody messaged me like a couple weeks ago and said, you know, tell me about your tours. And I went, OK, I guess I need to figure that out next. Right. Tell me about your tours. And so I'm researching and I'm asking questions of the people who are interested because I'm not building this for me. I am building this for the people that will come and experience a vortex tour. And then some people are like, well, what's a vortex? Right. And basically, like when you're in Sedona, there's, it just there are places where you internally feel the same energetic vibration as the external environment. And it's a place on the planet where it's really healthy and people are drawn to. So think about Stonehenge, all the people that go there. Right. Like there's places in Mexico, in Egypt, the pyramids, Sedona, Arizona. And then I'm adding St. Martins, New Brunswick to this list. These are places that people get on planes and travel to because there is a special energy and I've done it myself. So I'm thinking, well, why wouldn't people hop on a plane and come here or drive here or or come visit here to have that special feeling where the energy of nature is matching your internal energy and it makes you feel really good.

 

Christel Seeberger: [00:28:09] That's delightful, Elaine. Can't wait. Can't wait to test it out. To close off. I'm wondering if, you know, as you're designing because you're designing an experience. Right. And just as an experienced traveler, someone who's experienced a lot of things, a mature traveler and looking at who might be coming right and who you might be attracting to come to Fundy Vortex Tours, I just wonder, like, are there, I'm going to say a couple of things. Three things that you're really thinking of doing differently to attract you know, you talk to about people at different ages or stages. Right. Of their life. Are there things that you were doing differently in your approach to really be attractive to folks at the second or third stage in their life, as you put together a Fundy Vortex Tours?

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:29:12] So for me, I guess one of the things is making sure that people can hear well. Right, because I have siblings who are hearing impaired, and to be quite honest, most people are lazy talkers, so people talk with their hands in front of their mouth. They mumble. And I think we live in a world where most times we can't hear the people around us. And it's not and we don't even have hearing difficulties. Right. So for the people that are hearing abled because the rest of the population are typically lazy talkers, you can't hear anything. So I think it's really important. So whether you're whether we're on the trail or we're at a vortex, we're being present maybe some sort of a you know, maybe we're having a bonfire on the beach or whatever it is that we're doing. I think that it's important that everybody is able to hear or be heard. So I think that that's, to me, that's critical because I think that we miss out on so much. And then when people can't hear what they do is they just silently check out of whatever it is that they're doing and they don't feel engaged. And nobody knows they've silently checked out. Right. It's very, it's just so under the radar until you actually notice that they've checked it like it's long past when you're when you've lost them.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:30:37] So I think making sure that people can hear, that's good. I also think that, like I talked about earlier with the beach rocks and trying to get across to the caves, I think it's really important that people dress in appropriate clothing. So there's no bad weather. There's only inappropriate clothing. Right. So I've learned that I had a TV show that ran for four seasons and I learned that through some amazing guests on my show that here's how you layer up. Here's how you have proper clothes. Here's what kind of shoes you're wearing. Wait, you're going to use merino wool socks instead of cotton socks because they're not going to do you any favors. Right. So even though the Fundy Vortex Tours, it might only be an hour experience, it could be three hours experience. I want to make sure that people come prepared for where we're going to be. Near water, near rocks. You need hat, whatever it is for outerwear that you need, like, you just need to be prepared, because to me, this is a year round thing. This is 12 months of the year, right. This, you want to go and you want to have this sort of feel good experience. Well, we can do that in the middle of the winter.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:31:47] Like, it's just, you know, it's amazing. Or we can do it on a rainy day or on a rainy summer day, talk about a sensory rich, beautiful, like in a good way to experience the negative ions of the rain and that sweet smell and being outside in the rain. It is delightful. Like, so really having, making sure that people are prepared. And I think that also it is a teaching moment, a teachable moment. Right. For people who are 55 plus, you know, and they are always worried about having their kids or their dogs have a little rain jacket. It's like, do you have proper clothing. Right. Do you like, do you have the right shoes for hiking. Do you have the right shoes for the beach like this time of year. The beach, the sand is very soft this time of year. So there's some footwear that isn't going to be good for you. Like sandals. You're going to get sand in the sandals and you're going to be uncomfortable for the entire process, the entire experience and walk like I don't want that. So you need you know, you need clothes, shoes, and you can get summer weight merino wool socks, which are just, your feet are going to feel amazing. Right. And if your feet don't feel good, you're not going to be happy.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:33:00] Right. So that's number two and I'm just trying to think, Chris, oh food, there always has to be food. So, like, to me, it's like what's a nice snack that we're going to have? Right. And I love to cook, so I'm not sure. I'm still working on the research and development and sort of the legalities. Right. Because there's insurance and there's all of those things and and you know, how legally. Right. And insurance wise, I can incorporate food because I live here on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. We have great seafood. I also have a little garden I'm growing in my backyard. So what can I incorporate from the garden into this experience? So there's like to me, it's an experience that does reach all the senses. Right. So back to your question earlier, Sophie. Right. About how are you going to attract people? Well, there's going to be all kinds of, and as Christel would say, there's more than five senses, right? And there's occupational therapists and having friends who are occupational therapists. I know that there's more than the basic senses. Right. So I want to make sure that it is a sensory rich experience. Right. Being mindful of sensory overload. Right. And things that would be annoying to the senses.

 

Christel Seeberger: [00:34:23] Lovely Elaine here. Thank you so, so very much.

 

Elaine Shannon: [00:34:28] Thank you. I know we spent most of our time talking about travel in general, but I love to travel and I could literally talk about travel all day. And then if you had travel plus organizing, those are like two of my sweet spots. Right. But then also the love I have here for the Bay of Fundy. And I mean, every day here is magical. I mean, I started my morning at 7:00 a.m. with the walk on the beach. Right. And the tide was going out and there was a kayak and it was just so still. And I mean, the bay is it can be a pretty dangerous place. But there was a kayaker out there and the eagles were flying. And I'm like, look, this is, it's amazing. And to be able to bring people here, to feel that, to feel that presence and the beauty in nature, I mean, that's what these tours are all about for me.

 

Christopher Basmadjian: [00:35:17] Thank you, Elaine Shannon from Fundy Vortex Tours for joining us. We learned quite a lot from the perspective of an experienced traveler and what they look for when traveling. We hope you enjoyed this bonus podcast off the 55+ Travelers Arriving and Thriving audio conference. You can find more resources about making tourist attractions, events and locations sensory friendly at sensoryfriendly.net

 


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