The ROAMies Podcast

Small World, Big Travel Wins - Lessons and Stories from Travel Advisors

• The ROAMies • Season 7 • Episode 269

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You know those trips where everything teeters on the edge until someone steps in and saves the day? That’s the energy of this episode. From a Disney cast member gifting a last-minute Lightning Lane to an advisor coaching clients through an Italian airport strike, these stories show what happens when expert travel advisors turn chaos into calm. You’ll hear adventures from Disney to Rome, the Maldives to the Black Forest—plus a catamaran lesson in motion sickness turned masterclass on packing and protecting your valuables.

We’re joined by top travel advisors who share real-world wins, from finding the best food tours in Bologna to navigating Mediterranean cruises, Turkish hamams, and European travel strikes. It’s a mix of humor, heart, and insider strategy—showing the real value of having a travel advisor: local connections, real-time problem solving, and stress-free travel planning. Whether you’re dreaming of Disney, Italy, or Istanbul, this episode of The Roamies Travel Podcast will help you travel smarter, laugh harder, and plan your next trip with confidence.

If these stories made you smile or scribble notes, tap follow, share the episode with a friend who needs a smarter trip, and leave a quick review so more travelers can find us. Ready to collect your own small-world moment? Let’s go.Here’s your cleaned-up version, formatted simply with dashes and no lines:

  • Kristi Shipp – Always Magical Travel Co. (no contact info listed)
  • Kami – Destinations by Kami, LLC
    📧 destinationsbykami@gmail.com
    📞 419-957-2087
  • JoAnne Michaud – Dream Vacations
    📧 jmichaud@dreamvacations.com
    📞 919-452-0227
  • Samantha Garrick – Samantha Garrick Travel
    📧 Sam@MadHatterAdv.com
    📞 601-658-8484
  • Brooke Ray – Travel with Direction
    📧 brook@travelwithdirection.com
    📱 @travelwithdirection
  • Melanie Rodriguez, CTA, VTA – Life Is Better Traveling
    📧 melanie@travelwithmelanie.com
    📞 215-240-1327
    💬 “So I'm Melanie Rodriguez from Life is Better Traveling. And this one time I was in the Maldives—it was my 40th birthday trip…”
  • Christie Couples – Vacays by Christine (with Vincent Vacations) (no contact info listed)
  • Lisa Gallagher – Lisa G Travel


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Alexa and Rory
The ROAMies

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Speaker:

This transcript has not be read or edited by us. Alexa and Rory The ROAMies Podcast TRavel POdcast Travel Inspiration Hi, I'm Alexa. And I'm Rory

Speaker 1:

And together we are The ROAMies.

Speaker:

We are married to each other. Alright. We are a touring musical duo.

Speaker 1:

And our music has taken us to all kinds of places all around the world and keeps us always on the go.

Speaker:

So we hope you enjoy our stories and adventures while running around working to keep all your plates ready.

Speaker 1:

And we hope to facilitate your busy lifestyle and feed your inner travel bug. Hi everyone. Hope you are having a wonderfully inspired day today. We have a fun episode today. We recently had the opportunity to meet a nice, wonderful group of travel advisors. You might call them travel agents. We had so much fun getting to meet them, and we just kind of said, hey, can we just put you on the spot and have you tell us some kind of travel story? So some of them might be funny or meaningful, some of them may be related to them being a travel advisor themselves, or just might be a personal story that they have when they were traveling. But we just thought it would be fun to just hear some stories of other folks who are traveling for a living and helping others travel because this is such an inspiring world that we live in. And travel advisors can really help you maximize those experiences where you find yourself in a place where you have so many rich stories and experiences to share with other people. So we are going to dive in with these travel agents, and it's just one after another. So stick around because there might just be a story in here that you connect with in one way or another.

Speaker 4:

Hello, my name is Christy Shipp. I am a travel advisor with Always Magical Travel Co. I help families plan Disney vacations, cruises, universal vacations. So this past weekend, actually, my family was on vacation at Disney World. We were doing a four-part challenge day, which is where you visit Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios all in one day. So we had already been to Epcot, we had already been to Hollywood Studios, had a great time. We had Lightning Lane so that we could get in the rides a little bit quicker, cut down on some of our wait time. And so we were at Animal Kingdom, and then we had one more park to go to. We had been watching the wait time for Flight of Passage, which is usually one of the longest wait times in the whole resort. And it looked decent. We did not have a lightning lane fast pass for Flight of Passage, but we were just gonna wait for it. So it was approaching the end of the day at Animal Kingdom. The wait time had been 80 minutes. So we were like, you know what? We've walked on to pretty much everything all day with lightning lanes. We're just gonna go wait for it. Well, from in the two minutes from the bathroom to flight of passage, the wait time jumped from 80 to 115 minutes, just almost in like two minutes. So we walked over there and I was like, oh no, you know, it's so much longer. And we were just trying to think what to do. And there was a cast member standing off to the side. And I asked him, I was like, Do you think that wait time is accurate? I said, it was seriously just 85 minutes a couple minutes ago, and it jumped up, you know, by 30 minutes. And he goes, it probably is. And so I was like, okay. And I was like, come on, guys, well, you know, we're just gonna go and do something else. He goes, come on over here for a minute. And so he scans my magic band, starts doing stuff on his iPad, and I immediately knew what was going on, but Chad and the boys didn't. So we're standing there and he's just asking us questions about our vacation. And Cameron, my oldest son, came and whispered in my ear and he said, Mom, his name tag says Somerset, Kentucky, which is where we live, is where we're from. It's a small world. That's it. Yes, exactly. So his name tag said James, and then in small letters, it always says where the cast member is from. And so he finished what he was saying and scanned all our bands. And I was like, You're from Somerset? And he goes, Yeah. And I said, We're from Somerset. And so we have this just like crazy moment. Here we are at Disney World and met a cast member who, you know, was talking to us. But it was just so neat because I thought that would have been a cool moment, even no matter where he was from, because he didn't have to do that. Like the flight of passage, the we already had paid for lightning lanes, but that ride in particular is an additional like $20 or $22 per person. So it would have been an extra $100 on top of what I already paid for the Lightning Lanes for that whole day. So we just did do it. We were just gonna wait for it. Well, in the meanwhile, he had scanned all of our magic bands to give us a lightning lane single pass for flight of passage so that we could just walk on the ride. And this was before he even knew we were from the same town. You know, he was just trying to find out about us, how our trip was going. And so then we started talking about Somerset and what he did in Somerset, what he did now in Orlando for the Walt Disney Company. And it was just so neat. We knew a lot of the same people, and he did give us a fast pass or a lightning lane for flight of passage, and we waited 10 minutes instead of 85 minutes. And while that's not something that you just expect to happen, sometimes it does. You know, sometimes you get a little pixie dust, but even, you know, even when things like that don't happen, the cast members are there to help in any way. They can look up stuff about your tickets, your account, whatever you need, they're there to help. And it they really are what makes Walt Disney World shine. It's not just a job to them, you know, whether it's the custodial staff waving by with Mickey hands at the end of every night, or they draw pictures with their mops on the sidewalk. The food workers ask how you are, they make eye contact and friendly, and they're just a little bit of extra magic in your trip. And it's really what helps make the company who they are. So it's just a fun story. We will never forget it. I left him a cast compliment on the Mind as an Experience app as soon as we left him. And it's just a moment that we'll remember because not only did he see a family, we told him we were doing the four-part challenge, and then we wound up being from the same town, but he just really wanted to add to our day and cut on our wait time a little bit. So that's my fun story. Hope you guys enjoyed it.

Speaker 3:

Hello, I'm Joami Show with Joami Show Dream Vacations. I'm based out of Phoenix. As part of this podcast about travel agent stories, I wanted to share a story where I had some customers who had not worked with a travel advisor before and were a little bit questioning the value. We booked them on a trip to Italy about a week before they traveled. Italy announced that there would be an air traffic control strike that day, a day that they were landing. The strike was starting at 10 a.m. Their flights were scheduled to land around 9 a.m. that morning. So I advised the customers, I let them know this is going on, you should be fine unless your flights are significantly delayed. In that case, I have a backup plan for you. The day that they're flying out, their flight from Phoenix to their connecting airport in Philly was delayed, delayed, delayed, and they're getting very anxious, thinking they're not going to make their connection. I'm tracking the flights, and as they land in Philly, they had 15 minutes to make it to their gate. Thankfully, they were flying first class, they were in the front of the plane, they declaned easily. But what I did is I uh took a screenshot of the airport terminal where they were landing and taking off. I put an X in the area where they landed, drew an arrow to the gate where they were taking off, put another X there, and as I tracked the landing of their flight, I texted this to her and I said, You have 15 minutes to make it. Here's the map of where you're landing and where you need to go. I said, run for it. And so she gets the text as the plane lands, they're taxing to the uh gate, and she said, Okay, they took off, ran, got to the gate just as they were closing it. They got on the plane, she texted me and she said, Oh my gosh, we're all red-faced, but we made it. That customer who wasn't quite sure about the value of travel advisors, there were other issues that I assisted them with, but that kind of sealed the deal. She realized, wow, these are things that she did not think would be provided as a service. And the service was provided. And it's a customer that I've worked with on many trips since then. And thankfully, I didn't have to go to plan B. They landed in Rome before the air traffic control strike started.

Speaker 2:

So I'm Melanie Rodriguez from Life is Better Traveling. And this one time I was in the Maldives, it was my 40th birthday trip, and I saved my husband's life. He got into the water, so we're on a pier, he gets in, he goes, Melanie, come look. I found this amazing fish. You have to see it. I'm gonna wait to swim closer until you've seen it so I don't scare it away. I get in the water, I look down, and it is a five-foot-long giant barracuda. So I'm splashing, I'm hitting the water, I'm shouting at him, don't go near it, it's a barracuda. And we have a video, you can see him swimming towards it. And the minute that he hears that I'm screaming it's a barracuda, the camera pulls back and he's like swimming now away from the barracuda. He had no idea. And in the video, you can see its teeth, you can see how long it is, and this man was about to go touch a five-foot-long giant barracuda in the mouth ease. So now he learned he will not touch any fish that he does not recognize in the future.

Speaker 5:

Hey, I'm Christy Couples, and I was on a river cruise with Amadeus and went out into the Black Forest to see castles and lovely things. Ran into an agent that I haven't seen in years, right there in the gift shop in the middle of the Black Forest, completely random. It was the coolest thing ever. We took pictures, posted them to all of our friends. It was fantastic. Love it. And what's your travel agency? I am with Vacase by Christina with Vincent Vacations. I'm Lisa Gallagher with Lisa G Travel. I have been a travel agent for about eight years now. I have a quite funny story about myself. It's a little bit embarrassing. I was in the Bahamas with a group of friends, and they wanted to take a snoobah tour, which is scuba diving and snorkeling mixed together. But you have to take a catamaran out into the middle of the ocean. And I told them I did not want to do that. And they insisted I have to at least take the boat ride with them. But that's the part I didn't want to do was the boat ride because I know I get motion sick. So I get on the boat because peer pressure stinks. And I am on this boat and I am doing fine because it's going nice and fast through the ocean. And then it stopped in the middle of the ocean, and they put the anchor out. And I the boat was rocking. I didn't know what I was gonna do. So I got out of the boat and jumped into the water and then realized that I couldn't touch the ground. So that made me even more nervous. So I got back on the boat and the boat was rocking, and I could just feel myself getting sick. I stood up and was getting sick over the side of the boat. And my my friend comes up behind me to rub my back because she's a great mom. And she's like, It's okay, it's okay, and I'm sick. And then all of a sudden, everybody's like, Well, there's no fish in here, there's not much to look at. And she's going, look at all the pretty fish now. And then because I was getting sick, the pretty fish came along. So everybody was very excited. And this is apparently on video somewhere. You'll have to send us the video. I I I I I don't I don't even want to see it. But then the rescue boat had to come get me because I was that sick. So they had to send out the little rescue V-boat to come out into the middle of the ocean to get me so that everybody could finish there. I really wish I had a uh like a go patch or something to have helped me with my motion sickness. It was bad. It was not pretty, but it you know, cost a lot of laughs and a lot of good video footage.

Speaker 1:

And another story on a podcast to tell the story. Um, okay, but the rescue boat, I mean, how does that really help you? Because you're still getting on a boat. Oh gosh, it would have hardly just gets you off the sea faster.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, I the worst part was I was like at sea shore. And I asked them, I asked them if they could just take me to the shore so I could at least just sit along the shore, and they told me no. So they sent, I had to lay flat, belly first, on the bottom of the boat, and it made me feel a little bit better, but not quite. And then the rescue boat came and I got on this little speed boat, which was okay because it just speedboated straight through.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. Yep.

Speaker 5:

And so one of the other ladies came with me to make sure I got back okay. And yeah. Go patches probably would have saved my life that day. But at the moment, I wanted to jump off the boat and just drown. Would have been better. I am Sam of Samantha Gear Travel. This is a fun little story that started back in 2020 during COVID when everything was shut down. So I periodically post Italy content on my social media channels, as that's one of the destinations that I sell. And this lady started commenting kind of frequently, and she would say, You need to bring clients to Bologna. You need to visit Bologna. You know, any post that I made about Italy, if it was about the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Florence, doesn't matter, she would say, You need to come to Bologna. So we started following each other and um she posted cute content around Bologna. Again, this is when things were shut down. So we just kind of interacted and messaged a little bit back and forth. So fast forward to 2023, I was invited to come to Italy to a little town called Senegalia that I had to Google whenever I was invited, and then I was looking at flights and being, you know, a fan of Delta, I wanted to see where Delta fly into and go figure they fly into Bologna, which is about two hours by train to Senegalia. So I messaged my friend Cecilia, which I later learned is pronounced Cecilia in Italian, and I said, Hey, I'm coming to Italy and I want to do one of your tours. She has a private tour company and offers tours around the Emilia-Romagna region within Bologna City. So that I reached out to her and said, I want to come go on a tour with you. And then, long story short, I ended up having a few more agents join, turned into a group of six of us. And before our meetings in Senegalia, we did one night in Bologna and she picked us up early in the morning, took us to a Parmesan factory for cheese tasting, took us to her friend Mary Angela's house for balsamic vinegar tastings. We went to a prosciutto factory and had lots of different Italian cured meats to try. And we ended our day at a La Rusco winery, tasting their different wine varieties. And then at the end of the day, she dropped us off at the train station and we headed on out to our meetings. But it was really cool having the opportunity to connect on social media and then meet her in real life. And she's even better in person. We still stay in contact and I've booked her tours for our clients, but that's how I connected with my dear friend Chichuilla in Italy. Hi everyone, I'm Cammy Coast with destinations by Cami. It's very loud because we're on a beautiful catmiran. Here in Belize. So we are heading back from the island of Moho, which is very popular, beautiful, crystal clear water. And we're gonna talk about a travel story. And that story is uh last summer I was on a Mediterranean cruise, and one of the things I always tell travelers is when you're when you're going on a cruise, especially, is that you would you really need to have everything of value on your person. So always have a carry-on bag, you know, such as this or something, iPad, medications, phone, money, anything, you know, jewelry. Never put that in your bag that's gonna go leave your person. So I am on the cruise, my husband is with me, and we are I'm in, I'm in the room, doing the room tour. I come out, I'm like, okay, honey, then our room tour is over. And there's security standing in there very serious. And I said, and he said, honey, they they dropped my luggage overboard. And you I need to go down to the belly of the ship and identify my my luggage. And I look over and I see a suitcase that's not mine, and and I said, honey, that's your suitcase. So mine went overboard. So luckily they they were able to fish it out of the ocean. And they I was like, I told the lady, I said, I am so glad this happened to me. And she was like, Excuse me. I said, Well, it's a great learning lesson for my clients because it's really important. I didn't have my iPad in there, didn't have anything valuable. I went down to this huge, like, laundry facility, and they had me identify my luggage, opened it up. Only thing I lost in the deal was my flat iron. Everything else made it. They laundered everything for me, which was great because I'm a light hacker. In 10 days in Greece, I already had clothes that should have been watched anyway. So yeah, it was a perfect scenario. And I was able to go to the Sunset deck and have a live and tell people, hey, this is the reason it actually happened to me. It can happen to you. So there you have it.

Speaker 7:

My name is Brooke Ray, and I'm with Travel with Direction. So I recently went on a fam trip, which is a familiarization trip for travel advisors, and it was to Turkey. And when I say recently, like literally like three weeks ago, I just got back. And I have been to Turkey before, but usually it's just like long layover, hangout in Istanbul, whatever. And so this was a fam trip that was very immersive. We were gonna spend a lot of time really checking out the cultures. And um, I brought one of my associate agents with me, and she and I known each other for a long time, but we never traveled together. So there's that. But we made really good friends with this lady uh immediately on a trip. Like she was just really cool. She's like 70. She's been doing travel for like 30 something years, and she has all the stories and she knows all the stuff. So, okay, let's fast forward. We became friends, whatever. We had our itinerary, and then at some point, the guide was like, Hey, did you guys want to experience a hamam? A hamam is a Turkish bath, right? And so it's like a spa treatment, but think ancient. They've been doing this for like thousands of years. And they say the best one is the one near Haja Sophia. So that's like the big main attraction in downtown Istanbul. And it's been there for over a thousand years, and it's the cleanest, most authentic, awesome one, and we might be able to get you in. So they get us in, etc. They make an appointment, and we ask the guide, we're like, so how naked are we talking that this spa experience is? Because we're not even sure exactly what it is. You know, it's a bath. So do we get in the bath? Do we, you know, like up to our here with water? What? I don't know. And she's like, uh, you know, uh, a little. So we're like, okay, a little naked. So we're thinking towels, you know, massage. There's like a little skin exposed, et cetera. Nope. We go in there, these very nice Turkish ladies meet us, and they're like, okay, you're gonna go into this little locker room and you're gonna get changed. And we all go in there, and there's no dividers or anything. We're just all in there together. And they're like, here are your little sanitary indies. And so we're like, uh, okay. So we go in there and we like taking our stuff off and putting it in the locker. And they gave us these really nice little slides to wear that are like rubber, right? The slides are for our feet, and the Turkish towels to go around us. We put on our little towels, and we're like, look, we're covered, and yay! So the ladies come and get us, and each one of us have our own humami, and she is the lady that's gonna do your treatment. So we they take us into this thing, and it's so magical, it's so beautiful. It's all marble, wall to ceiling. There's a big marble table and like platform, if you will, in the middle of the room, and it's all thermally heated, right? Like, like um, this is all hot water running under everything, keeping it warm, and it's steamy and everything. And they take us over to an alcove that has marble sinks with brass bowls with two spigots. So you make your water the heat you want. And so the ladies come and they go, Okay, excuse me. And they just whip our tails off. And now we're standing there in our little streets with a tail swipped off right in front. And we're all facing each other. So she goes, Okay, sit down, back against the wall. And then she's like, Here you go, hands us a bowl. And so you dip out of your little sink, and you're supposed to rinse yourself off to rinse off all your makeup and your lotion and everything. And so this minerally water is being rinsed over us. And I mean, mine was way too hot. I had to turn the cold up. So we just then they leave.

Speaker 6:

So the three of us are sitting there like dumping this water over and trying to make conversation. And finally, Jane, the lady who is in her 70s, she goes, Well, there are no secrets between us now. So we're just doing the thing, doing the thing, and we keep rubbing and making sure we're doing what they told us to do.

Speaker 7:

And then they come back and they pick up our towels and take them over to the platform, and they're laying them out, and we're gonna lay, we're sitting here naked. And then they come, get us to stand up and they whip out this glove that is like shark skin, and they start scrubbing us, and they are exfoliating you. They're making like polite conversation with the minimal English that they have, and and it's you're like, Well, okay. I mean, it was so um cool because these ladies are obviously here for your well-being and for your health. Then they rinse and rinse and rinse us and take us still naked over to our towels and lay us out on the thing. And so we, you know, you lay down, you have a little pad for your head, and you lay down. So they give us this like foam rinse and then massage. It was really, really nice, and like they cared about every part. They could tell where you were tense, and they were like figuring that out and stuff. And then they were like, Okay, turn over. And so then you turn over, and then they massage your front side, and I mean they didn't, nothing got weird. There was nothing, anything like inappropriate, but at this point, I'm like, well, it's good. It's hot, it's steamy, you've just had all your muscles released, you've been very, very, very thoroughly cleaned. And they're like, Okay, stand up, but slowly, slowly, lady, slowly. So lady is the direct translation of what you call a lady in a nice way in Turkish. So it seems weird to Americans for people to say lady, lady, lady, but it's a nice thing to say. And so they take your hand and they stand you up, and then we all got to go to a separate room where we got our hair washed, head massage, and then they rinse you, and then they rinse you. This is the fun part. They don't tell you, they're rinsing you, and then the next thing you know, an entire cup of ice cold water is dumped on you, and you go, oh, and she goes, ha ha ha ha. And she seems to laughing at your pain, and then it's so dull, you're all like refreshed and everything, but a little bit high because of all of the sensory overload. She dries you off, gives you a fresh towel, and then she turns around with her wet towel and pulls a clean towel for herself and does this thing with her teeth and whatever, and went and switched her towel, and you never saw a glimpse of scan. It was like, what? But now you're completely like a zombie. They lead you with your hand and they're like patting you like you're like some sort of like invalid, and they're like, It's okay, lady, come on. And they take us to the the waiting room area in your towel, and they put a towel on your head, so you got your little head towel. They sit you down, they're like, You want coffee or tea? And they bring you pomegranate, Turkish Delight, and either Turkish coffee or tea, and set you down and do a little facial mask on you, and thank you very much, or remind you of their names, and then they say, Please don't get up before you're ready, and then they leave. And you get to sit there and enjoy your stuff, your caffeine and sugar to get you like back up. And then you go to the front desk and tell them, Well, then you go change, laughing and there, we're red and happy, and we laugh and we do all the things. And then we come out and you go to the front desk to do your tips, and you better believe everybody is at the point where they're like, just take my money. That was amazing. Thank you so much. So, yeah, um, our guy purposely didn't tell us about the massive amount of nakedness in front of who knows who, because she was like, You might not have done it, but I want you to experience it so you know what to tell your guests. So I now know certain guests ain't their thing. But some people, I can probably tell them, Hey, I did it, and I think you'll like it. You just need to relax and lean into it. It was amazing, but it was also hilarious.

Speaker 6:

So that's my story. I'm sticking to it.

Speaker 1:

Now, those are some experiences and stories for sure. We hope, y'all, that as you have been listening, that your probably biggest takeaway would be to see how much travel can enrich your stories and enrich your life. And, you know, Rory and I, we don't usually engage the services of a travel advisor because historically they haven't been people that like book concert tours. So we're usually us or someone from our team is usually like setting things up for our concert tours. So we haven't really utilized a lot of the services that travel advisors can provide. But as you can see from some of these stories, that a travel advisor really can enhance your trip and make it worthwhile. But whether you use a travel agent or not, get out there and travel because you are going to have your own stories to tell that are funny, that are meaningful. Stories of connection, finding that small world connection where you run into someone that you haven't seen in a while, and or you're making new friends all across the globe. And for us, that has been so hugely valuable and has enriched our life in so many ways because we've been able to deepen our friendships as we've traveled. And we'd love for you to have those same experiences based on what is fun and important and meaningful to you. We will put the information from these travel advisors into our show notes so that if there was a specific lady here that you connected with, you can reach out. You'll notice that some of them have different specialties in different areas and they may be the right fit. You know, one might be the right fit for one trip and another one might be a great fit for a different trip. But we will put their information in the show notes so that you can check out their information, reach out to them, connect with them, and start planning your next adventure. And we'll see you on the next one. We hope we've inspired you this episode. So join us next time. Please subscribe to, rate, and share our podcast with your friends.

Speaker:

Or, you know, whoever.

Speaker 1:

And please like and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

Speaker:

We're also on X and on all social platforms. We are at The Roamies. That's T-H-E. R-O-A-M-I-E-S. And our main hub is our website.

Speaker 1:

At www.theromies.com.

Speaker:

That's right, that's T-H-E.

Speaker 1:

R-O-A-M I-E-S.com. We'll be there until next time.

Speaker:

Yeah, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

Bye.