Review by New York Times--Frugal Traveler--Seeing the World on a Budget
By Eric Garfinkel on September 2, 2009
New York Times (September 2, 2009)
Frugal Traveler--Seeing the World on a Budget (On-line by Matt Gross)
The other day, my daughter, Sasha, was exploring the Great Barrier Reef off the northeast coast of Australia. She’d flown there by seaplane and was scuba diving 30 feet down when — whoosh! — a giant Maori wrasse, a thick, bluish-yellow fish that looks as if it’s made of Plasticene and is twice her size, zipped by. Next, after startling a stingray, she swam around with a bottlenose dolphin, before heading back up to the surface and on to the Serengeti for a hot-air-balloon safari. O.K., this is not entirely true. At 9 months, Sasha can barely stand, let alone scuba dive, and if anyone in this family is going to Australia, it’s probably me. But it is at least virtually true — that is, it took place entirely in cyberspace, through a new educational Web site called WonderRotunda.com, which offers children ages 7 to 12 the opportunity to explore the world (or a cartoon facsimile of it) without leaving the computer desk. At $45 for a yearlong pass to this interactive theme park, it’s a whole lot cheaper than buying plane tickets, booking hotel rooms, going out to restaurants and all the chaos and unpredictability of, you know, actual travel.
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/virtual-vacations/
