Stop!

U.S. destinations target affluent Chinese tourists

U.S. destinations are spending significant sums on marketing campaigns in China’s most populous regions.

London: The Longest Airport Immigration Line You’ll Ever See

Click here to see the short (but shocking) video of the line

Think you can easily fly through London’s Heathrow Airport because it’s big and should have its act together? Well, there’s only bad news: it doesn’t have its act together and epically long lines pop up every so often for everything from going between terminals to heading through customs. Just search YouTube for crazy long lines at Heathrow, and you’ll see what we mean—get stuck in one of these queues and you’re looking at a 3-4 hour wait, so you might as well film it.

Nonetheless, no line is as bad as the one that recently occurred at immigration, for those with student visas. Click here to check out the brief video on BBC, where a Heathrow employee filmed the length of the line from back to front. Thank god we’re beyond the student visa days. Still—what the hell is happening here?

Air New Zealand’s New Facebook Game Is A Wannabe FarmVille

You know how sometimes we complain that airlines invest in social media just so they can say they’ve invested in social media, with their “investments” quickly becoming “predictable losses” that we end up paying for (often in the form of insanely obnoxious opaque fees)? There’s a lot of back and forth on the debate, and we understand that reasonable people will differ over whether an airline needs a Facebook page for branding purposes. But can’t we all agree that Air New Zealand’s new Facebook game Jump Seat—developed because some consultant showed some middle manager the user statistics from Farmville—is painfully stupid?

Here’s how it goes:

Jump Seat players can upload pictures to create their very own avatars as Air New Zealand Flight Attendants or First Officers. Once en route, players answer trivia questions, play mini games and complete onboard tasks… Recruit Facebook friends to help fluff pillows for the lie-flat beds; recommend and refill New Zealand wine, a key component of the airline’s world-class service; send fellow flight attendants gifts of energy points for a boost; and tag team to ensure all passengers have an excellent in-flight experience.

Andy Tweets Miami: Success!

Christmas trains from coast to coast

Every year, railways around the country get decked out for the season and offer families a great way to combine a visit with Santa and a fun family outing. Next stop, North Pole!

LuggageLimits.com Untangles The Absurd Web Of Baggage Fees

Even by the airline industry’s new “charge for everything as many times as you can” standard, checked baggage fees are still absurdly complicated and expensive. Things have gotten to the point where airlines like United are letting passengers pay hundreds of dollars before they fly so they don’t have to pay hundred of dollars when they fly, as if that makes sense. That’s in between dozens of upgrades and conditions and levels that all affect fees in different tangled ways. Passengers today can be excused, then, for not having the first clue what’s going on with luggage—something that new website LuggageLimits.com is set to change.

The ambitious new site is built around a central database that picks out what you can expect by matching your airline with your departure and arrival airports. Once you choose your airline, a bunch of general information gets displayed, both as a broad description and in boxes with specific information. At the top there’s a drop-down box where for setting airline-specific ticket class, which reflects the idiosyncratic options of each company.

Fridays and November Not the Best Time for Car Deals, Edmunds.com Reports

If you thought you missed out on best-of-the-year car deals on Black Friday, forget about it. If last year is any indication, December is the best time to get a great deal.

Neither Fridays nor November are the best times to get the biggest discounts on cars and trucks, according to Edmunds.com's analysis of the past four years of sales transaction data.

Rather car shoppers can look for some of the best deals in December and January.

New York: How To Score Tickets To The Late Show With David Letterman

So you spent most of Thanksgiving feigning interest in your relatives’ flat, inappropriate jokes. We fully empathize, having let out our share of faux-laughs over turkey and sweet potatoes. Family holidays can be fantastically warm, fantastically awkward, or some combination thereof, and they usually entail a healthy amount of humor therapy after the fact in order to fully recover. Don’t worry; Uncle Dave’s got you covered—David Letterman, that is.

If you’re a native New Yorker or holiday traveler to the city, we suggest trying your chances at landing tickets to The Late Show. Now that Conan’s migrated to the West Coast, Dave is the last bastion of New York-filmed late night comedy on network television. Sorry, Jimmy Fallon.