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April Fool 2005/2006 - Slow Travel Tours & Slow Travel Villas

Pauline Kenny

In the four years of running the Slow Travel Message Board we have never done anything fun for April Fool. But April Fool 2005 changed that!!

April Fools 2005 - Slow Travel Tours

Back in January, the message board moderators decided to create a joke website offering guided tours of Italy and Europe. Slow Travel Tours was born!! (Note: This is a joke website!!) We all came up with different tour and website ideas.

  • Pauline built the very ugly, too bright, and flashing website.
  • Chris wrote the bus tour of Europe and even created all those blurry photos (as if taken from a fast moving bus).
  • Amy wrote the see Italy in the US tour.
  • Maureen wrote the inspired Poggibonsi tour, the Hidden Florence tour and the Uffizi tour. I think the Uffizi tour was originally David's idea.
  • I wrote the Obsessive tour of Switzerland (but it was one of the other moderator's idea), the Highlights of Italy tour (which made me realize that you really can see a lot more in a day than we do when traveling) and the Trip Generator (which generates the same 2 week trip, no matter how you answer the questions).
  • The other moderators helped with reviewing and giving everyone ideas.

Our Joke website, April 1, 2005, Slow Travel Tours

We started April Fool the night before, on March 31. I started to post about our new "commercial venture" and other moderators edited my posts with "commercial content removed", just list we do when businesses post on the site. That was pretty funny as we had a mock battle between the moderators with me posting, them editing, then closing threads.

Then around 11pm, I did the official announcement of the Slow Travel Tours site. I had hoped that everyone would click the "Sign Up Now" button, because that went to an April Fool page with a link to a hidden thread on the message board. But I did not design the site well enough and people started posting on the regular board, so the joke was out pretty fast.

It was great fun and lots of people read our joke site and filled out our "Trip Generator" form .

April Fools 2006 - Slow Travel Villas

Another great April Fool, but this time with a fictitious vacation rental agency!

Our Joke website, April 1, 2006, Slow Travel Tours

Some of the things I added to the Joke website

These are some of the small touches that I thought were pretty funny. :)

  • The rotating "this could be you" photo on the home page. This was my idea, because I end up with so many photos of me, or Steve, or me and Steve, standing with someone. And that someone could be you!!
  • The endlessly moving carrot - banana - cucumber smilies! That dancing carrot has an ugly history on the board. He was a smilie for about a year, until late one night when I was tired, I looked at him and realized I did not want to ever see him again, so I deleted him. Turned out lots of people liked him!!
  • The music!! I really dislike websites with music and with things that flash - so I added both to the joke site!
  • The tour price!! $10,000 per person and it covers nothing!! That was Steve's idea (always the good businessman).

What will happen to the site?

I will keep the site going and I would like to add more things to it. Maybe other Slow Travelers would like to write up some joke tours? Contact me.

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