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Wanderlog Report from England Trip

Wanderlog is an app and website that allows you to do trip planning and organize your research and travel details. I spent a lot of time on it when I was planning my 5 1/2 week trip to England. Here are my thoughts:

First, I will definitely be using Wanderlog to plan more trips. It was incredibly handy to have. I would log on the night before to look at the next day's itinerary, check out things I needed to do, and something move things around. It was so convenient to have all this information in one place and yet be fluid enough so that it could be changed. I also used the app during the day. Sometimes I would add in a restaurant from the Restaurants category at the top, or just use the app to look at what I still had to see that day and figure out if it was still feasible. It was especially helpful in Cornwall and Devon when there was so much rain that sites were closed.

Next time, though, I will do my part and flesh out the information in the itineraries. For example, I added a lot of information that I found in other places (including here on the forum) to each destination and that worked out great. But I fell short by not doing that with all (or even most) of the places on my itinerary. I relied too much on the fact that Wanderlog gives you basic info and a link to the website for each place. The problem was I wanted more information for many of the places. I think I got a bit overwhelmed since the trip was pretty long. It will be easier with shorter trips, definitely.

There were a few issues. Some of the information about sites (museums, and so forth) was wrong. For example, Wanderlog said that the Birdoswald site near Hadrian's Wall was closed on Monday, which was not correct. I always check that stuff anyway, but it was something that should be corrected and I sent them feedback.

A lot of the bookings I got by email did not make their way into Wanderlog automatically, even though I have a paid version. They worked on Tripit, though. I wouldn't mind so much if it was part of the free version, but since it is a paid feature, I expected that it would work more often. But again, not a deal breaker and I sent them feedback on that as well.

Overall, I thought the app worked well and was a very handy tool for travel. I will definitely be using it again. I might go back to the free version after my paid year expires, but that depends on whether they fix the issues I sent them.

Posted by
7784 posts

Mardee, it’s early morning (3am) here in Italy, and the social gathering just finished at the piazza next to my B&B. : )

I was hoping you would give us your feedback on Wanderlog after your trip! I think your itinerary gave it a good exercise in testing the capability features, so it’s great to hear your perspective afterwards.

I found a glitch with TripIt during my flights. Sometime between the months when my flights were loaded into TripIt and when I received my boarding passes, one of the flight numbers changed. So, TripIt was giving me real-time updates for the previous old flight number when I landed at JFK. Thankfully, I had my boarding pass and glanced at the reader board before later seeing the info directions from TripIt. Whew, that could have been a huge mess, sending me to the wrong area of an airport! So, something to check in the future with all of these apps.

Posted by
2614 posts

Marge—glad you liked it! I swear by it and have it all set for our upcoming Iceland trip but still need to work on it for Norway as well as our Christmas market trips. I haven’t had any issues with the hotel email bookings not showing up, unless I screw it up. I double check myself on that every time.

Posted by
4777 posts

Interesting. I haven’t had a look at it yet but probably need to. I have a fairly elaborate spreadsheet and use the free version of TripIt for a scaled back look at my plans, as well as an easy way to share where I will be with some of my family. In fact, the other day making sure I had forwarded all emails to TripIt alerted me to the fact I had bought one train ticket for the wrong date. (Oops)

So I will have to see if Wanderlog could replace my spreadsheets…..

Posted by
5350 posts

I wanted more information for many of the places.

Thanks for taking the time to write up your review. Your comment about wanting more information is exactly what I was finding when I was trying Wanderlog for a couple of my trips. I also tend to add a lot of information about each destination to my OneNote notebooks, basically creating my only little electronic guidebook, and was investigating whether Wanderlog might save me some of that effort. Alas, I wasn't finding that to be the case.

I also found myself wishing that Wanderlog had more organizational structure than it's left navigation bar - the ability to "expand" and "collapse" to different levels of detail.

I do know that I'm "stuck in my ways" with OneNote, and perhaps if I actually used Wanderlog during a trip, I might be more tempted.

Posted by
7912 posts

Jean, sorry that TripIt had some glitches. I think all of us tend to rely on various apps, but they do fail sometimes so it's good to stay on top of everything, as I know you do! And I hope you get some sleep!

mikliz97, I will say that the misfires with email bookings all dealt with the local small B&Bs, so it could have had something to do with formatting. When it happened, though, it was easy to fix by just emailing it to Wanderlog. There were two that I had to input manually however, as they were casual emails between me and the owner. But I expected that.

TexasTravelMom, I like it because I am a very visual person and I love seeing the places on the maps, and the graphics and how I can see where everything is at a glance. The maps feature is really nice because it uses layers, so you can pinpoint certain days to show up on the map. I used that a lot to see how far places were from each other.

CWSocial, yes, it would have helped. That said, the fault there was with me not with WL. Wanderlog does have the capacity for users to enter as much info as they want. I just sort of petered out halfway through. But knowing how helpful the info I did add was, I will definitely spend more time on it next trip.

Posted by
2614 posts

Mardee--I am a visual person as well. The problem with Wanderlog and this is that I keep looking at it and want to go NOW, lol. I also like being able to look back at other trips I used it for, and that actually helped plan this trip a bit.

Posted by
7912 posts

Mardee--I am a visual person as well. The problem with Wanderlog and this is that I keep looking at it and want to go NOW, lol. I also like being able to look back at other trips I used it for, and that actually helped plan this trip a bit.

Ha ha ha, mikliz97, yep, I definitely feel some immediacy when I look at it, lol! And yes, I wholeheartedly agree about being able to use it for other trips. Did you know you can turn the trips into guides for other people as well? I haven't tried it yet, but might take a shot at it when I get a chance.

Posted by
720 posts

Hi, reviving this thread to see if anyone has any input since May. This is the first I've heard of Wanderlog. I have used Tripit and I like the fact that there's a desktop and mobile version.

Posted by
7912 posts

SandraL, I've been using Wanderlog for my upcoming London/Paris trip in the early spring and I like it more and more. Wanderlog also has a desktop and mobile version, and I love the fact that there are lots of photos, which makes it more visually appealing. In fact, I just discovered that when you add places to your itinerary or list, you can change the photo. So I've been busy putting the photos I like the best on my links to cafes, restaurants, museums and so on.

I also love that you can add blocks of information. For example, I have one area at the beginning with notes about how to get to my hotel from Heathrow, and then later how to get to St. Pancras for the Eurostar crossing.

I also like that I can create categories for each destination. For example, for London and for Paris each, I have a category of Sights to see, Restaurants/Cafes, and Shopping. I put everything there that I am interested in, then when I fine tune my itinerary, I move the relevant entry down to the correct day. For example, when i bought the tickets for Warner Bros. HP Studio, I moved it to the day that we will be going.

You can test drive it and it stays free. There are a few perks to paying an annual subscription, but you really don't need to to get the benefits from it.

Posted by
2614 posts

SandraL--I have been using it for quite a while and have done at least 5 trips overseas with it. I used it again last month and it worked like a charm. We were in Iceland, and the month before we left another friend called and said she and her husband wanted to go to Iceland and could I help her. I gave her access to our Wanderlog trip and she was able to copy it almost verbatim. They had a great trip, and best of all for me, it was easy to give her that instead of regurgitating all that information. I like that I can still go back to past trips and see exactly what we did each day, or what we had planned and missed, so will do next time.

Posted by
1311 posts

We used Wanderlog for our family Japan trip last month. It is a very nice way to share and collaborate on an itinerary with a group.

We used the free version. I just copied website links into the Notes for each attraction to get additional details or info. I put all of my documents in DropBox and just copied the dropbox link for the document folder or individual document into the Notes section. Tapping the link takes me either to a website or my documents.

You can also share your Wanderlog trip with other people. Just take care to adjust the share settings so that those people can only view your itinerary but not access or edit your private notes (e.g. links to dropbox documents). It would be unfortunate if a friend accidentally cancels your flight or hotel.

The paid subscription is expensive in my opinion. Without it, we do not have the auto email forwarding and booking change notifications. I prefer to deal with bookings directly anyways and not add another layer where communications could go wrong. Route optimization is pretty nifty, but it is pretty easy to re-sort the order of the attractions myself to make make an efficient daily itinerary. Also, I still have not used the limited free AI so I have no idea if it is worth paying for unlimited AI. Finally, only the paid version works offline. You need Wi-Fi or mobile data to use the free version. That is okay. Mobile data has become indispensable so I always purchase an esim.

Wanderlog also has a feature to record and share expenses. However, I prefer to use Splid. The free version is more than great. The one time CAD$4.61 fee is so cheap that I finally bought the paid version so that I could download the Excel spreadsheets and also have more than two ongoing Splids.

I used Wanderlog to plan the trip. I still used my google calendar to have a journal of what we actually did and to record personal notes. I trust google to be around forever. Who knows how long my old Wanderlog info will remain available (for free)?

Posted by
10157 posts

I like what you all are saying about how Wanderlog makes it easy to collaborate with others you're traveling with (or with friends who are trying to plan a similar trip). Very interesting !