[cdtobin]

Comments on your travel agencies please. Good, bad, or whatever. Did they go out of their way or in hindsight, would you do something differently like use any online service? Travel is a big expense for all of us - so if you have do's or don'ts - please point them out for those of us who have not yet traveled. Thanks!

[BrandyHagz]

Please remember that discussing ANY fee based service that caters to adoptive parents (Including services that are elective) MUST be done via PM.

I have deleted two posts from this thread which violate our rules regarding the discussion of Fee Based Adoption Service by recommending Travel Agencies who specialize in providing services to adoptive families.

Please send all recommendations via PM.

[Ktates]

We flew into St. Petersburg - we did all our arrangements ourself - either online or over the phone. We also did the visas ourself....

[BlissMom]

Candice,
We did not use a travel agent for either of our two trips. Both times I researched what they could get for us (especially those specializing in adoption travel) and I could get a much better deal (both better route and price) booking by myself online. It was important to me to have a good route where we werent haggard tired wrecks when we arrived in Moscow or home.. so I liked searching online and being able to view all the layovers etc.

BOTH trips we had to change our flights and it was no big deal... just some extra time on the phone.

Our agency however took care of our hotel reservations in Russia and all in country travel.. this was just for flights to and from Moscow.

Happy Travels!!!

[CarRanVA]

We used a travel agency - we were so caught up in getting everything else done - we had lots of paperwork to redo and less than three weeks to do travel arrangements. It was worth it to us to pay the fees and not have to stress over getting visas, tickets, etc for ourselves. They were great and even helped with last minute ticket changes. PM me if you would like to know who we used.

[Jim_in_PA]

I booked out international flights direct with the airline as well as our hotel in Moscow (using points for the latter), but used a well-known NYC based travel agency that specializes in adoption travel for both our visas and our domestic travel arrangements. I didn't want to have to carry large amounts of cash with us for ticketing there, etc. They were already providing our in-region driver(s) and translator, too. I also booked the "VIP Light" service for arrival at SVO to speed us through passport control and so forth. We were off the plane and in the van in about 15-20 minutes including retrieving our baggage.

No regrets at all for using a travel agency for what we did.