Hi I am from Nelson New Zealand and my huband and I are planning a trip to the US in April 2003. One of my friends in the US suggested I use the AOL message boards to get information but unfortunately we don't get AOL down here. She then suggested Fodors as the next best option.
However after perusing the questions and answers posted here about New York over the last few days there is no way I am going to ask a question if I am going to get abused like the person who asked about restaurants in Time Square. Some of your answers are unbelievable especially when she said she was an English teacher.
I will do my searching someplace else.

Sharon, ask your questions here or not,as you wish, but understand that your comments here will get more negative ressonses than any question you might ask!

By far most questions asked here are answered promptly and politely.
Of course, there are many exceptions.
Poorly worded questions will get a combination of helpful responses (suggesting better ways to pose the question) as well as quite a few nasty comments, (mostly made by one poster to another , not usually directed toward the original poster--if the OP gets into the nastiness him/herself, well...)

Post your sincere questions here(probably best under a 'new' name" ,being fairly specific and having done a little research on your own first) and you'll hear from some of the most helpful people around.

Cindy

What do you mean you don't get AOL down there? I spent the summer in NZ and used it daily. There is no "here or there" on the web! Type in www.aol.com and you will be "there".
In addition, if you post sensible questions with good titles, you will get helpful advice. You might also get some mean or weird responses, but just ignore them. In additon, why don't you use an alias...not xxx please, but you don't need to put your real name and email on these. No one can abuse you if they don't know you and you refuse to take it personally!

In addition, you can also just do text searches and find 99% of your questions have been discussed earlier. I planned a 2 week trip to California using this board without once asking a question.

I have been to www.aol.com many times and also use the AOL instant messaging. Sorry you misunderstood my predicament. I was under the impression that to get access to the message boards you have to have AOL as your ISP. If I am not correct about this then please let me know as I would love to be able to access the travel message boards.