Our first experience with frequent flyer miles was in the early 1990s, when we had to pay our daughter’s tuition at a very expensive Ivy League university. We had the bright idea of paying on an American Airlines credit card. This earned us enough AA frequent flyer miles for an annual trip to Europe for four years. That didn’t make the tuition any easier to pay, but it gave us a sort of satisfaction in thinking we got the flights for free.

Since then, and during the thieving oil company robbery rise in prices during recent years, airlines have been cutting back on the value of frequent flyer miles. They’re still worth accumulating, but they don’t go as far as they did ten or 20 years ago. Back then, earned airline miles were worth about two cents each. For instance, we accumulated about 50,000 miles each to pay for round-trip New York to London flights.

Is there as much as a half a Grover Cleveland ($500) lurking in your final bill that you hadn’t expected? Do cruise ships and all-inclusive resorts offer low, low prices and then sneak in high, high extra charges? The answer is: you betcha. There’s nothing illegal about it, just a travel industry practice that too often leaves travelers with the bad taste of bait and switch.

First of all, and it isn’t the fault of the travel industry, on every product and service, there’s inevitably heavy taxation. It can be national, and/or state and/or city and/or dogcatchers’ protective association tax. Therefore, no matter what the hotel, resort, cruise ship and airline price quote is in all those enticing ads, you can expect to be hit with an additional 10 to 25 percent or more when you get the bill.

For instance, we saw recent ads from Southwest Airlines on a round trip from our town to Las Vegas for $175 each person, $350 total. No, not the real total. With all the add-on taxes and other charges, the actual price was $500.

We often get this question, and it bothers us. First, we sympathize with people who must carry all that weight around everywhere, not just while traveling. And the ridicule they’re always suffering from others.

On the other hand, let's do the math on the question of whether airlines should be charging more for overweight airline passengers. A 150-pound person pays $150 fare for a flight, and occupies one seat on the airplane. Next in line, a 300-pound passenger pays $150 for a flight and takes up two seats. Therefore, by simple logic, why shouldn't the overweight passenger pay double?

And keeping them in sight at least 24 hours a day while there requires eternal vigilance. Although WDW is squeaky clean and one of the safest vacation places on earth, you still need to be a super monitor.

One of our family trips to WDW many years ago, we had the horror of losing our three-year-old daughter. She was only gone for five minutes, but they were the scariest moments of our lives. We made the mistake of taking our eyes off of her for a moment after joining the wall-to-wall crowd on the sidelines watching the daily parade.