Trippin' With Days In The Park: Gowalla Style

We love Gowalla.  In point of fact, we're really rather addicted to it, in a way that is probably quite unhealthy.  So enamored are we with it that we do it just about everywhere we can just to try and score that next Stamp or Trip Pin.

Back in mid-December we wrote an article about Gowalla and how we use it in The Parks to play games  with each other and all of our friends.  For us, Gowalla is a borderline hyper-competitive sport.  We won't go into the entire Gowalla phenomenon again (in case you missed it, you can mash here and you can read our article about it), but recently we were reminded of a very important aspect of Gowalla that we totally forgot about and have seriously underutilized until now -- the ability to make our own trips.

We were recently reminded by one of our friends, Jason Tucker over at DisneyDayTrippers.com, about this nifty little feature when he decided to post  Trips he and his wife created on their website (you can view their trips here).  Never one to pass up the chance to jack a good idea, we've decided to do our own again.

We've talked a little bit about Trips before, but the basic gist of a Trip in terms of Gowalla is that each Trip consists of several check-in points at different locales. Completion will garner you a special Pin.  The entire reason we began using Gowalla at The Parks was because they had specialized Trips and Pins dedicated specifically to locations around The Resort (you can see the official ones here).  It's been slow going (we're really in no hurry) but we're coming to the end of the official ones that have been made so far.  What better way to congratulate ourselves than to make up some Trips that you can do?

To use of one our Trips is quite simple.  First, you need a SmartPhone (it might seem obvious, but you never know).  Second, you'll need to download the Gowalla App on said SmartPhone and open an account if you don't already have one (or the App for that matter).  Third, you need to bookmark our Trip!  It's called "Days In The Park's Favorite Attractions" and you can find it on the Gowalla website; just click the name of the Trip we just provided.  Once you're there, you can bookmark our Trip and it should begin showing up in your App for you to work on.  How cool is that?!  Or, if we're already one of your friends (if you already use Gowalla), we should automatically show up in your Trips since we're friends with each other.  Anytime you check into one of our locations, it will earn you progress towards our Trip.  Good stuff!

For our first Trip, we basically just tried to do our favorite attractions around The Parks, whether they be ride or show.  The question, "What are your four favorite attractions from either Park?", was posed to Amy, Chad, and Mark, and we tried to name the first things that popped into our heads.  Our Trip is the result of this collective brain-blast.

We'd like to try and create one of these Trips every couple of weeks so you can see all the different facets of The Park that make up our favorites.  In the near future, we'll highlight a Trip featuring our favorite restaurants around The Parks, so be sure and stay tuned for that!  We'll be putting all of our Trips in a permanent place at the top of our site (aptly named "Gowalla Trips") for you to view any time you like.

And that just about covers it!  If you're already a Gowalla user and a Park visitor, we hope that you'll find the DITP Trips clever, fun and useful.  As you work toward completing these Trips, we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Now get out there and start checking in!  Your Pin awaits!!

A look at our trip in the DROID Gowalla App

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