Fangirling Over Samantha Brown at the Dallas Travel and Adventure Show

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This past weekend, I went to the Dallas Travel and Adventure Show with my daughter. This traveling show has been on hiatus for 18 months due to the pandemic. The Dallas show was the first live event for this show since the world shut down last year.

I originally wasn’t going to attend because of the high number of Covid cases in the area. Attending an indoor show didn’t seem like a good idea.

But then I got some free tickets from a local miles and points expert. And, I saw that masks were required at the event. But, what really sealed the deal for me is that Samantha Brown was going to be speaking.

Fangirling Over Samantha Brown

There are very few celebrities I would be super excited to meet in person. I can probably count on one hand the celebs that would really made me giddy. Samantha Brown is one of them.

If you’re not familiar with Samantha Brown, she is a travel personality who has hosted shows on the Travel Channel. Currently, she self-produces her own show, Places to Love, which airs on PBS. Her episode on Switzerland is what inspired me to research the country more thoroughly and book a trip for next summer. If you haven’t seen her shows, you can watch some of them on her website.

At the Travel and Adventure Show, Samantha Brown spoke about Tips for Making Travel Count. In addition to those tips, she spoke about the painstaking precautions that she and her crew took in order to safely travel and film episodes of her show during the pandemic.

At the end of her presentation, she had some Q&A from the audience. I was hoping she was going to mention a meet and greet after the session, but she didn’t. So, I fangirled and walked up to the stage to speak with her. A few others followed.

Samantha was very kind, as I expected. I spoke to her briefly about my upcoming Switzerland trip. Eeeek!

The Travel and Adventure Show

Overall, the show wasn’t too crowded in any one place, and everyone was adhering to the mask policy. Seats were spaced out in the theaters to promote distancing.

The show had other speakers as well as some crossover speakers from Frequent Traveler University. It also had over 100 exhibitors from cities, airlines, resorts, tour companies and other travel industry partners.

My daughter was with me since I didn’t want her to be bored at home all day. I wasn’t sure if she would enjoy the travel show, but I shouldn’t have worried. She loved it!

Most of the exhibitors had free swag. We picked up pens, t-shirts, sticky notes, luggage tags and some other unique freebies. My daughter was most excited about this flamingo drink float that the Miami tourism group gave her. It doubles as a barbie floatie.

I enjoyed speaking with people about different destinations. I learned about some areas of Texas I haven’t yet explored as well as resorts n Mexico and different European riverboat companies. Some exhibitions were more interesting than others. For example, this virtual reality tour of Arkansas was a hit.

My daughter and I also enjoyed the different photo ops.

Just a word of warning: Some the exhibitors are actually time shares in disguise. Several tried to rope me into timeshare presentation trips.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad we went to the Dallas Travel and Adventure Show. The experience got me even more excited to research future travel destinations. I can’t wait for travel to be fully back up and running.

The show is going to be in Atlanta and San Francisco later this year. My daughter is already insisting that we attend this show in Dallas next year.

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