You can request a trip quote 24/7 through the form on this page. It is the only way into the desk that works at three in the morning, and it is the way most people use, because writing down four or five facts about a trip is easier than saying them out loud to somebody who is typing while you talk. Amber Almanac is a booking office in Lincoln, Nebraska. It takes booking requests and places reservations with the company that runs the trip. It bills you for nothing at any point.
What comes back is not a brochure. It is a written figure against your dates, with the name of the company that would operate the trip, what that figure includes, and the parts you would pay for separately once you are there. Prices on this site run from $1,920 to $3,940 per person and every one of them is a starting figure, because the same trip in June is not the same trip in October and the operating company sets both.
The next four working days, in order
The form drops the request onto the desk immediately. It runs 24/7 and shuts for nothing. A person, not an automatic acknowledgment, reads whatever has arrived before that working day is over, and if something in it is unclear, that is when the question comes back to you. Most of those questions are dull ones: whether the second traveller is an adult, whether the dates have a day of give in them, whether you meant the coast or the town two hours inland with the same name.
The priced answer takes longer, and the reason is worth saying plainly. This office does not set prices. To put a real number against real dates, the desk has to ask the company that operates the trip, and often a second company for the nights on either end, and then wait for both to answer. That is why a written figure takes opened by somebody here before that working day is out rather than an hour. Anybody who gives you a firm number faster than that is either quoting a published rate you could have found yourself or is guessing.
- 1. request lands
- Your form arrives at the desk in Lincoln the moment you send it. Nothing is charged and no card details are collected, because the form has no field for them. You receive a written acknowledgment that repeats back the dates and party size as we read them, so an error gets caught on day one rather than day four.
- 2. desk reads it
- A person goes through the request and works out which of the twenty-four trips actually match what you described, which is often not the one you named. If two fit, both go forward. If none do, you are told that instead of being sold the nearest thing.
- 3. operators are asked
- We write to the company that runs each trip with your dates and party, and to a second company where transfers or extra nights are involved. Their answer sets the price, the availability and the terms. This is the part that takes days rather than minutes.
- 4. figure comes back
- You get one written message per option: total per person, what the figure covers, what it leaves out, the operating company's name, and the deposit and cancellation terms that would apply. Sit on it as long as you like. Nothing expires.
- 5. you decide, or you do not
- If you say yes, the desk places the reservation with the operating company, which then bills you directly under its own contract. If you say no, or say nothing at all, the request closes quietly and no further messages are sent to you.
Reserve nothing by asking
A request is a question, not a commitment. It reserves no seat, no room and no date. It creates no account, no file you have to close and no obligation on either side. It costs nothing to send and nothing to receive an answer to, and if you never write back after the figure arrives, that is a perfectly ordinary ending. This desk is paid by the operating company after a traveller has been and come home, so the cost of answering a question that goes nowhere sits with us, which is where it belongs.
No card number is asked for on this page, on any other page of this site, or in any message that comes back from the desk. There is no checkout here, no deposit box and no payment field of any kind. When you do decide to go ahead, the operating company invoices you itself, under its own terms, in its own name, and the money never passes through Amber Almanac Bookings LLC. If a message ever appears to come from this office asking you to enter card details somewhere, it did not come from this office.
Two more things this desk does not do. It does not sell or advise on entry documents, passports or travel insurance, and it will not guess at whether you need any of them: those questions belong to the relevant authority and to an insurer, and a booking clerk in Lincoln pretending otherwise would be doing you harm. And it does not grade destinations or publish opinions about them. You will find no scores here and no ranking of one place above another, only the twenty-four trips laid out in all five orderings so you can sort by the fact that matters to you.
If you would rather speak to a travel agent about the shape of a trip before writing anything down, the desk takes calls and the number is printed in the footer of every page. Written requests still tend to get the better answer, simply because the dates and names are on paper and nobody has to remember them.
What to put in a request
The fields below are the difference between a useful answer and three days of back and forth. None of them is mandatory, and a request with only two of them still gets read, but each one you fill in removes a question from the reply.
- Dates, and how firm
- Exact days if you have them, otherwise the month and how many days of movement you have. A trip with three days of give often prices differently from one pinned to a single Saturday.
- Who is going
- Number of travellers and whether any are under eighteen. Room occupancy is set by the operating company and it changes the per person figure more than anything else on this list.
- Where you would fly from
- The nearest airport you would actually use, not the biggest one near you. Flying time on this site is measured from the middle of the country and your own starting point may add or remove hours.
- How much walking suits you
- An honest daily mileage. Several of these trips assume five to eight miles on foot most days, and the difference between wanting that and tolerating it is worth saying now.
- What is fixed and what is not
- Anything that cannot move: an anniversary, a school week, somebody's knee, a dog at home. Constraints make a quote faster, not slower.
- How to reach you
- An email address the reply can go to. Everything from the desk goes to sightline@amberalmanac.com, and if a figure needs correcting after it has been sent, that correction comes from errata@amberalmanac.com.
Once you have sent it, there is nothing further to do. The desk works through requests in the order they arrive. If your plans change while you are waiting, write again and the earlier request is replaced rather than duplicated. Detailed answers to the questions people ask before sending are collected in the questions put to this desk, the sequence from request to reservation is set out in the sequence from ask to booked, and the terms under which an operating company will let you cancel, which are theirs and not ours, are summarized in the terms for changing or cancelling. Amber Almanac Bookings LLC is registered with the Nebraska Secretary of State and works from 6940 O Street, Suite 210, $1,920, Lincoln, NE 68510.