An Actress On Strike Started Doing Parisian Bed Bug Skits On Instagram, Inspiring A Hilarious Halloween Costume Trend

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Annie Wonderlich 41, an Instagram and TikTok influencer who is traveling the US solo in her van. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Travel has been plagued by strikes and walkouts over the last couple of years, but France is looking to improve the situation for passengers.

Bed bugs are known to travel from hotels to unlucky travelers’ homes. But the pesky insects that cause itchy bites and are a pain to get rid of also hide out in several other places, many of which are popular on tourist circuits, according to pest experts.

A potential strike that could have crippled the Las Vegas Strip was averted when Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts was able to cut deals with the Culinary and Bartenders Unions. 

While on my honeymoon, I traveled to Japan and took the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Over four decades, the costume designer Colleen Atwood has enjoyed an incredible career, working on films like Chicago, Little Women (1994), The Silence of the Lambs, and Edward Scissorhands and winning four Academy Awards. Her considerable workload—in 2023, she worked on the live-action The Little Mermaid as well as Netflix’s new drama Pain Hustlers, streaming now—doesn’t allow for a whole lot of leisure travel. “I’m embarrassed,” she says of her lack of experience in this realm. “I’m a traveler, but not a vacationer.”

It's easy to think MGM Resorts is playing a game of financially troublesome whack-a-mole.

I'll never forget walking into the Cancún, Mexico, resort in August 2007 where my new husband and I would spend our honeymoon.

Have you heard the news? Paris is positively teeming with bedbugs. Yep, this autumn, the blood-sucking insects have been crawling all over the French capital, taking a bite out of citizens and travelers alike. In addition to being spotted on beds in hotels and private residences—precisely where you would expect the little critters to be hanging out—there have been bedbug sightings on buses & trains, in airports and even at movie theaters. (Hey, I know Barbenheimer was a big deal, but this is ridiculous.)    How did we find out about this infestation? It's 2023, how else? Videos of supposed bedbug sightings were shared via wobbly social media posts, gaining traction with shocked viewers and amateur exterminators alike. Predictably, the bedbug content set the algorithm alight, going viral and spawning memes and many a reaction video from influencers who wanted to talk about bedbugs, you know, "because a lot of you are asking".  Then, the story swept into traditional media. What followed was a slew of news stories about the "invasion", the panic surrounding it and how it all comes a mere 10 months before millions of people from all over the world are set to descend on the City of Light for the Summer Olympics. People wondered why this was happening now. Was it because of the Rugby World Cup? Paris Fashion Week? Or were bedbugs simply just getting out there and traveling again post-Covid? The fervor reached such a level that, back in early October, it was reported by Reuters that Emmanuel Gregoire, Paris's deputy mayor, said in a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne that "The state urgently needs to put an action plan in place against this scourge as France is preparing to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2024,". 

I worked at Magic Kingdom and Disney Springs during my time in the Disney College Program. With that experience, I know a trip to Disney World can be equally magical and overwhelming.

Two travelers enlisted the help of TikTok to make sense of their quirky hotel bed — which turned out to be billionaire Richard Branson's "hotel bed of the future."

Some 35,000 Las Vegas hospitality workers are ready to walk off the job on Friday, November 10 in a strike against casino and resort operators MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts if they do not have a labor contract by then, their unions said on Thursday.