Santa's 2013 Travel Naughty/Nice List

I woke up this morning snowbound. It will be a white Christmas. Reflecting on a year's worth of travel and assorted adventures, I thought "What would Santa do?" Here's a quick, down and dirty 2013 Travel Naughty/Nice List. First, the lumps of coal part:

NAUGHTY:

• TSA... for making us all feel like terrorists.


• Customs & Border Protection... for making us all feel like terrorists without a smile.


• United Airlines... for all the wonderful things you don't do.


• American Airlines... for dumping your employee pensions on us taxpayers.


• Delta Airlines... for being late, bumping us and losing our luggage.


• Carnival Cruise Lines... for leaving 4,200 passengers adrift in the Gulf of Mexico.


• Vladamir Putin... for taking the fun out of the Sochi Winter Olympics.


• The Amazing Race... for exposing Americans to exotic international destinations and making fun of them.


• Chinese Tourists... for becoming the 21st Century version of the "Ugly American Tourist."


• The Tea Party... for closing our National Parks to travelers for 16 days.


• Dubai... for their continued self-aggrandizement.


• U.S. State Department... for continuing to make Americans the only people in the world who can't visit Cuba.


• Anthony Bourdain... for moving to CNN and losing your edge. (We miss you.)


• Instagram... for making travel postcards obsolete.


• Weekly Travel Newspaper sections... for your continued unimaginative, cookie-cutter, revenue-seeking stories (ie. Hawaii, cruises, fall colors, Disney, Mexico, Vegas, etc.)


• Travel Channel... for not showing travel.


• Credit card companies... for charging us foreign exchange fees, transaction fees, ATM fees and 21 percent interest.


• Boeing... for not getting all the bugs out of the 787 Dreamliner before we flew in it.


• American Express... for closing down your travel store locations.

NICE:

• Southwest Airlines... for not being like those other naughty airlines (see above).


• The Amazing Race... for exposing Americans to exotic international destinations.


• FCC/FAA... for allowing us to use our PEDs in-flight, finally.


• Yapta.com... for letting us know when our purchased flight cost has gone down and how to get a refund.


• Alaska Airlines... for treating your customers with genuine kindness and bumping us up when you can. Thank you!


• Rudy Maxa... for continuing to pass on your travel know-how to us amateurs.


• Pauline Frommer... for her always refreshing takes on travel destinations.


• Johnny Jet... for his unbridled travel joy.


• Peter Greenberg... for helping travelers save money.


• HuffPost Travel... for constantly giving us fresh travel tidbits.


• The Global Scavenger Hunt... for 10 years of putting on a great around the world travel adventure competition.


• National Geographic Traveler... for all their great travel and adventure ideas.


• Christopher Elliott... for constantly looking out for us travel consumers.


• Scott McCarthy... for constantly amazing us with his Wall Street Journal's "Middle Seat" column.


• Brazil... for hosting the World Cup.


• Seth Kugel... for continuing to share his travels around the world on Frugal Traveler.


• The New York Times... for the In Transit blog.


• Ben Mutzabaugh... for his tireless "Today in the Sky" USA Today blog.


• Travel & Adventure Show... for exposing hopeful travelers to so many possibilities close and far away.


• Aung San Suu Kyi... for finally letting us visit her beautiful country, Myanmar.


• Google Earth... for continuing to surprise us.


• KAYAK.com... for helping us weed through the connections and numbers.


• TripAdvisor.com... for your reviews (even the fake ones we know are written by the properties).


• Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Thai and Emirates Airlines... because you know how to treat your customers.

That's my 2013 Travel Naughty/Nice list, who's on yours? Merry Christmas everyone.