Review – Rand McNally Destination: Vacation

Summary:
Destination Vacation is a race game of 2 to 6 players to collect a set of 8 destinations (2 of each of the 4 types) before other players are able to do the same.

Components:
Map is a highway map of the United States with paths of yellow circles (or in the color of the destination at the location) representing road travel, blue lines representing rail connections and a few major cities as squares representing airports.
Each play has a plastic pawn for his current locations, and airplane to use at airports.
There are 177 destination cards in 4 types
Blue - State capitals
Green - National Parks/Monuments
Red - Historical sites
Purple - Other places of interest.
There are 20 event cards - which are labeled play now or play anytime.
2 white dice and 1 red die
Spinner for plane travel - with a 50/50 split

To set up each play select a major city (Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle) as home base.
Once selected each play draws a card for their initial destination.

GamePlay
During a turn a play declares one mode of travel
- Car/Ferry Roll 3 dice and can move the sum of the 2 white dice alone the road paths.
- Rail (if at a rail station) Roll 3 dice and can move 1 rail connection for each even number on the white dice.
- Plane (if at an airport) - use the spinner to first summon the plane (50-50), then use it again once the plane is at the airport to move to any other airport (50-50).

The red die allows you dice roll to apply to your opponent instead of you. If the red die is even, you can choose to apply the white die as either car or rail travel to your opponent. If red die is odd the dice role only can be used for your own movement.

If you roll doubles with the white dice - you must take an event card.
Some must be played immediately such as lose turn/ send players to remote parts of the board/ lose destination...
Other events can be held for later use - such as roll again/ bonus movement/ take a destination from an opponent...

Once you arrive at the destination it becomes part of you hand of collected locations. You must reach 2 of the each 4 destination types to when. To get a new destination you must either travel back to your home city or use the spinner to phone home (50-50) to get draw the next destination card.

Opinions:
Reminiscent of Empire Builder series - that is multiplayer solitaire moving to a demand destination.
However, it very much a roll and move game with some tactical decisions on the method and paths to use at a time. The inclusion of the ability to mess up your opponents by moving them instead, gives a break from a pure race genre.

The game is very much dependent on the break of the destination cards. Since you must fulfill every destination drawn even if they don't help you complete your goal of 2 destinations per type a string of "bad" destinations can ruin your whole plan.
There are only a few event cards which allow you to lose/trade/steal destinations. I would have liked to see more events which open up destinations to multiple players and allow you to trade active destinations with an opponent...

All in all an ok game, but not an outstanding game