Some perspective regarding travel:
1. The NYC (or any other major city) subway - how many years have we been hearing about crimes of all sorts, violent and otherwise, on the subway? When I lived in New York in the early 80's I'd work until 10:00pm and take the subway home after that. Brazen and young, what can I say - brazen young AND on a tight budget. These days when I go to New York you won't catch me on a train after 9:00pm. The expense in taking a cab from point A to point B is huge - but safety always first.
2. Speaking of New York - just comuting home on the Long Island Railroad some nut empties a gun into a train car as it pulls into the station, killing and maiming many people.
3. In Nigeria a World Bank employee was kidnapped, raped repeatedly and held for several days. Now the World Bank will not allow their employees on Mission to use any type of taxi cab - anywhere. They are all given "trusted" drivers. That said, I believe when my Mom was held up at gunpoint in Mozambique she was set up by one of these "trusted" drivers.
4. Don't even get me started on Israel or Mexico
5. In Tolouse a madman opened fire on a Yeshiva (orthodox religious Jewish school) and killed 5 or 6 - mostly children
6. I was watching an HBO doc on brain injuries - one of the patients, a college aged man, was in what they called a perpetual vegetative state. Why? When traveling in Amsterdam, he was walking at night, accosted and thrown off a bridge, left for dead.
7. In Honolulu, at a large conference reception at a well known hotel in Waikiki a young woman, daughter of one of the attendees at the conference, dissapeared, only to be found murdered and raped on the hotel's front lawn the next morning.
8.I googled "Crime in Disneyworld" - here's a few results:
a. "ORLANDO, Fla.— A man has been arrested on a sex-related charge at an Orlando water park, the fifth such incident in the area in a month.
David Eugene Thomas was being held without bond Friday at the Orange County Jail after he was charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy at Walt Disney Worldâ€s Typhoon Lagoon." http://www.topix.com/forum/city/orlando-fl/T5K5LB77FQ3E8J3GV
b."Two 20-year-olds from Connecticut were abducted while walking through the parking lot at Downtown Disney late Saturday night. Jessica Dellacamera and Justin Stetzer said they were going to their Disney hotel when a man called them to his car. For the next 15 minutes, they took the pair to two ATMs and ordered them to withdraw money. Deputies were going over banking records to see exactly where the pair were taken. The attackers then took the two to the Bass Road landfill in Osceola County. There, Dellacamera and Stetzer said they fought for their lives, because they thought they were going to be killed.
The attackers pistol-whipped Stetzer and the gun went off. That's when the three attackers finally fled, leaving the two at the landfill. They were not seriously injured." http://www.wftv.com/news/news/tourist-industry-concerned-after-disney-kidnapping/nFB6Y/
...finally and sadly, right in my own neighborhood a few years back - a couple was found murdered on the beach in Jenner CA. They were visitors to the area, we know that - but that's all we know. Their bodies were wrapped in a blanket and they were discovered on the beach in Jenner.
So...really bad things really happen really everywhere. Does this mean we try to find the "safest" place to go on vacation, at the risk of possibly "imprisoning" ourselves in an all-inclusive our within a tour group? Or do we just stay home? Personally - I choose to live my life which includes travel. I take precautions, I am not reckless and I am always in a state of mind where I can feel and trust my gut. How about you guys?