I wonder if they took it from the actual story?
Okay, now I’m going to look like a pedantic crazy person for being confused by an episode of Full House, but I’m prepared to accept that. Full House took place in San Francisco. Why would they even be in a situation that required flying to Oakland? (It takes about, oh, five minutes to drive across the Bay Bridge connecting the two cities.)
I drove to Greenville NH for a job interview that was in Greenfield NH (about 10 miles apart). I even stopped a police officer in Greenville to ask why I couldn’t find the street. To my credit, no one I know can ever remember which one’s which either, but you’d think I would have checked before a job interview.
:wally
They boarded the plane to talk to a cute boy and were then mistaken for passengers. When they heard that the plane was going to Auckland, they mistakenly thought the stewardess had said Oakland and that they would be there in no time because “it’s right across the bridge”. A few minutes later, right before commercial, they then found out it was the former and not the latter with “comedic” reactions.
I feel like such a tool for remembering all this.
Well, when I notice people on message boards who often refer to Washington as though it were a big important city. 
Ah, better example - a flatmate (from Canada) was wearing a belt on which was the placename BANFF.
Now, perhaps it was before the breakfast coffee kicked in, but I did fail to notice that the belt had some Native American-style beadwork decoration, which ought to hahve given me some clue. Instead I remarked how odd that she would have visited Banff, and she replied how odd that I should even have heard of the place…
And so on, until we both realised at about the same time, that there is a Banff in Canada too. OR a Banff in Scotland too, depending on how one looks at it.
Even without any foreign connection, there can be a tiny bit of confusion if chatting to people from Edinburgh (only 30 mins train ride away, for goodness sake, because some place names are jsut sort of derived from geographical-type desciprtions, e.g “Sighthill” or “Tollcross”.
Oh, and I don’t even need confusing place names to end up in the wrong place.
:smack:
I know Between. It’s on the way from Athens to Atlanta and as you drive through it’s mandatory to squeal “Look, we’re in Between!” When I moved to Athens, thr was much confusion between my home town, Gainesvill, FL, and Gainesvill, GA. I was actually denied an apartment when they tried to call my former complex before I clared up the situation.
I’m going to a race next week in Oak Ridge, TN and it turns out there’s also an Oakridge, TN as well which made plane tickets and hotel reservations very confusing. Actually, I’m not totally sure which Oak Ridge I’m going to at this moment (it’s the one that’s near Knoxville) but I know I’ve doubl checked my reservations.
Disclaimer - the following did not involve me, nor woud I admit to it if it did.
I work in the dispatch department of a small aviation company.
Airplane was sent to the wrong state. The city name was correct, but it was located in a different state.
Thankfully the states were bordering each other and it was only a minor inconvenience. It could have been a 3000 mile error.
TVTome listing for the episode in question.
Doesn’t mention the Auckland/Oakland thing, but I do seem to remember it.
Yahoo says the episode will be on Nickelodeon on August 23 at 8 PM Central time, if anyone wants to check it out.
Cellphones and international roaming have caused a few funny occurances, especially when the technology was new and people weren’t used to it:
[Epping is a suburb of Sydney]
“Good morning madam. I am the Station Master at Epping Railway Station. I believe one of your children may have left his or her phone on the platform. I pressed “Mum” on the preset keys and got your number.”
“Oh thank you! Just a moment, I’ll ask my boys. {short pause}. Hello? That’s odd. I asked both my sons, and they have their phones right here. It can’t be my daughter’s phone because she’s working in England…”
At this point, theBritish Station Master, who has no doubt never heard of tiny Epping, Australia must have decided he was dealing with a nutcase… “Ye-es madam. Epping is in England.”
He’s pulling your chain, surely! Frequently? No no no. Can’t happen.
Can it?
No. Surely not.
Believe it. Working for the Post Office in Australia (where we get so many cards going to Vienna it’s not funny) I have occasion to glance at the content of some of the post cards people send home from here. A large percentage spell Sydney as Sidney. Now, I’m not particularly offended by this. I don’t care if the average American doesn’t even know where Australia is, but what bothers me is: this people have flown here! They have spend months planning their big holiday, thousands of dollars paying for it… They must have seen the word “Sydney” written dozens, maybe hundreds of times at travel agent’s, on brochures, tickets, boarding passes, inflight magazines, Australian airport signage. If this is the standard of tourist from the States*, we get, it’s not surprising some of them end up in Austria.
*And of course it’s not. The vast majority are intelligent, polite people who are knowledgeable and have done their homework, but there are enough bozos in every crowd to make a bad impression.
God, that show was even stupider than I remembered it. The idea that anyone could think that there are commercial flights between San Francisco and Oakland makes my head hurt, even if it was done for “comedic” value on a crappy TV show.
No big deal, but I called AVIS and told them I was going to Costa Rica and needed a rental car in San Jose. When we arrived, we went to AVIS with confirmation # in hand. They kept looking thru papers, whispering to themselves, etc., etc. Finally someone got on the phone and found out our car was waiting for us in San Jose, CA. They had plenty of cars, so no problem.
I have occasion to send many packages and letters to Vienna from the US. I always write:
AUSTRIA
EUROPE
I’ve heard that some people get Dallas, Texas and Dulles Airport confused, so that the airport is normally called Washington Dulles Airport.
Oh, also, we have two metro stations called Place-d’Armes and Place-des-Arts. Fortunately they’re close to each other, so an error wouldn’t be terribly severe.
Oddly enough, LaSalle, Saint-Laurent, and Mont-Royal stations are not actually located in the boroughs of LaSalle, Saint-Laurent, or Mont-Royal.
This is a friend-of-a-friend story, so I can’t vouch for it’s veracity.
FOAF books a flight to Nepal. She has friends that work for an NGO in Patan, so instead of staying in Kathmandu proper, she asks the travel agent to book her a room across the river.
The flight arrives at Tribhuvan Airport and nobody has even heard of the hotel where she’s supposed to be staying.
Turns out, the agent had booked her into a hotel in Patna, India, several hundred kilometers away.
One time I was going from Los Angeles to Washington, DC on United. The adjacent gate was for a flight to Seattle, WA. After the plane was buttoned up and being pulled back to start taxing, the head flight attendant came on the PA and said, “Welcome to United Airlines flight XXX to the nation’s capital.” At this point two guys a couple rows ahead yelled out, “Stop! Stop!” So we were pulled back in, the loading dock was reattached and they departed for their Seattle flight.
In addition to that foul-up the plane was a stretched DC-8, the most miserable airplance ever. Like sitting in a soda straw.
From further down the page, under the Analysis header:
"*Life Lesson
Never follow someone onto a plane, and just so you'll know, there's a world of difference between the way the words "Auckland" and "Oakland" sound*."
I was ten!
Well, the fact that they were little girls, maybe ages six and four at the time, mitigates the stupidity somewhat. At that age, I thought my grandmother lived in You Nork City. The Full House episode was based specifically on the real incident of the man who mistook Aukland for Oakland.