Fluenz Language Immersion Software

Search function has not been working at all for me, so hopefully this topic hasn’t been covered ad nauseam.

I’m traveling to France/Italy next year and am considering trying to become very basically literate/fluent in French and/or Italian, as opposed to carrying a phrase book and looking/sounding like an idiot. I know, it seems like a lot of work just for a vacation, but for me, learning languages is fun in a mystery decoder sort of way.

So I was looking into Rosetta Stone software, but discovered it’s not Mac compatible. Then I found Fluenz. Looks cool, I checked out the samples and really got into it.

Anyone have experience with Fluenz? How did you like it? Is it too much for someone who just needs conversational basics? Anybody want to talk me out of a small monetary investment in language immersion software just for a vacation?