Pictures Taken by Pros

At most theme parks these days, it seems, they have their photographers wandering about taking pictures, and distributing little code cards to find your photos online later. An excellent idea, to be sure, another stream of revenue, and keeps people from having to lug their own cameras around and finding someone to take a shot of the whole family.



Here's what we got (even though, with the exception of the water parks, I had my own camera with me) submitted for your approval!!!











One of the better days we had was the day we went to the Disney Studios Park. If memory serves correctly, it was the 4th Disney park we visited. By that time, my wife & the younger boy were pretty worn out, so they stayed at the resort while the older boy & I went. This was coupled with the fact that the remnant of a tropical depression were blowing through that day. The day was mostly overcast & occasionally drizzly.



That made for many of the lines being pretty short. We pretty much walked onto the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror twice, and at the end of the evening we rode the Aerosmith coaster twice. Also, my older boy has patience for and even an interest in some things that my wife and younger boy would quickly find boring, and he's like me in that he'll stay as long as possible to get the most out of a park. We got to go through the museum-like area and the film of the Walt Disney story. The only ride I would have liked to visit that we didn't get on (due to the over an hour wait time) was the Toy Story shooting gallery ride, doubtless a clone of the one at California Adventure, one of my new favorites.







As opposed to last time, we actually made it on a few of the rides we missed out on last time. At Magic Kingdom, we made it onto Splash Mountain and Space Mountain (both much better than West Coasts'), although we didn't have time to visit the Heritage Square or whatever it's called area we missed last time, too.



At the Animal Kingdom park, they'd shut down the Expedition Everest coaster due to lightening last time, so that was our first stop this time. Made it on after a considerable wait, but also got fast passes to return later that night. Last time we'd gone, we'd seen a show on the in room programming that had that coaster as the best Disney coaster. It's pretty good, but I still like the Aerosmith one better. Got to ride the Dinosaur! ride, too, similar to the Indiana Jones ride out here, but differently themed. Got to take a good look at (and about a zillion pictures of) the Tree of Life. Oh, and the river raft ride that we waited for probably an hour or more last time was pretty much a walk-on. Rode it probably 3 or 4 times in a row.



At Epcot, they had Spaceship Earth open this time, so I got to ride it again, for the first time since 1983. They've added video screens to the cars, and at the end they use a photo of you taken at the beginning of the ride on a an interactive cartoon. Pretty hilarious. Rode it again later to take a video of that. Got to ride the Soaring, another California Adventure clone, and Maelstrom, which were both closed by the time we made it to them last time. Mission: Space we got to ride again, and the boy found someone's dropped fast pass for the GM Test Track ride.







The last few shots here are taken at Typhoon Lagoon, which is where we got the famous free shirts.

The Final Sleep Deprivation Post

Finally I'm going to post about our final vacation day. Nearly two months later.


This was the day that I had rescheduled to return the rental car on. The older boy and I got up early and went to Blizzard Beach again. He had kept trying to get the younger boy to check out the kiddy area there, and he wanted to go there that day. We got to go on a lot of slides.

We got the rental car back right on schedule, and headed back to the resort. Next, we headed out to the one Disney theme park that we had not yet been to, Disney MGM Studios.

Of all the theme parks, I think this one was my favorite!!! For one thing, it seems to be a lot smaller than the other three, so it doesn't take near as much walking to get around it.


It has a couple of duplicate rides, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror that we'd been on before at California Adventure, and Star Tours from Disneyland. The Tower of Terror was the first one we went on, it had a fairly short line. We had planned to let the younger wait with one of us while the other went, but he said he wanted to go. He was tall enough, so we let him. He didn't like it so much.

Over in the same area was the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster. We got fast passes for that to come back later.

There was a show featuring Drew Carey that was mostly sound effects that we went to, it was quite amusing. One of the cooler things they have is a live stunt show with lots of horsepower and pyrotechnics. I took quite a bit of video of that, maybe someday I'll post it.


Oh yea, finally bought a spray bottle with a fan for the youngest boy. He had been wanting one for a lot of the trip. They had them for about half as much at the shuttle launch, but they were sold out by the time I discovered this.

One of the other cool rides is one that goes through several scenes from classic movies.

Cool props galore there, too. See the umbrella attached to the light post (featuring an out of camera sprinkler overhead) a la "Singing in the Rain"???

Of course, our fast passes were for pretty far on in the evening. We made our way back to the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster, and wifey takes the older on it while the younger and I wait. After they get off, the older and I head on. It is nicely themed, you start out in a recording studio with Aerosmith (who the boy kept calling "Arrowhead"), then head out into the alley where a super stretch '59 Caddy limo roller coaster is waiting to take you to the concert. It gets into the launch area, and there are illuminated freeway signs saying traffic is jammed, etc. then it launches. It's supposed to be accompanied with a soundtrack of Aerosmith music, but there was no sound. NICE coaster, though!!! Mostly in the dark, with several inversions. It pulled up to the ride exit area, and the attendant apologized for the lack of sound, do you want to go again??? We all cheered loudly, to which the attendant shushed us and looked worriedly towards the ride loading area. It was quite amusing.

Second time around was even better, with the sound. Very cool that the last ride we went on there we actually got to ride twice!!!

Water Park Pics

Here's something kinda cool. At the Disney parks, there are staff photographers wandering the park, taking pictures and handing out the number to find your picture online. This was especially helpful for me at the water parks, because I wasn't going to take my camera in the wave pool!!! Funny seeing them wading in the splash down pools with these REALLY NICE digital cameras, completely wrapped in plastic bags except the lens.

The other day I found the two little bracelets I'd gotten from the photographers at the water parks. Just in time, it would seem, it said that the pictures would only be available online for 30 days. I thought I might be too late already, but I wasn't. Of course, their deal is to try and sell you prints, a 5x7 for about $13 if I remember correctly. They have it so you can't just get the digital picture, but we have our ways, oh yes.

The top picture is on the end of the The Crushin' Gusher at Typhoon Lagoon, and the bottom one is on Team Boat Springs at Blizzard Beach. I don't believe I had made mention of this slide, but each water park had a variation of this slide, a giant tube raft for up to six riders at a time on a huge slide. Typhoon Lagoon has Mayday Falls, and Blizzard Beach has Team Boat Springs. Of the two, the latter is the best. It has a much longer slide, and it has a conveyor to haul the rafts to the top. On Mayday Falls, you have to lug your own raft.

Sleep Deprivation Part 3

Day five!!! This is actually the day we went to Hurricane Harbor for their early extra hours. It's all a blur now, but I'm sure of this in retrospect. Take everything I said about that on the Something Completely Different post and put it here. Don't know what we did in the morning of the fourth day, maybe we just played in the pool at the resort??? I know we did a lot of that.

This was the last day we were going to have the rental car, I was scheduled to turn it in at noon that day. We left early enough from there that we could make it back and go out for a last meal with the rental before we were back to having to take the Disney shuttle buses. After dining and leaving the restaurant, my oldest boy starts looking around for the admission card and room key card that he'd had in a Ziploc bag in his swim trunks. He can't find it anywhere, and we head back to the restaurant, because his mom is sure he had it there. Yea, like it's still gonna be there half an hour later. Damit. Ends up being so late I know I won't get the rental back, so I call them up and tell them to add one day. Had to go to the concierge desk at the resort to get them replaced.


After that, it was off to Epcot Center!!! This was the night that it had the extra evening hours, which was a good thing, since it was mid afternoon before we made it there. My wife had been especially looking forward to this, because the guy she had sat next to on the flight out had told her that they have wines from all over the world there. I think she had pictured in her mind something like vats with coffee urn spigots on them where you can drink all you like for free or something.

At the security check going in, the security guard Dave was singing "Drift Away". When we got closer, I broke out my video camera and asked him to sing it again. Probably I'll post that at some point. Pretty amusing.

First stop was the Mission: Space ride. Outside of it, they have a very cool model of the moon, with marks everywhere something has been landed. Red for the first landing, blue for the subsequent manned landings, and white for unmanned probes. There are two different intensities to the ride, so we got our tickets fast passed to come back later that day. However, the line for the less intense version was really quite short, so the older and I rode it. It featured Gary Sinise in the video leading up to it. It was hard for me to recognize him out of the Detective Mac Taylor or Lieutenant Dan roles. Pretty cool ride, but the less intense ride wasn't very intense.

After that we went on the GM Test Track ride. These are the two thrill rides at Epcot Center. This one wasn't much of a thrill, either, but it does go pretty fast and has some nice, high banked curves.

One of the coolest things there was this soda pops of the world pavilion. They have all these different sodas on tap from several countries. Amazing what some people will drink, guess it depends on what you're used to. We attempted to go on the iconic Spaceship Earth ride (the giant golf ball), but discovered that it is closed for renovation. It has apparently had several of these in the course of it's life. Last time I saw it, it didn't have all those stars on the top of it. The structure next to it I had taken to be a crane, but it turns out it used to be a magic wand with Mickey's hand holding it.

We were making our way around the World Pavilion, where they have different countries represented in the buildings, food and attractions. The workers in the various lands are from the represented countries, I understand that they are housed by Disney and are college students. How cool would that be??? That was one of the things I had wanted to do was have some food that I had never tried before. We got to the France land and were on the search for some wine for my wife. The wine shop there had a sampler package of three different wines for $15, so I went to buy one for both of us. Hahahaha, my wife forgot to bring her ID!!! It took a little bit of doing, but finally the clerk let her have her wine.

There was a movie of the French countryside that we watched. It was pretty cool, the screen is a full 180° and we were in the front row, so it was all around us. Did you know that Walt Disney's original concept for Epcot was to have a dome over the whole place and have it air conditioned??? That would have been real nice, that was a lot of the reason we went into the theatre, to sit in the air conditioned building for a while.

Around this time, it was getting towards the time that our fast passes were in effect for the Mission: Space ride. Went back and rode the intense version, first mom and the older, then myself and the older. WOW, what a difference from the less intense one!!! You can actually feel it pulling your face back when it does the launch sequence!!! I had thought it was a standard motion simulator type thing before I had rode it, but after the second trip I figured out that it uses centrifuge effect for the G-forces. Very cool. I was back from our vacation before I found out that there have been a few deaths from this ride!!!

Starved after that, so we ended up going the other way around the World Showcase (we'd only gone about halfway around when we had to head back for the fast passes) and ended up in the China land. I've had Chinese food a lot before, but I wasn't seeing much that looked any better, and they had a real nice sit down restaurant, Nine Dragons. We got a bottle of a strange plum wine to drink with dinner. We were some of the last people to get a seat, as they were closing down for the evening. I believe that it was after the time when the park was closed to all but resort guests. After that we went to the Norway area to attempt to go on a ride called Maelstrom that is a viking boat ride. It was closed. OK, we headed back to a ride called Soaring, which is very similar to the one at California Adventure called Soaring over California. It was closed, too. I was noticing a trend. The Seas with Nemo & Friends ride was still open, so we rode that. It goes through one of the world's largest salt water aquariums, riding in a clam mobile. Nice, but not too exciting. That is the general consensus of most visitors to Epcot altogether, I think, nice, but not too exciting.

One Year Later Random

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for a little randomness and a departure from my chronicling of me vacation travels!!! I've been enjoying doing that, nice way to preserve the memories, but randomness will not be withheld!!!


It was approximately one year ago that I was unceremoniously axed. In hindsight, it was one of the better things to have happened to me!!! This morning, one of the girls at work was axed. That reminded me. I hope it turns out to be one of the best things to have happened for her, too. Right before a three day weekend, and she had her vacation time scheduled for next week, too. Bad mojo for the ones who fired her, I say, even though I'm sure she will be treated much better by these guys than I was.

Have you seen that show, "Who Wants to Be a Superhero"??? I like it quite a lot, as do my boys. I think the integration of Esurance into the series is the best product placement I've ever seen. I also like the way the pink haired girl is drawn.


Did you hear about those fires that were burning in Greece??? You know, it's not safe to use water on a fire like that, but either smother it with baking soda or put a pan lid over it. A safety tip from your friends at Aye's Random Ravings.

A neighbor family and friend of my son took a vacation to Holland. She brought back some boxes of chocolate sprinkles that are one of the delicacies of the land of windmills. They serve it on buttered toast, of all things!!! Crazy ass Dutch!!!

That black and white looking picture there??? That's how it would look if you were behind your keyboard looking out.

I purchased a collection of the first six Harry Potter books in paperback, so I can get up to speed now that they are all out. I'm reading the first one, and they have the Christmas holiday celebrated at Hogwarts. I thought that strange, wizards celebrating Christmas. Like Christian children celebrating Halloween.



I had been thinking of going to Johns Incredible Pizza for my birthday. It didn't happen... yet, anyway. Maybe I'll take Sammy there for his birthday. Bet he's never had spicy peanut butter pizza before!!! Sounds strange, and the one time I had it I wasn't that impressed, but now I occasionally crave it.

A couple of the lesbians at work were discussing how hot they find Keira Knightley at break time a bit ago. Just recently my wife has become a huge fan of the show "The Closer", and I think she's got a girl crush on Kyra Sedgwick. She says, "She's so CUTE!!!" Not the adjective I think of, but I kinda like her glasses. Anyway, I'm thinking it's a Keira-Kyra thang.



I happened on that picture of all that cheese this evening. I wasn't looking for it, but there it is!!! It had a caption something to the effect of "There shall be cheese for all!!!"

I had wanted to do this post last night, but I got caught up watching Bullett. Great movie, but it's amazing the way the world has changed. Of course, they were all using phones with dials, and, when out in the field, pay phones. Bullett would get to a place and call into the station and tell them where he was at in case they needed to get in touch with him. Didn't even have walkie talkies!!!

I was doing some small talk with one of my friends at work yesterday, asking how things were going. We both agreed it was going great, one more day until a three day weekend AND payday, could it get any better??? Then we ran that past one of the girls on the other side of the conveyor, and she was taking today as a vacation day. Guess it could get better!!!

You know, I think those Dutch are onto something with that chocolate sprinkles on buttered toast, it tasted great!!!



There was cake in the break room at second break yesterday. Most of us in attendance had some, but very few fillers were in that area for second break. Today at lunch we were telling those who were absent about the cake. They had been at the couch and chairs right by the bin structure. I wouldn't take my break there, there is almost no chance of cake showing up there.

Why is it that our body temperature is around 98° Fahrenheit, yet it has to be a LOT cooler than that for it to not feel "hot" to us??? Seems like anything a bit less than that should feel cool to us.



Did you see where they played a funny trick on Karl Rove, wrapping his car up with plastic wrap??? Those wacky Republicans!!!

Speaking of politics, if there were truth in advertising laws for politicians, Fabian Núñez would have to change his identification from California Democrat to Mexican Socialist.

Of course, if there were truth in advertising laws for politicians, I don't think there would be any left.

I was quite hungry at morning break yesterday. Figured if there were any decent looking pizza available, I would buy a slice. There was, it had pepperoni, sausage, ham, olives and mushrooms. One of the slices was inordinately huge, and I decided I should make it mine. I took it as a gift and a challenge, see if I could down it in the time I had. I did.

They are having a lunch and learn conference at my work in a couple of weeks on bio fuels. Very cool, I shall be in attendance. Hopefully personnel will be representing, and I can inquire if using or brewing biodiesel could be considered for incentives like they have for ridesharing and public transportation.



That last picture, it's one of the merchandise racks at the Disney resort. See how the adjustment slots are Mickey heads??? I thought that was a very cool detail, and a great show of force of the buying power of the mouse. How many companies can have their logo made into something as mundane as an adjustment slot???

At lunch today one of the girls asked me if I wanted her extra dill pickle slices. I love dill pickle, so of course I thanked her and partook. Of course, I have something of a reputation as the guy who will not turn down much of anything food related, so she was saying, "Of course you will take 'em, like I had to even ask!!!" Another girl had a container of sour cream for her food, and I said I'd been eyeing that too, "Ya gonna finish that???" Mostly in jest, because I didn't have much that would go with sour cream on it. However, she took what she was going to use and gave the rest to me anyway!!! I tried one of the honey wheat pretzel sticks from my lunch dipped in it, and it was GOOD!!! Later, she offered me her last tortilla. A plain tortilla wasn't too appealing, and I was already loaded up on pickles and sour cream. Everyone was shocked when I declined. I joked that I should hold onto it for break time in case there was cake again, I could make a cake burrito. They were laughing and expounding on that idea as I was chewing the last of my pretzel and sour cream when it hit me. Not a cake burrito, but a cakeadilla!!! I had a laughing fit in mid-chew and shared after I had swallowed. Everyone loved the name.

I know cakeadilla will never make it past blogger's spell checker.

Something Completely Different

The third and fourth day of our Florida Vacation were a distinct and welcome departure from the first Disney-saturated days.

Well, it actually started out with some quite literal Disney saturation. I set the alarm in the room and the older boy and I got up early and went to Typhoon Lagoon again, for the extra morning hour. Now, this was actually pretty nice!!! We got to go on several slides with relatively short lines.

The coolest, something I've not seen the likes of before, was a set of slides called "The Crushin' Gusher", which instead of being fully dependant on gravity and downward flowing water, has several places where it has high volume water jets that propel you upwards for a portion of the slide. We went on it three times. Many of the other slides were practically walk ons. Cool.

They also have a shark encounter attraction there that we went on. We had gone through the wrecked submarine that has port holes through which you can view the inside of this tank. One of the props in the line was an anti-shark cage, which prompted me to recite the dialogue from Jaws about the shark cage to the boy:

Quint: What you got here? A portable shower or a monkey cage?

Hooper: Anti-shark cage.

Quint: Anti-shark cage... You go inside the cage? [Hooper nods] Cage goes in the water? [Hooper nods] You go in the water? [Hooper nods] Shark's in the water? [Hooper nods] Our shark. [Hooper nods]

Quint: [he sarcastically sings] Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again....

We did that several times the rest of the trip (because, what else is there to do while you're standing in line, anyway???) and now he's pretty much got it memorized. He'll have to see that movie someday.

We had to leave fairly early from there, though, because Enterprise was coming to pick me up for a car rental!!! I had purchased tickets to see the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 mission. This is one of those things that worked out very cool, I'd requested the time off at the end of last year, and it just so happened to be when there was going to be a launch, I found out many months later. The fact that we were planning to vacation in Hawaii kept me from even thinking of this, and even after we'd changed to Florida it was weeks before I even thought of the Kennedy Space Center being there. For the launch day the visitor center is closed, but the tickets include a day pass for another day within seven days, so we went to the visitor center this very day.

Having a rental, we were able to buy a few meals away from Disney parks or resorts, so the cost of the rental was near offset by the savings of being able to do that!!! However, there was another new experience awaiting. They have these things they call "toll roads" in Florida. They actually stop the cars and you have to pay to drive on their roads!!! Strange and stranger.

They had many cool displays and attractions. The boys got to have their picture taken with Artoo Detoo, and they had a stage presentation, "Mad Mission to Mars", which was nice, geared to kids, and the older got to play the part of the astronaut. There was an IMAX theatre there with a Tom Hanks movie about space (I think it was called "Space") playing. Very well done.

We left from there that evening and stopped at a Waffle House franchise we had seen on the way in. Good eating, and they had a juke box with more songs than I would have imagined about waffles and waffle houses on it. After that we stopped at a Wal Mart to pick up some sodas and snacks, as well as another bag to bring back all the extra swag we were acquiring on our trip. After that we did quite a bit of searching for a place to buy some rum to mix in with all the soda we'd bought.

It was well into night by the time we got back to our room, but the boys wanted to go swimming. OK, some drinks for mom and dad, and some swimming for the boys!!! A good time was had by all.

The next morning we went to the other Disney water park, Blizzard Beach, which does interesting things with the themeing. It is a winter wonderland water park, where you can hear the music of The Beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett segue into Frosty the Snowman.

We didn't stay there very late, either. The launch was on this day, and Marge from the Waffle House (I don't know if her name was Marge or not, but it would be a perfect fit if it were) had warned us that the traffic can get pretty bad on launch days. She was right. The drive out and back that day were hellish. There was quite a lot of waiting for something to launch while we were there, too. We had to be there by 3 at the latest, and the launch was at 6:25. Fortunately, there was an elaborate play apparatus and a run-through-me type water fountain there, as well as a big screen carrying the launch, as well as having Alfred M. Worden, who was one of the crew on the Apollo 15 talking about the differences in space travel in the 36 years (nearly to the day) between these flights.

However, the launch itself more than made up for all the traffic and waiting!!!