So what has been going on since the last time I posted? A whole lot! I am still working my ass off at the company that will remain anonymous. I am generally bored in my job so I will have to correct that soon. Work consumes ninety-five percent of my life, with the rest going to sleeping and eating.

I have managed to sneek away from work to go on a few vacations this year. In April I went to Washington D.C. with my family. We met up with our cousins and toured around the city for a week. That trip confirmed my opinion that Washington D.C. is a much cooler city than New York. In July, some friends and I took a road trip to Sandusky, Ohio to the Cedar Point Amusement Park. It was my pilgrimage to the Mecca of roller coasters. Needless to say I had a blast. Finally, not too long ago in November, I went to Florida with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving with my grandma, and other extended family. Any time I get to have nice warm weather in the winter months is a welcomed treat and I had a good time to boot.

There is lots of other boring stuff that has happened over the year, some good, some bad but I won’t bore you with the details. If I were to sum up 2009 I would say that it was a year I would largely like to forget. I am hoping to make 2010 a better year and I am thinking that making a better effort to post on this blog will help me achieve this. If I ever get over my designers block, I am also hoping to finish my custom design for this blog. So we will see how I do with these goals. Until then, you can always find me on Twitter, complaining about the world in 140 characters or less. And with that I say good night Internet.

Totals

I did this little experiment for 5 months. That means I bought 5 monthly passes at $60.00 USD. That adds up to $300.00 USD that I paid for travel on the NJ Transit rail system. If I only bought tickets for the times that I was checked I would have only needed 46 tickets and my total would have been $103.50 USD. That is a difference of $197.50 USD. I could have saved almost two hundred dollars by not buying monthly passes. That is a pretty staggering number if you ask me.

Conclusion

My only explanation for these results is that NJ transit just doesn’t care about checking tickets between Secaucus Junction and Hoboken. It’s a ten minute ride and I guess they just think they have better things to do than to worry about who boarded the train for the short journey. That annoys me slightly since I am following the rules for no real reason. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my little experiement as much as I enjoyed performing it.

I have decided to run the experiement through the end of the year. I figure 5 months is more than enough data to reasonably conclude whether or not I should buy train tickets. Stay tuned!

I am beginning to wonder if I am somehow a factor in all of this. I don’t take my ticket out unless I am asked to display it. I am thinking that because I am not waving my pass around at the first sight of a conductor, that the train staff thinks my ticket has been checked already. That is not acceptable to me since it is not my responsibility to make sure my ticket is checked. That is the train staff’s responsibility and I am not going to do their job. I will see if next month continues the streak of no checks.

For the month of September I traveled on the train a total of 42 times and had my ticket checked only 15 times. Remember that a one way ticket is $2.25 USD and a monthly pass is $60.00 USD. If I only bought one way passes for the times I was checked I would have saved $26.25 USD.

So it seems that buying a monthly pass is turning out to be a bad idea.

Since I payed $60 USD for my monthly pass I was kind of annoyed that my ticket wasn’t being checked. Every time I rode the train without a check, I was wasting money. Because of this, I decided to do a little experiment. I started keeping track of when my ticket was checked to see how much money I could be saving by not buying a monthly pass. My backup plan would be a standard one way ticket. Since a one way ticket does not expire, I would keep one in my wallet for a time when my ticket was checked.

The first month I conducted this test was August. In this month I rode the train a total of 40 times. Of those 40 times, my ticket was checked only 10 times. A one way ticket for my trip costs $2.25 USD. So for the month of august, if I just bought one way tickets, my travel costs would be $22.50 USD. That is $37.50 cheaper than a monthy pass. That’s quite a savings.

Because of my findings in August, I decided to continue my experiment through September. I wanted to gather more data to see if it August was just a fluke or if NJ Transit really doesn’t care. I will post my September results in part 2 of this story. Stay tuned.

My last full day at Disney World was mainly a catch-up day for the family. We decided that we wanted to go back and ride some of our favorite rides but mainly we just wanted to have a fun relaxing last day. The day started at the Magic Kingdom.

The main reason for starting at the Magic Kingdom was to ride an attraction that had been closed for our entire stay: The Pirates of the Caribbean. According to the ride op, they were refirbishing the ride. I really wanted to ride it because of some of the new additions they made since the new films had been released. Well the ride op told us the ride would reopen on Thursday so we headed back Friday to see if he was correct. Sure enough, the ride was open and we hopped on quickly. The additions were pretty cool, especially the new Jack Sparrow animatronic.

After the Pirates of the Caribbean, we decided to grab some lunch. Epcot had our favorite places to eat at Disney so we hopped the Monorail over to Epcot. After a quite bite to eat, we hopped on Soarin’ one more time because the ride is so fun.

As the afternoon progressed it was time for my brother and I to exercise our extra ticket privilege and headed to Downtown Disney and go to Disney Quest.  Now when I first went to Disney Quest, I found it very fun and had plenty to do. This time I did not have as good of a time. The problem with Disney Quest is that nothing changes. The attractions that were there four years ago, were still there. The changes in arcade games was not enough to make the place fun. So my brother and I decided to leave Disney Quest and head back to the Magic Kingdom for the extra magic hours.

Extra magic hours with just my brother and I is a pretty fun time. We went and rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad three or four times in a row, then ran over to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin twice and Space Mountain once before the two hours of extra time were over. It was now 2 AM and we were exhausted. We headed back to the hotel and went to bed to get what sleep we could before we had to be up to catch our flight home.

Final Thoughts

As I look back on the vacation, I can honestly say it was one of my favorite times spent with my family. We have been to Disney World as a family before but something seem to fit better this time around. None of us had any issues with what we were doing and the vacation benefited for it. Disney World is one of my favorite places to visit and I hope I get to head back soon.

If there is one conclusion I can make from my experience at Disney World, it is that Fastpass no longer functions. I used to think that Fastpass helped keep lines shorter and reduce wait times but after this past vacation, I realize that Disney can no longer make this service work. Too many people use the system and on most rides they end up making the Fastpass line move and the regular line stop. It is time for Disney to drop the Fastpass and return to normal line operations.

So that was my trip to Walt Disney World. I know my final post was a bit late but hopefully I can return to a more normal post schedule. Stay tuned.

I can’t really give you specifics about where I work or what I do but I do work at a large company in New York and I am a computer programmer; that’s all your gonna get. While my career has started my job hasn’t really started yet. I am currently in training and will join my team in a few weeks.

Another big life event happened after I started my job. I finally moved into my first apartment. I was supposed to move in before I started work but unfortunately my apartment was delayed since it was new construction. Because of the delay, I was unable to sign up for internet access until after I moved in. My installation date was also pushed back because I could only get an installation on the weekends (employees in training don’t get days off). So today is my first day with internet access; a full two weeks after I moved in.

Now that I am working full time, I forsee my blogging habits to morph into weekly posts made on the weekends. The first post after this one should hopefully be the conclusion to my Disney World trip. Now all I have to do is remember what happened on that vacation. Stay tuned to see if I can remember.

Day five began just like day four. We headed to the pool for several hours of needed relaxation. These days were some of the hottest days of the week so it was a very good idea to hit the pool during some of the hotter hours so we didn’t get grumpy while at the parks. I think we spent more times in the pool than out.

After the pool we got some lunch at the hotel food court area and headed to the bus stop. Earlier that afternoon we decided to head to the last of the parks, Hollywood Studios. For those of you that don’t know, the Disney/MGM Studios was renamed eariler this year to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Here is a link to some info on the name change. A part of me will always think of the park as MGM though. I’ve grown up with that name so it will be hard to get my brain to change.

When we got to the park it was already pretty late in the day. We had decided that we wanted to see the nighttime show called Fantasmic and since we were Disney World Resort hotel guests we were allowed to take advantage of one of the coolest features. It’s called Extra Magic Hours and it is only available to guests staying in a Disney hotel. One or two days a week a couple of the parks are open an hour early and a couple of hours later than the normal hours. All you have to do is show your hotel key card and they give you a special wrist band. With that band you can get on rides hours past the regular closing time. If anyone is thinking about going to Disney World, Extra Magic Hours is a very convincing reason for staying at a Disney hotel.

So we got our bands for Extra Magic Hours, which meant we could go to the later Fantasmic show. After that we went and checked the lines for Rockin’ Roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror. Both had really long lines so we decided to do those rides later. Next we headed to the new show Lights, Motors, Action stunt show. It was brought over from Disneyland Paris and was a really good live stunt show with really fast cars doing ridiculous maneuvers. After the show, we decided to head to the newest ride in the park, Toy Story Maina. This ride is very new (opened May 31. 2008) and I guess they were still working out the kinks because the line was ridiculously slow. It took 2 hours to get to the ride and that is way too long for a Disney attraction. Disney is usually very good about managing wait times and this was not handled very well. Also, the fasspass feature only made the problem worse. For the first time in my life, I now think that fasspass is not a useful system and only makes the lines longer.

When we finally got to ride Toy Story Mania, I found out that it was well worth the wait. The ride is similar to the Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin ride at the Magic Kingdom but way better. The ride vehicle navigates you to a series of large screens where there are midway games managed by Toy Story characters. You have a special gun that you shoot various projectiles to gain points. What makes this ride so much fun is the 3-D element. Unlike Buzz Lightyear’s ride where you have to follow your red dot to aim, Toy Story Mania uses 3-D technology to shoot virtual projectiles. This makes it very easy to play. They keep score of each game and a total of the whole ride and you can compare scores with the daily bests and all time bests at the end. This is definitely one of the best rides at Hollywood Studios and one that one one should miss.

By the time we got out of Toy Story Mania, it was getting very late and we still hadn’t eaten dinner. We managed to get into a all you can eat buffet and the was pretty darn good for park food. After dinner, it was just about time to go to the Fantasmic show so we walked across the park top the amphitheater. The Fantasmic show was great and it was much easier to go to the later show because it was after park hours so there was a limited number of people that could be there. After the show we decided to go back to the hotel room rather than attempt to go onto the Rockin’ Roller Coaster or Tower of Terror. We decided to come back to the park the next day and finish it all up.

Back to Hollywood Studios

Day six started with breakfast and then a bus back to the Hollywood Studios. My brother and I went ahead while my parents went over to Downtown Disney to get some dinner reservations and to pick up our tickets to the Cirque Du Soleil (more on that later). We met up for lunch and then headed out to finish up this park. Our first stop was Star Tours. Its a classic ride and I can’t imagine a trip to Disney World without riding Star Tours. I do hope they update it soon though. It is beginning to show its age. Next we headed over to the Rockin’ Roller Coaster, which was great as usual, and then the Tower of Terror. The best part of Tower of Terror is the 5 different drop programs that they have so you never know what ride you are going to get. I think I managed to get a good program because we had lots of good drops. We also were smart enough to fasspass Toy Story Mania to avoid the long lines. We all wanted to ride it again because it was so fun.

By mid-afternoon we had finished up Hollywood Studios and headed back to the hotel to relax and get ready for dinner and the Circus.

Wolfgang Puck and Cirque Du Soleil

My parents managed to score reservations at the Wolfgang Puck Dining Room and boy was the food good. That was probably the most upscale restaurant I have ever eaten at. We were waited on by four people. I only used to one, maybe two. After dinner we headed to the Cirque Du Soleil. The tickets weren’t cheap but if you are at Disney World then you have to go see the Cirque Du Soleil. The show was amazing. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The stunts they perform are mind blowing and the comedy is really good. I say it again: If you are at Disney World, go see the Cirque Du Soleil.

After the show we headed back to our hotel and got some rest for are last full day at Disney World. Stay tuned for my last post where I wrap up the trip and give some reflections and tips on Disney World.

Day three of our vacation started much like the day before. We woke up, went to breakfast, and immediately went off to a park. On this day we decided to go to the Magic Kingdom. There were a few new attractions that the family had not done and of course the classics that we all love to do.

First we went to Tomorrowland and went on most of the rides there like Stich’s Great Escape, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger’s Spin, and the new Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. Buzz Lightyear is one of my favorite rides so we made sure to do that one more than once. We also picked up a fasspass for Space Mountain. Our fastpass for Space Mountain came up pretty quick so by the time we were done with our second ride on Buzz Lightyear we were able to walk onto Space Mountain.

We had pretty much exhausted every good ride in Tomorrowland so we wandered over to Main Street USA to get some lunch and then walk over to Adventureland and to Pirates of the Caribbean. To my surprise the ride was closed. It turns out it was the scheduled maintenance for Pirates and it would open in a few days. That was a relief since I was interested in seeing the additions they had made to the ride. We continued on and ended up at the Mickey’s Philharmagic show which was pretty cool. By the time we got through everything at the Magic Kingdom it was nearing dinner time so we hopped a bus over to Downtown Disney to eat at Portobellos, an Italian restaurant. The meal was great and after dinner we strolled around Downtown Disney once again.

Day 4: Pool and Animal Kingdom

On day four we decided to go to the Animal Kingdom park but we decided to go there in the afternoon because of the heat. The day started by the pool at our hotel.  We took a break from the parks because we didn’t want to burn ourselves out going to the parks for the whole day. The pool is great and very relaxing but I am more of a amusement park person then the rest of my family so I would have been perfectly fine going the whole day.

I was abnormally excited to go to the Animal Kingdom park because of there new roller coaster Expedition Everest. But I would have to wait to ride it since the whole family wanted to go see the Finding Nemo Musical first.  The musical was surprisingly good to tell you the truth. From what I know about it, the designer of this production also did the Lion King on Broadway. After the show it was time to ride Expedition Everest.

The ride is exceptionally designed. The queue is extremely detailed and you really feel like you are in Nepal waiting to go on a mountain expedition. The ride is amazing. You go backwards for quite a time in pitch black inside the mountain. Space Mountain is dark, and Rockin’ Roller Coaster is darker but both of those don’t even come close to how dark it is inside the mountain on Expedition Everest. I throughly enjoyed the coaster and wanted to do it again but we had other parts of the park to explore.

Next up was the safari ride. Its a pretty standard ride that just about everyone goes on when they go to the Animal Kingdom. I was able to get some good photos of some of the animals while I was there. After the safari we went to the “It’s Tough to be a Bug” show inside the big tree. I had not done this show before and was pleasently surprised. I thought it was better than Mickey’s Philharmagic show, my previous favorite so far.

It was nearing the end of the day and Animal Kingdom was closing so we decided to hop a bus to Epcot to get some dinner. We ended up in the Chinese pavilion for some rather decent chinese food.

In my next post, I will travel to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, twice, and stay in the park later than I am allowed to. Check back soon for the next update!