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.

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!

Day 1: Traveling Down and Relatives

Day one (June 14) was a travel day. Our flight was in the afternoon which was nice since I didn’t want to arrive at the airport at 3 AM for some early flight.  We arrived in Orlando around 4:30 in the afternoon and encountered one of the first Disney tricks before we even left the airport. It is called Disney’s Magical Express. This is a free service for all staying at a Walt Disney World Resort hotel that provides a bus to your hotel at Disney World and complete baggage handling. All you have to do is put special tags on your luggage before you check your bags and Disney takes it from there. You board the bus to your hotel without even going to the baggage claim area. Disney takes your bags from the airport and delivers them to your room in a few hours. That way you can check in and immediately start exploring the resort. It was nice not having to deal with baggage claim and the bus ride is quicker than finding a taxi or other transportation.

When we got to our hotel, the Caribbean Beach Resort, we were greeted by my aunt and uncle that live down in Florida. They have a time share at Disney World and decided to meet us for a couple of days. By the time we checked in and put our bags in our rooms, it was getting late and we were all hungry. We decided to go to Downtown Disney for some dinner. For those of you who haven’t been to Disney World, Downtown Disney is an area with shops and restaurants, and night clubs. It is a popular place to do at night after a day at the parks. We at at Fulton’s Crab house and it was delicious. After dinner we walked around Downtown Disney and browsed the shops and got some ice cream.

Day 2: Epcot

Our original plan for our first full day at Disney World was to go to the Magic Kingdom but we decided against it because we figured it would be very crowded because it was the weekend. Instead we decided to go to Epcot. I really like Epcot because it has a bunch of pretty good thrill rides and the world showcase has some good food. We started by going to the Land pavilion to get a fastpass for the Soarin’ ride. Then we went to the Living Seas to see the new Finding Nemo attractions they had added. The Turtle Talk attraction where you talk to Crush the turtle was quite funny. After that we went over to the other side of future world to Mission: Space and Test Track. I love Mission: Space and did the original intense version, not the wimpy watered down version that they added a couple of years ago. After Test Track we met my cousin who decided to drive to meet us. He lives about an hour away and comes to Disney World a lot so it wasn’t hard for him.  He waited as we used our fastpass for Soarin’. This ride has been in California for a while but is relatively new at Disney World. I thought the ride was amazing. You really feel like you are flying over the California countryside. We ended up doing Soarin’ twice that day.

By the time we were done with Soarin’ it was time for lunch. After lunch we started going around the world in the World Showcase section of the park. The weather started to get bad while we were in world showcase and ducked into many gift shops to avoid the rain. We eventually got around the world showcase and by that time my cousin, aunt, and uncle decided to head home. We said our good bye’s and started to look for a place to eat dinner. We settled on the restaurant in the Japan pavilion. The food was quite good; better than I thought it was going to be. The best part was our seats in the restaurant. We had window seats overlooking the world showcase lagoon where the fireworks show is every night. We had prime seats for the fireworks and didn’t even know it. When 9 PM rolled around the lights dimmed and they pumped the music into the restaurant. The fireworks were amazing and our view was quite possibly the best in the park. After the fireworks, we left the restaurant and headed out of the park and back to our hotel.

Part 2: Coming Soon

In my next post, I go to the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and hang out at the pool. Hopefully I will have the post up in the next couple of days.