leisure

Ohio for the holidays

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We’re up in Ohio  for Christmas … brrr!

Last night we checked into the Marriott at the Tampa Airport using their “Park Here, Fly There” package (a one-night stay with up to 7 days of “free” valet parking). This way we didn’t have to use the remote long-term parking lot and not get up as early to make our 8am flight to Cleveland. Once we checked into our room, we went down into the airport proper to grab a drink at Starbucks and people-watch. It was weird being in the airport without any luggage and not having to go anywhere (yet). As advertised, the room was very well insulated so we didn’t hear any of the airport traffic outside. I just wish they had insulated the door as effectively, however, because there were some noisy people out in the hallway pretty late that woke us up.

We had no travel issues to speak of this morning, which was a pleasant surprise. The security line was long, as expected, but we didn’t have any problems or delays. Our flight was smooth and perfectly on-time. Stepping off the jetway in Cleveland we were met by an unpleasant, but not unexpected, blast of cold, northern Ohio winter air. It was mostly just cold, windy, rainy, and overcast … just like I remember Cleveland winters. The rest of the day was spent running errands: picking up the boxes we had shipped up earlier, checking into the hotel, going grocery shopping for Christmas dinner, etc.

For dinner we met some old college friends and their kids at The Pub in Rocky River. The last time I had been down that part of Detroit Road, I think the old movie theater that The Pub is now located in was still a  movie theater! The food was great, though, (I had the Ham and Swiss Pub Pretzel) and the spirits were better (my favorite was the Monty Python Holy Grail Ale, of course!).

The next few days are going to be busy …

Laser tag has come a long way

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Today we had my daughter’s birthday party (with three other birthday kids from her class) at the Xtreme Fun Center for laser tag and video games. Wow, laser tag is awesome!

My sister and I owned a pair of Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag pistols and sensors when we were kids and used to run around in the yard and play. Around that same time, a Photon arena opened up in a nearby Cleveland suburb and I remember my dad taking us to play once or twice. Both games were cool, and a lot of fun, but the WoW stuff was cheap plastic, with limited range, and playing Photon required wearing bulky and heavy equipment (and it was expensive). In the years since I’ve honed my “combat” skills on first-person shooters like Doom and Quake, and I’ve played paintball a few times (which is a different kind of rush with real pain involved).

But before today it had probably been over 20 years since I’d stepped into a laser tag arena. The tech and equipment is amazing. This center had the latest iteration of the gear, which consisted of a simple, relatively light-weight vest with illuminated sensors on the chest, back, and shoulders, and a two-handed rifle connected via an elastic cable (so you can’t accidentally drop it). A heat sensor in the barrel of the gun won’t allow it to fire one-handed to prevent you from shooting blind around corners or over your head. When you get “hit” the affected sensor vibrates so you can tell where the shot came from and then you “go dark” for about 5 seconds before you can shoot again. The most amazing part, to me, was that you can see the laser beams! I was floored when the first game started and I could see these green laser lines flashing across the arena. Combine that with the glowing colored targets on everyone’s vests and guns and it was a surreal Doom + TRON-like experience. Super cool. If you watch the video below closely, you can see a few of the beams flash by (I was recording with my digital camera, so the quality is not that great).

 

We got a bunch of free passes as a “thank you” from the center for having our birthday party there, so we will definitely be going back for some quality family time in the arena. 😀

Back home, via the maze

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We left the panhandle this morning, bidding farewell to family, not looking forward to 8 hours in the car driving back to Tampa. We figured my daughter would need to burn off some energy before being stuck in the backseat for that long, so instead of going directly to I-10, we took US-98 along the gulf coast to Panama City Beach, home of the Gran Maze. My wife and I had done the maze over 15 years ago when we were still dating. Back then, the maze was still made of wood but it was destroyed by Hurricane Opal a few years later. It’s since been rebuilt using white vinyl fencing.

The goal is to enter the maze, visit each of the four towers, and get out as fast as you can. They keep a record board of the previous day’s top ten times. It took us 39 minutes and we were the first visitors of the day, so at least we were in first place when we left. Based on the previous winners’ times of about 16 minutes, I’m sure our time didn’t stand for long. But my daughter had a great time leading us through the maze, and that was the real point of the trip. Here’s a view of the maze from Google Earth:

I joked with my daughter we could use that and GPS to cheat our way through the maze. 😀 I grabbed that screencap on my iPhone. Oh, hadn’t I mentioned I got an iPhone yet? That post is still forthcoming … 😛

After grabbing lunch in Panama City, we settled in the car for the long drive. The weather was perfect and we even avoided the traffic we expected around Gainesville due to the Florida/Florida State football game. At least we have tomorrow (Sunday) to relax and recoup before heading back to work/school on Monday. Three more weeks until Christmas vacation!

Quick day trip to the Magic Kingdom

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We’re on our way to north Florida to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family, but today we swung through Orlando to spend a quick day at Disney. We needed to renew our annual passes that we had purchased last November anyway in order to get the extra three months for free. Now we’re set through February 2011! 🙂 The weather today was perfect, but the park was a little more crowded than in the past when we’ve come around Thanksgiving time.

Since we were just coming for the day, we figured on just staying at the Magic Kingdom and not doing any park-hopping. Thus, we decided to try out a few of the attractions we either had never been on, or hadn’t been on in a long time. First things first, we got Fast Passes for Space Mountain. The ride had been closed for remodeling since April and is my daughter’s favorite roller coaster at Disney. It just re-opened this past weekend so we definitely wanted to get on it. No surprise, our Fast Passes obtained around 9:30am were for 5:30! That gave us the rest of the day to wander around. Thinking we could get a sneak peek of the Space Mountain changes, we hopped onto the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. To our surprise, the tunnel through Space Mountain is totally dark and you can’t see any of the ride anymore (we found out why later, once we got onto the coaster). Still in Tomorrowland, we rode the Astro Orbitor, another ride we hadn’t been on (in about 13 years). It was a first for my daughter though and she really loved it, considering it just goes up and down and around in circles just like the Magic Carpets or Flying Dumbos (just a bit faster).

After lunch we went to Fantasyland, rode the obligatory “It’s a Small World” and also went to see PhilharMagic (a personal favorite). In Liberty Square we went into the Hall of Presidents to see that show (I could have sworn I saw the Bill Clinton “robot” check his watch while Barack Obama was speaking! ;-)), which is now narrated by Morgan Freeman. In Frontierland, the river boat ride is now part of the promotion for Disney’s new upcoming animated feature, “The Princess and the Frog.”  The film doesn’t come out for another two weeks but there’s already a New Orleans-style parade featuring the princess (and prince) and some Mardi Gras-type characters and music. We rode the slow river boat around Tom Sawyer’s island (which we didn’t get to) with some great views of the back side of the Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster.

I couldn’t convince my daughter to go through the Haunted House, so we walked back to Tomorrowland intending to use our Fast Passes to Space Mountain and found it had been shut down! “Technical difficulties” the cast member outside the line said. He told me to check back later and any Fast Passes would still be valid. We snagged Fast Passes for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and then had dinner. After a race over on the Tomorrowland Grand Prix, we went to the Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor where my daughter had a joke she had texted in read in the show!

By this time, Space Mountain was running again! We noticed a few changes while going through the line, primarily the addition of interactive video game screens on the standby side of the line and the “closed roof” of the waiting area. You can no longer see the coaster itself (what little you could see) while in the back-and-forth area of the line. This actually makes the ride itself darker because you can’t see the people in line. The “stars” seem to stand out more since there is less light on the ride. The coaster track itself hasn’t changed and it’s still my second-favorite Disney coaster (behind the Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios and just ahead of Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom).

After our speedy space ride, it was time for our Buzz Lightyear Fast Passes so we got in line to “shoot some aliens!” It was getting late, so we found some seats near the front of the park for the SpectroMagic parade, which my daughter, who actually awake this time, loved. Since no view of the evening fireworks could beat our last trip we left the park and drove to our hotel for the evening. Tomorrow morning we hit the road for the panhandle.

Preparations, rehearsal, the ceremony, and the party!

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Whew, what a couple of days! It’s late Saturday evening and my little brother is now a married man. Congratulations, kids! 🙂

Friday morning started with a family breakfast, just the siblings and our parents … something we haven’t done for a very long time (years). The restaurant we had breakfast at was the location for the rehearsal dinner (as planned) so after eating we set up the back room for later that night. Then it was time for some random errands before heading over to the hall where the reception would take place and doing some more prep/setup there. It looked great:

We had a little down time after that, so I helped my brother replace the hard drive in his laptop and also install a new dual-DVI graphics card and wireless card in his PC. We ended up running a bit short on time so before we knew it, it was time to clean up, get dressed, and head to the church for the wedding rehearsal. After the “practice run” we all went back to the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner and a little socializing.

Saturday morning dawned gray and rainy. 🙁 I had breakfast with my brother and the rest of the groomsmen at IHOP (mmmm, pancakes!) and then went looking for orange umbrellas for the wedding party in case the rain continued (couldn’t find any, not even a Cleveland Browns one!). Once again, the morning flew by and suddenly I was rushing to get into my tux and get over to the church on time. It was a beautiful and touching ceremony.

(That’s me, second from the right). By the time the wedding was over, the rain had stopped! It was still overcast, but it was enough to be able to get some outdoor pictures of the bridal party at a local park and on the beach of Lake Erie. Right as we were finishing up it started raining again, but it was time for us to get over to the hall for the party anyway.

The reception was a blast! Great food, great music, the great company of friends and family, and a photo booth (which was a really cool idea)! When the party was over, we reluctantly cleared out, headed back to the hotel to change (my rented shoes were killing my feet by the end of the night!), and then grabbed a few beers with the happy couple in the hotel bar (just in time to see Notre Dame win a thriller over Purdue).

The weekend went too fast … time to head back to Florida. At least we’ll get to see everyone again for breakfast tomorrow before we leave.

Labor Day Weekend @ Disney – Day 2

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The plan was to get to Animal Kingdom close to opening time (9am) this morning, so we had breakfast in our room and then walked over to the bus stop at the Contemporary. The last time were we at Animal Kingdom was back in 2007, so we were looking forward to checking out the Asia area.

I love roller coasters, so I had to ride Expedition Everest first.

Surprisingly, my wife and daughter came with me, since the standby wait time was only 5 minutes (a benefit of being there early). It’s a great coaster! It goes through dark caverns, it’s fast, and even goes backwards … I loved it! My daughter thought it was “ok” even though she kept her eyes closed the entire time (there are some scary parts that involve the Yeti). After that thrill, we went down the path to the Kali River Rapids and got totally drenched … twice. My daughter really loved that ride, so we had to go on it again at her insistence (no lines so we walked on both times). I swear my clothes were still wet at lunchtime hours later, but at least it kept me cool in the heat of the day. 😉

As we started to dry off, we walked through the Maharajah Jungle Trek to see dragons, bats, and tigers. Most of the animals were apparently still sleeping though, because we only saw one tiger (sleeping in some tall grass, I almost missed him). I did catch this huge bat doing his best Dark Knight impression, though:

We had 2:00 lunch reservations over at Epcot, so we walked back through DinoLand USA (where my daughter did the scavenger hunt at the Boneyard) and then went back to the bus station.

At Epcot, we stopped into Innovations again, this time to register for the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure. My wife and I love the countries at Epcot (especially the food!), but my daughter finds them boring. The Kim Possible adventure is the perfect family solution! The kids get a “communicator” which is basically an old LG flip phone. The screen plays video messages from the Kim Possible characters and sends you on a hunt in the various countries around the World Showcase to track down and stop the criminal masterminds. The communicator can be used to “activate” clues in the countries. It’s really slick. For example, our first “mission” took us to France, where we had to find a bookstore. Once in front of the bookstore, my daughter used the communicator to activate a fingerprint scanner. In the window of this bookstore there in France, a laser scanned the books and showed a fingerprint. This led us to another clue, and another activation. I was really impressed with how it was put together, all of these “clues” hidden in plain sight waiting to be activated by the presence of one of these mobile phones. One small drawback was that there were a lot of kids (and adults) running around with these communicators, so you kept hearing the sound effects and voices everywhere. It was hard not to spoil some of the locations that way. Once you complete the mission, you have the option of accepting another one which sends you to another country. When you’re done, the communicator directs you to a drop box to return the phone. This was a great way to keep my daughter interested as we walked around the World Showcase … kudos to Disney for that!

At 2pm we were at the Nine Dragons restaurant in China for lunch, which was good, but wasn’t great enough to earn a spot on our “favorite Epcot restaurants” list. We enjoyed a little more of the World Showcase after lunch and then took one of the Friendship ferry boats from the International Gateway (near France) over to Hollywood Studios.

Down Hollywood Boulevard we snagged FastPasses for the Rockin’ Roller Coaster, but they weren’t until 7:20 so we had a while to do some other things. My daughter and I went on Star Tours (a personal favorite, even though it’s old and somewhat dated) and eventually we made it over to the American Idol Experience and had front row seats. By the time we got out of there it was apparent we were going to get another mid-afternoon rainstorm, so we ducked into the Prince Caspian: Chronicles of Narnia walk-thru and avoided most of the rain. After dinner, we rode my favorite Walt Disney ride: Aerosmith’s Rockin’ Roller Coaster.

I love the loud music, the speed, and especially the launch (0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds!). This was my daughter’s first upside-down roller coaster experience … and she hated it. Oh well. I don’t think she minded the loops, or the dark (she did open her eyes a few times because she was able to describe some of the scenery) but she didn’t like how it banged her head around against the harness.

Immediately after getting out of the ride, we grabbed some ice cream and then headed into the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater for “Fantasmic.” This was another Disney show we hadn’t seen yet … we tried last year but were turned away because the park had closed, which was disappointing. Well, it was worth the wait because it’s an incredible show.

It took us a long time to get out of the theater due to the massive number of people, but eventually we threaded our way through the crowds and back to the bus station. We made it back to the hotel to catch the Magic Kingdom fireworks from our room for the third night in a row. Sweet.

Too bad we have to go home tomorrow …

Labor Day Weekend @ Disney – Day 1

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This morning we got up early and headed over to the Magic Kingdom to meet some friends for breakfast. We caught the monorail over in the Contemporary and had our particular car all to ourselves.

That didn’t last, of course, as the monorail swung through the Polynesian and Grand Floridian resorts on the way over. We had 8:30 reservations at The Crystal Palace which allowed us to get into the park before it officially opened. That was really cool because Main Street USA was completely deserted, something you rarely get to see. My wife got this great picture of my daughter all by herself in front of Cinderella’s castle (she’s standing under the archway):

no one but my daughter at Cinderella's castle

The Crystal Palace is a Winnie the Pooh-themed buffet, so as we ate with our friends, the various characters (Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore) stopped by for personal photo ops. The girls also got to march in the little parade around the restaurant.

By the time we finished breakfast, the park had been officially open for about 30 minutes and the crowd level was noticeably higher. We headed back to Frontierland to hit the rides there. As we were debating if we should get a FastPass for Splash Mountain, a cast member came up to us and asked if we were going to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I said we were debating which one to do first and she said ” if you follow me I’ll take you in the back way.” So we all followed her and she took us back through the exit to the front of the line for the ride! How cool! After riding the roller coaster, we went next door to Splash Mountain and walked right on. We walked off slightly wetter than before, but not soaked.  🙂

The rest of the morning was spent around the Magic Kingdom, letting the girls dictate pretty much what they wanted to do: meet the Princesses in Toon Town, visit the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, “shoot some aliens!” on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, etc. By early afternoon we had done pretty much everything we wanted to do at the Magic Kingdom, so we hopped the monorail to Epcot.

Arriving in the park, we bee-lined it for Soarin’ in The Land to get FastPasses. That gave us some wait time to grab lunch and then let the girls play around in Innovations. It had been a while since I’d been in those buildings (I tend to stick to the World Showcase) but there were some neat new exhibits in there like The Great Piggy Bank Adventure (which teaches kids about saving money, and topics like inflation and diversification), and IBM’s ThinkPlace which digitizes you in various motions and then green-screens you into your own video game that you then get to play and e-mail to yourself. Neat stuff.

After using our FastPasses at Soarin’ we headed over to check out Test Track. The standby time was listed as 20 minutes so we decided to wait. It ended up being closer to to 40 minutes once we actually got onto the ride, but that’s always a fun one. Of course, it’s a big GM showroom at the end so we got to check out the new Camaro and Volt up close (except they weren’t letting anyone sit in those).

When we got out of Test Track, the weather had seriously clouded over and it was apparent it was going to rain in short order. It was about time for our friends to head home anyway, so we said our goodbyes and parted ways outside the gates. We then hopped on the monorail for the trip back to the hotel and that’s when it started pouring. Of course, we figured we were set since the monorail runs through the Contemporary, but we had forgotten that at the Ticket and Transportation Center you need to switch from the Epcot monorail to the resort monorail, and to do that you need to leave cover and run from the exit ramp on one side of the station to the entrance ramp on the other. So, unlike our Splash Mountain experience earlier in the day, we got totally soaked.

We picked up dinner at the Contemporary and took it back to our room to relax and dry off. The rain eventually tapered off, so we walked (gotta love staying in a hotel that close!) over to the Magic Kingdom and got some dessert from the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street. By then, of course, the park was jammed with people getting ready to watch the parade and fireworks so we did a little shopping on the way back to the main gate and then walked back to the hotel and watched the fireworks again from our balcony … in our PJs. 😉

A little chilly at the “beach” …

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Beach Week at Progressive Field It was Beach Week at Progessive Field, which turned out to be a little ironic since the temperature at game time Saturday night was in the low 60s and the wind blowing in from Lake Erie was downright chilly. Thank goodness the rain held off!

Despite that, and the Indians’ 3-1 loss to the Mariners, I still had a good time out last night with my brother and the rest of the groomsmen from the bridal party. We even got his name on the scoreboard in the fourth inning wishing him congratulations.

the groomsmen at Progressive Field after the game

Hard to believe my little brother’s wedding is only two months away (I’m sure it’s hard for him to believe too!).

Happy 4th!

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Happy Independence Day!

fireworks

Our fireworks viewing experience was a little more interactive this year: the wind direction was blowing the ash, smoke, and debris right overhead, so remnants of the shells (and sometimes still glowing embers) were dropping into the crowd around us at the Largo City Park. So in addition to oooh’ing and aaah’ing at the spectacle of the fireworks, you had to keep your eyes peeled for falling stars. My daughter had collected quite a pile of dubious “souvenirs” after the 30-minute show was over.

fireworks debris

Still, a good time was had by all, and it was a great show as usual. I made sure to send a few photos and a short video of the fireworks to my wife and sister in China, so they could have a little bit of home while overseas.