MichaelD

Mindblowingly awesome, and just adds to the magic.

Awesome news today! At last, a hint that he may be beginning to recover instead of getting worse. Jack, you've made my day.

I read them. I don't follow any social media, so it's the one way I keep in touch with what's happening at TPR.

I'm not a huge beer person, but Crown Lager or Cascade would be decent mid-range Aussie beers. True stories from the Australian booth (my wife and I are Australian); Wife - orders a lamb chop with her Aussie accent in full force, takes delivery of said shrimp, and is asked "where are you from?"..."Australia"... Me - orders the shrimp with my Aussie accent, wearing my Aussie flag hat..."where are you from?"..."Australia"... This amused us no end, but all in good fun. Our opinions of the Aussie food; lamb chop - underdone compared to what we are used to (which is cooked on a barbie just beyond nuclear apocalypse) but OK garlic shrimp - tasted just fine to me. pavlova - didn't have it. I'm not a huge pavlova fan at the best of times. the wines - all good quality choices Our opinions of the rest of the food (I managed to get around 4 times, my wife twice); - pretty much everything is DELICIOUS. Really DELICIOUS. - portion sizes are suitably small and cheap so even if you don't like something it's no big deal. - the dishes are probably "Disneyfied" but so what? We now have a ton of new dishes to seek out and try full portions of. The biggest thing I concluded was to simply "JUST TRY IT". There were a heap of things which sounded banal to begin with but which ended up being delicious. My favourites; - Singapore: Mahi-Mahi - Africa: the beef dish - Terra (vegan): both the fake meatballs and the fake chicken were great - Scotland: the salmon - Mexico: the beef taco

^I agree with R & E - Wet 'n' Wild is in serious need of attention. On paper it has some great attractions, but it just feels a bit "yukky" when visiting. I've personally always preferred Dreamworld's water park even though it has less rides because it feels nicer to be in. It's a shame that both the schedule and the weather conspired against a visit to White Water World. Interestingly, 2 years ago, Dreamworld looked and felt like Wet 'n' Wild does today - Dreamworld was old and tired, but they really have spruced it up. It was a very pleasant surprise to me.

Familiarty breeds contempt. I felt the same way before the trip, but it's because we have been looking at our parks through jaded eyes. To first time visitors, even hard-core enthusiasts like those on this trip (most were 400+ credit whores), our parks are GREAT. Yes, they aren't a Cedar Point or a Six Flags, but the stuff we take for granted (like the huge free range zoo areas) is unique, the parks themselves all look really great, and we do in fact have some great rides as well (Superman, Scooby, Claw, Giant Drop, TOT2, Jet Rescue, the Rotor at Luna Park Sydney, Coney Island at Luna Park Sydney and more). Any Aussie that chose not to go on this trip because they thought our parks were crappy missed out on a phenomenal trip. Kathryn reckons this has been her favourite TPR trip to date, and I'm not far behind her. Our parks did us proud.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to this thread - it may be of interest to others in a similar position to myself. I am one of the (only) 3 Aussies on this trip. Prior to this trip, I had mixed feelings about going, given I had already been on essentially all of the rides (apart from Tower of Terror II and Surfrider) and visited all of the parks multiple times. I have NEVER had SO MUCH FUN at these parks as I have had on this trip. My expectations have not only been met, but been wildly exceeded. The incredible perks (eg lights on Scooby-doo and many others not yet posted about on this thread), the great friendships both renewed and freshly made, the great food, the shared experiences - I would not have thought it possible to enjoy MY home parks as much as I have. To the Aussies (and others) that didn't come along because of our "crappy" parks and our "only 18 coasters" - the parks have all treated us like royalty and have all been overwhelmingly welcoming and hospitable. Australia has been overwhelmingly hospitable to the group. I am proud of how all of our parks have presented themselves - they have truly "punched above their weight" and shown themselves to be world-class with nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone not on the trip - you missed out on an amazing and wonderful experience. Thank you, Robb and Elissa for bringing your special breed of magic Down Under. and ps - IMHO Giant Drop is much better than Blue Fall.

^Ouch. That's a bit of a worry, since my habit is to collect fastpasses in the morning with windows in the 10am-12 midday range and use them at around 6pm to stroll comfortably around all the E-ticket rides, a strategy which works very well indeed in the US as the fastpasses are accepted after their windows have expired. Somewhat related to this...any general ideas as to crowd sizes at DLP on the Mon/Tue/Wed before the TPR UK trip starts? My reading on the topic suggests that the really busy time for Disneyland Paris will be a few weeks later, but there isn't as much info out there for DLP as there is for the US parks.

Thanks for that, Elissa. It's very useful to know that since an early morning "fastpass run" is a frequent tactic I use to allow a leisurely afternoon's/evening's park touring.

Hey guys, I'm wondering if anyone has had any specific experience with Disneyland Paris and the windows on their Fastpasses. In particular, arriving late for the window - are the Fastpasses still accepted? I know that both US parks will take the passes any time after their start time, but will the same apply in Paris?

It's perhaps somewhat irrelevant now, but we've been to Tokyo Disneyland/Disneysea twice now in mid to late April and both times the parks were very much empty on weekdays, but busy on the weekends. A weekday when it rains is ideal for Tokyo Disneyland if you don't mind getting a bit wet, which is what we got this second trip - come round about midday and the (light) rain started and you could see the park emptying out, so much so that everything was more-or-less walk-on from about 3pm onwards. Doing Pooh's Hunny Hunt 6 times in a row as a walk-on is from what I've heard not all that common.

Hi all, We went on this ride yesterday. Unfortunately, I did not take any photos, as I truly had no idea how new it was until we left the park. All I could think of during the 1 hour wait time was "must be a busy day at Universal for a wild mouse spinning coaster to have an hour-long wait". What an INCREDIBLE ride this is! It immerses you in the fantasy of the world superbly, way up there with the very best I have ever seen from Disney, and the ride itself is sheer bliss. All the effects are MAGNIFICENT, even mind-blowing. It's not a thrilling coaster ride, but that would not suit the theming at all. The emphasis really is on the overall ride experience. There's not a lot of spinning going on, but a lot of swooping during the ride which give the perfect illusion of travelling through space between the planets. The ending is a real highlight of the ride. A definite 10/10 in our books.

I personally have very mixed feelings about this, but ended up voting YES in the poll. For me, this site is about two things; 1. DVDs which we use extensively to plan trips, and 2. TPR trips I have a few thoughts to pass on; 1. TPR Plus sounds better than Club TPR - less cliquey and more about what is being offered. 2. Don't upset the currently fair system of trip allocation - as I see it the fair way would be past trip participants > premium members > non premium members. 3. Participation in a trip = free premium membership for 12 months. 4. I for one would resent a two-tiered trip experience where premium members would have a better trip experience than non premium members. Given the $ involved in a trip, especially for families and OS participants, this seems an inappropriately harsh penalty for non members. A way around this may be to mandate membership to even be considered for a TPR trip.

Robb/Elissa, I have a question about the IntimadaTOUR - I see that Dollywood has been mentioned as a destination on this trip - do they have something new planned (can't see anything on their website) or are you going because it's on the way to somewhere else anyway and it's DOLLYWOOD? (Mmmm.....Dollyfood). (I guess it could be an opportunity for credit whores to pick up the Veggie Tales and the NASCAR Speedpark credits )

Wow - those wait times are really scary. Is it school holidays or something over there at the moment? When we were there in April it was rare for the posted wait times for anything at DisneySea to be more than 5 minutes long, and most everything was more-or-less walk-on. In fact, we had to make a point of walking slowly through the queues to enjoy the magnificent theming.