ginzo

They're doing it wrong.

"It's not line jumping. I had a towel down there." --Said to me by some teenager at Zoombezi Bay in Columbus when I called her out on doing the classic line jumping trick of meeting your group halfway through the line.

Here are a few more shots from Musée d'Orsay. Apparently, we missed most of the galleries with paintings, but statues make for more interesting pictures anyway. I'm still trying to figure out what that is exactly. You can tell you're not at Efteling because the statues aren't deformed. More display room opulence. "Le Chat Noir (French for "The Black Cat") was a 19th-century cabaret in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It was opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rouchechouart by the artist Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 (much to the disappointment of Picasso and others who looked for it when they came to Paris for the Exposition in 1900). Its imitators have included cabarets from St. Petersburg (The Stray Dog) to Barcelona (Els Quatre Gats). There is a "Black Cat" cafe in the City of Corfu, Greece, next to the sea on the main street between the (new) harbor and the center of town, and a quite conventional tourist restaurant called "Au Chat Noir" in the center of Brussels." More statues with boobs. As you can tell, I was still using a flash like a doofus at this point. Hi ho, Silver! I guess I don't have a foot fetish because someone sticking their foot in my face just makes me think, "Ewww, stinky foot!"

Yep, the Cleveland Clinic is HUGE also. You can't drive more than like 2 miles in Cleveland without passing one of their buildings. I wonder if CP is going to get a nice little attendance bump just from the closing of Geauga Lake.

^Too strong of ejector air? Sounds *exactly* like my kind of ride. El Toro's second and third hills look like something out of a cartoon, like you describe on T-Express. Thanks for posting this! I've been wanting to read a review from a non-local.

Beat me to it. CP has bad enough queues on normal days.

Great coverage of "the day Liz missed", Chuck. Schlossbeck was such a trip. Excellent time that day.

Holy crap. That dude is a nut! I love mountain biking, but it pretty much scared the crap out of me the few times I tried it. And I never got nearly as crazy as that guy. I went a lot slower.

The point of the stop was to break up the long drive from Europa Park to Disneyland Paris. A rest stop with credits beats a rest stop without credits. Walibi Rhône-Alpes is way out of the way we were going. Besides, many people on the tour really enjoyed the walk through attraction at Walygator Parc. I regret missing out on that!

I don't believe that the aliens actually have the *real* Space Computer. The Space Computer would have designed a much better woodie than Anaconda.

If I have any decent ones left, I'll try to throw up a few more pictures of it tomorrow for you. It's a very nice, well-kept art museum, just not insanely huge like the Louvre. I thought Asterix was totally fine in terms of the other guests. Probably better than an average day waiting behind gang members at Great Adventure.

http://www.wcbd.com/midatlantic/cbd/news.apx.-content-articles-CBD-2008-07-01-0008.html I like how this lawyer is so dumb he doesn't even know the difference between a death ON a ride and a death resulting from someone getting into the track area. Basically, like walking in front of a moving train.

Are these guys like Penn and Teller where one of them (Bolliger) does all the talking? I enjoyed the article for the most part, until I came to this: I'm not sure they should link someone getting killed by their own stupidity with a legitimate ride malfunction like that.

I'm blaming the G-trains.

Here are some more pictures from our first day in Paris: Another pretty city vista. Pretty view from the second floor of the tower. This is one photogenic city! The people below. If someone down there asks you if you speak English, the correct response is "No, never. Go away!" More of the gorgeous ironwork of the Eiffel Tower. And you can get an idea of the insane amount of stairs you have to climb to make it to the second floor. A view of the city from the first floor. I actually preferred the views from the first two floors over the top floor. You don't have to mess with zoom as much when you're taking pictures on the lower levels. And it's really cramped up at the very top. I'm told that the view from the top is best at sunset, but we were much too impatient to wait another 90 minutes for that. This is what the observation area on the first floor looks like. Note that they had to put fencing up to keep idiots from jumping over the side. If you want to go to the very top, you'll have to climb more stairs to the second floor. The lawn behind the Eiffel Tower. Or is it in front? Heck, I have no idea. This is the elevator shaft that the ACErs take to the second floor. If you walk, you'll be seeing a lot of this. But, I didn't mind a bit as it was a very quiet and peaceful climb. And, as I said before, it just looks really cool to be trapped in the belly of this 19th century iron beast. To get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, you have two options. You can either wait to take the elevator to the second floor and then wait to take the elevator to the top. Or, you can walk to the second floor and then wait to take the elevator to the top. I advise walking the first part because it's cheaper, quicker, and an experience in itself. In fact, walking inside all this amazing ironwork was perhaps my favorite part of visiting the Eiffel Tower.

Sorry Terry! Copy/paste strikes again! I fixed it. Agreed. Can England please invade France, move the French to some colony in Siberia, and then repopulate the country with Brits?

I'll mark myself down as lucky for not having seen that. I think Paris is worth a look. There are very few places with quite that much to do. Granted if you're not into museums, art, architecture, etc. then it might be a little bit dull for you.

Liz & I joined the fun of the TPR Europe trip this summer and had a great time. We visited some of the best theme parks in the world with an excellent group of people. The trip went off flawlessly and most everyone involved was a joy to travel with. Well, everyone except for me maybe, but that's another story. Table of Contents: Pre-trip stuff: Musée d'Orsay #1 Eiffel Tower Musée d'Orsay #2 Versailles Pompidou Centre Jardin d'Acclimatation Louvre Official Trip Stuff: Parc Astérix #1 Parc Astérix #2 Walibi Belgium This first set of pictures is from the pre-trip in Paris. Despite being jet lagged and irritable, Paris is so vast with so much to see and do that it's hard to have anything but awe for the place. The highlight of our Paris pre-trip was taking a night bike tour with Miles & Michael, which ended with a drunken boat night boat tour on the Seine. If you haven't seen Paris from a boat all lit up at night with a head full of wine, then you've really missed out on something awesome. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of that. My bad. Just another miscellaneous Paris city scene. I believe this residential building is in very close proximity to the Eiffel Tower. Just one of the very pretty display rooms inside Musée d'Orsay. What the hell? More amazing sculpture. Do you ever wonder how the heck someone can take a raw block of marble and make it look like that? I always stand in awe of anyone with any sort of artistic ability because I can't even draw a straight line. Do you think they're real? Never take pictures of a person with the blazing sun right behind them. As you can see, the results are bad. This gives you a better idea of Musée d'Orsay history. Looks a lot more like a train station than a museum to me. Another masterpiece of sculpture that is lost on a brute like me. And he wondered why the porno company never called him back for an "acting" job. One important rule in art museums is to never use a flash when photographing ANY of the art. Please note that this even includes statues as I found out when one of the museum workers scolded me. Seriously, this is a very important rule as slowly damaging the art just makes you a douche. Follow it! A close up of Musée d'Orsay's awesome old train station clock. "The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986." (Great artists & Europa park steal.) Everywhere you looked there were awesome scenes like this. Get a room! This is where they used to sacrifice virgins. Notre Dame was my favorite building in Paris. This picture does not give you a great perspective of its immensity. The level of detail and craftsmanship are unlike anything I've seen. Liz in front of Notre Dame. A closer view. Liz poses on one of the city's countless bridges with the Seine and some miscellaneous buildings in the background. Notice the beautiful architecture? Well, most of the city is like that.

Hanging out in that fountain area of Hotel Colosseo was a trip highlight for me. You could eat ice cream or drink alcohol and watch the awesome fountain show. Heck, you were allowed to play in the fountain if you were willing to risk getting totally blasted with water. The hotel in general was beautiful, nicer than most Disney hotels. And they gave us a fruit bowl and sparkling water in the rooms when we got there!

Not to mention Cedar Fair probably isn't too interested in letting KI have a coaster that might steal some of MF's thunder in terms of height.

Yeah, see they've kinda changed the definition of being "laid off" over the years. The old school implication was that you stood a strong chance of being called back to work and would come back with the same amount of seniority you had when you left. You wouldn't accrue net credit service for the time you were laid off, but you wouldn't have to start at day 1 again either. This is the old school/union way of doing things. Unfortunately, as Terry said, the new school way of doing things is that being "laid off" is a lot closer to being outright terminated. Or, as they say in the corporate communications emails, "Left to pursue other opportunities." And you're likely to be considering a brand new employee under this way of doing things. Of course, every company does things a little bit differently and you'll have to ask the wonderful people in HR for specifics.

Erik, could this have been part of why people thought the trims on EGF seemed more forceful last year? It was apparently a colder day than this year. I thought the trims seemed to have very little effect on the speed of the train this year.

Yeah, I agree. If they ever did redo the Beast, they should radically change the lay out.

Very funny because it's true!

The iPhone has always been overpriced for what it does. But that's how most Apple products are. You pay extra for it being pretty basically.