packfanlv

^If you look at the recent "More Flags More Fun" commercials they all used cut ins with the Asian guy along with footage from each park. I think they can use Mr. Six and also use voiceover and footage from the individual parks, thus making each commercial a little more local than the previous Mr. Six commercials.

Thanks Dave! This looks great.

Great pictures. Was the park just open for you to walk into or did someone let you in?

I was wondering if someone could help me out. RCT3 keeps crashing when I try to load this park. I have all of the custom scenery installed, but I am unsure of where to put the logo folder that is included with the park. I am hoping that this is the problem causing the crash. If anyone knows where to put this folder please let me know. Thanks!

I would love to say the Cardinals, but I don't think they can overcome how good the Steelers' defense is.

This is my first time posting in this thread. I had never seen it before. My wife, son and I at Hong Kong Disneyland. (To bad the person taking the photo didn't get the castle) =(

Great TR! I really love San Antonio. We were only there for a couple of days and thus didn't get the chance to dive in for more than the River Walk and Alamo area. We also got to take in a few events during their Fiesta! When we were there in 2007 that Tomb Raider Dark Ride was themed to something else, but everything at Ripley's is so overpriced that I can't believe people actually pay for those attractions. Thank you again for all of the great pictures and history.

^I don't think that I had seen that one before. I love Mr. Six and am glad that he is returning!

The coaster looks pretty darn good. I love the theming you added. I wish I had the patience to design a ride with this much detail. Thanks for sharing! BTW you spelled Bolliger & Mabillard wrong in the closing credits.

Thanks Sean. At least now I know what you look like for when we visit in March. Great pictures, although I agree the varying sizes are a bit wierd.

Oh Lover's Beach in Cabo. Jasmine and I once got stranded out there when our water taxi driver decided not to come back and pick us up. We were stranded with three drunk Mexican men from Tijuana and ended up sharing a taxi with a Mexican family of 15 other people. I was the only white one on the boat. What an experience! Thanks for the great pictures!

Thanks guys for another great update. Those Kim Possible Adventures look really fun. Keep up the great work!

Olympics in Beijing, China - Part #2 Since archery was the only event that we had tickets for, our original plans were to leave Beijing shortly after that. Fortunately for us many of the tickets were not being used and we found that showing up outside of a venue and asking everyone if they had extra tickets usually enabled us to somehow get tickets for the event. We also discovered that as long as he would sit on our lap in the event of there being any empty seats, that Shawn Reece didn't need a ticket! We were truly lucky in finding people to either give us tickets for free or sell them to us for near face value. For the seven events we attended, our total outlay for tickets was only $120! It was truly miraculous. Out of everything that I have done in my life, I have to say the attending the Olympics in China was probably my favorite. Today I will focus on some more Olympic sights around Beijing, our visit to the water polo venue and some "boring" Olympic boxing. Shawn Reece was also lucky enough to celebrate his 8th birthday while we were at the Olympics. What a lucky punk he is! As always keep the comments coming. I really enjoy hearing from everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this! Next time I will try to finish up this TR with Cuba vs. U.S. baseball, beach volleyball (including bikini dancers), weightlifting and track cycling. I will also show you the Beijing Zoo and more pandas than you will know what to do with. Thanks! After boxing Shawn Reece wanted to visit the water cube and National Stadium at night to see them all lit up. Oh yah and Jasmine loved the Mexican wave! The only time I really enjoyed myself was when the Chinese boxer came out because the arena came to life with cheers. The way they score boxing in the Olympics sucks IMO. The boxing tickets were by far the easiest for us to get. To get to the boxing arena we had to take a bus. Of course Shawn Reece had to call home via Skype first on our ghetto ten time taped together piece of s**t headphones. The next morning we woke up and celebrated Shawn Reece's 8th birthday with cake. We also wanted to try to get into boxing. See what I mean! (Actually this was just a tall black guy who was not an athlete. The Chinese all assumed because he was tall and black that he played basketball and they swarmed him!) Afterwards we ran into the U.S. men's basketball team at the mall. We had a great time at the water polo match. Uh oh. I think she spotted me taking pictures. GOD I LOVE ZOOM LENSES! We even decided to break down and sport a Chinese flag for the occasion. It was a ton of fun watching and cheering for China with the locals. Towards the end of the U.S. match, the arena started to fill up for the final match between Russia and China. The Americans were well represented. We even got to see the U.S. women play. Enjoying the sights! Before long we were inside and.... Shawn Reece was excited. Luckily after spending almost an hour looking and not finding anyone selling water polo tickets, we ran into a Dutch man who gave us two! On the next day we headed over to the Water Polo arena to try and score some tickets. Here is some of the military equipment nearby. We also discovered this cool Coca Cola venue in which they had large screens set up to watch the competitions, a huge pin trading tent and Nintendo Wiis! Since the beach volleyball was held at Sun Park, we decided to ride the fake Tarzan coaster instead. (We had already visited this park previously and gotten all of the credits.) Our first attempt to get scalped tickets after the archery was at the Beach Volleyball venue. Unfortunately we were not successful, but Shawn Reece did get interviewed for Australian tv. Temples can be interesting places to visit. Of course when you visit a lot of them, then they all start to look the same! In between events we took some time to visit some of the lesser known sights in town. This is the Lama Temple (Yonghegong) More floral displays. We visited the National Stadium site a few times, but this was the first time we actually got to see the flame. This is a bad picture, but you can see that that the balconies were covered in the flags of the countries occupying them. All of the signs are in Mandarin, English and French. This is the entrance to the Olympic Village. It was fun to stand outside and see all of the athletes coming and going. The buildings in the background are the apartments for the athletes. Each sport had its own little drawing. These were used on the tickets, at the venues and on all of the signs. And even far away from the venues we could find a guard on every corner. Pictures of Chinese athletes were found everywhere around the city.

The condo craze and moves by all of the casino owners towards drawing in more upscale clientele has really hurt Las Vegas in terms of being a family destination. I do believe they will some day soon have to do something about Circus Circus though. Excalibur is only twenty years old, but the Circus Circus is almost in complete disrepair as it just turned forty years old. Nothing has been done to the actual hotel or casino since I was a little kid. I hope that Las Vegas can find a balance between upscale properties, with still some things to do for families. I think if they are going to experience the growths in tourism that they want, Las Vegas casinos are going to need both demographics. Who knows, Las Vegas seems to reinvent itself every 10 to 15 years anyway. Maybe the family friendly craze will return. One can only hope!

Yah I remember that damn song that they used on the commercials. I could never get it out of my head. It was a catchy tune with the words: Grand Slam Canyon, Adventuredome Circus Circus Las Vegas! Thanks for the update!

I'm glad we got there a few weeks ago. The park really was charming. It was a great children's park. Edit: I just realized that our TR was from the last week the park was opened, since we visited on December 26th and the park last operated on New Years Day. I'm glad we decided to stop there on the way to SFDK!

The rumors that I heard about them tearing the Circus Circus down always involved leaving the Adventuredome in tact. It is a money maker for them. Of course, everything was just a rumor so who knows. This is the same company who butchered MGM Grand Adventures until there was nothing left!

We were going to go to Fuji Q on our last day in Japan this summer, but were so tired that I figured based on your trip reports that it would be to much hassle, so we opted to stay in Tokyo instead. Since this was around two weeks before your visit, I am assuming we would've run into similar conditions. That looks just horrible! I am glad we didn't go, but I would've loved to get the credits. I don't know if I would go just to get the credits given what you have gone through on your trips. Thanks for the report Robb!

Yah I have seen that splashdown before. Like I said before, I can't remember them running more than two trains in the past few years. I am sure they probably have, but the park doesn't ever seem that busy. I agree that the Rim Runner will probably be there for a while as I saw them working on the lift first hand a couple of months ago.

I'm still not convinced that they are taking it out. They have several boats and the dome is seldom busy enough to warrant them using more than just one or two of them. When I was there in early November it appeared that they were doing maintenance on the lift. MGM Mirage is in some trouble financially and I just don't see them progressing with what would be a major construction project inside of the dome until business pics up again. With that said, I hope they rip that thing apart and add another good coaster, because they have run out of room to add small flat rides inside. The park needs some change!

^We looked for you at Indiana Jones. My son made a point at looking at every cast member's name tag. To bad we couldn't find you.

Thanks Dave. You really have an exciting few years ahead of you in Dubai. I'm looking forward to your next update.

Since I promised to provide a trip report from the Olympics, I figure that it is time to follow through. With other people posting some pictures from their summer trips, I guess it isn't to late for this. We spent a total of 10 days in Beijing during the Olympics and attended seven events during that time. I will break this update down into two or three parts since we did cover a lot while we were there. I hope you enjoy! Part 1 - This part will focus on us arriving back in China from Mongolia, the opening ceremony party we attended at a Beijing park and our first event attended, archery! More on that next time along with Water Polo, boxing and Shawn Reece's 8th birthday. I hope you enjoyed it so far! Little did we know that we would get to see six more events in what would become one of the most exhausting stretch of days in our lives. So we took our time leaving the venue, while making sure to soak up the atmosphere. It ended up raining for most of the event. Since this was the only event we actually had tickets for, we weren't sure if we would get to see anything else. It was cool because we watched them set a world record! They had an entire section of devoted fans. The best women's archery team in the world is the South Korea team. Or maybe they were just scared of her. When the Chinese women came out, the crowd went bonkers. After a while it started to rain, but they nicely provided us with rain ponchos for free! And there were plenty of people to cheer them on. The Japanese beat the Columbians. This was my first live archery event. It was quite fun! As was noted on tv, the crowds were light the first few days. Add to it that it was raining on and off and the archery venue was only about half full. All of the signs and announcing was done in Mandarin, English and French. And then a ticket check. Once at the venue we had to go through metal detectors. Add to it that Chinese people don't like to wait in lines and you had people constantly cutting. Luckily we gave ourselves plenty of time. We had to take a shuttle to the archery site. This was the line for the shuttle. This was only the second full day of competition and they were still figuring out some things. Are you ready for the Olympic security hassle? After the ceremony it was time to actually attend an event. We started our early morning on Day 2 of the festivities with this delicious bread/fried egg thingy that was delicious. This is just after they lit the torch. Another view of the crowds. The energy was truly electrifying and Shawn Reece enjoyed every moment of it! Thanks ladies for keeping your pits to yourselves! There's a hidden surprise in this photo. Find it and you won't thank me later! Of course the crowd loudened as the Chinese athletes made their way out. Yay! We represented when the American athletes came out. Despite the scary images being shown on the screen..... This guy was just as shocked as we were that the Chinese had pulled off such an incredible show. Its time for the ceremony to start! Please don't eat us Chinese People. We love your country. No your eyes aren't deceiving you. These are real live genuine 100% pure CHINESE PEOPLE! (I know, I couldn't believe it either.) They had two screens set up and a kazillion people, no a bazillionkillion people showed up. (Ha Ha I made that up!) Off to the park we go. Before heading to the opening ceremony party, we practiced for when the American athletes came out. and a flag on every house. The atmosphere was electric on opening day. On our walk through one of Beijing's old neighborhoods we saw this... Are the weapons ready? CHECK! Tonight the Olympics start in Greyjing! Finally the day of the opening ceremony has arrived. One is never far from people while walking the streets of Beijing. It is also home to a food court in the basement of one of the buildings that has the BEST FOOD EVER! (We almost never saw any westerners down there, despite that fact that there were hundreds above on street level!) This is Wangfunjing Street. It is home to the famous night market that sells all of those tasty insects and starfish! This attractive street housed our hotel. There is something wrong here. I just can't place it. They literally had displays everywhere in the city. As the Olympics got closer, these volunteer booths were set up to help confused tourists. One would be lucky to find an Engrish speaker among them. We encountered these clocks all around China in the lead up to the Olympics. This is where former chairman Mao, who some say killed more people than Hitler is shown off every day for tourists. How many soldiers can you spot in this picture? Security was never more than a step away. They had several nice displays in the square. Since we had already been in Beijing to pick up all of the cultural credits, on our first day we decided to head to Tienanmen Square to see how crazy the olympic crowds had become. Our bus was an overnight sleeper bus. This configuration works good for shorter people, but for me, not so much! The border town on the Chinese side is Erlian. It is nice enough, but we were anxious to get on the bus for our twelve hour ride to Beijing. The most colorful border on earth. (Actually we were detained and searched for 30 minutes before being let into China. They even questioned Shawn Reece about whether we were really his parents. They also turned on my computer and searched it for a while to make sure I didn't have any banned materials. SCARY!) You can't cross from Mongolia to China by foot, so it is necessary to buy a bus ticket for the short hop across the border.

Disneyland and DCA for me.

^^I have to agree that in person the ride was definitely green. I guess I am in the minority in that I like the new colors. Yes I think there are better colors than purple for the supports, but the dark blue is a much better color than green IMO.