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While we were there, not very busy, at least not until later in the afternoon/evening. UAE parks tend not to be as busy during the day because they like to avoid the heat, even for an indoor park, but we saw "light crowds" in the evening hours. We also went at a time of year where the parks don't get that crowded. But not really sure if there is ever a time of year at the moment where they get that crowded!

Hmm, I'll have to ask Scott as he's the pizza expert, but I don't recall him saying that style of pepperoni originated in Buffalo. I remember him saying the "curl" had something to do with the casing that was used for the pepperoni and it's usually a sign of higher quality. He said that most pizza places don't use it because it's more expensive, but you'll find it in many NYC pizzerias because they need to have higher quality to sell slices with all the competition.

The next couple of updates will have to be done in parts because there is just so much to talk about! This was our first visit to IMG Worlds of Adventure in Dubai, and while we had seen quite a lot about this park online, we weren't *exactly* too sure what to expect in person, and let me just say that we were all completely blown away by our visit to the park! IMG Worlds is billed as the "World's Largest Indoor Theme Park" and I can most certainly believe that both in terms of space inside the building and high detail level of theming. The themed areas are very interesting as this park has a "Marvel Comics" themed land, which apparently the deal for this land was done BEFORE Disney bought the rights to Marvel. That being said the area was VERY well done and some of the rides were even on par with Disney attractions, but more on that later. Anyway, as you read through the next couple of reports just think "World's Largest Indoor Theme Park" and "lots of super cool stuff!" Here goes... Here we are!!! We have arrived at IMG Worlds of Adventure in Dubai! The World's Largest Indoor Theme Park! Upon entering the park, you can tell the place has a very "clean" feel to it. We like this. It makes the park feel a bit more upscale. The lighting and sign package everywhere was really impressive! As was the decoration around the park! It was great being in here before anyone else as I love getting these pics without any crowds! [twitter] [/twitter] We took a quick lap around the just to check out some of the themed areas. This haunted house was a lot of fun! The "Lost Valley" area was a really great dinosaur themed land! Yep, lots of dinos! lol Here's a quick look at the Marvel section, but we'll get back to this later. Tony Stark's Avengers tower! (It's actually a restaurant with AMAZING steaks!) The Thor ride is a themed top spin...but like the rest of the Marvel area, we'll get back to this... This morning we'll start out in the Lost Valley area and do some filming on Predator, the park's Eurofighter roller coaster. Yes, even in Dinosaur times, they still drank Mountain Dew! (What do you think REALLY killed off the dinos?) Time to ride! Are you guys ready? Take a front seat ride on Predator! Looks like everyone had a good time! We wandered back up to the front so the park could officially open now! After a cute little song and dance by the park's opening team, IMG World's was officially open! Hey look! Gumball from the Amazing World of Gumball came out to say hello! Kristen is a huge fan of the show so of course this made her VERY happy! Next up with the Spider-Man spinning coaster! While we know the park is all indoors, this ride was sort of "indoors and outdoors" in the sense that it never goes "outside the building" but it goes outside of it's "show building" and out into the midway areas. This is a GREAT RIDE!!! Quite possibly my favorite (or really up there) of all the spinning coasters I've ridden! The queue is very well themed... And as you move along the ride you'll see some familiar characters! Check out a full POV of this awesome coaster! The entire ride looks great! The entire area looked great! Some of the Marvel stuff reminded us of what you'd see at a Universal park, some of it more like Disney. It was an interesting mix, but we liked it all! [twitter] [/twitter] Even the coin pressing machines were well themed! We were treated to an amazing breakfast by the park! Turns out, the park is owned by people in the culinary industry and they take the park food VERY seriously! Let me just go on record right now saying what we ate throughout the day was some of the best park food we've had. Epcot level of quality! Some more theming around the park. This is the Chinese restaurant. Let's go check out the Lazy Town area! Some of you may remember this "physical education" based show. The area consists of a ropes course, restaurant, and a Lazy Town show! There you have Sportacus and Stephanie! Lazy Town also has one of those "kid powered towers" and these are a lot of fun AND a great workout, too! (Sportacus would be proud!) Kristen getting all suited up for the ropes course! Time to go get lost on the course! You guys ready? This ropes course was HUGE! It actually had some VERY challenging obstacles. When you were up high, it FELT very high off the ground! This may be the only ropes course I've seen where you drag yourself along in a bucket! lol Hey look! Stephanie and the Lazy Town citizens came to say hello! And yes, we did go check out the show! Since the Cartoon Network area was close by we checked out some of this land as well... [twitter] [/twitter] Hey look! A couple of the Ben 10 characters! (Not the ones in the middle!) Again, this whole area was clean, nicely done, and looked great! Yay! Powerpuff Girls! This was the park's Zameperla Air Race and with a very cute theme! The REAL Powerpuff Girls are the ones riding! Wait, no... the real Powerpuff Girls were never this ugly! If you haven't been on an Air Race, they are super fun rides and they spin a LOT! Here's a little bit of ride video for you... And with that, we'll end this first part of the report with a group photo with Lazy Town! More to come soon! Thanks for reading! We will have more Dubai updates soon! Oh yes, be sure to POST YOUR COMMENTS!!! (we took the time to write the report, the least you could do is say something nice about it!) Mini-Rocket.nltrack Construction Photos from early Feb 2005

I'll take a shot at it for the sake of discussion - Perhaps they want to eliminate any possibility of the VR animation getting out of sync based on changing seats? With the Kraken setup the correct headset is always in the correct seat. If you had 128 headsets (enough for 3 trains' worth plus another full load being set up before boarding), I'd bet that it would be a chore to keep them all in the correct order, especially if the team on the platform needs to keep moving fast and just plug whichever headset in the nearest charger. If a guest decides at the last minute, "I want to do the VR experience now" the operator would probably have to spend more time setting up the experience for their specific seat, and then spend the time adjusting the lenses anyway. Keeping everything restricted to individual seats that never change eliminates that and the operators only have to focus (ba dum tss) their efforts on focusing the headsets so guests can see. Is this even how this works? I was under the impression with all the other VR coasters I've done that something triggers the VR to start when the ride ops sends the train, and that is what starts the animation and syncs it all up.

Also, I just noticed your YouTube channel doesn't have a custom URL. I think you qualify and you should consider fixing that!

OK, this is actually a VERY good question and I'm going to give you some of my best advice, although this may not apply to all people. 1. First of all, if you want to get more exposure, you're going to HAVE to boost some of your posts. That's just how the socials work now. And this isn't the same as "buying fake likes" from those off-shore twitter farms, this means (especially on Facebook) boosting your post to reach your audience, or specific people who may become your audience. And I don't mean boosting it with hundreds of dollars, but even sometimes $5 per post can go a long way reaching the right people. Remember, Facebook will NOT deliver your post to most of your followers newsfeeds unless you PAY FOR IT. And that's just how they work now. We have 1.1 million people on our FB page that follow us, and on average, Facebook will deliver posts to about 1/4 of them. If I want to reach more, you have to pay. And that's what is so frustrating about FB. 2. Post calls to action. "Retweet this..." "Share this..." "LIKE if you're a fan..." Some people make fun of this and call it "click bait" but it's really not. The more you remind people to do something, or put that idea in their head, they will do it. And the more you can get your content in front of other people the better. 3. As far as YouTube goes, just keep at it. Sadly, new YouTube channels today take much longer to get going than they used to. You may want to consider doing a YouTube ad targeting people who may be into theme parks. Or you may want to consider FB posts that feature your videos (not a link to YouTube because that's like Facebook newsfeed suicide) with a title card at the end that says to sub your YouTube channel. It's not easy and remember we've been doing TPR for over 20 years now. Social media channels do not grow overnight anymore. It could take YEARS to have something that will grow in popularity. Hope that helps!

That's all good if you don't want to go outta the way for Jesus lol, just glad you enjoyed NYC and hopefully you got to see everything you wanted to see! Definitely next time , if you didn't get to this time, I'd recommend getting out to queens and the Bronx maybe a bit farther into Brooklyn too for some NYC exploration and great food! You do realize that Elissa grew up in NYC and we visit all the time. It's not like we haven't been to all those places you are suggesting, we just choose not to go because we're not as big of fans of those areas. And we did actually go to the Bronx this visit... Sorry, not meaning to come off as rude it's just always been sort of a pet peeve of mine when someone implies things we've missed out on or should be doing when we are perfectly educated on the things that we do and have made specific choices in the locations we visit based on our personal preference.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going out of my way for Jesus! lol It was there, we popped in for maybe five minutes, snapped a picture, made some Catholic school girl jokes and left. That's about my extent of interest in places of worship!

Yeah I'm not a cathedral person, sorry. In fact I pretty much went in just to make fun of it! lol The atheist in me was very proud of that fact!

This right here is the part that I sort of question... Based on what I've been told, all this happens WHILE YOU'RE SITTING IN YOUR SEAT, correct? On the Six Flags and Europa Park version of VR, all of the "adjustment" and "cleaning" process is done BEFORE and AFTER the guests board the train, which cuts down on the operational part of it significantly. So you can already adjust your VR headset to fit your head BEFORE the airgates even open, and you hand your headset to someone OFF of the ride to clean, so that the next group of people can start boarding without waiting. It would seem to me that having the adjustment and cleaning as part of the actual boarding process of the ride would significantly impact dispatches and I wonder why they didn't try to move this process to being outside of the actual "boarding the train" process as to not slow things down even further. The dispatches are bad enough at Six Flags, I can't image what they would be like there if they had these additional processes on top of that.

Report coming later but here's a video for those who are too impatient to wait....

It was. Lombardi's for sure!

I didn't miss it. I chose not to see it. It doesn't interest me. I have seen the entire show on a video and nothing about it makes me want to see it. It's fine if YOU like it, and that's great, but please don't tell me how I've missed something because I didn't go see it. Just like I had someone tell me yesterday how I "missed out" seeing Dear Even Hansen, and my response was "Um, no I didn't...."

Yep, this is my issue with the show also. I don't care enough about any show or anyone else who is into shows to "brag" about that I've seen it. Same reason why I didn't bother with Book of Mormon early on when the tickets were insane (and that was like $300-$400, not even close to what Hamilton is asking) and I have still yet to see that show on Broadway, only the touring versions. Even with the tickets we pre-booked, I think the average price I spent on shows was about $125 per ticket, and the furthest back I sat for any of the shows I saw was Row N at Kinky Boots, all the other shows I saw where in the first 9 rows, and 3 of them I was in the first 4 rows. That really is about my limit in price for seeing a show. I'll pay $180 for a ticket one night if I can get a ticket for $75 the next. There is NO WAY IN HELL I'm paying $300 - $500 for any show, especially in crappy seats. No show is worth that, and it's not like I can't afford it, I just choose not to do it!

Yes, it's insane. If you want shitty seats now, they will cost you at LEAST $500 - $600. I honestly don't get it. I've watched the bootleg of the show a bunch of times and listened to the cast recording over and over, and while I *LIKE* a lot of the music, and I can see it's appeal, I don't get why *THAT* show in particular is the one that gets $600 - $1,500 per seat ticket prices. I feel like it's just over-inflated hype beyond comparison to anything else on this planet. It's a good show, but it's not that groundbreaking, at least in my opinion, in terms of set design, staging, or song writing. Like, I would have understood if it was just while Lin-Manuel Miranda was in the show, but he's been gone for a year now and it still gets crazy prices. And not just in NYC, it's like that EVERYWHERE the show is currently playing. I seriously don't get it.

It would be really nice if people would STOP POSTING CONTENT from other locations when you'd think it's pretty damn obvious we will be posting our own POVs on our own channels really soon. Seriously, when you post a ride video, especially of something that's a NEW RIDE when you know damn well TPR will have their own version of the video up soon, that's like someone inviting you over to their house for dinner, but you decide to bring your own food. But then again, I should not be shocked by the stupidity I see on this planet anymore... That being said, be patient, our video will be up soon. And if you're not happy with that, feel free to look at some other theme park forum. Thank you.

I bought Anastasia and Miss Saigon in advance. Everything else was TKTS. Anastasia was not offered on TKTS for most of the time we were there. In fact, we only saw it once. Limited amount of tickets for one of the matinees. So I think the show is doing well enough right now with advance sales.

So we just recently got back from New York City where we did a bunch of random stuff like this... The very first thing I see upon landing in NYC is something I'm looking forward to. Let's hope it lives up... I went straight to TKTS to see what was playing tonight. Since this was more of a "show week" for me, I figured I might as well start as soon as I get into the city! OMG! You'll never guess what I got cheap half-price tickets to!!! That's right! Avenue Q. Can you believe I've actually NEVER seen this show before? To be honest, I don't normally like shows with puppets. I just don't. The concept behind it really bothers me for some reason. And I know this show is funny as hell, it's written by the same people who wrote the music and songs for Book of Mormon and Frozen so it should be a GIVEN that I see it, but I just never got around to seeing it before... I loved it! I'm not sure why, but the puppet thing didn't bother me as much in this show. The songs were just as good as I had remembered hearing about before. Highly recommended and you can get tickets pretty cheap in NYC now. And yes, there was full frontal puppet nudity and yes, I did watch two puppets have hardcore sex! And it is just as amazing as it sounds! lol I had to try a couple of "Scott's Pizza Tour" recommended slices in Times Square at Patzeria. Decent. Not the best in NYC I've had, but still better than anything I can get in Orlando. Thumbs up! NYC is my favorite city in the US and my second favorite in the world! The next day started with some Dim Sum lunch in Chinatown. Delicious! Reminds me of how good the food was in China, but without the annoyance of having to go there! Time for the matinee of Anastasia. This was one of the main two Broadway reasons for this trip. There were a bunch of shows I was interested in seeing, but this one, which is brand new, and the revival of Miss Saigon, one of my all-time favorite shows were the main Broadway portions of this trip. Let me just say that this show did NOT disappoint at all! In fact, I was totally blown away by it! My seats were in row 2, and I admit to being a "theater snob" usually not wanting to sit any further back than ten rows from the stage, especially for a show that I REALLY want to see, and this was well worth it! Please take a moment to check out these clips. The first one is Christy Altomare performing "Journey to the Past" on the Today show, the other is a teaser about the show. It gives you an idea of what the show is about, and I cannot say enough about how wonderful it was... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4htofsf_Bo The cast was just wonderful. Christy Altomare was incredible as Anastasia. Derek Klena, John Bolton and Ramin Karimloo were a trifecta of force when it came to male leads in the show. So much talent on the stage! As a straight guy, I can still say how much I want her red dress, right? Actually, I want her blue one more, but I don't have a photo of it. One chick wearing a thong, the other wearing an American flag. Yep, we're in Times Square! There is no amount of money you could pay me to eat here. The next day was a pizza day for us (the best day of the week!) We spotted Joe from Scott's Pizza Tour! (Still one of our most highly recommended things to do in NYC!) Time for some Lombardi's! We can't get pizza like this in Orlando, so this is a NYC tradition for us! And when you see this sign on the door of a pizza place... You know that's a sign of approval! Eat here! We went over to UniQlo since we wanted to check out some of the new Nintendo shirts they just started selling. Here's a few of them... They are all awesome and I want them all, but oddly enough I did not buy any. I saved my money for theater tickets which was my focus of this trip. Next came Molly's cupcakes, another NYC tradition for us. Our NYC trips seem to be centered around Broadway musicals, pizza, cupcakes, and retro video games. I'm not complaining. This cupcake had a gooey peanut butter center, and it's quite possible that it made me do some gooey stuff in my pants, but that's probably too much information for this report. (semen) I posted this with the following caption on Twitter: "Sign @MollysCupcakes #NYC *LOVE* this! TY for not catering to those annoying food allergy people so the rest of us don't have to suffer!" And it really offended a lot of people! GOOD! Seriously, I'm so sick of people with "food allergies" or food preferences bitching and complaining and wanting everyone to cater to them. I completely support business that basically say "If you don't like what we serve, don't eat here, and if you're going to bitch about it, we don't care." Five Guys did this a few years ago when some group bitched about the shelled peanuts they serve in their restaurants and they basically told them to fuck off. I'm all about this attitude! lol Famous building or something... Hey look! We are at Universal Orlando's parent company HQ! Should we ask if Jimmy Fallon can race us through NYC? This guy in front of Trump Tower may be the best thing I've seen so far during this trip to NYC! lol We went into a church. Not sure why, exactly, but we did. Honestly, I'm just happy I didn't automatically burst into flames upon entering the buildings, so I guess that's a step in the right direction... We went to the World of Nintendo store near Rockefeller Center. WARNING! Lots of nerdy video game photos will follow! Thank you for bearing with us... Back in Times Square again! Miss Saigon was actually my main reason for wanting to do this NYC trip. I've seen this show LOADS of times years ago during its initial run and I absolutely LOVE it! It's a very intense show with some of the most amazing visuals I've ever seen and the music is just amazing! The talent in this show is like nothing I've ever seen before. The chemistry between the leads playing Chris & Kim (Eva Noblezada and Alistair Brammer) is incredible. They have been playing these roles since the revival started in the UK a couple of years ago and I've never seen anything quite like it in live theater before. This show plays in NYC only until January 2018 and I strongly recommend trying to see this cast before it closes! This is the trailer from the same production of Miss Saigon, with the same cast, when it opened in London in 2014. Seriously, this is a milestone in theater and it's a shame to see Hamilton tickets going for as much as they are, while this show, which blows away anything else on Broadway right now, sells tickets every night at TKTS. I get that it's a "revival" and the show has been around for 20-something years. But man, it's amazing. Thankfully, Fathom events also captured this performance and you can buy it on Blu-Ray if it turns out you cannot make it to NYC to see it: https://www.amazon.com/Miss-Saigon-Anniversary-Performance-Blu-ray/dp/B01LYT5JDC Now for a slight change of pace... This is literally Zootopia! Here's a picture of idiot kids climbing over the railings to get pictures of animals. So when they are attacked here's the proof! Guess what? Polar bear butt!!! The more you know... [twitter] [/twitter] Frog porn. I really could get used to this place... We went to look at some art stuffs... Lots of art stuffs at MOMA! No Soup For YOU Andy Warhol! I don't care what is currently playing here, it will always be the Newsies theater to me! Tonight was Groundhog Day. This is one of those shows where I *liked* the original source material (the movie), but didn't love it, but since the show was written by the same team that did Matilda (which I *LOVE*) I sort of had to see it... So by intermission, I knew that the show was going to be a lot like the film. I *liked* it, but I didn't *love* it. The talent was great, the show was VERY FUNNY, and some of the staging was super impressive. But it was one of those shows where you walk out not singing a single one of the songs to yourself and ten minutes later if someone asked you to name one song from the show, you couldn't. It was a well-written, well performed show, but sadly none of the music was memorable. I enjoyed it, but to be honest, it was the perfect show to see at "half price." The next day we started off at "Eataly" so we knew a lot of good Italian food would be in our near future... If you're in the mood for some high quality Italian food...go here! Let's just jump right into our next show, shall we? Kinky Boots! Now I have seen this show before several times, but at the moment, Brendon Urie from Panic at the Disco is playing the role of Charlie, so that was our reasoning for wanting to see it again! He was fantastic! His range of voice talent was amazing! There are some songs in the show, like "Step One" that actually sound like they could be Panic at the Disco songs! He was perfectly cast for the part and we were happy to see him both as fans of Kinky Boots and Panic at the Disco! [twitter] [/twitter]This entire show is just a super high-energy feel good show with a GREAT message! So that night I super nerded out and went to quite possibly the best "Retro Barcade" I've ever been to! This one is located here: http://barcadenewyork.com/ And here's lots of dorky arcade game pics... Q*Bert is still one of my favorite arcade games. The "kicker" wasn't working, but still, this machine was in great condition! Sinistar and Joust! "I hunger, coward..." " Beware, I live!" They had an "environmental" Discs of Tron which I haven't seen in an arcade since the 1980s. Everything in this machine was working, too! The crown jewel of the place was a working "Time Traveler" machine, which as far as I know is the only "hologram" game. (Which isn't really a hologram as much as it is a pepper's ghost effect!) "Maybe I should have ducked!" It's not a real Disney machine, but still nice to see cool reproduction of this cabinet there! Some AtariAge love! Remember this one on the ColecoVision? Three all-time classics! I still have an original Donkey Kong machine in my TPR office! Need a drink, anyone? And here's a video of the place if anyone is interested... Going to try someplace new in NYC today! This place sells... Cookie Dough! OMG! cookieDOnyc is delicious! Yes! That is cookie dough in a cup! And it's wonderful!!! And if you don't want to eat the cookie dough raw, they also have amazing fully baked cookies! (We recommend the dough though!) Time for some more Scott's Pizza Tour approved NYC slices of pizza! The Pepperoni here is delicious! The final Broadway show of the trip was a 2nd visit to see Anastasia! This time they brought the girls and they loved the show, too! We had such a good time taking this journey to the past once again and never did I expect to come away from this NYC trip with a new "top five" Broadway show. Seriously, go download the cast recording from iTunes right now! You will not stop listening to it! I love Ramin's smile in this one! The whole cast seems to really be enjoying performing in this show, and they should be! It's something to be proud of! This was my first time being in the Broadhurst theater and as much as I enjoyed sitting close to the front for both shows, I went upstairs to see what the rest of the theater looks like, and it's really beautiful! There is just something about these smaller, more intimate Broadway theaters that have a feeling you don't get at bigger performing arts venues in other cities. So that wraps up this New York City trip! I ended up seeing 6 shows. 3 of them new to me, 1 of them I saw twice! Here's how I would rank what I saw: 1. Miss Saigon 2. Anastasia 3. Kinky Boots 4. Avenue Q 5. Groundhog Day I ended up seeing Anastasia twice because it was SOOOOO GOOD but even as much as I loved that show, I'm still not sure I have seen as much on stage talent as what was in Miss Saigon. Holy cow! It was IMPRESSIVE to watch the two leads do their thing. And this new production was just amazing. One of the best overall shows I've ever seen. I really hope that Anastasia has a very successful run on Broadway and goes on to be one of those shows that will continue to live on because I feel it deserves it. I didn't expect to walk away from this trip with a new "top five" show! Kinky Boots is still as amazing as always and one of my favorite "high energy" shows and I LOVE the message the show sends also! Having Brendon Urie in it certainly was a huge bonus! Avenue Q I liked a lot, but I'm still "weird" about shows with puppets. That being said: hardcore puppet porn! lol This is a great show and I'd gladly see it again. Really the only bummer of the trip was Groundhog Day. It wasn't "bad" but I felt it was a filler show at best and nothing about it was really that memorable. Go see it either on a tour in cheap seats or get discounted tickets at TKTS. Strange that it got a Best Musical Tony nom but Anastasia didn't. I don't get that. It was also nice to take the girls to a couple of shows and they loved them both! (Kinky Boots & Anastasia) I wish they'd do more shows with me because they always seem to like everything I take them to! Thanks again for reading! Until next time.... Oh yes, be sure to POST YOUR COMMENTS!!! (we took the time to write the report, the least you could do is say something nice about it!) Inertiatic.nltrack Construction Photos from early Feb 2005 To add a little excitment to the gardens section of the park, gas lines have been added which cross the paths.... Is that a drop tower....or an adult toy?!?!?

That's GREAT NEWS!!! We have so much video that we shot last year that I've been waiting to release! I figured it's a better idea to post the footage when the ride is actually open!

Have you ever heard the saying "two wrongs don't make a right?" No, of course not because you're a moron. Banned for a week.

Are you seriously suggesting to someone to break park rules by "jumping in an empty seat???" I'm also sure the park staff doesn't want you "lingering in the station" either. And if I personally was at a ride WITHOUT a single rider line either on my own or a group of three, I would find it incredibly RUDE for some random person who wasn't assigned to that seat to just "jump in." What if that group of three was trying to get a nice onride photo of the group together? Seriously, your posts are normally stupid enough on their own. But this one? I really should ban you for it and finally be rid of you from the forums. Why I don't, I'm really not sure. Maybe I'm being "nice" today...

No.

Yeah, I don't think that's the case.

I've heard two terms mentioned over the years: "Ride Time" - Which is the complete length of the ride, station to station. "Fly Time" - Which is the part of the coaster from which a train drops from the lift or launches, etc. Basically the time in which the train is in motion on it's own. Feel free to use those terms how you see fit.

Unless perhaps it was Flight of Passage style. As much as I like Flight of Passage, I would have still rather it have been a physical ride than a simulator. I will just never be able to like a "simulator" attraction as much as I will a coaster or a fast moving dark ride, etc. Personally, I will be very annoyed if Nintendo World turns out to be another batch of "One and Done" Universal simulator attractions.