Garet

Part 2: I think this was the only ride I was told it was Ok to bring my camera, the ride op just said no flash. There was a lot of fire Now we enter the rides were inside and I couldn't take pictures part of the tour This ride was all kinds of messed up Japanese awesomeness Does Spain know about this? Single rider lines were very popular I'd already used my fast-pass for Space fantasy but I decided i'd check out japanese T-2 Loved the bobble-head terminator I'll cover waterworld when i get around to Universal Singapore photos Is that Japanese Jackie Chan? I was losing light when I photographed Hollywood Dream, I think this may have been my only B&M of the trip Take the tunnel I wanted a front row seat but sadly they had a hot girls only policy due to this being one of the only outside rides for tourists to photograph. I'll end this update with Jurassic Park Onwards to Yokohama

So last February, my school surprised me with a week off from work, after a lot of help from Robb and Elissa, I had a list of websites and a route set out. I had originally planned to start from Tokyo and work my way to Osaka but Journeys rehab schedule made me reverse my decision. I'll try and get an update up every 3 days or so as I edit the pictures. Part 1: Universal Studios (This post) Part 2: Yokohama Sea Paradise Part 3: Yokohama Cosmoworld Part 4: Fuji Q Part 5: Disneyland Part 6: Disneyland At Night Part 7: DisneySea Part 8: DisneySea at Night & Fantasmic Part 9: Tokyo Parks Part 10: Tobu Zoo Final Part: Tokyo Culture ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Universal Studios. Universal Studios was one of my only weekend park trips, I got to the park pretty early Sunday morning to find a line already forming outside the gates. Since I heard Japanese parks could get seriously busy I wanted to get a big locker early (I'd yet to check my stuff into my hostel) and buy a fast pass. I really liked Universal Japans opening ceremony, in Singapore, Po had come out and waved to the crowd as the gates were opened but in Japan all the staff came out to wave and greet the crowd from ride operators to cleaners lining all the way down main street until Woody Woodpecker showed up checked his (imaginary) wristwatch and quickly tried to rush everyone off to their jobs at which everyone ran off to their posts, it was just a nice way for everyone to get some recognition and I don't think i've seen any other park have so many employees get to come say hello (although the gates at Disney were always far to busy to see in to). The majority of the visitors seemed to be season pass holders so getting in the gate took a while since each person had to have their head scanned by a camera and checked against their season pass and the system seemed to be having issues. Once in though the rest of they day ran smoothly. I think I may have enjoyed this Universal more than Singapore, I've seen people describe it as a greatest hits park and that seemed pretty accurate, I went to Florida when I was too young to remember most of the details but walking around Japan i felt like I'd seen most of these rides before. I did however have 1 or 2 negative experiences compared to Singapore though, firstly was the fast-passes, I knew beforehand that there were two tiers of fastpass and even with the 7 attraction pass i'd still be made to choose between attractions (I wonder what all the people complaining about cedar fair having a two tiered system would make of the top tier still not covering all attractions) and so I'd planned my day accordingly to try and utilize single rider and the fast pass to try and make a half day out of it to go explore Osaka, only to find myself being turned away because the fast pass line would only open once the line was past a certain length (it was a 20 minute line and the fastpass line went right up to the boats to be boarded),I ended up spending the whole day just to try and get my moneys worth out of the coupons. It seemed very different from in Singapore where they warned you as you bought them that they might not be needed if it was a quiet day but still let you use them no matter the lines length. I also found unlike Singapore where the staff happily took pictures for you with your own camera as well as their own professional cameras whereas there were people everywhere in Japan stopping you from taking pictures in quite a few places so an official photographer could come over to take it. Anyway here are the pictures, it was a rainy day so it was quite difficult to take pictures and unlike a few other parks i visited in Japan, they were very strict about taking pictures in loading areas or on-ride so this is probably my weakest update, but hopefully you'll all stick around for the obligatory "Did x person have a good day at fuji q?" post Well at least I know i'm on the right subway Kong overlooks city walk Anybody else remember these guys? Apparently they left their house and set up a bubble tea shop A line had already formed an hour and a half before entry Elmo was at the entrance, they were still making the sesame street area when i visited Happy 10th anniversary to Mr and Mrs Woodpecker I'd seen the pictures but the dome was much bigger than it looked in any pictures. Suprisingly most of the opening crowd went to spiderman and space fantasy than hollywood dream, I went straight to BTTF since it was the only ride without single-rider Will get to this ride later I skipped these since the fast pass option was one of these movies or Hollywood Dream and it wasn't worth the hour line later to see these movies I wonder how many theme parks have these, i'd just seen one of these in Everland As much as I love BTTF, on both my rides people were laughing at how the ride starts in 2012 (the date of my ride) and then we jump a whole 3 years into the future of flying cars, it really does show its age. Since the voices are dubbed in japanese I wonder how much it would cost for them just to rerecord the voices and state the year as 2095 and change the dials. If there's one place where you can make your insitute work and not need to sell it to Krusty surely its Japan, Doc? The shop had lots of awesome BTTF stuff BTTF rice crackers anyone? Mr Fusion underwear anyone? Continuing our tour of things you can no longer do in Orlando Official photographers at the ready I couldn't take pictures but damn the ride operator was awesome, she had a higher pitched voice than any anime I have ever seen, right until the shark showed up at which point she took on a voice like a Japanese masked Christian Bale

Is the copy of Hyper Rails only included with the $40 pledge and gold set?, I'd want to play it for nostalgia's sake since i had the original but i don't see it on the $50 set with the platinum/early bird special? I'd be\ interested in a Hyper Rails digital download but I also want to participate in the closed beta test. I'd happily donate $60 to get hyper rails and the $50 benefits of early testing (plus another $10 to ship me the boxed version in September of course).

Everlands Teaser website for the 2013 expansion to the safari ride: http://www.everland.com/web/lostvalley/teaser/main.html Click the word valley to see the pictures. As much as I would love it to be a rhino rally kind of style ride at the end, I do remember them having similar artwork when they expanded the tiger safari to include the elephants, giraffes and zebras and in the end that just turned into a 180 bend around a small giraffe and elephant pen with the zebras on the outside of the curve being added to the original route. Although all those animals were removed after 2 years ready for this expansion and they were doing a lot of land clearing on my visit last spring so this could be a pretty big expansion. If i can snag a weekday morning off, I may try and go grab some pictures of the new upgrades.

It can be quite annoying but it doesn't impact the ride times so much I feel, I hear the park is dead most weekday mornings and stays that way until mid-afternoon when people from schools start going once class has finished. However i've been on weekdays where there are tons of children on school trips so you never know, sometimes it can be dead and other times its busy but mornings are generally quiet. T express closes more in the autumn and winter since its colder it runs in much much lower winds, it was 20C yesterday so now there is warmer weather again hopefully it won't be closed so often. They normally close it during January or February for the month anyway to give it it's annual rehab since its so cold then it can't run that often anyway, now it should be open quite a lot until winter comes round again, I think i've just been super unlucky this year. Keep in mind the ride and line for it will close early to make sure there is no-one on it once the fireworks show starts. Hope this helps.

I was mistaken after a visit to the goddard groups facebook page it seems the new beluga ride is in a different place from the fountain show. As much as I found Lotte World much improved and with a huge selection of fastpasses this year, I do wish they would relax the rules about not queuing in the actual queue lines and making people wait outside the entrances, even with this new ride they have people waiting in the walkways and during peak weekends it can be really crowded and a lot of people use it to line jump. [vimeo] [/vimeo]

Lotte World Sad news, the donkey is no more. They'd upgraded their desperados to become 3D They really did have fast pass for everything, and for all those moaning about disney enforcing their windows look how short the window was on the lotte world rides They had a new fountain show but the whole theater was empty except for me, I wonder if the new talk to the white whale attraction will go here, since it seemed a shame the theater was so empty. It had fire an angel thing and lots of water It really wasn't very interesting, most of the time it was just a small water fountain I had to wait 10 minutes just to take these "interesting" pictures Finally after 3 years rode the balloon ride and got this signature shot No drunk, pregnant women Lottle World had a lot of angry bird merchandise. I'll end this update with my photos from the balloon ride

So here is my yearly update for Everland and Lotte World. I won't lie, i've actually had really bad luck with Everland on my past 3 trips, I still love the park but i'm probably going to take a break for 2013 (since the new ride is an expansion to the safari ride to see more of the zoo animals) and head back in 2014. The last 3 trips we've had T Express has been closed due to winds since Everland is situated on a hill-side,the ride shuts in extremely low winds especially in the colder temperatures. (http://www.everland.com/service/front/front2Pop.do) Sadly no park can help the weather but Everland seems to really struggle without its big people-eater to the point where every ride has a wait from 40-2 hour lines and I mean every ride, even the kiddy rides and chairlifts to get around the park. T Express also closes early for the fireworks nearby so if the weather hasn't improved by mid afternoon they tend not to open it at all since last time we were there the ride operators came out and sweepers went in around 3pm despite the lady at the entrance pointing at the sign that said it may open if weather improves. The q-pass option here is only available on T Express, the safari ride and the rapids and since it is a system where you show a ticket and someone hands you a pass, people tend to grab all 3 in the morning and i've seen people grab them twice if they catch the different staff member of the 2 so they run out extremely quickly. This was also my first year trying out the water-park and I was sadly really disappointed. We opted to go on a $50 day in september instead of a $70 day in august. We had heard from the students that weekdays its pretty quiet but being teachers we had no choice but to go on a weekend after getting in and lining up to purchase the $30 dollar cash wristbands which we needed to purchase the mandatory life jackets for the pools we looked at the waiting times and they were mostly over 2-2 and a half hours with an hour wait for even the ordinary speed slides. If they were running at full capacity it wouldn't have been an issue but it turns out that on a $50 day you will only get half capacity. Most slides have mirror images, an A and B side for crowds but all B sides were closed or on slides with only one lane they would have half the slides closed, on the 4 aqua loops only ran 2 of them, and the master blaster with its 3 slides on each side (3 at the top to the middle splash pool and then 3 in the middle on each side for a total of 12) despite having water flowing down them all was only using 1 of them. The other issue was the extreme queue jumping, despite signs saying it was against the rules we were constantly being asked to move on the safari world by ride attendants to let 2-3 people through to join the 1 person holding a spot was annoying but it was nothing compared to the water-park for the aqua-loops and raft rides, where people couldn't even ride together since it was only 4 people rafts or in the aqua loops case 1 person. Since they only let 1 raft down at a time and the aqua loop you had to have a briefing on ride position (and still surprisingly a lot of people weren't making it round the loop and had to be rescued) the line jumping of the slides easily added almost 30 minutes to each of our already 2 hour lines. One tip for Everland is that although I love the crazy low fireworks and the show that is almost a complete rip-off of Fantasmics plot line, the top spin and top scan tend to really quieten down at the end of the day when most people watch the lights parade and night time fireworks. On the other hand Lotte World was much improved compared to my previous visits, the second the park got busy they had their fast passes opened for every ride even the ones with no queues, they had a really huge selection of fast pass rides available and their system was the same as Disneys where you scanned your ticket and could get another in an hour or two, though the more popular rides like indiana jones rip-off and atlantis ran out quite fast, we got plenty of tickets and unlike Everland where we got 4 rides/slides done on our trip, we got most of lotte world done and never felt too rushed or worried about how to get on the rides we wanted (it also helps Lotte World has really long opening hours). One thing I really liked was the little things Lotte World added to improve even ordinary rides, there is a tram that goes round the inside of the park, for christmas the tram would stop halfway through the park, a marching band would appear and the ride operators would dance with the driver to the music. While people were watching the staff and bands, Santa Claus would appear join in the dance and then ride the rest of the tram journey with the kids before running off just before the station so the people waiting in line don't see him and go back to the mid-way to surprise the next group of kids. A little touch but it was really well done and all the staff of the attraction were really devoted to making it play out perfect each time, the kids really loved it. Welcome to winter in Everland New for 2011 Pororo 3D, Pororo is a hugely popular young kids cartoon here in Korea. Pre-show Doc Brown is making a flux capacitor for the blue penguin Here's where the flux capacitor will go Theming touches Pororo, the hero of the show, the kids went crazy when he appeared Interesting note, even though there are booster seats a lot of children were still quite short, any seat with the penguin cover couldn't be sat in so the theater is only ever half full. Before the 3D film started some people in costume came out, our students who went on a field trip to see this were really disappointed there was no meet and greets available Only a cut-out to pose with This was new, I think it's a kids cafe, it was pay to use so I didn't really look into it. New for 2012, the 3rd chairlift this one a gondola Station #1 Station #2 Also new Madagascar stage show, this was also up charge so I didn't see it. Sorry forgot to include the ride rules for Pororo Lots of people We finally found the end of the safari ride line because there was a certain bear to see. Huh........ Since this is Korea, they have taught a bear to dance Gangnam Style Since the chairlift had a 40 minute wait to take you halfway up the park, we walked. The ferris wheel is permanently closed but instead of being removed it's been left as a memorial. This sign in Korean says after 18 years of service Eagle's Fortress was retired, maybe it's also been left as a memorial since it sits on the hill slowly having the tress grow over it. but the english sign promises hope The flume ride has some strange rules for the ladies. Night at Everland Forgot to include the Ferris Wheel memorial photo

Isn't tire launched part of todays launch systems because i'm pretty sure galaxy express 999 has a curved launch using tires and hydraulics.

Yes it does have a dual station, when i was there they were mostly using it to get people ready for the next train then walk across, only occasionally putting a train into the other station at the busier points of the day.

Underexposure was a huge problem, I tried to clear the first set of photos up but it was hugely overcast and there was a fair amount of rain during the morning, it worked out nicely because it kept the crowds down and it was super hot and sunny in the afternoons.

According to screamscape you can ride it either forwards or backwards:

I find it interesting it's only the back 2 rows and not the whole train for this one unlike Batman. Wonder if we'll see this on other wing riders soon with a separate line for the backwards section of the train? Wonder what they've added to the scenery for the new near miss.

Source? I can't believe that they would spend all this money on a new chassis just to turn the seats around for a period of time... Great America said it at . Here it is at the specific time they mention ordering a chassis for those who don't want to skim through the video trying to find it

Final Part: How popular is this ride? Most of the people I went with really didn't like this ride, we sat in the back and they found it very uncomfortable I love flat rides, I was kind of sad that I didn't get to experience a Chaos or Zipper ride while I was in America since i've never tried either of them. I didn't give this ride much love with the camera or Gemini which is a shame because for a ride I hadn't heard too much about, I really really enjoyed Gemini This was a great ride, I really loved Skyhawk, one of the few rides I did go round and ride again It was really hot so the water rides were pretty popular when I went. Sadly I never tried shoot the rapids, it was broken on the second day when I went to ride it. What can I say about this ride, it was awesome and lived up to every expectation although strangely I actually enjoyed the mega-lite I experienced recently almost as much. This was one of those photos I just didn't know what to do with so I decided to be artsy Before the ride my friends couldn't believe an almost 3 minute long roller coaster would have no line.... after the ride however everyone knew why Maverick for me was easily my favorite roller coaster of the trip. I can see why it gets some hate though, my taller friends found it really uncomfortable and only enjoyed it the second time when they knew what to expect and tried to lean into each side of the restraint before the turn when they knew what was coming. We ended our trip with a night-time ride on windseeker so I'll end my update that way too with the now signature shots of windseekers light package

Part 2: Next stop the midway Corkscrew, Sadly I also never rode this one either Maybe if I hadn't been so busy taking pictures I could have ridden more. Time for my tallest S&S tower yet Iron Dragon was next, every time I see an arrow suspended I can't help but think of all that yellow rusted track sitting on the hill of Everland and how I never got to ride it. Top Thrill Dragster was definitely a highlight of the trip, it was having a few problems on the day rolling back fairly often and having the line closed when we arrived but I finally got to experience it on the second day. Mantis was another fairly busy in the morning but quieter in the evening ride. This was quite a forceful ride in the back and I enjoyed it but the group declined to re-ride this. I know there are a few B&Ms that have had yellow color schemes but I do love the yellow and red of Mantis Loop de loop The incline loop was definitely my favorite part of Mantis

So in the summer of 2011, while visiting some friends I made teaching here in Korea, I was given an amazing surprise birthday gift, they were going to drive me to Ohio to visit Cedar Point for 2 days. Normally I have a lot to say on parks since most of them I have season passes and I've visited them regularly enough to comment but this was my first trip to a Cedar Fair park so i'll let the photos do the talking. I had a really great 2 days, the weather wasn't great for one day and great on the other so the crowds were nowhere near as bad as I thought they'd be, although I was really surprised to see a 2 hour wait for raptor and a 1hour wait for mantis in the mornings when both were walk-ons later in the evening. I think the only slight negative I had was the Maverick single rider line, we did this at the end of the day and realized if we split up and used single rider we had 30mins before the lines closed for Millennium force (i was desperate to get a second ride and try it at night) the lady on the line was super friendly and chatty but we saw so many empty seats going by in the end feeling a big rude I had to point and say can we please take those empty seats, although i'll take friendly staff over rude or non-caring any day. A quick note about the pictures I shoot in raw even though i'm not a professional photographer ever since I found my Korean store-display laptop had Photoshop cs5 installed on it I have enjoyed editing pictures, there was something fun about editing a picture or 2 in my 5 minutes between classes. My knowledge of cameras makes professionals weep, I have a lens that does zoomy stuff and one that doesn't, these were edited on a laptop purely because I enjoyed experimenting and trying out different things and these photos are for my enjoyment. I got some criticism for them elsewhere about how there was no consistency and how over edited ugly etc they were, it's probably true for some but I do it because I find it fun not because I want to go professional, it's only because i'm having fun, I don't spend much time on these and I will never splash out on expensive hardware to make sure my screen is calibrated correctly. The poor weather also made it quite difficult to clean up these photos but I do welcome constructive criticism though, what you liked, what you didn't like, what could be improved, i'm always willing to learn so please any suggestions are welcome before I start on the photos from my Japan tour since my school kindly put a bigger screen in my room for teaching with I may hook up to that for future editing instead of this super bright gamers laptop. I have been told by some due to said brightness the pictures can come across quite dark, if it's a problem let me know and i'll work on it for next time. If it's a really big problem then please turn up your own screens brightness or turn off the lights. I had one chance to get this picture, sadly I missed the T, it's always been called Cedar Poin Never thought i'd get to see this skyline Not sure if that's more Cedar Fair interactive queue line goo (see windseeker picture below) or old paint streaking the roof Raptor was super busy in the morning, thankfully it was a walk-on later in the evening I really enjoyed Raptor, not as much as Nemesis but more than Inferno, i'm not sure if I liked it better than Montu since I was 8 when I rode that One thing I do regret is that I didn't ride Blue Streak, it sat in the corner quietly and none of the group wanted to ride it but I hear good things and wish we'd chosen this streak over the other. All this to come in parts 2 & 3. I found Max Air really nice to look at and photograph compared to the other frisbees i've seen. I think the back drop of the lake is what made me like photographing Maxair so much I'm going to spell it maXair this time so i've covered all possible ways of typing it. Troika Troika Troika Maybe I just have BBW syndrome but I actually enjoyed disaster transport I heard space spiral going to run upside-down next year when it comes back from the B&M factory Off to Windseeker next This ride had varying reactions in the group, some found it extremely scary, some found it boring and some found it a really nice new type of tower ride. I'm not too bad with heights but the wind did make it an interesting ride. So these seagulls gave windseeker the most amazing interacitve queue disney engineers could only dream of. They would both crap on only one specific part of the queue-line each and you would stand in line watching as people nervously approached the drop-zone and then had to run the poop gauntlet to rejoin the queue and then eventually it was your turn, I saw a direct hit and a few near misses. I wanted to get back in line just to watch people go through it again. Wicked Twister was a great fun ride, i've always enjoyed the launches on these when they pack a punch.

If I was to take a completely random guess, i'd say it will probably be around until the 7th of July

It was just Singapore that I used an App, not to derail the thread since i'll cover it when I get round to the TR, but the main lines were 4 hours+ the day I went the ToT single rider lines for reasons I will also talk about later took me over an hour and after 45 mins in the raging spirits line and barely moving with 30 people still in front I had to beg a castmember to let me hop the fence so i could make one of my fast-pass times (this fast pass only had a 30 min window!!!). As Robb said the policy has changed and with 4 hour lines it just wasn't worth the risk of missing my window.

I don't know why everyone keeps talking about how foreign phone users will struggle with this, I recently did a japan tour and Singapore and I never had a problem. universal had an app and when my stubborn Korean phone wouldn't connect to check line times there were lots of staff to help me get what i wanted done and there was plenty of wifi everywhere, even when my phone refused it someone helped show me on my park map where I could find line times ( i realize looking up ride lines is different from booking fast-pass but my point is that a park will always have alternatives and friendly staff to assist you). I like to be spontaneous but i would welcome a chance to plan some of my fastpasses, due to extenuating circumstances the day before that i'll try and cover during my trip report, Tokyo Disneysea was packed with people the day I visited and even though I managed to get fastpasses and was happy I got everything done, i found that at 2-3 points during the day i literally had an hour- an hour and a half each time where I couldn't do anything because i was waiting for a fast pass time and was worried about joining any line for fear of missing my fast pass window. I'd have been more than happy to have been able to plan even a little and then been spontaneous for the rest of the day. Although to be fair DIsneysea was one of those parks where you can just walk around and admire everything.

I found Kevin Rowher's complete honesty quite refreshing when he was talking about the capacity on the free-flyer, i feel like you don't see that so often when you're at these kind of trade shows where they are trying to sell their products.

The white is the more recent and its current color scheme but it's still quite rough.

We can always hope. But they would have to do some serious work for that to happen. Another news item that is related to Everland for 2013 is the opening of the EverLine in April (if it don't get delayed again). It's a rail line that will connect to the Seoul city Subway network and it will make it possible to get to Everland from Seoul by train, which will make it much easier to get there for people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverLine_Rapid_Transit_System I wouldn't trust wikipedia on that, its been on the maps for a while and was supposed to open when i arrived in Korea almost 3 years ago. Honestly from Seoul i think you'd be just as well off taking the bus since there is the bus lane on quick a few highways, i've taken the bus and i think it could beat out the subway and is also much more convenient. To get to the everline you have to take the bundang (yellow) line all the way to the end transfer to the everline then also take that to the end. The yellow line isn't that well connected to the rest of the cities subways since it's not a main numbered line, even without taking one of the many express shuttle buses to everland, i think the public buses would still outbeat it, despite the name i think the everline is more for people that live in yongin to get around the city than as a new faster way to everland... it has an awful lot of stops to make and this subway is very different from the 10 train cars of seoul, these are little 2 car tic-tac shaped monorail cars i think you'd face quite a queue trying to get on one after everland closes as well.

Funnily enough, i had the same experience when i went on comet express with one of my young students and he weighs barely anything compared to me, riding with him I had very little spin but alone it spun more than most spinning coasters i have been on.

I was going to post this with my 2011 photo update, that i will put up within the next few weeks but i've been invited (weather permitting) to go with my director to everlands last firework display of the year next week, where they set off even more than usual and I love Everlands crazy low firework displays so i'm going to try and get some pictures of the 2012 ride while i'm there and add them to the photos from 2011 1st before i post it (again weather permitting) so it will probably be a while before i have that update ready. So following Everlands 2nd 3d movie they added as their new for 2011, it has just opened its 3rd chairlift in the park, this time spanning the park lengthways as opposed to the other 2 going down the mountainside and gondola style as opposed to the other twos open style: http://www.everland.com/web/everland/how/festival/news/1205112_10436.html For 2013 they are expanding their zoo again using the safari ride, easily one of the parks most popular rides: http://www.everland.com/web/everland/how/festival/news/1203825_10436.html to include cheetahs, white lions, rhinos into their existing giraffe, elephant and zebra part which is currently closed, although the lion, tiger and bear part of the safari ride is still open. I find these interesting developments since the safari ride already has one of the longest lines and is a huge hit already with no signs of losing popularity, i'm surprised they feel the need to upgrade it since it was only recently upgraded in 2010 to include some elephants, giraffes etc (which talks apparently: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4622479/Chatty-elephant-Koshik-stuns-scientist-by-being-able-to-speak-Korean.html) I also find it interesting since they have quite a few SBNO rides that stand out noticeably the big wheel and the eagles fortress coaster, as well as some of the rides seem to be getting quite grafitti covered (especially around the helicopter cycle fun house area) or the always temporary looking middle section of the park where a lot of kids rides are just placed on the concrete, I thought one of those areas may have been the target soon. I will cover it in my trip report in more detail but i recently had 2 pretty bad days at Everland operations, and it does seem that the park needs another big people eater like T express to soak up the crowds soon, especially considering Everland is one of the most visited parks but the trend both here and Lotte World seems to be on getting in young children/family rides right now (i blame battlestar galacticas lack of popularity for this )