Nrthwnd

It arrived! It arrived! And I opened it!!! THANKYOU Secret Santa, you know who you are, lol! And one of the more interesting things about what you got me, a few of them were bi-lingual in their packaging AND distributed in Canada through a local suburb near me - Burnaby! Very cool. We didn't get our mail service back until today (two days off for up here, including yesterday) so this was a real treat to find on our porch. Thankyou - Merci - Thanks! Bearhugs. Bill This is where the package was left for me. Nice and neat up against the house. And here it is, about to be opened and ransacked, LOL! But first - that all-important Secret Santa Card. I love it! Especially since I don't do Facebook myself, lol. True. So true. Opened! I see a set of Disney stickers there. And...... Cool! Season 1 Musical Glee-A-Thon and a Cushion To Make Whoopee, lol! Don't know why. Can't think of a reason..... If you look real close there, this little towel has "Burnaby" as it's Canada connection. Right near me! Woo hoo! A new cap! With A Bell! Classy! And Best of all (or is that Worst of all?) - Real "Been Naughty" COAL! (o: ***Bearhugs Secret Santa***

This was the second flight cancellation I had ever experienced, with an overnight hotel stay involved. First one was in 2007, coming back home from Amsterdam. Did not want to repeat that one, ever. And honestly? If this was EVER going to happen again, I truly, truly hope that the Alveys are a part of whatever happens, LOL! Not that I ever, ever want this to happen again, hmm? (and knocks wood) Still, Robb was amazing under all of this pressure - and among all of the locals yelling and crowding up to the service desk in a very angry mob-like way - and I would go through this all again, if either Robb or Elissa had to handle "the situation." Big Bearhugs to Robb!

^ Ha ha, didn't even notice him, Chuck. Was trying the get 'the shot right" etc etc. But I mean, once you've posed with one of V these V guys....... then Ultraman might be easy to miss, lol. Now THIS I noticed! At the entrance to Happy Valley Shanghai.

Wet and crappy today. Merry ho ho.

Just to mention a few things here.... ~ Pesos for my upcoming TPR Mexico Tour. ~ Coffee table book on the creation of V "The Book of Mormon" Brdwy musical. ~ Candy and chocolate. Way - too - much of it. Lots of photos, the entire libretto and the score and interviews with everybody involved with it. (o: (Clicking not possible HERE.)

"Greensleeves" (or "What Child is This?") By The Quebec Symphony Orchestra on the radio.

^ We ate a number of times at Pizza Hut. And we did group meals at several places I can't even begin to remember. Eating various food, I can't remember either. The floating restaurant in Shanghai harbour, I remember. And a couple that were upstairs, and a couple of them... downstairs of couse!

The TPR SNOW COASTER!

Hmmm. Maybe those "rope lights" lining the edge of the run? And a TUNNEL! Ooooooo, that could be fun AND scary!

I don't know yet! Everything's still wrapped! Yule Tide Frustration. See! This is all of it at 10am. Waiting for my partner to wake up, and THEN we open everything up. (o:

Although the comparison really isn't the same, I believe this is how Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck were introduced to audiences. It was after their guys made it on the big screen, lol. They didn't show up when Mickey and Donald first appeared. It was later, just like Shellie Mae here. An observation.

I suppose we now should be asking... Will 2012 end in the world? Just a thought.

Here's our tree. You can't see it too much, but it's covered with all the (ahem) "small souvenirs" I have picked up on all my TPR Tours these past several years. Happy Holidays Everybody! A bit dark, but it looks real nice with the lights on. And (for example) that strap on the right hanging down, is from Hansa Park in Germany, when we visited in 2009.

Tippy Blue? What the heck does that mean? And omg he's a mailman/bird! Stranger and wierder as we go along with this... Can't wait to see 'who' (and what) the milkman is, lol!

What is wrong here? Children are gunned down. And now, firemen are being shot and killed? Sad. Angry. Pissed off. In shock.

You can never have too many Happy Valleys.

Is there a Single Riders Line?

Does this include those 'theme parks' that even the bus driver AND the guide did not believe exist? (re: China TPR Tour)

Happy Jolly Ring Ring!

Mmmmm, it looks so nice! Can't wait to get back there.... 2016?

I figure it's about time to wrap this up. So, the poll will stay open until...Christmas Eve! Just in case any "last minute votes" come in for the black and white ones, HA HA. (Just noticing...) Hmmm. It looks like the poll may have ended already, as of Nov. 15! Oh well. Red wins anyway...

I love what was posted at Imgur... "The world has not ended. Sincerely, New Zealand."

Tokyo Disney Sea + Disneyland Paris Why? Regardless of park operations and crowd personality, Disney Paris is still one of the best laid out and landscaped and yes, unique parks in the Disney Parks World, IMhO. And Disney Sea is just >blushing< too good everywhere to enjoy - besides the great attractions in it. So it's a fairy tale castle at the base of a huge ever-erupting volcanoe, yes? And Big Thunder up in that unused (so far) corner of TDS? The mind boggles at what could be combined....

So here's (most of) all the extra credits we picked up in both tours (Beijing and Shanghai). They are not in the order we rode them. I went nuts trying to put them all in order and decided to just post them, and get it done and over with, LOL. I will make comments on a few, from what I remember. Here we go... Just your basic mouse, yes? A bit old, but still running. I think this is the Dragon that went with the above mouse. At the Youth Park? Got a kick out of this next pair of pix. First mousie in yellow. And then, on a totally different mouse.... Shazam! The mousie is now RED! (And the trees disappeared too, lol.) Another Dragon. Re-themed to 'somethimg spacy'. With a pretty good Star Flyer behind it, I remember riding. A spinning mouse taking off. Hi guys! Look! It's another Worm! Creepy face, too. Are we keeping count, yet? Your basic Dragon. Ooooooo, another one! But this one wasn't powered! Actually we found a good number of them non-powered, to our surprise. Sometimes it was nice having actual trees nearby, wherever the credit was located. Yeah, they're a happy bunch. Soooo sad. Another one. A good number of them were themed to space vehicles with crazy long names to them. I think i was trying to get some kind of artsy fartsy shot here. Fail. And then, sometimes....nature wins. Hi Richard! And it goes on and on and... I believe this one was one of our first mousies. And it had a wasps' nest in the final braking area of the thing. Nice touch. Actually, I got a kick out of this shot, cause I caught Big Mike there (red shirt), posing for/with a few of his Asian Fans. Good going Mike! Another spinny mouse. Same layout as per usual. What else? It's Powered Dragon time! And another spinner. I think I had the layout of it memorized by now,... Here's a Dragon that circled around other kids' rides. So sad... I actually really liked this mouse. With all the trees surrounding it. Scarily close, but great to ride. This is me in front of the (then) closed Mad Rats at Happy Valley Chengdu. Grousing in my Dippin' Dots, lol. A spinning mouse, which later opened, but a few of us were then outside the park, eating lunch,. We all decided not to go back in for it. "Next China tour", heh heh. This is the mouse at the Fishermens Warf, which also had that insane looping toboggan we rode. And another Worm to ride... Another Dragon. And that's all I got!

And now.... Sad-And-Pathetic Credits (s-a-p) time! By now, if you've been reading this trip report regularly, you "might" have noticed that I had taken very few photos of all the small kids' coasters, be it Wacky Worms or Dragon-type. Add to that, the multitude ( = LOTS!) of spinning and non-spinning mouse coasters we rode in parks one wouldn't think to find any coasters at all... well, it was a lot of parks, with a lot of coasters, lol! So here's the photos of as many as we rode, a few more interesting than others, due to how they were set up, "themed" (ha), or operated. Sometimes, we found the coaster in question wasn't being run at all that day, so it was with a bit of "Alvey Finesse" (and at times with a bit of $) that we got the opportunity to ride and get The Creditm heh heh. Now as to naming them all and listing them in their respective parks... Well, I really wasn't set up to make good notes on that. As you can see by my "notes" below, on the tours' schedules, its was hit and miss with me, keepign track of what # coaster (in my credit c ount) it was, where it was, what kind it was..and that's about it. Names were sometimes so unusual and just wierd, I couldn't keep track of them all, in my head or on paper. For a good listing of all of them, you can check Larry's List I believe in the main TPR China Report for the names of them and which park they were in. Chuck's TR on the tours also makes good notes on all of these credits. Thanks for doing that guys, and anybody else who did the right thing, unlike myself. But first, here's how I kept track (hah) of all them things.... All the s-a-p credits are there in pencil on the tours' schedule. Somewhere... See how this all made sense to me (not). A closer look at the Beijing Tours' extra credits. And this is the set of the Shanghai Tour schedules. All neatly organized, ha ha. The rest of it, from the Shanghai part.