Nrthwnd

I still can't quite believe, that now that I've just finished an amazing TPR trip to the Far East, that I'm now even thinking let alone considering, that there's another TPR Tour coming up for me and others next June! Sweet.

We finally went and got to see The Simpsons Movie last night. I know it's been awhile since opening, but I've had other movies, and a Japan Tour to get ready for, and do..... 7/10 It was the tv series, UPSIZED in several spots; some of the animation played around with (fire effects...oooooo) and oomphed a bit here and there; and a bit more 'story' for the characters (Lisa 'maybe' gets a bf, Marge & Homer's ongoing marriage sh**, Bart rethinking about his dad...). But I enjoyed South Park: The movie more, and I enjoyed the new Disney animated "Rattatouie" more as well. Still, it was a cool thing to see everybody up there on the Big Screen, lol.

Yep. Are you wishing it was tomorrow already?

You guys are being way too mean to him. But --- since you did ask.... Well, Brian?

^ Are those the "cups" that actually look like they'd take one of those infamous "Yards of Beer" in them? We have had them too, at our park. But I know absolutely nothing about "stoners useage" with them, *cough*exhale*cough*cough... Thought I'd put up some more of the Japan 2007 Tour stuff I bought and brought back with me. This close-up pic shows the "collector holders" I got, when I bought something to drink/eat. In a small bunch there, is the transluscent MM holder (for my massive ice cream dessert - mostly all grape!); the small yellow ceramic (NOT plastic, note) Hunny Pot for my lemon-honey sherbet (which itself had an 'insert cup' for it, and that's beside the cup with a little souvenir bear in it)... The clam shell holder that held my Sea Salt Ice Cream (I kid you not - and not bad either!) from Mermaid Lagoon in TDS w/lid in front of it; a big "Holographic" drink cup (top of pic) from Chef Genie in the Arabian Coast at TDS; the fold-down tray/box (at left corner) my foot-long deli sandwich came in, at New York Deli in the American Waterfront at TDS... Couple of pressed pennies there (Scary Teddy at HM/NBC and Tokyo Disney Resort Line); ONLY 115 Yen in coin left in my pocket when I returned home (!); and a couple of the VooDoo Dolls I couldn't resist buying, including one from one of the first um.... Rastifarian Gift Shops we saw at a few of the more remote parks on tour? Yeh mon. Trippin'. Stuff within stuff - to collect! Really unique things to bring back home, especially from Tokyo Disney.

^ I totally agree with you on that. We have had the joy of having several cats own us thru the years for a few decades. Meow, indeed. But now - Taiko Drum Roll please! - I reveal to you all now my TT#1 pick of the TPR Japan 2007 Tour! (as if you're going to be surprised by this, hmm?) My Top Ten #1 PICK of the TPR Japan'07 Tour - Ms. ELISSA ALVEY! ~ ~ ~ Firstly, a lot of Most Honorable Mentions should go out to all of you guys who helped Robb and Elissa throughout the tour, but espeically when it came time to dealing with, and helping with that Happy Screaming Bundle of Stuff, Miss Kristen Alvey. Chris, Dan, Joey and Ryan I could see you were part of the main support group for the Alveys and THANKYOU for spending a good part of your touring time, helping them have a better time on tour, themself. Doing everything from keeping the KidTums happy and 'occupied', feeding and holding, carrying/folding/lifting the stroller, etc. etc. It was also a treat to see the "koochy koochy koochy" come out in all of you, heh heh. Most heartwarming. ~ ~ ~ Then there's Elissa's "other child" we all had to deal with. Robb, it was great see you again, touring with you again, and I'll especially have good memories of us at Nagoya Zoo and you on that "controversial" coaster, heh heh. Photo to follow in TR. Awesome tour, Mr.A. ~ ~ ~ And Elissa, I know the lot of us in this tour, past TPR tours, and many tours to come will drone on and on about ya... But you know what? It's all a Great Thing! And well-deserved. And needed to be told to you every so often, okay Ms.A.? You were truly AWE-SOME and an Oustanding Tour Organizer, bar none. One of The Best and you are Ours, all OURsss BWA - HAH - HAH!!! Bright Blessings to you, Kristen and Robb and your close family and friends. And here's to more touring together as She-Who-is-Now-Getting-Credits proceeds to blossom and bloom, grow and.... run around - hah! Take care - BIG BEAR HUGS. Bill (and shameless PR here - next installment of my TR goes up tomorrow/Friday!) ...And amaaazingly packed it all into this set of itty-bitty liddle bags! And an extra carry-on, too. Hee hee hee. ...I took all of this....crap and stuff (everything showing here except the t-shirts, above'em all)... My charicature (sp?) from Cosmoworld in Yokohama 16/09/07. And why do I appear to look so "slightly smug" here? Well, maybe it's because....

^ I think the whole timing of the day wasn't working in (most of) our favor, starting with the coach taking a lot longer to get to the park due to construction on the highway, and causing more longer traffic delays than E&R figured in. They certainly figured in enough time for "Point A to B" as they always do that with their amazing daily schedules. But this was just un-expected traffic sh** nobody counted on, including them. Then the light (extreeeemely light) drizzle was holding up immediate opening of ALL of the coasters at Fuji-Q, something a lot of us were NOT too understanding of (myself included I will admit), probably based on a previous park we went to that didn't open anything for us due to "rain" ~ separate rant, lol ~ and then it became a game of "is it open, is it testing? yes it is testing - should we go over to the line? no, wait till we see people on it..." etc. etc. Most of us started at Fujiyama, then proceeded to the smaller coasters (the indoor, Wild Mouse) making sure we could see both Dodopna and Eejanaika for testing, etc. And Peter/Loefet & myself dashed from the Mouse line, once we saw peeps on Dodop. To get into that never-ending queue. Got very frustrating - and we ended up in 2 hour+ lines for both Dodop and Eeeeeej - and that four hours+ spent in two lines, sort of killed the rest of the afternoon for a lot of us. I didn't get two of the other coasters (the two rodents, hee hee) out of the 7 there, because of the huge lineups, and changing trains on Eeeej, blah blah. It was a lot of "bad stuff" that sort of all played into that one touring day. Poor Fuji-Q. Just one of those visits.

I would tend to "lean" towards the latter, hah hah. (^Thanks Dave. We figured that, too, lol. Baseball IS such a big thing over in Japan - a few of the guys actually went to a game while in Tokyo, near the end of the tour!)

Our city's civic workers' strike (read: NO garbage pickup) is now in it's 70th Day then

Thanks, it probably is. We chatted it a bit when we first saw it, and majority ruled on it being some sort of driving range setup. But still - seeing it in the photo just makes me initally go WTF is that? Then, I remember, heh heh.

^^ The eyes got me immediately. And my cat Camille has had enough of this cutesy dog stuff - and is on vacation right now. She'll be back. Yep - she's on vacation now, LOL! Nice looking getaway spot, actually. (o;

I'm Not That Girl. Sung by Idina Menzel from the Broadway Cast CD of ~ Wicked ~ One of the best shows on Broadway today.

Thanks. She Owns us.

Your report is definitely worth BUMPing...

^ I've already clicked on Watch this topic for replies.

BUMP My cat Camille just "heard" there's only one more day until My Top Ten #1 Pick of The TPR Japan 2007 Tour is revealed... "Yeah, prove it" I hear her thinking, lol. Till tomorrow, then. Only a day now? I'll wait here till then...

"Pop-u-lar. I'll help you be pop-u-lar..." (With low bowing admiration to the Broadway Musical, "Wicked") Or - was it true TPR nastiness they grabbed all those soakerssssss...... Hmmmm. You guys made it so spectacular a start on that thing. And then that &%^#@ water cannon, and THEN that Spray Tower after that.. and then... oooooooommmmmmmGGGGGGG - "her with the firehose.." Started my tour off really great, LOL!

I think I would have the most fun doing the coasters (outdoors and in) and all those great-looking dark rides and walk-through funhouses. Then of course, there IS the beer, heh heh. Thanks for sharing another great Oktoberfest in Munich! Hope you didn't get too sick or ill from all that beer, and Dirndls, LOL!

And I'm still a-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZing over Winnie The Pooh, AAAAAAAAAOMG over Indy Jones & The Crystal Skull (soon to be a major motion picture!) and sssSMILEeee over Sinbad and Hightower's Tower of Terror.... And I am going to really try and keep The Great Feelings going, thru the Holiday Season at least, lol! Man, I thought Elissa and Robb would need a bit more rest time than just a few days or so. You guys are truly awesome!

First of all, a quick explain here. I am still one of those peeps who hasn't taken to the all-delightful ownership of a digital camera...yet. My camera is a PENTAX ESPIO 115M model, taking rolls of film, one at a time, heh heh. That said - I am very proud that (litrerally) every photo posted here is one that turned out just fine, and that I did indeed take just over 100 photos for the entire tour! The only two I tore up, were two taken by other tourists who thought my camera was digital and assumed, nautrally, that more than one pic could be snapped again and again. Thankfully I stopped them after they took the second shots, lol. So here's one Photo Set at a time, posted every 2 days, with my look at the TPR Japan'07 Tour! I hope you enjoy it, brief as some park photo visits are (meaning sometimes only one pic taken, lol). ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Set A - The Tour Begins - at Yomiuriland This was a nice park to begin the tour with, taking a gondola car up the mountain to get there - and gliding through one of their coasters, Bandit. Ah yes, Bandit. SPLASH BANDIT actually. Every other set of cars that ran the track, turned into one of the WETTEST RIDES I have ever been on, even counting flumes and chutes! It was awesome, and I first thank Brian for accompanying me on this OMG ride; thanks to all of you who lined up there with super soakers in hand to make sure we didn't stay dry, heh heh; and a special OMFG to that woman sitting near the end of the ride, with an f-ing FIREHOSE, ready to blast us out of our seats, if she could! Awesome. (to be continued...) Speed up to near end of visit - and AFTER Splash Bandit ride - I was wet, my shoes was wet, my eyes still watery. Awesome ride!!! White Canyon wooden coaster. A very rough ride for most of us. Once was definitely enough on this one. And two drop towers I didn't get to ride, time not permitting, boo hoo. We enter the park and head towards Bandit, naturally. And no that's not water in front there - just paint. We head out to Yomiuriland, and our first Japan Transit ride together. Can you count 30 TPR-ers there in the crowd? Grin. One last look back at Yomiuriland, on the gondola, thru Bandit(Splash). Thanks for the wet memories, LOL! What IS this thingin the middle there? I don't remember asking, and it wasn't on the park map so...? Heading back to our train station - thru Bandit again. Water park and "something else" in distance.

Now that I have got some "order" to all of my TPR Japan Tour stuff - i.e. photos, souvenirs, maps, literature...and stuff - I thought I would post a couple more sets of the recently bought things on the tour. First up, my pins. The photo shows the lot, on top of the Tokyo Disneyland Halloween 2007 pin bag also purchased. The three on the bag's edge are: Tower of Terror w/slider elevator car; a big round TDL Halloween button; and two NBC/HM pins on a card, right one with My Hero, Scary Teddy, heh heh. Three in front are: Tokyo Disney Sea 6th Anny pin; a Dale pin I got as a "non-winning prize" (there was a choice of several available) in one of the games of chance they had in the Arabian Coast of TDS... ...and a treasured Sherriff's Star pin that was only won by shooting ten-out-of-ten shots in the Westernland Shooting Gallery at TDL. I couldn't do it, even if I was two feet away from the (&%^#$@ targets - but my touring buddy Peter/Loefet offered to win me one (awww) and - he did! Thanks again, Peter. Much appreciated for this special souvenir you got for me. This was enough pins I thought, at the time. But there's always next visit, hmm? Grin.

For me it's all the parks listed in the Japan Tour, plus a few add-on parks here and there. So, in order of going to... Hanayashiki (one of oldest parks in Japan, and Add-on #1) Aqua Stadium (not really a park - but it had a coaster!) LaQua Yomiuriland Space World Uminonakamichi Harmonyland (hellooooooooo kitty!) Wonder Rakuntenchi Kijima (home of my #200 coaster - Gold Rush!) Mitsui Greenland Central Park (Tegarayama Yuen - rides closed due to..um...rain?) Kurashiki Tivoli Park Universal City Osaka Parque Espana Nagashima Spaland Nagoya Zoo (Add-on #2) Lagunasia Hamanako Pal Pal Tokyo Disney Sea Tokyo Disneyland Fuji-Q Highland Sea Paradise Cosmoworld Toshimaen (Add-on #3!)

My gaydar is now old, somewhat rusty and definitely has it's BZZZT - WRONG moments, lolol. But try, try, try again I will, heh heh.

Aw Chuck. I think you're doing just fine with whatever-the-f theme you've got going here.... I think. I didn't take my camera for that first add-on park, so many thanks Oh Most Honorable One From Hummel Land (arrrrhhhh) with Your Most Elegant Intrepid Camera Work and Truly Artsy (not fartsy, perish the thought) Caption-ing.

Or you could follow Robb and Co. around the park for the entire day and just stalk them, hee hee hee. Not that I'm suggesting anything like that...