MichaelD

Mindblowingly awesome, and just adds to the magic.

Awesome news today! At last, a hint that he may be beginning to recover instead of getting worse. Jack, you've made my day.

I read them. I don't follow any social media, so it's the one way I keep in touch with what's happening at TPR.

I'm not a huge beer person, but Crown Lager or Cascade would be decent mid-range Aussie beers. True stories from the Australian booth (my wife and I are Australian); Wife - orders a lamb chop with her Aussie accent in full force, takes delivery of said shrimp, and is asked "where are you from?"..."Australia"... Me - orders the shrimp with my Aussie accent, wearing my Aussie flag hat..."where are you from?"..."Australia"... This amused us no end, but all in good fun. Our opinions of the Aussie food; lamb chop - underdone compared to what we are used to (which is cooked on a barbie just beyond nuclear apocalypse) but OK garlic shrimp - tasted just fine to me. pavlova - didn't have it. I'm not a huge pavlova fan at the best of times. the wines - all good quality choices Our opinions of the rest of the food (I managed to get around 4 times, my wife twice); - pretty much everything is DELICIOUS. Really DELICIOUS. - portion sizes are suitably small and cheap so even if you don't like something it's no big deal. - the dishes are probably "Disneyfied" but so what? We now have a ton of new dishes to seek out and try full portions of. The biggest thing I concluded was to simply "JUST TRY IT". There were a heap of things which sounded banal to begin with but which ended up being delicious. My favourites; - Singapore: Mahi-Mahi - Africa: the beef dish - Terra (vegan): both the fake meatballs and the fake chicken were great - Scotland: the salmon - Mexico: the beef taco

^I agree with R & E - Wet 'n' Wild is in serious need of attention. On paper it has some great attractions, but it just feels a bit "yukky" when visiting. I've personally always preferred Dreamworld's water park even though it has less rides because it feels nicer to be in. It's a shame that both the schedule and the weather conspired against a visit to White Water World. Interestingly, 2 years ago, Dreamworld looked and felt like Wet 'n' Wild does today - Dreamworld was old and tired, but they really have spruced it up. It was a very pleasant surprise to me.

Familiarty breeds contempt. I felt the same way before the trip, but it's because we have been looking at our parks through jaded eyes. To first time visitors, even hard-core enthusiasts like those on this trip (most were 400+ credit whores), our parks are GREAT. Yes, they aren't a Cedar Point or a Six Flags, but the stuff we take for granted (like the huge free range zoo areas) is unique, the parks themselves all look really great, and we do in fact have some great rides as well (Superman, Scooby, Claw, Giant Drop, TOT2, Jet Rescue, the Rotor at Luna Park Sydney, Coney Island at Luna Park Sydney and more). Any Aussie that chose not to go on this trip because they thought our parks were crappy missed out on a phenomenal trip. Kathryn reckons this has been her favourite TPR trip to date, and I'm not far behind her. Our parks did us proud.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to this thread - it may be of interest to others in a similar position to myself. I am one of the (only) 3 Aussies on this trip. Prior to this trip, I had mixed feelings about going, given I had already been on essentially all of the rides (apart from Tower of Terror II and Surfrider) and visited all of the parks multiple times. I have NEVER had SO MUCH FUN at these parks as I have had on this trip. My expectations have not only been met, but been wildly exceeded. The incredible perks (eg lights on Scooby-doo and many others not yet posted about on this thread), the great friendships both renewed and freshly made, the great food, the shared experiences - I would not have thought it possible to enjoy MY home parks as much as I have. To the Aussies (and others) that didn't come along because of our "crappy" parks and our "only 18 coasters" - the parks have all treated us like royalty and have all been overwhelmingly welcoming and hospitable. Australia has been overwhelmingly hospitable to the group. I am proud of how all of our parks have presented themselves - they have truly "punched above their weight" and shown themselves to be world-class with nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone not on the trip - you missed out on an amazing and wonderful experience. Thank you, Robb and Elissa for bringing your special breed of magic Down Under. and ps - IMHO Giant Drop is much better than Blue Fall.

^Ouch. That's a bit of a worry, since my habit is to collect fastpasses in the morning with windows in the 10am-12 midday range and use them at around 6pm to stroll comfortably around all the E-ticket rides, a strategy which works very well indeed in the US as the fastpasses are accepted after their windows have expired. Somewhat related to this...any general ideas as to crowd sizes at DLP on the Mon/Tue/Wed before the TPR UK trip starts? My reading on the topic suggests that the really busy time for Disneyland Paris will be a few weeks later, but there isn't as much info out there for DLP as there is for the US parks.

Thanks for that, Elissa. It's very useful to know that since an early morning "fastpass run" is a frequent tactic I use to allow a leisurely afternoon's/evening's park touring.

Hey guys, I'm wondering if anyone has had any specific experience with Disneyland Paris and the windows on their Fastpasses. In particular, arriving late for the window - are the Fastpasses still accepted? I know that both US parks will take the passes any time after their start time, but will the same apply in Paris?

It's perhaps somewhat irrelevant now, but we've been to Tokyo Disneyland/Disneysea twice now in mid to late April and both times the parks were very much empty on weekdays, but busy on the weekends. A weekday when it rains is ideal for Tokyo Disneyland if you don't mind getting a bit wet, which is what we got this second trip - come round about midday and the (light) rain started and you could see the park emptying out, so much so that everything was more-or-less walk-on from about 3pm onwards. Doing Pooh's Hunny Hunt 6 times in a row as a walk-on is from what I've heard not all that common.

Hi all, We went on this ride yesterday. Unfortunately, I did not take any photos, as I truly had no idea how new it was until we left the park. All I could think of during the 1 hour wait time was "must be a busy day at Universal for a wild mouse spinning coaster to have an hour-long wait". What an INCREDIBLE ride this is! It immerses you in the fantasy of the world superbly, way up there with the very best I have ever seen from Disney, and the ride itself is sheer bliss. All the effects are MAGNIFICENT, even mind-blowing. It's not a thrilling coaster ride, but that would not suit the theming at all. The emphasis really is on the overall ride experience. There's not a lot of spinning going on, but a lot of swooping during the ride which give the perfect illusion of travelling through space between the planets. The ending is a real highlight of the ride. A definite 10/10 in our books.

I personally have very mixed feelings about this, but ended up voting YES in the poll. For me, this site is about two things; 1. DVDs which we use extensively to plan trips, and 2. TPR trips I have a few thoughts to pass on; 1. TPR Plus sounds better than Club TPR - less cliquey and more about what is being offered. 2. Don't upset the currently fair system of trip allocation - as I see it the fair way would be past trip participants > premium members > non premium members. 3. Participation in a trip = free premium membership for 12 months. 4. I for one would resent a two-tiered trip experience where premium members would have a better trip experience than non premium members. Given the $ involved in a trip, especially for families and OS participants, this seems an inappropriately harsh penalty for non members. A way around this may be to mandate membership to even be considered for a TPR trip.

Robb/Elissa, I have a question about the IntimadaTOUR - I see that Dollywood has been mentioned as a destination on this trip - do they have something new planned (can't see anything on their website) or are you going because it's on the way to somewhere else anyway and it's DOLLYWOOD? (Mmmm.....Dollyfood). (I guess it could be an opportunity for credit whores to pick up the Veggie Tales and the NASCAR Speedpark credits )

Wow - those wait times are really scary. Is it school holidays or something over there at the moment? When we were there in April it was rare for the posted wait times for anything at DisneySea to be more than 5 minutes long, and most everything was more-or-less walk-on. In fact, we had to make a point of walking slowly through the queues to enjoy the magnificent theming.

Personally I thought the Zuma coaster was the greatest credit of the entire Deep South trip (and maybe my entire life). The look on the ride attendant's face when 50 pathetic adults came to ride his tiny little kiddie ride more than made up for any embarrassment felt. The sight of the train struggling up that tiny lift hill was also hysterical. "I think I can, I think I can". (Much more fun than the slightly less pathetic kiddie credit on the Texas trip).

We're back home now in Australia, and already missing you all. Can't wait for our next trip "snacky snack snack snack, snack, snack". Here's my personal favourite ride photo of the trip, appropriately from Dollywood's Mystery Mine. Can you pick the non-TPR people? A close-up if you can't quite work it out from the first photo. 6 x joy. 2 x terror.

Just thought I'd update you all on the outcome of our visit to SFDK, having just returned to our hotel room. Getting there via Amtrak was fine, albeit quite lengthy. We got up at 6am, left our hotel at 7:30am, got on the train just after 8am, and after a long delay in traffic with the bus crawling to the park from the freeway off ramp, got to the park at 11am. Getting from the bus stop, through the metal detectors, through the turnstiles, picking up the QBots and processing our annual passes took us until 12 midday. The bus was scheduled to pick us up at 5:10pm. Lines were ominously long already (as if the entry crush didn't already make it obvious that the day was going to be busy), but... We had ridden all the coasters once within an hour AND stopped briefly to eat something along the way. We then very leisurely rode and rerode everything else we wanted to ride (my daughter was quite distressed with the heat requiring frequent rest and hydration stops) and happily made our way home, stress free. Walking onto the flume ride to cool off nearly instantaneously with a 90 minute line was almost life-saving all on its own. So, with all the odds stacked against us; - a stinking hot day (100 degrees Farenheit) - arriving well after opening - in peak season - on a Saturday - with limited time available to ride the coasters QBot Gold made our visit to SFDK an absolute pleasure. Sorry if it sounds like an ad for QBot, but frankly we'd finished in the park in the same time as it would have taken to get one ride without the QBot Gold. That says a lot.

^Thank you, Kevin. This is most useful information. We've already booked our Amtrak return ticket, but if things are not going well at the park despite Gold Q-Bot we'll stay late and use a taxi to get back home. Not the cheapest solution, but cheap in the scheme of things given the $ spent getting there in the first place.

^Thank you all (Zonga ++). It seems as if Amtrak will be the least stressful option.

^ Thanks for your reply John. From what I could make out, the big problem is that BART terminates a long way away from Great America, and getting between BART and Great America is the tricky part of the trip. Our problem is that we're staying next to Great America, not in the centre of San Francisco.

Hi all, Being from Down Under, we're a bit nervous about driving in the US. We're planning 3 days in the San Francisco area, staying adjacent to Great America. One of the days we'd like to go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, but public transport options seem fairly limited, and we don't want to move between areas just for the one park. The best option I have been able to find so far seems to be an Amtrak combo train/bus which takes 2 hours each way, but which has us arriving at SFDK at 10:45am and leaving at 5:15pm. With the park open 10:30am - 9pm on the day we plan to visit (a Saturday), we'd love to spend more time in the park if we could. I get the feeling a taxi ride would be prohibitively expensive. Any suggestions, anybody? (By the way, we will use Gold QBots to at least make the most of our limited time in the park given we're going on a Saturday).

Day 8 - Hanayashiki Park + Yokohama Cosmoworld Third Attempt Part 2 - Yokohama Cosmoworld After finishing at Hanayashiki Park (before closing time, incidentally), we made our way back to Yokohama Cosmoworld. Was this park finally going to succumb to our desire to visit? We were delighted to find that, yes, it was indeed open. Yokohama Cosmoworld does not have an unlimited rides option, with everything pay-per-ride. It was by far the poorest value for money park of this trip, and cash-only to boot. 3 credits and a log ride are on offer here. I had chosen in advance to buy ride tickets worth 2800 yen (which gave us 3500 yen worth of rides), so spent $42 Australian on each of us ($28 US dollars each). This gave us; 1 ride on Diving Coaster: Vanish 2 rides on the log flume 1 ride on the Spinning Coaster 1 ride on the Family Banana Coaster 1 ride on the pedal ride, and 1 trip through the ice house I coughed up another 1000 yen each to be able to go through the mirror maze, and that was it for the Cosmoworld budget. Diving Coaster: Vanish - this looks stunning, but the restraints are the heaviest, most uncomfortable restraints I have ever had the displeasure of using. The ride is rough - even the dive underneath the water is not enjoyable due to the severe shaking making it impossible to focus on the theming present. My daughter HATED this ride, even more than she hates Arrow Corkscrews. Spinning Coaster: A standard spinning mad mouse ride, made a little more enjoyable by being located several stories up. Family Banana Coaster: Strictly for credit whoring purposes. The log ride was, for us, the ride highlight of the night, so much so that we rode it twice; once in the late afternoon and once at night. The ice house was interesting...and COLD, but attraction-wise, the highlight for us was the mirror maze. It was expensive, but was a significantly more difficult maze than we had seen before, so it took us quite some time to complete it. Basically it involves you finding your zodiac symbol, a surprisingly difficult task in this maze. My daughter managed to win a fluffy toy prize at the end of this maze, which pleased her no end. A mandatory trip to pay homage to the "Meat Cow" machine was the final item on our agenda, but sadly we couldn't get the machine to dispense for us, so had to settle for the nearby Human Body Part machine and a model larynx (voicebox) instead. By this stage, my wife had rejoined us having toured the surrounding area and also having been underwhelmed, so we sought sustenance in a nearby retail complex called "World Porters". It looked impressive from the outside, but one step inside, and... "Hold on a second. Why is there so much SPACE inside here? Why are there so many tourists in here? Why are the prices so high?" Yep. TOURIST TRAP. Kinda sums up the whole Yokohama area, really. Looks great, but is way overpriced for what you get. Come here if you have the time, but don't feel bad about skipping this one - you're not really missing out on much if you do. If you do come, however, plan to arrive late afternoon as the area DOES look spectacular at night. Best part of the day - the busker we came across back at Ikebukuro station. Since Meat Cow was unco-operative, we had to settle for Human Body Part machine. Yay! Meat Cow machine. We couldn't get this to work for us. Yay! Finally we get to Yokohama Cosmoworld.

Day 8 - Hanayashiki Park + Yokohama Cosmoworld Third Attempt Part 1 - Hanayashiki Park A couple of days prior, my daughter had spotted Hanayashiki Park from the Senso-Ji temple, to which we had been ordered by "she who must be obeyed" for our cultural enlightenment. Clearly this was a sign that we were required to visit this park, so given the very good progress we had made through our itinerary, today was allocated to visiting this park. By now, a 3 train journey was a push-over, and we arrived in good time. Getting into Hanayashiki Park is a two-step process. Outside of the park, you need to buy a park entry ticket. Once inside the park, you then need to buy ride tickets or an unlimited ride pass. Both steps were cash-only. I was confused at the entry gate by the repeated mention and anxious gesticulation towards the rollercoaster in the English version of the map. Being the sole credit in this seemingly tiny park, I wasn't overly keen on entering if it was out of action today. My trusty phone translator came up with "zekkyoumashin burokun" for broken rollercoaster, but this did not sit well with the girl in the booth. All I was able to discern was that there was a problem with the rollercoaster, but that broken didn't seem to be its correct status. On this basis, we took the risk and went in anyway. At first sight, Hanayashiki Park is TINY, but don't let this fool you. This park has an immense array of interesting attractions, all remarkably efficiently packed into this very tiny space. Our first mission was to head towards the rollercoaster. We could see the train tantalizingly parked at the station, but sadly there was a maintenance sign at the entrance and maintenance people working on the train. For the moment, we moved on to the reverse drop ride. My daughter is not a huge fan of reverse drop rides, so she played with the working model of the drop ride (yes, really - see the photos below) whilst I went on it. Following this we went on a couple of elevated rides to get an overview of the park. I'm quite glad we did this, as it revealed just how layered this park actually was. It really pays to climb every stairway and explore every nook and cranny of this park. Now, it was time to fully ascertain the status of the rollercoaster if I could. The maintenance sign was still present, but I managed to come up with "sumimasen zekkyoumashin konnichi" - excuse me, rollercoaster today? - which managed to get the English response of "later" - fantastic! With that worry behind us, we continued to explore this park. There are just so many rides and attractions here it's amazing. There's a ghost train which somehow goes on forever and ever; maybe the door leads to a tardis? There's a gruesome haunted house walk-through. There's a cool maze with several unexpected surprises, all uniquely Japanese. There's an AMAZING audio-only experience which, whilst only in Japanese, is absolutely tremendous and had me grinning from ear to ear. Don't let the lack of English deter you from this great attraction. I will, however, mention one ride which I didn't like - it's called Little Star. I wondered why the height restriction for an innocuous-sounding and looking ride like Little Star would be 120cm, but it's because you spend an awful lot of time upside down on this ride. Not my cup of tea at all. Anyhow, by this time the rollercoaster was running, so off we went to score this credit. This coaster is billed as the oldest steel coaster in Japan, and the seats are TINY. I barely fitted into this coaster - I'm 176cm / 5'9" - and my knees were firmly wedged against the front of the seat. If you're taller than I am you are going to struggle to get into this coaster. Consequently, the ride isn't the most comfortable, and I was only able to ride it a few times before my knees started to protest. Despite this, I was very happy to have ridden this coaster as it does give quite a surprisingly wild ride. A shot from the exit of the Disc-O showing just how densely packed this park is. In this shot you can see; a flat ride called Carnival, Surprising House, the Taxi Ride, the Sky Ship ride, the Helicopter ride, and the Roller Coaster lift hill. That's a lot of rides in a very small area. Little Star does not convey the intensity of this particular flat ride, or should I say upside-down ride. Caveat emptor. Mr Hanayashiki? Yep, that's a little shrine in the theme park. Fascinating juxtaposition. Hey I know that website! Mini golf course visible from the roller coaster. Not part of the park. I guess if you're the first roller coaster in the country you don't need to come up with an imaginative name. Found locked up in the maze. When my daughter wondered why my hands were entering the cage I had to explain that I was scratching her nose. Yeah, that's it. Her nose. Expensive taxi fare. My daughter absolutely loved this taxi ride. See. It really does work. Don't like actual rides? Just play with the elaborate working model instead. Roller Coaster is not ready to come out and play yet. Hello Roller Coaster. We see you.

Day 7 - Cultural Day + Yokohama Cosmoworld Attempt 2 Today was the second of our officially decreed cultural days (the official in question being my wife). Her cultural task for the day - get us to experience a Japanese Tea Ceremony. She went to one back in Australia (in Dubbo of all places - a country town) and enjoyed it immensely, and wanted us to experience one in Tokyo. A bit of a search on the 'net turned up the Hotel Okura in Minato-ku offering a Japanese Tea Ceremony for 1,050 yen, clearly focussed at foreigners as the website was in good English. This was an acceptable price for what we wanted, so off we went to the hotel. We did get lost whilst walking to the hotel from the station, but a map soon put us to rights, and had us walking past the US Embassy, awkward-looking high security and all. That in itself was an interesting cultural experience. Ultimately, it did not matter one iota that we got lost - we stumbled across many other interesting sights on our meandering way to and from the Hotel Okura, including a non tourist trap temple. Our host spoke excellent English, and managed to clear up at least one Japanese mystery for us. Two Japanese coins have holes in them. One is silver and marked with a 50, so there's no mystery there - that's clearly 50 yen. The other is a goldish colour and has no number on at all. We were under the mistaken impression that this was also a 50 yen coin, but our host informed us that this was in fact a 5 yen coin. This explained why the vending machines did not take these coins and why when we used them to pay for things we often got puzzled looks from vendors who would then select the 50 yen coin from our proffered handfuls of change. In retrospect, I think it's telling that not once did we ever get taken advantage of by this - only the correct amount was ever taken from us. On the way back from the tea ceremony, we stopped by a 100 yen shop - everything (more or less) in these stores is priced at 100 yen. Actually, it's priced at 105 yen (including 5 yen sales tax), but 100 yen shop just rolls off the tongue so much better. My wife had this on her list of cultural things to do (?cultural), and I actually wanted to stop at one of these to pick up some plastic sleeving to protect paper theme park tickets. When we visited Toshimaen earlier in the trip, we were issued with paper tickets, which had become quite worn by the end of the day with being taken out of my wallet all the time and shown to ride operators. I was aware that at least Disney also had paper tickets, so felt it would be wise to protect these tickets in some way. ID card holders proved perfect for the task. A bewildering array was on offer in this full-to-the-rafters and tiny aisled shop. At least 20 different ID card holders were on offer, and I was able to select two perfectly suited to the task. These proved to be a wise investment when we went to Disneyland and several other parks, and are a recommended prerequisite for any trip to Japan. Having completed our cultural obligations, we enthusiastically headed off to Yokohama Cosmoworld. My wife declined the trip, preferring to wander the streets of Ikebukuro and Shinjuku instead. Easy enough to get to, although a fairly long trip away, Yokohama Cosmoworld looked phenomenal as we approached. It was my plan to arrive soon before dark, so we could ride both pre-dusk and at night. Unfortunately, the lights were on but the gates were closed. A thorough wander around the park failed to shed any light on the mystery as to why the park was closed, so, bitterly disappointed, we returned home crushed and defeated by our first credit-less day. A quick check of the web site revealed the problem - Yokohama Cosmoworld is closed on Thursdays. I HAD noted this on my trip sheet for Yokohama Cosmoworld, but somehow simply didn't notice this when deciding on this destination for today. Mea culpa, and at least we could be relieved that the park had not closed for good under our noses, so we would try again another day. Wouldn't want to meet the iPod owner who could fit these into their ears. Epic fail! Yokohama Cosmoworld looks stunning from afar. Japanese Tea Ceremony, with our patient and gracious host. We stumbled across this temple smack bang in the middle of the chaos of Tokyo. An amazing sense of serenity and tranquility immediately enveloped us as we passed under this gate. No swell of tourists here, just an oasis of peace.