jray21

They could make a Leslie Hall style amount of money at a TPR event

From the bottom of every TPR page, Disclaimer! You need a sense of humor to view our site, if you don't have a sense of humor, or are easily offended, please turn back now! *Warning: I am fat, ugly, and a coaster nerd (30 +lbs. over what is considered normal). Therefore, I am allowed to make fun of other fat, ugly, and nerdy people. This report will contain pictures of fat, ugly, and nerdy people, and will make fun of people who are also fat, ugly, and nerdy. If you are easily offended, take this as a warning to not view this report! Some of you may think it is beyond humor and just mean, if you are one of those people, please do not continue looking at this report. The pictures in this report will be similar to those found on PeopleofWalmart.com. If you find PeopleofWalmart.com offensive, then you will also find this thread offensive. You have been warned.* *Bryan Stoll Disclaimer - Many many many animals were killed and eaten in the making of this thread. Vegetarian discretion is advised* This is my trip report for the 2010 TPR Middle America trip! The idea for "Food and Fatties" was decided upon after a lengthy discussion between Amy, Dan, and I. Amy, Dan, and I (and many others) ate an incredible amount of food on this trip so we decided to record our 10+ lbs of weight gain. Each. Also, being in Middle-America we soon noticed the incredibly vast numbers of 'unique' looking individuals. We decided that just as people document the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot, we needed to record these Middle-America oddities for generations to come. This was one of the greatest event/trip/vacations of my life. From the coasters, to Leslie Hall, to the City Museum, to Lambert's, and to the bus driver's stand up comedy, this trip was non-stop fun and excitement. Thank you, you have been warned. Enjoy! Make sure to follow along for a chance to win a one-of-a-kind TPR souvenir signed by none other than Leslie Hall, along with some TPR celebrities like Dan, TPDave, and Lou!!! And as always, THANK YOU ROBB AND ELISSA FOR AN INCREDIBLE TRIP! Pre-Arrival: This was the pre-arrival day and dinner at the Mall of America. Day One: Mall of America, Sponge Bob, and a few hand selected Fatties! Day One Evening: LESLIE HALL!!!!! Day Two: Adventureland, almost death by tree, Pedo-Dan, PROWLER, and Waffle House!!!! Day Three: World's of Fun, Private Time with Prowler, and Lambert's! Day Four, Part One - Silver Dollar City!!! Food, a fatty quiz, and Barry M. Deeper! Day Four, Part Two - Silver Dollar City! A big hole in the ground, more food, and a massive fatty! Day Five - St. Louis Missouri! Pizza Hut, White Castle, St. Louis Arch, and the CITY MUSEUM!!!! Day Six: Six Flags St. Louis, Mr. Freeze Backstage Tour, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and horrendous heat! Day Seven: Holiday World! The Voyage walk back, great food, and a warped look at nursery rhymes! Day Eight: Indiana Beach - Lot's of food, Revenge of the Kankles, Fascination, and Steel Hawg! Day Nine: Six Flags Great America: Superman ERT, Raging Bull, Backstage Tour, and Dan gets WET!!!! Day Ten: The Wisconsin Dells, All About Bryan Day, and half-naked Fatties! Day Eleven: Valleyfair! FINAL DAY of the trip! Domo day, more food, and Renegade! Pre-Arrival - We arrived in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the evening and headed over to the Mall of America for dinner and shopping. I was excited to find a Famous Dave's there as I love eating their ribs at the Reno Rib Cook-Off. Little did I know that a year later we would be getting one in Reno!!!! It was excellent food. We then went and saw Inception in the D-box theater. The best way to describe D-box is like a very tame version of Sponge Bob or Shrek 4D. The seats are choreographed with the movie and move a little with the camera. They have an intensity setting so you can make it move less or stop moving if you start getting sick. We don't really recommend it. If it was a movie with planes or cars it would have been better, but it was a little odd to be moving with the camera in a movie like Inception. Another bad thing was that the seats were the very last rows of the theater so you were pretty far back. Also, the seats were taller than normal so short people like us had our feet barely touching the ground and it became a little uncomfortable. We watched the last show of the night, I think it was the midnight showing, so we didn't get out of the theater until after 2 am! At this point we had to exit out near the theater, which was on the other side of the massive mall! We had to walk really far to our hotel and it took us over 40 minutes! I thought for sure we were going to get mugged. Anyway, we woke up the next morning and met up with the Robb, Elissa, Kristen, and Dan, and headed back to the mall. We did a little at the park, walked around the mall, met up with other TPR members, did an Ikea run, and had a pre-arrival dinner! The dinner was incredible and I ate a ton! Since this is early in the trip, we hadn't decided on the 'theme' of the report yet so besides the fat ugly pictures of me, there is only one other 'fattie' picture. In the air leaving the 'beautiful' state of Nevada We arrived to see that MSP also has one of the M&M's like the Alvey's! See kids, this is why smoking is bad for you. We made it the mall for dinner and a movie! This is the directory for the mall. There were three panels of stores! Food may love Pepsi, but no one else does. We will see you tomorrow Sponge Bob! Time for Famous Daves! Up first was the Smoked Salmon Spread. Amy got the chicken and shredded pork. I got the delicious ribs and brisket. I was too slow to get a picture of the pecan pie. This was our second dinner, so we didn't eat too much. Had I known there was a Famous Dave's here, I would have saved up. Sitting in our D-box seats waiting for the movie. Yay, a backpack to match my nerdy shirt! (First nerd and ugly shot of the report!) I had a premonition that pictures with mustaches would be part of the trip. A shark backpack! I'm sure Dave would have had this bag when he was growing up. This greets you right at the entrance to the mall. Is this a TPR welcome or what! Sponge Bob welcomes everyone to Nickelodeon Universe! KidTums says hello to Sponge Bob and Patrick! KidTums is absolutely the cutest kid in the world! By Ming-Ming, your too slow. A tiny portion of the mall. They had MagiQuest. I've never done it, but I know a lot of TPR's love it. Show her how much you really love her. Hey, if she can fake it, why can't you! Family Foursome for only $26!? A family foursome in Reno costs a lot more, and has a whole different meaning! Nothing says Bad Attitude like colorful boxers! Congratulations Sir, your our first fatty! The Splat-O-Sphere was the middle-child of the drop towers. Not really tall enough for a drop tower, but much taller than a frog hopper. Tak Attack was sickening and fun! They have the Taito Drum Game!! This is the best game in any mall or theme park in America! Nothing says love from Minnesota like Loons, Walleyes, and Mosquitos? I definitely didn't think of a bean bag when I saw the stores name. Nothing else says love from Minnesota like a wedding chapel in a mall! Talk about classy! Yay, Dave meets up with us! Also, check out the people in the background! They look more like twins than Robby and Tyler, but these are even different genders!!!! Dan is drooling over the retro video game collection! They had so many rare and old games and systems. QVC @ The Mall? Doesn't that ruin the entire purpose? Next up was lunch at Tucci Benucch. I think this was a special appetizer of Gnocchi. This is all that was left of the scallops (I think). Dan gives my chicken the stink eye because it's so much better than his food. Amy decided to get a small pizza so she wouldn't ruin her appetite for dinner. We decided to take a tour around the park. We will see you at ERT Sponge Bob! KidTums enjoy the kiddie coaster, while Elissa really enjoys the kiddie coaster. If you take one more damn picture of me I will go Italian mob on you. When visiting Ikea, remember to leave your ho's outside. 54" is a standard height, but 37"? How do you decide that that is the number? Elissa's wedding night . (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist!) This was the largest fan I have ever seen. It was bigger than most airplane propellers. We missed the Blizzard truck! I would have eaten a ton of ice cream. I guess it was a good thing they were leaving. Definitely not the crap Pepsi. We played some games and won a bunch of Sharks! Got a little snack of smashed potatoes. We went back to the hotel for a little rest. Here are some of the TPR goodie bags. And here are even more! They probably pay more for the bag fees than the actual airline tickets! Kirsten played a game of super fast speed jumping over the Hanno and Joey monsters. Dan and I got the room ready for John's arrival. We wanted to head back to the mall, but we had to wait for Dan to recover from his diabetic coma. How rude. Back at the mall we check out the retro game store. They had a really cool NES, SNES, and Genesis all-in-one system! They had a Dave approved wall of Ice Bat and friends. We arrived for our pre-arrival dinner at CRAVE! It was incredible, and we ate an enormous amount. I think we took up 3 or 4 tables that were all this size. I think this was the Yellowtail appetizer. It was gone in a couple of seconds. (Sorry for the blurry pics, I promise they will get better.) The Tuna Tataki was also devoured in seconds. No clue what this was, but it was delicious. The Baked Crab & Artichoke was amazing! The Pesto Shrimp (Sautéed tiger shrimp, pistachio,pesto, oven-dried tomato, and crostini) = Heaven. That's it for the appetizers! Dan was disgusted at how much I ate. Amy got the obviously low-fat Baked Cheese Penne with shrimp. I decided on the small sample of Minnesota Walleye with grilled chipotle polenta, and braised red cabbage. It was a nice finish for a simple meal. Needless to say, I didn't have room for dessert. Time to head back through the closed park and on to our hotel for the night!

I am absolutely coming down there the next time they have it. That looked so incredibly amazing. Thank you for making my day!

Yeah, I couldn't remember what the statue was so I just threw that one out there. I'm waiting for Alfredo to come by and remind me.

Sorry for taking so long to start this up again. I've been job hunting and it's been taking all my time. Also, after having a fun video all put together, my movie program decided to crash and I lost half of my work so I will finish it later. Until then, here are some photos from our 'Culture Day' in Paris! I didn't really care for Paris too much. There was a lot of cool architecture, but it was extremely dirty. I've always heard how rude the French people can be, but I went in with a totally open mind. After three days in France, I can say that yes, they are extremely rude. Some people may say it's just because of cultural differences, but it's much different than, for example, people pushing to get on a train in Japan because that's what everyone does, but it isn't just cultural. Everyone has a 'Bryan' attitude, It's all about them ! At one restaurant it felt like we ruined the waiters night because we dared to show up and want to eat at his restaurant. Ok, enough of that. We didn't make reservations to go up the Eiffel tower (we should have), but the line for the stairs wasn't too long and gave us some nice exercise. The restaurant at the first level was incredibly good and much better than the French crap food we get in the states. The Arc de Triumphe was nice to sea, but we didn't go to the top because it didn't seem worth the price and time. The real surprise for us was the Louvre. We are not museum type people at all, but we easily could have spent two days at the Louvre. They had some incredible stuff there, and the pictures were enormous! I'm used to normal sized boring pictures at the museums here, but these were so massive and really impressive. Next we headed to Notre Dame, but we were too late to go inside, another thing we should have done. In all, it was fun day in Paris seeing all the tourist attractions. It was also nice to have a day to recover from all the concussions and brain damage I experienced on the TPR trip! After a very early train ride, we arrive in Paris, the city of awesome bakeries and rude people! This was the local boulangerie, and was incredible! If the French put just half of the awesomeness they put into baking into their personalities, France would be the greatest country in the world! Pretty much a chocolate croissant, and pretty much heaven. Bet no one in the world has this picture Proof we were there! At least for Amy. I don't think I have ever seen such a long line! Luckily, the line for the stairs moved pretty quickly. Looking up Eiffel's skirt. To the left are the stairs we had to walk up, and in the center is the slanted elevator shaft for the people that plan ahead! They had these advertisement pictures on the stairs like some SF parks, and adding how high we were in the air they made me lose my balance a bunch of times and I almost bit it. Halfway up to the first level. Everything was secure, but see through. It was pretty creepy for me, but not nearly as scary and the City Museum wire cages! This is just one half of the line! This looked like some dead body wrapped up, maybe it's for the Da Vinci Code 3? Amy is at the center of the railing, but you can get a sense of how high just the first level is. Nice view of the city. Looks like the Eiffel Tower got a little 'Rocky Mountain' treatment. There is no way this could stay up with how out of alignment it is! Nice shot of Amy and the city. A rare picture of me with Amy proving that she does allow me to be near her every once in a while. The food was amazing! Who knew that even something disgusting like deviled eggs could become incredible. I guess the crab instead of 'devil' does help a little This sign saved my life! They have almost no public bathrooms in Paris so I was very lucky to find this one. It ended up being one of those pay toilets that washes itself after every use so you have to wait forever! The Arc de Triumphe, you can go to the top but we didn't have the time or the money. Wait a minute, what country are we in again? Nice shot of the Arc. Alfredo approves of the Arc! Here you can get a sense of it's size. This was probably the most screwed up intersection I have ever seen, even worse than ones in LA! No one moved even 1 car length for 10 minutes! What you saw in the movie. What you didn't see, The APPLE STORE! Haha! The throne of some dude named Bacchus. They had a lot of interesting old stuff like this that was around when Jeff Johnson was growing up! The hallways and rooms of the Louvre were works of art themselves. Most of the ceilings had incredible art work. More 'ceiling' art. Here you can see the incredible detail, and this is just for the ceilings! Heading towards Lisa. The Louvre is somewhat U-shaped. Here you can see the other side of the museum and how incredibly huge it is! The Mona Lisa was nothing special at all, and was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I really liked these larger style pictures. The people who painted these, and so long ago without modern tools, were truly artists. There were many pictures that were even larger than this one! Alfredo, NOT Fernando, gets an up close look. This was shortly before he was tackled and tazed. The top of the Pyramid and the other side of the Louvre. I couldn't believe how much this painting looked like a picture. I have no clue who it is. Here is one of those larger pictures I mentioned. Props for the Raiders of the Lost Da Vinci Code movie coming out soon. A picture from an early TPR event. Kindle 1.0 I want this door when I am King. A Robb approved room. Another example of detailed rooms. Alfredo at the Louvre. We tried to find the statue of David, but go incredibly lost in the museum. Then they started closing and would just start shutting random doors and hallways so we got really lost. We never did find David, but that's another reason to go back! The Midget Arc. A favorite Hollywood location for car chases, murders, and running from danger. You would think that after WWI and WWII the French would have learned a little more about security than just having two guards and a little pole. Next we visited Quasimodo! In this area you are not allowed to hold your child's hand, but must let them run wherever you want. Does anyone have any clue what this sign is for? Amy at Notre Dame. Another nice shot that no one else in the world has! Too bad I ruined it with my stupid expression. Up close and personal with Notre Dame. I see Victor, Laverne, and Hugo, but no Quasimodo. *Newly Engaged!!!* Kristin and Andrew at dinner with the rudest waiter in the world!

I agree. The brown-nosers always ruin a good thing. Such as the people that sign off like Robb. Trent...tired of people copying Robb like it will help them become better friends with Elissa and he...Green Oh, are we not allowed to do that? I must have missed a new rules seminar or something. . That's a ridiculous generalization. Is anyone else utterly confused like I am? I'm getting a migraine reading this thread now.

I do not like the red car graphics at all! Looks like they are 3 decades behind.

The ACE events are completely separate from TPR events so they should have no impact whatsoever. I'm sure a MOD will be by shortly to verify.

^If only Kat had a truck like that....

Even if there are 5 times as many people this year for ERT it will still be INCREDIBLE! There was absolutely no wait on most of the coasters, and maybe one train wait on X2. Amy and I rode many coasters with 'maybe' 4 people on them. Honestly, even if it was on the 4th of July I would still go to WCB because of how incredible the event is. WCB is organized so perfectly that you have more than enough time to get in all the coasters multiple times, while waiting in almost no lines. In the middle of the day when the lines are the longest, guess what, you don't have to worry because your either on a tour, eating lunch, or in a nice air conditioned/heated theater for the presentation so you don't have to deal with the lines and you still have the most incredible ERT in the evening! If anyone is on the fence about going, just GO! There is a reason why everyone says it is the most incredible event, because it is!

There is a poll at about.com right now for Best New Water Park Ride for 2010. It's in the same group of polls that Robb has been mentioning. Wildebeest in running really close with Scorpion's Tail. If you also think Wildebeest should be number one, then vote HERE!

Thank you for this picture Robb. I just cried looking at that picture. How incredibly beautiful. October is too far away. I'm hoping to gain at least 20 pounds during that week.

I totally thought that too! I had to do a double take to see what it said. I have been around TPR too much! The food looks incredible as always!

Just saw The Chorus Line last night. Better than I thought it would be. A little slow at parts, but entertaining enough. The next one coming to town is Fiddle on the Roof.

I would totally talk your group into doing the Knott's event. It is an incredible event, and an incredible deal! You will absolutely hate being there on the same day and see all the things you are missing out on. You'll see us on ERT, tours, and a buffet lunch, and wish you were with us! As for payment, you would have to pay in advance using the options available on the registration (I think they were paypal or send in a check). So I "think" you could either pay with a credit card through pay pal, or have her mail in a check with her registration. However, remember that if she is not a TPR member, she has to be registered by a TPR member.

Here is the island. You can still see some left over stuff as you go past it on a boat.

^Yeah, I noticed that too. Also, I love how if you look at their "Sports" forum, there is only one thread. Nascar. ^^Search "too fat to ride coasters."

I have a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice, and a Master's in Business Administration.

I broke my left wrist snowboarding. It was my first day of snowboarding, and it was just 2 hours into the day. I had so much fun snowboarding that I have never gone skiing again. I also broke my left "pinky" toe in a motorcycle accident. Some stupid uninsured lady dropped her cigarette on her child so was leaning over to get it and didn't see me stopped at a stop sign. She hit me at about 45 mph, and I got launched about 50 feet backwards. Luckily, I got just a few scrapes and the broken pinky toe, but unfortunately, I still had to go to school the next day.

I have seen La Nouba and Mystere and absolutely loved them both. I also couldn't believe it, but Cirque's Quidam is coming to Reno! We never get any good shows here. Amy and I got tickets and can't wait!

Happy Birthday Forums. Thank you to everyone at TPR that made this happen! The forums really are awesome! Thanks to the TPR forums, me and my wife can actually say we have friends!

That is definitely true. It wasn't a situation like a lot of people are saying. The gunman didn't pull out the gun until they were all in a small back room with a closed door. He had been caught shoplifting and was taken to a back room. They had no idea he had a gun until they were all in the room. At that point, the guy pulled out the gun and said "don't make me do this." At that point it became a much more deadly situation. If he had ran in with a gun and held up the store I highly doubt the employees would have gone after him. However, after he was detained and then pulled the gun on them in very close quarters, the situation become highly dangerous. I would have done exactly the same thing. When you have someone detained and they pull a gun out the situation becomes a game of life and death. You have no clue if this is just some scared individual or an escape felon who will not be taken back to jail. At that point, you can't take a chance.

Russel's T-Shirt is awesome! I picked #2. The flat tire was awesome! I would totally do any trick for hot swedish teacher! Kid Tums is the cutest kid in the world! Can't wait for more!

^ It's pretty funny that one of their complaints is that Robb will just ban you if you don't agree with him, while they ban you if you just visit their site!

I'm sure Robb will respond to this soon, but you don't have to pay for the up-charge events/dining, and you would still have an incredible time. I know Disney also has up-charge items, and I'm sure the other cruise lines do as well. A vast majority of the food/events are included, but soda is rarely included, and alcohol never is included (as far as I know). Plus, the up-charges are usually extremely low, I think the one dinner on the report was $7. For that up-charge it would be like going from an Outback style steakhouse (still a very good place) to a Ruth's Chris. Don't let the up-charges deter you, you would still have an absolutely incredible time, with the best food/shows/games/activities even if you didn't do any up-charge events.