SLUSHIE

Anyone that read the Snowboarding/Skiing thread might have seen my post about me going on a trip to Colorado, I just got back from that trip. I live less than an hour from the snow of Tahoe, but it was time to branch out a bit. Other than one trip to Mt. Bachelor when I was a kid (I was actually DEATHLY sick with an allergic reaction on that trip and went out maybe 1 day. I spent more time at the hospital), I haven't really snowboarded outside of California. While the snow is actually much better here at the moment, it was still nice to get out of CA and experience some new mountains. Just a few days before the trip the forecast said there was going to be a couple of inches every day, but as it got closer that disappeared and it only snowed maybe an inch one of the days. What was correct about the forecast though was the temperatures. Sunday-Tuesday it was colder than -10F during the day and in the -20s at night. Seriously freaking cold. Since Southwest doesn't fly directly to Denver from Sac we had to stop at Robb's favorite place in the world, LAX. While I have been to LAX a few times before I'm not really sure what terminal I was at, but I must say it was old and crappy. The the couple of bars in the area actually had tube TVs. A Denver football game was going on, and since Denver was where we were going, there was a lot of fans that wouldn't pull themselves away from those awesome TVs and the flight was late taking off. Shortly after taking off news spread like wildfire though the plane that they lost. If you look along the trailing edge of the wing you can make out the Hollywood sign, hardly. Denver had a light dusting of snow all over it Saturday night/ Sunday morning. We stayed fairly close to the airport for one night before heading into the mountains. Coming back to Denver a week later all this snow was completely gone. The parking lot had 2 more of those horse trailers in it. Not sure why, I didn't see a single horse. This is the view of the pool area from the balcony. We were on the 2nd floor, but the balcony was only a few feet off the ground. The 1st floor is actually the parking garage and some hallways that connect some of the buildings together. So while the pool was technically in a different building, we could walk under the ground to the pool area without going outside. The pool was indoor/outdoor and was said to be heated to 90, but it didn't seem that warm to me and when going though the threshold outside it was noticeably colder (It was -10 after all). I didn't spend much time in the outdoor portion. Looking to the right of the previous picture. Parking and walkways are underneath this area. On Monday we spent our first day skiing at the resort we were staying at, Breckenridge. This day was really really cold and it was around -15 on the mountain. The coldest temps I have ever been out in. Luckily I had plenty of layers and some heaters in my boots. It wasn't at all windy so it really wasn't all that bad, there were only a few times sitting on the chair where I really felt all that cold, besides my face that is. There isn't too much snow on the ground in Colorado right now, so many areas of the resorts weren't open. Breckenridge has the highest chairlift in North America, but it wasn't operating. This rope tow was the highest you could get. Photo of me from the top of the rope tow. On the way down from the rope tow there was actually a little nice area where you could do a bit of tree skiing. It was short lived though as the rope tow isn't too long and I only did it once, since when on a snowboard rope tows are the devil. The next day we decided to take a break since Monday was going to be the same temps, and On Tuesday it was supposed to warm up significantly (POSITIVE 20s). We decided to do some touristy stuff instead. The town of Breckenridge is a pretty cool area. The other Vail resorts all have "Villages," which are pretty much outdoor malls with condos around it. Breckenridge though is a real historic mining town. It really reminded me of Old Sac and places like that. One thing I noticed was all the T-shirt shops. There was millions of them and they all had the same T-shirts. Since the resorts in the area are all named after the towns there was a lot of "bootleg" shirts since the names were public domain. For dinner we went to the Breckenridge Brewery restaurant. Had to get the sampler of course. I'm a huge wheat beer fan and I really enjoyed their Agave Wheat which is produced with agave nectar instead of sugar. For food I got a bacon and blue cheese burger which was AMAZING. On Wednesday we went to Beaver Creek. This resort was super nice. The place we were staying has a little ski shop and when asking the guy working there for tips n stuff he said he liked Beaver Creek the best because you can go fast there. My thing is going fast as well and the guy was certainly right. The runs here were really wide and had a fairly constant slope compared the Breck. It was also a fairly easy place to navigate. Beaver Creek ended up being the best of the resorts I thought, and it also happened to have the best snow as an inch or two of fresh snow dropped overnight. Amazing. Something I thought was cool that many of the resorts had was ice carvings. This is something we don't have in Tahoe at all since it easily gets into the 40s on the average sunny day. On Thursday we went to Vail. While its THE VAIL of Vail Resorts, I actually liked it the least of the 4 Colorado mountains. The place was super confusing and had flat trails all over the place to get around. 2 of the 3 people in my group (myself included) actually got lost. I can see how this place could be amazing on a powder day though (just imagine fluffy powder all over that hill) but since there was no powder, it sucked. This is actually the back side of the main hill, and it was the side the sun hits. At the bottom it was bare spots galore. This is the ice rink in the newer of the two Vail villages (yes they have 2 malls, it's ridiculous). What was also pretty lame at Vail was the parking. There are parking garages that are owned by the city and they gouge skiers like crazy to park there. Parking in them for a day of skiing costs $25. It's free from 3pm to 3am though. It's incredibly lame. Another ice carving at Vail.

When I was younger I was skateboarding around the side of the house and as I was going though the side door I had my hand on the door frame and the wind blew the door shut on my hand and I broke/ripped one of my fingers off. In 2005 I was snowboarding for the first time that season and for the first time on my new board and caught my heel edge while going super fast and broke my right arm/wrist. Then another pencil story. On the first day of 2nd grade I somehow stabbed myself with a pencil in the palm of my right hand and the tip of the pencil broke off in my hand. It's still there.

I can kinda see how they could make Colossus into one track, but hopefully they keep it as two. If they did make it one track, the structure in most places would be over engineered as it is built to hold two trains at the same time. Hopefully the re-do would create enough new ridership where they would run both sides... at least for a while. Some people said make one side all metal and the other the partially wood track, I think that's kinda a neat idea but might not really make the experience different enough. As we have seen the capability of the partially wood track is essentially the same as the steel. The actual feel of the track might be significantly different, but nobody can really say fore sure quite yet as they only coaster fully built like that isn't open yet. One thing they could do, to give themselves a reason (like they would) to run both sides as often as possible, is to make the layout of both sides a bit different. Colossus as it is now is a pretty mellow coaster, so maybe they could make one side less extreme and closer to it's classic self, and the other side the one with more airtime and the barrel roll. This would effectively make each track a different ride and experience and more of a reason to run both all the time. Honestly they could actually keep one side mostly original. Actually that would be pretty awesome.

While I do think something similar will eventually take place of all paper fast passes, I don't think the fact that people staying off property don't get this really means that much. People staying on property probably spend much more time at Disney World, if not all their time. Also I think the people that decide to stay on property also have a bit more disposable income and are probably less restrictive with their cash than people that go the cheaper route and look for cheap hotels off property. So I don't think it's a matter of they don't get these things, it's probably more that they don't need them. They won't need Disney transportation, they wont need to get things they bought with their wristband sent to their hotel room because they won't be buying much stuff, they don't need a easy means of getting reservations at the restaurants because they wont be eating out as much, etc. It's giving the people that have the cash to take advantage of it more reason to do it and spend more cash. I honestly don't think this will effect rides negatively at all. As far as shows though, it's pretty rare that you won't get into a show or be able to watch a parade or fireworks if you want to. The fastpass+ people just get to fight among each other for a better spot.

In the military they use "Go Bags." In the SEALs and other operation forces notification of a mission can come pretty much at the last second, so they keep bags full of all the gear they will need for any given mission in a bag where they can just grab it an go. It's a pretty go idea to have a similar bag for yourself with normal survival gear, especially if you live in a tornado, hurricane earthquake, etc zone. It's also a good idea to have a small kit with a number of things in your car. If you travel, it's also pretty handy because a lot of the things you would take with you on a vacation are already packed and ready to go. Just make sure to take out the knife first.

I think it would be nice if they also were in normal plastic cards with a notch in them, then people could hang them on their lanyards or on a retractable reel. That way they would pretty much work like a employee badge used to open doors and whatever. I think its pretty funny that they are going to sell accessories for these things, kinda like how they sell pins for lanyards or something.

There is no way this could suck if it's true. Hopefully the station would get a decent renovation too.

This really does look like a logo for a Whole Foods competitor or something. The logo is obviously supposed to convey coaster track as well as plant life, but the roller coaster/theme park aspect is way to subtle, its almost not really there. I don't get what is wrong with their type only logo.

Yet another SFDK inversion.

That's pretty much how it works. The chip in the band contains nothing but a unique identifier which is just numbers n whatnot that is used to associate the wristband with data stored in the database. There is no way to obtain personal information from the wristband itself. If someone did manage to make a 'copy' of the wristband, they might possibly be able to use it to enter the park and make small purchases under $50 that don't require the PIN (at Disney that wont get you very far), and that's probably not all that worth it to most thief's. They might also be able to use it to get into peoples hotel rooms, assuming they knew which room it was. Since all this info is also accessible though web apps though, that's where the real danger always is. If their site is susceptible to injection, all kinda of data could be retrieved that way. An example of that being when people got credit card info an whatnot of users off the PlayStation network. I think the wristband makes perfect sense for kids, but I personally wouldn't want to wear one on my wrist for my multiple day vacation at Disney World. I'm not a jewelry person and I can't stand wearing a watch or anything like that. I don't care if I have to pull it out of my pocket every time or awkwardly 'hump' the reader, I'm not going to be putting that thing on my wrist.

I was wondering how they were going to make sure kids always have their 'ticket' on them. Normally parents hold on to their kids tickets in fear of them loosing it, and I guess the wrist band solves that problem.

Families with 'tweens' and teens go on vacations too (it's pretty much what IOA was built for).

I think it taking the place of whats left of Lost Continent would make sense attraction wise. I could really see how they could make a new show out of this, but then that really is too close to Potter land. Who says they are actually going to make a big themed land around this though? It could just be something in a sound stage in the Studios parks. I'm not a fan, but I really do think this is super close to Harry Potter. Sure there are differences but they both revolve around magic and wizards and all that other nerdy stuff. I think I've only seen one movie each of the Harry Potter and LOTR trilogies, and have no plans to see the Hobbit. Maybe this could be a replacement for the Marvel stuff, but then would give the majority of the park a pretty similar feel (Potter, Jurassic park, Lost Continent, and Port of entry) and I'm not sure how they would put a spin on the existing attractions. I don't think that is likely though and even though the content is tied to Disney now I think it's still the 2nd most popular area of the park.

Really nice to see Disneyland getting a proper show again. For me these things are kinda a one time thing (or never in some cases, I've never seen the Aladdin show at DCA or Nemo at AK). I know many people like shows though, and it's one of the things that gets high praise at WDW and DL really lacks.

Toe Turns are the hardest thing for a beginner. It would be pretty amazing if you were able to do toe side turns and link turns in 3 hours. That really doesn't sound ideal for lessons, but really when it comes down to it it's more just trying over and over again than someone telling you what to do and then you'll be able to do it. I mean I skied for a long time, but I have never taken snowbaord lessons. I have 'taught' a number of people though and really it's more about knowing a few key things and then just getting up there and trying until you figure it out. Like STR8FXXXINEDGE said, snowboarding is much easier with some speed. I laugh every time I go by the bunny slope and see all the people trying to make turns while hardly moving. Keeping your balance and making a turn like that is super super hard for a beginner to do. Basically I just take people to the bunny hill for one or 2 runs to get aware of their edges and show them how to stop, then I'll take them to a small hill where they can practice sliding with one foot in so they don't fall getting off the chair. After that its pretty much just them trying to do it until they get it themselves and helping them out if they are doing something obviously wrong. Then later on we can go back to the bunny hill and laugh at the people trying to balance on a knife edge while standing still. As far as keeping on an edge at all times, boards are pretty forgiving nowadays when it comes to that. Most snowboards now are reverse camber and have raised contract points which makes it a bit less easy to catch an edge. contact points are the widest part of the snowboard. Basically where the orange and yellow meet in this picture. In the old days (pretty much just like 5 years ago) almost all snowboard were positive camber, which means if the board was set down on a flat surface only the contract points would be touching. Now most boards are opposite and only the middle is touching (though there are all kinds of hybrids and other crap. The Burton rental boards are actually completely flat). It makes it much easier to keep the board flat and not catch a tip. I always tell beginners to keep their board perfectly flat when getting off the lift. Once they get down the ramp to a flat part they might start to spin around but at that point they can usually just hop off onto their foot. One you get better though and start going fast or over bumps its a pretty good idea to always keep on an edge because it's not worth risking it and it will really really hurt. I Ride a board that is completely flat between the feet with raised tips and I pretty much only have the board flat when sliding into the lift line or getting off the chair (plus on rails n stuff). There are more times where I would be able to but since I started snowboarding on positive camber better judgement tells me not to. You can read more about reverse camber here in the banana technology section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lib_Technologies

Snowboarding is the best thing in the world (sorry rollercoasters). I have lived in the Tahoe area most of my life, and my parents started me skiing at the age of 2. I switched to snowboarding in High School and haven't put skis on since. I'm actually spending new years eve snowboarding then going to watch the fireworks, then spending the night in a cabin. I'm going to snowboard on new years day as well (we'll see how that goes). I'm pretty excited as in a couple weeks I'm going on my first real 'ski trip' to Colorado. I've never been anywhere outside CA/NV and OR. I will be going to some of the Vail resorts and maybe some other ones as well. If anyone has any tips about those mountains let me know.

Sure Disney has been using it for other systems, but those are things that were probably used by a few hundred people a day, and not hundreds of thousands. Also those are things that aren't absolutely essential to the operation of the resort. At a ski resort a majority of the guest purchases are food. There really isn't a huge merchandise market like there is at a theme parks with all the toys n crap. They do sell ski's and clothes and those sorts of things, but those are hardly impulse buys. So I mean that since I bring my lunch I don't have much experience with the 'Resort Charge' feature. jray21, I'm not saying that they will implement some sort of tracking thing like what Vail has, but what Disney has revealed about the system could have been done with basic magnetic stripe card. So far many of the places it's been put to use the person has to actively hold their pass within inches of a reader, that isn't all that more convenient than swiping a card like a credit card. Where RFID really has benefits is when the user doesn't have to actively do anything other than walk by a sensor or whatever. For instance if the Vail tracking system required everyone to stop and swipe their card every time they rode a chair, that would be plain stupid, but with RFID people don't have to do anything at all. Magnetic stripe cards are more secure to, since a sly person has to have direct access to the pass to obtain it's info. Someone with some soft of scanning device (security would hopefully catch stuff like that) could unknowingly get someones info from RFID. The info associated with it is nothing more than some obscure ID number, but they could possibly use it to break into peoples hotel rooms. The way they are using RFID right now doesn't really seem to warrant it's use with such a security flaw. Maybe there will be more to the system, maybe there wont. With what I've read about the system though, they really haven't implemented anything that hugely benefits from RFID which makes me think they might have chosen it to allow for other features over the years.

*shakes head* *face palm* *insert any other internet meme here for amazingly stupid thing said that I'm in disbelief over* I don't get it... While the clientele may be different your actually much more likely to be stabbed on a ski bus.

Well I just meant that they are further ahead in the fact that their system has been in use now for a couple years across 7 resorts in two states. Disney is just now getting theirs up and running. No doubt the Disney system is more complex and will become even more so, but they have different requirements and the Vail system is more complex in ways that the Disney system probably won't be. Theirs has heavy social media integration. I also forgot that you can use your season pass for purchases, but that actually isn't unique to their RFID system and have been doing it for a long time with their old magnetic stripe cards. They also have some sort of bonus system in place with that, but I always brown bag it so I don't care or know much bout how that works.

I really hope so, the Fastpass system wouldn't be able to work exactly as it does now, but I think there really must be a plan to 'digitize' the whole thing and get rid of those stupid pieces of paper. I just made connections to the ski industry in another thread, and it applies here too. The ski industry is actually pretty far ahead when it comes to ticketing systems like this. All Vail resorts use RFID passes, even if your buying a single day ticket they give you a plastic card with a RFID chip in it. When you get to the bottom of a lift there are 'scanners' which are people with hand held devices that they wave at you and if your pass is good, your good to go. No gates or turnstiles or anything and you actually don't even need have to have your pass out. You just simply point to which pocket or whatever it's in and it pulls up your photo (if it's a season pass) on their PDA. Whats great about it for daily pass people is that if they keep their card and decide to ski another day (at any Vail resort) they just hop on the computer and type in the number on their pass and it adds another day and they don't have to wait in line or print a ticket out or anything. Another HUGE benefit to the system, is that every single lift has these archways that you go though for a feature called 'Epic Mix.' (stupid name and I still have no idea what it's supposed to mean). This system keeps track of every chair you rode for the day for the whole season (and multiple seasons) and you can earn pins for doing things like riding the same chair so many times in a row, or riding one chair and then the next chair ridden being one that is completely on the other side of the mountain, stuff like that. It's actually pretty cool. There are also photographers on the mountain that can take your photo, scan your pass and the photos are then available online for you to share on Facebook n stuff for FREE. You can also buy a high res version for a ridiculous price. Something that is new this year and completely AWESOME is that they are setting up race courses, and then your time is uploaded to an online leader-board. FRICKEN SWEET! Another benefit to the system is that with the app, you can see that last chair a family member or friend rode if you get lost or separated and their phone died or something. The real reason behind the system though is that they know exactly how many people are riding what lift how many times... at what time of the day and all that crap. It's super useful information for them to have when it comes to knowing what lifts are more popular, and if maybe they need to build a new lift in an area to help thin out the crowds, or maybe if a lift could even be closed at certain times due to lack of ridership (lets you know if its actually different people riding it rather than the same 20 people over and over). This pins are also a form of crowd control. There are a number of pins that are like 'ride Arrow after 3pm' or stuff like that as a means to get people on a certain area of the mountain that people wouldn't be otherwise, or when the vast majority of people would normally be eating lunch.. The whole thing is pretty genius. Maybe Disney wont take it quite that far, but they certainly could, and knowing exactly what specific people are riding rather than just numbers like they have now could be really useful to them. Anyways as far as Fastpass+ goes, I really do think this is a trial run or something more.

I doubt these are brand new, they must have gotten them from the city or something. I really don't think loading and unloading will be too much of a problem. The Ski resort I worked at and have been going to for over 20 years has been using similar buses for the past 5+ years. That's people carrying Skis/Snowboards, poles and all kinds of other equipment. It really isn't ideal for them though since the seats are configured like a normal bus so many times seats are left empty or people are forced to stand just because of how much extra crap people have. The ride from the parking lot to the stop at the village is literally over a mile too. What does suck though is that there are multiple stops, and sometimes it can be super hard for people to get off. I've actually had to stand in the doorway once and had to keep getting off and back on to let people out. This couldn't possibly be any worse than that.

I'm sure there must be a separate limit for the number of Fastpass+ so that there wouldn't ever a scenario where there are no Fastpasses available because all the Fastpass+ people happened to choose the same time window. The coaster looks awesome, and I'm not sure if people are thinking that 50-60 feet is short, but remember it's a kids ride and not meant to be a big roller coaster to battle Big Thunder... or even Barnstormer probably. While it's not small, I think in the real world it will be smaller than it looks to be in the renderings. I'm sure this thing will pick up a bit of speed, but it will probably be more like Paris' Casey Jr. than anything else.

These games that have been popping up at MK, and at Aulani and on the ships seems really cool. I haven't been able to try one yet. Hopefully the team that works on these will do a project in California Adventure or Disneyland. Also I would think Animal Kingdom would be perfect for something like that. The fact that there is no barricade or whatever at the entrance now just seems super odd to me. I know there are other parks like Hershey that don't have any turnstiles, but parks without something to keep people from running though are pretty uncommon. if they don't think it's a security issue to not have them, then the reason that they did have them must have purely been for counting attendance. It makes we wonder why the old ticket system wasn't capable of that, or if it was, why they felt the need to have them in the past.

Not to disagree with you, I wouldn't count them twice in my total either, but I personally take note of whether I rode it before and or after a significant rebuild like what Space Mountain went though and what Big Thunder will be going though. The best sort of analogy I can think of for where I'm coming from has to do with rebuilding cars. When a car is restored it is considered an original as long as it has the original chassis. Literally EVERY other part on a car can be replaced and it will still be considered the same car, once the chassis is replaced it is no longer the original car even if literally EVERY other part of the car is the original part. So no matter how many times a race car has crashed and the engine, body panels and suspension have been replaced dozens of times, it's still the same car as long as it's the same chassis. So with that same sorta idea applied to coasters, re-tracking: same ride. new trains: same ride, complete reconstruction of every single component: different ride. I know where your coming from, since it's the same layout in the exact same location, but from an engineering standpoint it is completely new (even if it were to be built to the exact same specification) and that is why I make note of it.

Downtown Disney has needed something like this for a long time. There are other things around the resort that are kinda in the same category as this, like mini golf and Disney Quest, but the location is more convenient than the mini golfs, and this will have more family appeal than Disney Quest. This is the perfect thing for families to do on their arrival or departing day.