SLUSHIE

Not at all.

Haven't seen what your taking about but it sounds like one of these.

It's not a bad ride, and certainly higher quality than any of the older fantasyland attractions. It's just that it focuses more on the musical scenes of the movies rather than telling the story and it misses some of the key moments because of that, then the ending is just kinda slapped on there. Of course all the hardcore Disney fans are going to like the classic rides better, because they are Disney fans. These ride are made for kids though, and when people review things like this they always seem to leave out what kids think of it. I guarantee kids prefer the music over compressing the whole story of a Disney film into 2 minutes. Kids don't recite random dialogue but they certainly always seem to know the lyrics.

Solar Grill Here is a tricky or maybe easy one. This has two possible and completely different answers and I'll accept either.

How can they push back something that probably never existed in the first place? We are all roller coaster fans, so every time a park is supposed to get a new ride that is instantly what everyone assumes it's going to be. A hyper coaster has been the rumor for other CA parks in the past as well simply because that's what the vast majority of coaster fans want. Could they have put a coaster there? Sure. Was it ever going to be a hyper? Doubt it. If it does end up just being two flat rides, I would say it's a missed opportunity to make something truly great, but we still don't know what the plan exactly is. Flat rides can be really popular if done right.

Was watching the Thursday Weekend Update thingy and saw this attack add for the Galaxy S3. Pretty funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM&feature=player_embedded

I don't mean to be. I changed the only word that could be considered an attack, though it wasn't, to ignorant. I mean that in a 'blind' way not a 'unintelligent' way. The post Robb did which I think you directly linked to relates it to the whole Wii Remote thing, which I don't exactly agree with what he was saying there. The remote thing is purely an user accident, and then Nintendo tried to provide a answer to something that had to be addressed regardless of that. The antenna thing was an accident in design. Sure they used the excuse that it happens on antennas with all phones, the antenna on the iPhone at the time just happened to be in a poor location. Sure it got blown out of proportion and probably wasn't an issue most of the time, but with an already low signal, sweaty hands, or who knows what it probably did make a difference. To say that people were holding the phone wrong just means Apple didn't expect people to hold the phone a certain way, and that shouldn't be the users fault unless it was 100% obvious that you weren't supposed to hold it that way, which it wasn't. Also that post is over 2 years old and we know a lot more about it now. It's possible that Robb has even changed his opinion. Unless you have a first run iPhone 4 I expect you shouldn't have a problem, and even then it probably just depends on the phone. Just like the first run Xbox 360s, some have problems some don't. Anyways both of these things are totally pointless discussions now, lol. I should also add that my post about the maps was more in response to comments I have read elsewhere than anything anyone has said here.

I don't see anything too bad with those photos. Maybe when you start spinning it around it looks worse, but as far as those stills, I don't see any glitches that are any worse than you can get from normal satellite images.

You can't possibly see it that way. That was 100% a flaw in the phones design. Sure, you can still use Google Maps in the browser, but having to result to doing that is just plain stupid. I don't necessarily think Apple wanting their own maps is dumb (actually its a compilation of TomTom's maps and a few other companies Apple has acquired), Microsoft has their own, but they should have just waited and continued to use Google until it actually worked. The argument of 'give them time' is ignorant, you shouldn't be comfortable using inferior feature lacking software just because it's newer and hasn't been in development as long. What is dumb is that Apples grudge against Google is more important that providing quality software, whether it's 'theirs' or not.

This past Saturday was the final Indy Car race of the season. I guess because of the crash last year in Las Vegas they opted to go to the AAA track in Fontana, CA instead. I should start this TR by saying that I'm not a fan of any USA racing series, and know little of Indy Car. My parents have been to the Indy 500 multiple times (we have family in Indianapolis that were on the Indy 500 board), but I have never gone. I am a fan of many European series's however, from a young age I have been a World Rally Championship fan and in the past couple years become a fan of Formula 1. My Mom invited me to the race though (she is an avid NASCAR and Indy fan) and so I went. This was the first major series race I have been to, I had been to a NASCAR Busch series race at Sonoma (friends Dad got free tickets for buying gas or something) and I went to F1 Friday practice at Indianapolis while visiting family in 2005. I wasn't a F1 fan at the time, so I didn't care about not going to the race, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't anyways because that was the year of the tire fiasco. Here is a wiki link if nobody knows what I'm talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_United_States_Grand_Prix. On with the TR! The Sacramento Airport has a new terminal that isn't even a year old, and that is where Southwest is now. The check in area has this crazy polygonal rabbit thing. After landing and getting the rental car I drove out to Riverside where I was staying for the night. Anytime your driving in CA for an hour or more a In-n-Out stop is mandatory (for me anyways). Stopping somewhere like this is pretty mandatory also. They had some other things going on outside the track, but we arrived a bit too late to really look at much of it. What is crazy is the parking lot opened at 7am and the race wasn't till 5pm. There were some people tailgating, but not that many. They had a little drifting area setup to promote Formula Drift. I think at some Indy Car races they actually have competitions but here they were just doing it for fun. People were lining up to get rides. I don't know how much it costs or anything but they just did a quick figure 8 then swapped passengers. They also had an area setup for motorcycle jumping but I never saw anyone over there. There was a bunch of booths you could visit where you could get free pens and that sorta crap. Stuff I'm not interested at all. The AAA booth here was giving out soda can koozies, good thing security didn't allow metal or glass drinks inside. We went up to our seats in the stands, and off the back you could get an overview of the stuff going on in the parking lot. This RC truck course must have been entertaining. This guy was getting some EXTREME!!! closeups. There are currently 2 former F1 drivers in the Indy Car series. Takuma Sato who's best and only podium finish in F1 was 3rd at the 2004 USGP, and former Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello with 68 F1 podiums including 11 wins. Rubens' last year in F1 was 2011, and he hopped right into Indy Car for the 2012 season. They had this truck/stage out on the track which is where they introduced all the drivers and had some other things going on. I think in this photo they are about to do some taiko drumming, I have no idea why. Of course with any major sporting event, a jet flyover is mandatory. Here are the starting positions for all the cars. The only one I remember is that Rubens is number 8. Takuma was either 14 or 15. Here come the cars to start the first lap of the race. One thing (besides everything else) that I like about F1 over Indy is that F1 does standing instead of rolling starts. The big battle for the championship was between Will Power and Ryan Hunter-Reay. Will Power was who everyone (my Mom at least) was hoping would win. Last season I guess he would have won the championship if it weren't for them canceling the race after the crash. He would have won this year if he finished better than 6th (I think) but not even 1/3rd of the way though the race he basically took himself out by hitting the wall. So close yet so far once again. Since the race started at 5pm it got dark pretty quickly and taking photos became pretty hard. Since I didn't have a tripod I just started spraying and praying that one of them wasn't blurry. I had been paying attention to Rubens and rooting for him to place well, but shorty after Will Power crashed his car started to noticeably go slower and then suddenly his car was kinda on fire. He was up to 3rd at one point though. I was kinda bummed but obviously not as much as he was, I didn't really know who to pay attention to until the final laps of the race. For some reason they repaired Will Power's car and brought him back out on track, he only did a small number of laps before they pushed him back into the garage again. I have no clue what that was about. With about only 10 laps to go there was a pretty heavy crash by one of the cars and they red flagged the race. I noticed that every time there was some small incident on track they waved yellows and brought the safety car out. I kinda understand why, because the speeds are so high at every point of the track and after the cars spread out there is pretty much constant traffic. It's different from F1 though, because while yellows get waved all the time, its only for the speficic portion of track where the incident was, and if they bring the safety car out that means something totally bad happened. All the cars were brought into the pits. I don't think they had to red flag the race, but I think they did it because under yellow the laps count and with only 10 laps or so to go they didn't want the championship race to end that way. Ed Carpenter won the race, and the 2 Target cars 2nd and 3rd. Ryan Hunter-Reay came in 4th and secured the championship. After the race was over they opened up a gate and let everyone who wished go out on the track and view the ceremonies. For such an event I found it odd that very few people actually stayed and went out on the track. Since we were at the top of the stands (higher is better at a race) it took us a while to get down there and the winners circle was flooded with people. We decided to go over to the podium for the championship ceremony instead. Even this camera operator was having a hard time getting a good view. I have no idea what the hell that clown is for. The championship trophy! The NBC announcer and some other dude! Over at the race podium some confetti went off. Ryan Hunter-Reay made it to the podium and explained that none of this would have been possible without the power of lime! He then received his check for $1M, the amount every F1 driver gets for taking a crap. The trophy is apparently kinda heavy. One issue I have with Indy is that hardly any of the drivers are from the US. Indy doesn't only race on ovals but circuits as well, and there is almost no way for Americans to get into the sport. NASCAR is the only series in the USA that has a means for young drivers to develop their skills. Most of the Indy Car drivers are from Europe, and former American Indy Car driver Danica Patrick was actually raised in Europe so she could compete in the smaller racing series. I guess having an American win the championship was a big deal even though its a USA series. While I'm not a fan of Indy and pointed fun at it sometimes, I still had fun and it was entertaining even though I was pretty lost as far was what was happening. If you get the chance to go see a race you should try it. We were sitting in the most expensive seats and it was only $50. Indy Car is making progress in increasing it's popularity. Until this year all the cars were exactly the same and all used Honda engines. There are now multiple engine manufactures involved again and there are plans in the future to allow teams to make chassis modifications (they are still are all the same, yet brand new for this year). F1 is trying to make a comeback in the US aswell though. This November will be the first F1 race in the US since 2007 at a brand new track in Texas, and with yet another race outside New York for 2013. It will be interesting to see what happens with the popularity of Indy and F1 in the coming years. After the race we stopped at El Pollo Loco and this kitty greeted us in the drive though. I checked into a hotel in Irvine and found this misspelled sign amusing. Something I would do. I checked signs on other floors and they were all correct. The next day I had planned to go to Magic Mountain but didn't feel like getting up and making the drive, so I slept in what seemed like 5 minutes and made the pretty much equidistant drive to Carlsbad. I probably should have gone to MM but at least I got a new pair of shoes. The day after (Monday) I went to Disneyland to check out Cars Land for the first time. Didn't take many photos but I think most of us have seen it enough already. On Tuesday before flying out I stopped at Farrell's. I guess these used to be all over the place but they all closed down. They recently started opening some new stores. Recommended.

That paint seen on Vortex is probably just to test those areas for fractures. There is special paint that can highlight cracks and that's probably why its all over areas that are welded. Maybe it will be painted but I don't think that specific paint or color is final paint.

Went to the park today and the crowd wasn't bad but it was more crowded than I would have thought. We were able to get on pretty much all the major rides at both parks. It was my first time riding ghost galaxy and while it was cool it really is a minor change. Racers is fun and I made it on it 4 times. Single rider is the best. It's pretty much exactly what it appears to be from the videos and pictures. One thing I did dislike is the windshield. I found myself trying to look around it most of the time. Being someone that normally wears glasses, I found it to be like looking through dirty smudged up lenses. I'm sure the Test Track windows were the same in that regard but there isn't necessarily anything worth looking at on that ride. About the thrill factor, I actually found it more thrilling than Test Tack. Yes it goes slower, but it has some floater air that Test Track doesn't. The inside line on the banked turns also has a little dip that is kinda fun. After closing... or around closing it broke down and half of the people I went with were stuck on it. We split up because they wanted to watch World of Color and we went on Tower of Terror. While waiting for them to get off the ride, a nice man gave us his "Magical Yellow Cut the Line" piece of paper he got from the ride breaking apparently down earlier. We were able to go up the exit and they let us right into the line at the merge point. It was probably a half hour after park closing before it got going, and there was plenty of people still in line. Didn't go on either of the other Cars rides, but Luigi's looked just as boring as everyone says it is. The line for it was about 60 minutes when we went to look at it, and there was 3 or more empty vehicles, not sure what that was about because they seemed to be floating around just as well as the ones with people in them trying to make them do something. What was funny is that when I was waiting in the single rider for soaring the op counted wrong and when I went inside I didn't have a seat, so I had to go back out. Then I was standing in the pre show staging area all by myself for a while and then Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters and his family walk in through some other entrance. So that was cool but my group ended up getting split up over 3 shows and that kinda sucked. Here is the ride count for the day. Racers x4 Screamin x2 Tower of Terror x3 Soarin Mermaid Toy Story Star Tours Matterhorn x2 Pirates Haunted Mansion Splash Space Buzz Big Thunder Didn't get a photo with Dave Grohl in line, but I got a creepy over the shoulder shot of him doing what all cool people do, stare at their phone.

It hasn't even been a year since Jobs died (almost but not quite). The iPhone 5 and some other products that are in the pipeline are things that surely would have already been in development. Yeah He is not around any more, but Apple is hardly in a 'post Jobs era' yet. Sure Apple can continue to make high end user friendly products, but innovation it what got them to where they are. They completely revolutionized the music industry and the phone industry, then was one of the first into the whole tablet thing. I'm not saying they aren't ever going to come out with anything innovative ever again, but it seems like the iPhone 5, and some of the rumored products coming in the near future (iPad mini) are just to make sure that they aren't stuck without something that other provide. Sure they can continue to cash in on the train they started, but this business is all about staying ahead of the curve and at this specific moment it just seems like they are playing catch up.

First Apple sues Samsung for copying their devices, then they release a new phone with new software that copies from everyone else. Apple has lost it's innovative lead, sell your stock now!

I love the way the cabin actually moves upwards as it fell.

Do they allow you to print tickets at home and go right to the gate or did they skip that step? Kinda cool, but I know a number of people that prefer to leave their phones or anything else they are afraid to loose or get wet on a water ride in the car. Honestly I would just rather have a printed copy regardless.

I wouldn't mind if the tram tour went away, other than Catastrophe Canyon it's pretty dumb. The pre show area alone would clear up a lot of space. I remember when the Tram actually drove though the production area, through the suburbia street, and then around the New York area which is now a footpath. Really if it weren't for Disaster at Universal this attraction would seem pointless. Now you just drive around and pass some vehicles n things that anyone under 20 has no clue what they are, through the costume warehouse that I have never actually seen anyone doing anything inside for a long time, and Catastrophe Canyon. I also remember the walking tour that went though the production buildings, but I think they got rid of that just before or after Millionaire was built. The last time I remember going though there was when you could see them building the set for Millionaire. I remember seeing the sets from Dalmatians, and then they had a little interactive Home Improvement set of the backyard fence in a warehouse full of tons of props including Johnny 5!!

They randomly changed the closing time from 8pm to 9pm next Monday, IDK if I should see that as a good or a bad thing.

I'm assuming they are donating the cars that were recently removed? Still cool, but I would think the 'holy grail' would be the vehicles that it opened with. not the ones from the late 70's

I think these awards try to celebrate the 'other' parks, but then the fact that places like Disney and Universal and the other big known around the world parks and rids are even on the list just makes these seem inaccurate. I guess just because the major parks are the most visited in the world doesn't mean they are the best, but there is some sort of correlation there.

Aww why are they destroying the buoy? I'd have taken it for the front yard!

The Horror Nights theming reminds me of some of the set elements that were built for the Avengers movie. So I'm assuming the fake train engine will be going away and that space used for a real train station? Will be interesting how smooth going from one park to the other via the train when this is done. I imagine it will just have some attendants and turnstiles like the entrance to the park does. Maybe this could turn out to be an example for building a monorail station in place of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire building, but I doubt it.

Considering that the 'Rocky Mountain Treatment' seems to cost somewhere around 10mil I guess they thought that the 10mil would be better spent towards something else, if they even did look into it.. Since the retrofit uses existing supports and footers, they would be forced to follow the route of the giant helixes that weren't all that entertaining in the first place. While they do make drastic changes to the ride, the possibilities here might not have been all that great.

I didn't know so much of the ride had been changed since opening. I thought it was strange that the bottom of the first drop was so high up, but now I know it originally went much lower. It seems like many of the giant wooden coasters of that era had to change a lot because of how uncomfortable they became or because of wear on the track.

The thing about building rides taller is that the increase in speed from the added height isn't all that huge. Here is a dumb graph to show what I mean. You can see that tripling the height doesn't even double the speed. It has a lot to do with wind resistance and wheel diameter. For instance, TTD goes 120mph on the way up the tower, and then crawls slowly over the top, the speed coming down on the other side probably is in the realm of 100mph even though the distance traveled on the way up and down is pretty much the same, it doesn't get all it's speed back. So when looking at a coaster like Leviathan, if B&M was to build a coaster 400' tall, the 2nd hill wouldn't be all that much taller than Leviathan's 2nd hill because so much speed would be scrubbed off by wind resistance and friction from the small wheels. Train design would have to change drastically in order to achieve higher speeds. They would have to be much more aerodynamic and have larger diameter wheels. Then in the interest aerodynamics you might as well make it enclosed, but doing that would just ruin a large part of the experience.