ChrisFL

yeah, thats why I said ballpark

I want to go to Japan very badly....any idea on any ballpark cost figure? I'd also have to factor in flying across country too!!

About a year ago, I participated in a supervisor training program in which we were each given two hours to come up with a new ride for either USF or IOA and then pitch it to a panel of upper management types. Of course, it was just "for fun." Nothing that would ever get built. But it was still the coolest training exersize ever. Anyway, of the dozen or so people in the program, three pitched almost identical "dueling rocket coasters themed to The Fast And The Furious," and all placed them behind BTTF. Me, I pitched an indoor swinging ship with a Viking theme between Mythos and the Enchanted Oak, and emphasized how affordable it would be to build. I won, too. (At least, that part of the program.) I have no real point. Except maybe that the whole "dueling rocket coasters themed to The Fast and the Furious" thing is a bit pedestrian. I came up with a different idea...F&F Drifting ride....take something like "the whip" where your car is on a track and at different points it whips around, or drifts for a few seconds on every turn...could make for an interesting ride.

There's only one word I can think of right now.... "ARMAGEDDON!!"

Hmm, maybe that name changed, I thought it was all part of World Expo back when USF was new (and some of that wasnt open yet)

The theme of the area is pretty generic..."World Expo" can mean a lot of things...I mean you have MIB, BTTF, Animal Planet, Fievel, Curious George and E.T., I dont' see any regular theme there. Here's a link to the overhead view of the area...they have a TON of room bck there beside MIB and behind BTTF: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.494074,59.941406&q=Islands+of+adventure&ie=UTF8&ll=28.480273,-81.466638&spn=0.002405,0.003659&t=k&om=1

I disagree about theming not making the ride, look at the Mummy, it's just an indoor coaster that stops a lot but add all of the theming and fire, etc. and it becomes so much more. Also I've never been to Cedar Point, but IOA has some of the best food I've had anywhere. Busch Gardens being on the Florida trip adds a lot of coasters as well, they now have 7 coasters (or 8 if you include the wild mouse).

Don't knock it until you've tried it. I've been on Spiderman, Dinosaur and Indy at DL... the list goes: 1.) Spiderman 2.) Indy 3.) Dinosaur Dinosaur is jumpy and seems to be fast moving, but is way too dark and just not as much fun as the other 2. Indy is fun but I thought it seemed a bit short, definitely close to as much fun as Spiderman though.

The WildCat at Herhseypark...went when it first opened, hurt like hell, went several years later hoping it may be different...it was worse. And I think it's worse than Gwazi...I can still ride Gwazi.

Yep, Revenge of the Mummy's Fake Unload is pretty harsh, and also the Flying Uniccorn...plus Scorpion at BGT, I mean BGA

I think 7 days at WDW is fine, if you want to relax and enjoy everything at your own pace...plus theres a lot more to do at WDW than just theme parks, there's the Boardwalk, Downtown Disney with DisneyQuest, mini golf courses, and lots of other stuff. 3 days at USF is also good for a relaxing time especially with front of the line access.

That Shamu Express from those pics layout looks a lot like the Flying Unicorn's layout

I ride coasters like I drive cars.. with white knuckles, and no pants on...

Universal might have big plans but being bought and sold constantly isn't helping them PAY for those big plans

Sorry I couldn't make it out there, had some major personal issues with a friend I had to help out that day...long story. Anyway, I'll catch you guys the next time you're in O-Town!!

There's a 50/50 chance I'll be there.

IMO it's better than some newer B&M's like Kraken, and it's still one of my favorites, must do every time I go to BGT (oops, BGA)

I went with a friend to the Fantasia mini golf course at WDW last weekend, did the "hard" course and it definitely wasn't easy. It also wasn't themed at all, unlike the "easy" course which is better for the kids. Has anyone been to any really good and different mini golf courses?

Yeah, what's funny about missing Smart Watermelon is I asked the CM working there about it and she was upset too saying she always drinks it first thing in the morning! She said they were just getting a delayed shipment of it.

Sorry, no pictures Last week I was emailing a friend and former co-worker named Tim, and he mentioned he wanted to see EE since it had just opened. I'd been wanting to go back to WDW for a while anyway, so we set out to at least get to AK, MGM and Epcot, not knowing if the Spring Break crowds would be too much to handle. So I ordered park hopper passes with the Florida Resident rate for $66. I think to see 3-4 parks in one day it's not a bad deal. Saturday night we went to Boardwalk and ate at that microbrewery place since ESPN club was packed, then started out early the next morning First Stop, AK, there at park open, 8:00 AM, I'd been reading about the best strategy to get to EE when the rope drops, and it WORKED. Employees were telling guests to go through Asia to get there, but even though I had never been to AK before, I trusted what I'd been reading. So we rush past Dinoland and notice that the people walking from Asia are being held up by CM's, and it seemed like 500 people trying to go as fast as possible behind the CM's, we got to the entrance and were sent through the FastPass line, enjoyed about 10 seconds of looking at the Queue before getting to the FIRST RIDE of the day for EE. Now I must admit, I had watched the videos of EE already so I knew what to expect, but I didn't expect how fun the dark sections are, especially the backwords portions. I'd also like to mention that the Yeti which we've all seen pictures of....I never expected it to be that HUGE. The thing is ENORMOUS, much bigger than I thought from seeing the pics and video. Afterwords I actually didn't think they needed more Yeti on the ride....at other parts you can hear him roaring anyway and seeing him at the end makes it a pivotal theming moment. Good Job on the coaster, it's about as good as we can expect from the family friendly Disney coasters, I give it 8/10 for Disney thrills. Next stop was Dinosaur. As I mentioned earlier, I had never been to AK before this trip since there wasn't much in the way of rides and I live right near Busch Gardens if I want to see animals. We were with only about 10 other people in the entire ride. One thing I noticed in the queue was how similar the interior design was to Jurassic Park (movies and ride) and Im guessing it isn't coincidence, but I thought they could have gone in a more unique direction with it. The ride was good I think, it was a bit more intense than the JP River Adventure, definitely a lot more quick action and surprises. I think most of it was a bit too dark, and Im willing to bet that a lot of visitors may be underestimating how scary it might be for smaller kids. Then again the 2 little girls sitting in front of us thought it was great, so maybe Im wrong. Tim kept telling me that he liked the 3D movie "Its tough to be a bug". I like some 3D movies but not all of them. This one was ok, not incredible. So we got through 3 attractions and it wasn't even 9:00 AM yet!! Anyway, off to MGM Studios. We decided it would be much faster to drive to MGM than wait for the stinking, slow Disney busses, so we saved a lot of time there. Went toward TOT and there was only a 20 minute wait. Tim had been on it once, but he said it was a few years ago. This is my all time favorite Disney ride. Everything about it is perfection in my mind, theming, thrills, re-ridability. This time was extra special though because everyone on the ride with us were clapping and also yelling that this was the best ride they've been on in all of Disney. We went toward RnR coaster next, 80 minute wait, got Fastpasses, then headed over to Star Tours (another of Tim's ideas). We went to lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater. I love this restaurant, it's just so unique. If you don't know what it is, you're in a building, but inside it's all designed like a 1950's drive in theater with old B-movie previews and every "table" is in a 50's style car. We had a great waitress, food was good, but Disney expensive. Next we saw the new Lights, Moteurs, etc. car stunt show. I had seen parts of this show on TV before, but there were a few surprises. A couple parts were not working or were delayed but overall I was impressed. We went back to RnR coaster with fastpass, got to the second room and heard the technical difficulties warning, no one was getting on. Waited 20 mins, then heard that it's entirely shut down. Oh well, so we head over to our next park for the day... EPCOT, we arrived at about 1:30, went straight to Test Track, fastpasses were for like 6:00 so we tried the single rider line which had a posted time of 30 mins...was more like 45-50. What was kinda interesting for me is thinking back to World of Motion and standing right under where the ride vehicles used to turn around and go back into the building...kinda weird thinking about how different the whole thing is now. Tim had never been on Test Track before and really enjoyed it. I think it's a lot of fun, especially the crash test. Now a word of warning about life....must be one of Murphy's Laws, if you ever spend half the day telling a friend of yours about how great something is going to be once they try it, something will probably happen so that they never get to try it. Yesterday I spent 1/2 the day telling him how awesome the Smart Watermelon soda is at the Coke display area (whatever it's called now) and they naturally were OUT OF IT. I was not happy, that's one of the big reasons I go...so instead, I naturally found something else to do. "Hey Tim, come try this stuff, it's called BEVERLY" Yep, this is the one time I REALLY DID wish I had a camera with me. I don't usually take photos of WDW since I've been going there my whole life. His face was the standard reaction to the horrible stuff. (As we're driving back to Tampa that night he mentions also that he was still tasting it) We headed to Soarin' where the posted wait time was 60 mins...and at the end we got to where the FastPass side and the regular line side gets into either Concourse 1 or 2. It seemed a bit messed up to me though, that it was a bit over 60 mins and the CM was stopping the regular line whenever someone with a FastPass got there. So he'd be letting 2 or 3 people in the regular line go, then 15-20 of the FastPass, and naturally the FastPass people kept coming. From what I've seen this isn't normal for all of the other rides, so I don't see why Soarin is like that. Anyway, I still think it's a great ride and Tim said it was good. It was about 4:30, still plenty of time to hit MK...so finally we could take the monorail(s)! MK: We arrived and headed toward Tomorrowland, SpaceMountain was 80 mins and FastPasses for 10:00PM, umm, no, so we did the next best thing...my favorite ride in all of MK.............................................the PeopleMover or TomorrowLandTransitAuthority. Don't ask me why I love this ride, but I just do. I think it's like why people like the Monorail, you get a great view of most of Tomorrowland, the castle and the speedway in a comfortable ride. You also get awesome views of Space Mountain and the original Progress City/EPCOT model which Im currently researching. Anyway, Buzz was also quite a long wait so we headed to the Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain, finished those and headed around to Philharmagic which had no wait. By then it was about 7:30 and that's about 12 hours of theme park going, enough for one day, so we took the monorails and tram back to our car at EPCOT and had lots of fun dodging the crazy idiots on I-4 back to Tampa. In conclusion: Spring Break didn't kill our day like I expected, the longest wait of the day was just over an hour and that was only once, the rest of the day went smoothly and we saw almost everything we wanted to, though I think next time we might slow down a bit. (was this TR too long ya think?)

I'll probably be with you guys also if I don't forget by then!

Yeah, IOA hasn't really improved much at all since it opened, but seeing as most people still have never been there, it's not a major problem. Im going to agree with Hersheypark, it was good to begin with, now it's very very good. Can't wait to get back there someday.

I love Papa John's, it my favorite of the chain pizza places, followed by Little Caesars... As long as it isn't Domino's!!

They went from 2-3 people just sitting in front of another, to having individual seats.

That's cool with me. Im not sure exactly my schedule as Im going to DL with a friend, but I don't know what day she can go yet. So I'll post as soon as I know more.