RailRider

The Arrival: So how did we end up in California for only a few short days? Simple, my wife was assigned a business trip for 2 weeks and during the middle of that time our daughter Zoe and I were going to fly out to be with her and visit California for the first time. While there we planned on doing a trip to Disney and I started planning immediately. Developing a plan of attack for both parks, if you would like to see the schedule PM me and I can send it your way. My wife was staying in a swank 2 bedroom villa in Newport Beach that we paid $0. Very nice and upscale. What a view we had of the Ocean from the cliffs of Southern California The Resort was the Marriott Vacation Club Newport Coast Villas and it was massive. One of the numerous pools on site, the lack of crowd is a sign of things to come. Swimming in late January? Awesome... The Sunset the first evening at Newport Beach was amazing. The sun looked to be a giant ball of fire slowly extenguishing in the Pacific Ocean. Stunning. The Magic begins shortly...

Disneyland is often credited as being the Happiest Place on Earth. After experiencing the magic and living it through my daughters eyes, I must agree with the earlier assesment. Please join me for these next few minutes and share the magic and memories that we created as a family and a little girls true joy of meeting her favorite characters and princesses. I borrow the word magic from a member of this site, Avatar. I never truly understood why he refered to Disney with such awe and revrence. Now I understand what the magic creates for his daughter. Now it is crystal clear, Jesse thank you for your passion and your many tips regarding visting. I used many of your tips for the Magic Kingdom in planning our Disneyland trip and they worked quite well. I have visited Walt Disney World on numerous occassions, but never truly experienced it. I have never visited Disneyland, I have only experienced it. I was fortunate enough to share this with my wife and my daughter, who was in total joy and awe the entire day. For those that don't realize Disneyland is the granddady of all theme parks, the first tubular steel coaster The Matterhorn, the first Disney park and is the blueprint they followed with Magic Kingdom, and truly a place where dreams do come true. I have pondered where to begin with this trip report and have spent some time just reliving the trip in my head. I have decided to break the report in to different sections. An introduction to the start of our trip and our resort in New Port Beach, our experience at Disneyland, the surprise of Disney's California Adventure, and a conclusion of the trip. I took well over 500 pictures from this trip, but I will only share a fraction. I honestly hope that you sit back and enjoy the experience and maybe sense some of the Magic we experienced. I will release a new section of the trip report throughout the day or days to follow. Please enjoy and I look forward to your comments and questions. First let me share the plan. I created a schedule to experience Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure in one day. Yes one day is the plan because we only had 4 days in California. This schedule used numerous tip I have learned from both Avatar and sites he has directed me to. Because of it being a down time of year and with the use of the schedule we were able to stay typically 2 hours ahead of schedule throughout the day, experience more than what I though we could and in the end we spend over 15 hours at both parks and saw, road, and experienced everything we planned and more. Disney in one day is possible and still magical beyond belief. Sit back and enjoy...

I would be shocked if IOA doesn't look refreshingly new this year with Potter opening. Like Vortex did with DB opening.

I was shocked to see the Potter add during the SuperBowl. Universal needs to all out market blitz for Potterland so folks plan on going to it specifically and are not there for Disney and see the billboards for Potter. It will be interesting to see what the weeks ahead bring marketing wise for IOA

I look for this push by Mr. Raynor and others that are putting money in to FUN as their way of betting they can make more money by forcing Apollo to make a counter offer. I still look for Apollo to be the eventual owners and I wouldn't be surprised if Blackstone may eventually come in. Apollo to me looks to be a much smaller version of Blackstone.

The title doesn't mean as much as it used to. The coaster wars of the 90's and early 00's is long over.

Yes they still have the water clock, very awesome indeed and I forgot to add one picture. The force is strong with this one...

The winter can be a chalenging time for any enthusiast or child who loves to be outside. So I decided to load up the family-truckster and head to the Indy Childrens Museum for a quick fun filled weekend and it also gave us a reasson to visit some friends that just had their first child. The Childrens Museum in Indy is amazing. The Dinotopia, amazing Chihuly glassworks and the numerous interactive exhibts are amazing for children and not to shaby for the adults either. I hope you enjoy the PTR and this is my warm up on the new site for when I do the massive Disneland PTR that is coming shortly. I hope you enjoy our adventure, I know we did! The Dinos have escaped, this is not good... My daughter was excited because the big one was just like Aladar from Dinosaur the movie. Once inside we headed for the Dinotopia exhibt. Very cool with the various skeletons Look at the teeth on that thing! Very cool dino dress up and egg nest play area. My little Velociraptor on the run. Next we headed to the massive Chihuly glassworks instalation, Fireworks in glass. This interactive area was amazing and is located under the glass structure itself. I could have looked up at the celing all day. Amazing!!! Zoe could have played with this all day. Very cool interactive display. As a huge fan of Chihuly I found this to be very cool. Very busy behind the sea of glass. Above the play area is the massive glass tower. This Fireworks of Glass tower is just awesome. Awesome from top to bottom, it dominates the center of the museum. Next up was the Playscape, sand box, and the forest. We could have spent all day here. What kid doesn't love playing in the sand. The play forest was very cool. So now that I have crossed this log, how do I get off? Jump!!! Zoe taking a break before repeating the log crossing for the 15th time... The top floor of the museum holds the carosel, which Zoe absolutely loved. We had to ride the Giraffes, some of her favorite animals They also had these giant story books around the top floor, time to relax and read. All in all we had an awesome day at the Childrens museum and there was so much to do. Great way to spend a cold wintery day. We will definately be making a trip back and hopefully have more time in the Indianapolis area to look around and meet some locals. Say goodbye to the dinosaurs on the way out.

No real surprise, but still a loss to the industry. Makes the impending sale of Cedar Fair seem marginal when compared to the fate of SFKK.

I would agree RZ, there is no need to go through DC. Even if coming from the Columbus area I still find it best to run through Richmond to Doswell and after a trip to KD may as well head on down to Busch Gardens.

I305 is just massive and the track layout looks even more intense than the renderings show. Like I said in the begining this thing looks like Mega Lite on Steroids and is very reminiscient of Piraten. I for one am glad to see the trim, the speed from the first hill needs to be burned off somehow before all the twisty goodness.

Looks to have worked perfectly. Nicely done. Glad someone was able to finally solve this issue. Thank you so much.

Ahhh Yes the sinking of the S.S. Gator, one of the best trip reports ever done.

DVO enjoyed the trip report. Thanks for sharing. I too am heading to Southern California at the end of the month, but I will be visiting Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. While I had planned my daughters first trip to Disney World, Disneyland is a quick substitute. Thanks again DVO for sharing, just getting me even more excited for our trip.

Avatar, Love the trip report as always. Glad you got your first taste of Dollywood. I never got around to posting my trip from this summer, but it was amazing. The only thing I will add is that Sha-Kon-O-Hey is the most amazing show I have ever seen at a park. Better than Disney and is truly Broadway quality. The story, dance, music, set design, and theatrics are first class. Many surprises lie around each corner. Everyone in our party from my 2 year old to my 72 year old father enjoyed it tremendously and you may even shed a tear or two. Also when in the area I highly recomend the River Stone Resort located behind the old mill on right off Dollywood Lane. Will never stay anywhere else. The lodging is priced equal to lesser accomadations and the condo units are emaculate. Dinning recomendation is the Park Grill in Gatlinburg and also stop by the Apple Barn Winery in Severville for some fabulous wine. Avatar glad you finaly got to experience the magic that is Dollywood and I know your family will love every minute they spend there.

Still no fix on the forum issue. I have found this frustrating and am wondering if there is any known fix.

I am having the same issue as you Gator and that others have mentioned. I am using IE8 and running Vista. Any fix yet for this issue?

Its a shame that Blackstone hasn't made a play on Cedar Fair. Then again there is still time.

Funny how so many panic with a possible new owner. I remember when Cedar Fair came a calling and it was the end of the world. Things have been pretty good since that ordeal went down. So I wouldn't be too worried yet. Some interesting thoughts on Apollo and how they opperate. They are very much a smaller version of Blackstone Group, which owns most recently Busch Entertainment, Merlin and a large portion of Universal. 3 very successful industry players. Also if you look at some of the investments Apollo has made you will see they have worked very closely with Blackstone a number of times. As a stock holder I am not complaining about the buyout price right now of $11.50 per share along with what I have made in distributions. I may just have to take my buyout and look at BX now...

Seeing the pictures of the drop completed with the pullout turn in to the second drop, I am amazed at this monster. This thing is going to be insane going through that hard right.

And to think they still have their Wild Lights Holiday hours. The Columbus Zoo is becoming more of a destination every year

Feel free to copy and send it from your own email. Here is the response I have received, looks to be canned to me.

Here is a copy of the email I sent Mason City Council since I cannot attend the meeting. Im sure it will be overlooked or deleted.

Amazing that this has surfaced again. How many times will municiplaities try to throw an additional tax on parking and tickets at parks? All they see is another way to increase incoming taxes and help themselves. I am tired of this and they can expect a nice email from me latter today. I imagine they will not respond, but I am doing my part even if I cannot be at the meeting.

I will admit that the debt load is killing any chance of positive results right now for CF. As they continue to carry the large debt load from the PParks addition they will either figure out how to opperate more efficiently with it or they will go under. Next year will be a very important year for the parks and attendance and guest spending. CF needs to act swiftly to incentivise guests to visit more and spend more inside the park. This years prices and options inside the parks did not to help in park spending. I am still a firm believer that CF stock whether last year or this years price is a good buy and I think it will rebound long term. Then again thats how I invest, I do not look short term, so I expect fluctuations from year to year. I would also expect the stock to recover some from yesterdays sharp sell off. Should be interesting to see where it sits Friday.