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It's a shame that they didn't want the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at Walt Disney World. What in the world were they thinking? Do they not understand the fan base that movie has here? What the heck would Tokyo want with that overlay? Not sure, but I feel like that movie has more of a cult following here in the states. I might be wrong though. I've just heard amazing things about it and I've heard people (mostly online) just go on and on about it. Heck, they even put a ride through video on the Nightmare Before Christmas blu-ray. If they thought it was popular enough to share on their home video release of the movie, then why would it not be popular enough to have the overlay at both of their U.S. parks? This just seems like a really REALLY stupid move on their part. My wife and I are going down there in less than a month, and I know we would've loved to have ridden that ride with the Nightmare overlay. Hopefully they'll eventually come to their senses and this will be something that they'll have at all the parks, not just a couple.

^That's a pretty neat idea right there and some great instructions on how to make your own!

Have any pictures of that?

^LOL honestly? No. And I'm not really sure why. I guess I just felt like Nemo was a good fit for The Living Seas or perhaps it was because I didn't really ride it too much when it was just The Living Seas, so I didn't really care as much. I've always liked Epcot. I feel that it's a totally different type of place when compared to the other parks at Walt Disney World. I love World Showcase and seeing other types of cultures and experiencing attractions that aren't necessarily based on a Disney movie or character. Now I know that in the Mexico Pavilion, they refurbed the Mexico boat ride and added the characters from the Three Caballeros. I didn't really mind that too much. Why? Because I still felt like it was honoring the Mexican culture. It was still, somewhat, educational. It felt like it belonged there. The make believe Kingdom of Arendelle from Frozen shoved into the Norway pavilion? Eh...not so much. And I know it seemed like I'm all fired up, but honestly, I'm not really. Just a bit disappointed and confused. I just feel like they're removing something from the Norway pavilion and replacing it with something that's less unique and strays from the actual culture of Norway. It feels like they're cheapening the World Showcase in my opinion. And if this happens, then what next? What will the World Showcase turn into? That's about all I have to say about that.

^Yes, yes I have ridden Maelstrom. In fact, my wife and I were planning a trip to Epcot next month and when I found out Maelstrom was going to be closed, we changed our plans. We'll be visiting Hollywood Studios instead. See, Maelstrom was one of the few rides I always looked forward to at Epcot. With it's removal, it was one less thing there that I liked to do. Yes it might not have been the BEST ride at the Walt Disney World Resort, but it was rather unique in my opinion. I think it felt unique because it wasn't "up to Disney standards." There is one other problem with this whole thing and that's the manner in which it was handled. First, get on any Walt Disney World forum and read the numerous complaints from people who've scheduled trips to Epcot in the upcoming months who've already scheduled their Fast Passes for a ride on Maelstrom. Now they're finding out that it's closed AFTER THE FACT that Disney had already let them schedule their rides. What's wrong with this? Perhaps Disney should've planned this out a bit better and when they had the slightest idea that they might be shutting it down, removed the option to Fast Pass Maelstrom. Now they have many upset vacationers scrambling at the last minute to update their plans. Should we also mention Norway's opinion in all this? How would you feel if you're sponsoring a pavilion at Epcot based on your customs, culture, and folklore and all of a sudden you hear that a section of it is being replaced by something that's based on a fictional land that's sorta kinda based on your country, but not really. So now instead of people coming to that area to learn about your country, 2-8 year olds and their parents are flocking there to take a ride through Arendelle instead, completely overlooking the TRUE country it was based on. Not only that, but Disney still expects you to sponsor that pavilion for the upkeep of the buildings and area around that ride. It's just sad really. I just feel like it's not just about a Frozen ride being put at Epcot, that has nothing to do with it. Heck yes put in a Frozen ride, and a Tangled ride, a Hunchback of Notre Dame ride, and maybe even a Pocahontas ride, but do it someplace else because there's plenty of room. Don't tear the Norway pavilion apart and fill it with a bunch of make believe characters loosely based on the country you're putting them in - that's not what Epcot is about. Leave Norway, and the rest of the World Showcase, intact and find another place to put the fictional stuff. Heck, I bet Disney is kicking themselves in the pants for not making a Frozen area in the New Fantasy Land. And now with that new realization, they're scrambling to find a place to shove this ride into. The Norway Pavilion is the closest thing they could come up with and it shows. With everything I've mentioned above, it just feels like a rushed decision to me. Only time will tell. On a final note - I'm an animation addict/junkie, a huge Disney fan, lover of musicals, and as most of you know - I'm obsessed with dark rides. So, will I ride this ride when it's open? Yes I will. Will I like it? Probably. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. What's done is done and once the Frozen ride is installed, I'll accept that change happens and move on with my life and enjoy the new additions. However, I'll still miss the uniqueness that was Maelstrom.

^I read the article. So Disney's basically taking a massive crap on Norway and their culture and still hopes that they'll fund the pavilion. If I were Norway I'd be ticked. How can anyone expect Norway to be like, "Yeah you're removing the one ride that shows represents our culture and folklore only to replace it with a ride based on a fictional land slightly inspired by us, but yeah, we'll be glad to keep funding our pavilion." Ridiculous! However, Disney's being extremely generous by telling them that they can continue to fund their pavilion for just $9 million. Yep. That sounds about right to me.

I'm obviously against this "retheme" and for various reasons. Here's something I posted on an animation website that explains my reasoning: "Another thing that bothers me about this "quick retheme" is that Frozen really hasn't had to prove itself. It's been around how long? 10 months? So what. How long did The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast have to wait before they got immortalized in a Disney park? 20-25 years? We just got the Voyage of the Little Mermaid attraction last year in the New Fantasy Land as The Little Mermaid was turning 24 years old. 24 years it took. And why did they add The Little Mermaid attraction? Because that movie has stood the test of time and has cemented itself as a TRUE Disney classic in the hearts and minds of the general public. It deserved to be given it's own attraction. Disney is milking the Frozen Cash Cow to death. Heck, there's no milk left to be given! I enjoyed Frozen when I saw it last year, but God help me, I'm approaching burn out faster than I can handle. The removal and retheme of Maelstrom to Frozen is a quick and greedy cash grab by Disney and it's just one more way they're squeezing that last drop of milk from that Frozen Cash Cow. How about let's let Frozen sit in the hearts and minds of people for a little while, see if it sticks, and let it EARN it's right to be considered a Disney Classic before it's immortalized as a permanent attraction at the Disney Parks. If Disney princesses were real, I'd feel super sorry for Belle, Ariel, and others who had to wait decades before they got their own attraction in the park and to the others who still haven't earned their rights yet. It's just so obvious and just so sad. Very disappointed."

Yikes a water park tomorrow? Hmm...not sure if I'd be up for that. Not even for $9.99. Who would've thought it'd be 68 degrees in mid-September? Oh yeah, I forgot we live in Ohio.

I read this earlier. I'm not impressed. I'd be up for a Maelstrom refurb, but not a removal. I think they need to leave the Maestrom alone and quit with all this over-hyped Frozen stuff. Yes I'm a Disney fan, and yes I enjoyed Frozen, but enough is enough already!

You know what I'd really like to see? Some love for Adventure Express. All it would take would be an off season refurb job. Nothing major, just a little bit of work on the theming and some other stuff. Especially the last tunnel. God help it. It's not looking too hot this year. A little love could breathe new life into that awesome little ride. Just a thought.

Yes, yes, and yes. And I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for that last "yes." Hopefully more dark rides (or at least 1) in the future. And I'm rooting for near future.

Hey now, I had a Sony Betamax (which I did use to record many, many episodes of the Brady Bunch). My dad bought it back in the 80s when there was the Beta/VHS wars (similar to the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war that was going on several years ago). The guy at the electronics store assured him that Beta would most likely win out due to their compact size and superior resolution. After doing more research, my dad opted for the Betamax. Unfortunately, it was the wrong choice. A few years later we were stuck with a VCR that couldn't do too much because VHS had won out and everything had switched over. Ah...the good ol' days! (Edited to add info)

It was hard for me to pick. Since I was born in 1980, I have great memories of the park all through that decade. However, I have some great memories of the park from the 90s as well. Plus, there were some really great rides added to the park in the 90s like Adventure Express and The Phantom Theater. Also, that was the decade I really started liking roller coasters and took my first rides on The Racer, Vortex, and The Beast. Plus it also helped that Hanna-Barbera was still around in the park during that time period as well. So my vote was for the 80s and the 90s.

This is great news! It would be cool if KI did sell the collapsible water bottles. They could sell them in various souvenir shops and could sell them in various colors and have various KI/ride logos printed on them. If that were the case, I'd probably be willing to pick one up and bring it to the park with me.

I was there Monday. I ate a Smurf cone while riding Enchanted Voyage with Scooby Doo. It was quite the day!

Since we both had the day off work, my wife and I decided that we'd ride out to KI Monday evening for a few hours to grab some $1 pizza for dinner and to enjoy a few rides. We arrived at the park around 4:30 and proceeded to find ourselves a parking space. After driving up and down a few rows, we found a really great spot in Invertigo row 45. We parked the car and were getting everything ready to head into the park. When I arrived at KI, I usually take my main car key off my key ring, hook it to my lanyard, and wrap that around my belt loop. This makes it easier for me so I don't have to carry all my keys around the park with me. So while I'm doing this, I hear a "thump" and my wife starts making some comments in frustration. My attention immediately goes to her and I ask, "What's wrong?" It seems as if, since it was windy the day, the wind caught the door and blew it open rather quickly causing her door to slam into the car we were parked next to. Great. So I get out of the car, shut my door, and walk around to her door to check out the damage. She gets out and shuts her door as well. We inspect the damage and decide that it was bad enough that we needed to leave our contact info. So we go to get back into the car and realize the doors had been locked. Both of them. That's ok, I had my key right here hooked to my lanyard. Oh wait. This isn't the right key. Yep. I had taken my car key off my key ring and just now realized we're not in my car, we're in my wife's car. In all the commotion I had grabbed the wrong key. Great. So now we just dented someone's door AND we're locked out of our car. Two crappy things happened within 5 minutes of arriving at the park. And what's worse, we left our cell phones in the car too. I wasn't sure if KI had anything set up to help you with keys locked in your car, so I figured we'd walk over to guest relations and see what kind of assistance we could get. When we arrived there, I explained what happened and the girl was super nice and informed us that security could help us get into our car. She asked us what row we were in and what kind of car we had and then radioed security to meet us. Once back at our car, we waited just a few minutes until security came. The security guy was very nice and extremely helpful and within about 10 minutes had our car door opened. So, we grabbed the correct key and wrote a note explaining what happened with the door situation and left our name and number. We left the note under the windshield wiper of the car in hopes that the people would see it. Just a note - If you're reading this and it was your car we hit, we're super sorry!!! Ok, so now it's a little after 5 and we're finally heading into the park. We're determined to salvage our evening! We were both hungry and decided to go straight for the pizza. We thought we would head over to the LaRosa's by The Beast since they had tables and places to sit. While walking through the park we noticed how long the lines were to get food and we also noticed people who had stacks and stacks of plates piled high on multiple trays. How much pizza can one person eat? Hmmm. So we get to LaRosa's and that line wasn't too long. We waited about 10 minutes which wasn't too bad. After eating, we decided to take a ride on The Beast. The line wasn't too bad at all for the crowd that was there. It only took about 15-20 minutes to get on and was an awesome ride as usual. Next, we walked over to Coney Mall and walked around for a bit. The crowds were extremely light over in this area. Not sure why. We got down by Adventure Express and decided to take a ride. It was pretty much a walk on, which is always nice. This is where something interesting happened. So we loaded the train, got buckled and we're waiting to get everything checked. In front of us was a woman with, what looked to be, a very young child. Too young to be on this ride it seemed. So as the workers are coming back checking harnesses and such, they noticed the young boy and asked him to step out of the train to be measured. The woman starts semi-arguing with the workers explaining that he rides this ride "everyday." They proceed to measure the young boy and he stands about 3-4 inches below the bar. They explain to the woman that he was way too short to be on this ride. The woman continues to argue with them explaining that he rides this ride everyday and they said he could ride as long as he was with an adult, etc, etc. You could tell that she was not happy. The workers kept explaining that he was too short and could not let him ride. In frustration, the woman gets up out of the train and proceeds to the exit with the boy, still convinced that he should've been able to ride and still claiming that he rides the ride everyday. So that was over and now we were able to enjoy our ride. Great ride as usual - that's about all I have to say about that! After Adventure Express we headed over to Action Zone for a $1 Banshee Twist cone and some Cotton Candy. The line for the ice cream was rather long, but we gladly waited. This year it seemed that they were making the $1 cones slightly bigger than other years. Maybe it was just the people working this day. Regardless, we were happy. Unfortunately though, this location was sold out of cotton candy, so we decided to take a walk over to Planet Snoopy and get our cotton candy over there. As we were standing in line waiting for the cotton candy, it started to rain. Now, this is the third Dollar Days we've come to and the third year in a row that it started raining while we were waiting in line for cotton candy. Not sure what that means exactly, but it's becoming a rather annoying tradition! After buying the cotton candy, we walked into the Peanuts store (not sure what the actual name is) and looked around for a bit. It was now about 7:45 so we decided we should probably head on out since the park closed at 8. While walking out to our car the rain picked up again and got us pretty good. I guess it's not Dollar Days without a little bit of rain. Oh well. Even though the evening got off to a rough start, things turned out pretty good. We got some pizza, ice cream, and grabbed some cotton candy for the trip home. All in all a pretty good day. We didn't ride a whole lot, but it's always nice to get out to the park for a bit, even if it's just to take in the atmosphere.

I'm not trying to start anything...but your avatar pic is of a ghost from a former haunted attraction... Yes, and I wouldn't compare Phantom Theater to anything that exists at "Haunt." I quite enjoyed the light-hearted aspects of "Phantom" as it was more a family style ride. Just like I didn't mind taking a ride on Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Castle. These types of attractions don't bother me really. I absolutely hate blood and gore and feel that most Halloween type events, including KI's Haunt, glorify these things as well as death, murder, and other such things. It's one thing to take a ride on the family friendly Phantom Theater, it's another thing to come out and participate in the attractions at Halloween Haunt. As I mentioned in my post above, I come out and enjoy the festivities of the family event during the day, but leave before Haunt starts.

^I'm also anti-Haunt and absolutely despise all the focus that gets put on it (like building permanent structures to use ONLY for Haunt). However, I'm also glad that for at least part of the day on the weekends are dedicated to a family-type event. Even though I hate walking around the park and seeing all the tacky decorations (I hate anything that glorifies death, mutilation, etc.), at least I'm able to come out to the park for a little bit and enjoy the fall weather and the rides. I, too, will be looking forward to next April when we're back to the normal operating season.

It's interesting that this list mentions relocating Mantis. I wonder what that could mean?

Well, I had been sort of on the fence about this for the past 2-3 weeks or so. At first I wasn't quite sure how I felt about all the videos going around, but then started to hear information about all the money that has been raised due to this simple internet challenge. Regardless of how you feel about the challenge itself, how or where it got started, etc, you have to admit that a lot of money has been raised because of it. Money that might not have been raised if not for the crazy little challenge. With that said, I was nominated by a friend of mine and my wife was nominated by his wife, so yesterday we decided to brave the icey cold bucket of water since it was such a hot day and we took the challenge. Not only did we both do the challenge, but we went onto the ALS website and made a donation. I also nominated a few of my friends who have already accept and will participate and donate as well. If you would've asked me a few weeks ago if I would've dumped ice water on my head just to be part of (what looked like to me) an internet fad, I would've said no. But sometimes things change and you look at things with a new perspective. I would hope that if I were dealing with such an awful disease that needed research money to find a cure that people would jump on board and be just as excited to raise awareness and donate money like they have been about this. Regardless of how you feel, this has to be a good thing.

Not sure what's so bad about dollar days? My wife and I have went the past 2 years and we quite enjoy it. Although we don't go to pig out and make ourselves sick. It is one time during the operating season that we do eat in the park though. It's fun to go grab a couple slices of pizza for dinner and then later in the evening grab an ice cream for dessert and maybe a bag of cotton candy to take home. I don't think it's too bad at all really. Yes, I'm sure some people show up and act like it's the only food they'll ever eat again, but I think most of us are reasonable and can enjoy the day without going too crazy.

I always thought it was weird that Blue was the girl and Magenta was the boy. I always thought it was the other way around.

From what I understand, if you're nominated for the challenge you can either dump ice water on your head, or you can donate to ALS. With all of these "Challenge" videos going around the internet, I'm wondering if anyone is donating at all? Everyone lately has seemed so thrilled with all these ALS challenge videos, but to me it would seem better to not see so many videos of people dumping ice on their heads. That would mean more people would be donating the money. I understand part of this is to raise awareness and all, but if you look at the options of the challenge, it would seem that the more videos you see, the less people are donating. Just a thought.

Maybe it would be best if KI just sold passes based on age alone and not age and height. The article said that Coney Island just base their tickets on age and not height. I feel this would eliminate a lot of confusion because no parent knows for sure if their child will have a growth spurt between the time they purchase the pass, and the end of the season. This is ridiculous. Just have a cut-off age for the Jr. Pass and be done with it. No more confusion and no more unexpected upgrade charges for parents because their kid grew and inch.

Please note that I am not trying to offend any person (or group) with my next comment. I'm simply making a comment based on personal experiences and observations I've made. That being said: I feel that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter comes with a slight disadvantage over Disney World and here's why. I know some families, christians, and christian groups who want nothing to do with Harry Potter because of the "witchcraft and wizardry" dealt with in the movie series. These same people are more likely to avoid places like that and flock to Disney as they have no problems with the more lighthearted, fairytale "magic" so prevalent in most Disney films. That being said, you could say that this is just a small percentage of the population, but it still equates into dollars. So you could say that "Potter" may not have as high a draw (even though the draw is quite large) as Disney has with all of their offerings. I'm not really a Harry Potter fan, so I'd be more likely to choose Disney over Universal because of that. So, does Universal have something that only draws a niche crowd? Maybe, I feel like Disney's appeal is more widespread because of all the different variations they have within their parks. Again, I'm not picking people out, or saying this is fact. I'm just stating what I've heard and seen from personal experience. If someone feels I'm wrong, please feel free to give your opinion as well.