TR: Norwegian Pearl Pt. 2 (Boat Review, 1/1-1/8/12)

For the second part of the trip report, I figure I’ll give a review of our cabin, wait staff, public areas, et al. That will give me more time to focus on the actual itinerary rather than reiterate certain aspects of the ship’s design/operation.

Most of the cruises my wife and I have taken are on boats similarly sized and with similar numbers of passengers to the Pearl. In all honestly, the Pearl was perhaps more packed than usual because of the holiday that we were sailing over. In fact, 2/3 of the passengers, we were told, were from outside the US. There were a substantial number of accents and multiple languages being spoken, and many announcements made over the loudspeaker were in a Costa-esque 5 languages. All the crew was very capable of speaking english and we had no communication problems whatsoever.

TR: Norwegian Pearl; Pre-Cruise (12/29/11-1/1/12)

(Sorry for the delay in writing this: Just been busy ever since getting home. Happens sometimes.)

Any number of things can justify a trip. Sometimes its the location. Sometimes its the sense of adventure that’s in the journey. On other occasions, it may be that one simply wants to get away and relax for once. All three of those things played into the booking of our fifth cruise together on the Norwegian Pearl over the New Years. It would be a longer trip than many we’ve taken in the past, with three nights spent in hotels leading up to the trip itself, and then seven nights aboard the first repeat of a cruise line I’ve had yet.

NCL had been the first line we had taken all the way back in 2008 (trip report: http://tinyurl.com/78qvlh6) and we returned to them again for a number of reasons. First among them was amenity level. With suites on their ships, food from both the specialty restaurants and main dining rooms could be brought to the room. Balconies were large. Room size was large. Those are all things we like and have become, to some degree, accustomed to in our travels. NCL does have a downside, which is that it has few really exciting itineraries for us. We ended up choosing a somewhat general Western Caribbean cruise that would bring me to my first stop at Ocho Rios, a new private island, and a couple of repeat ports that we could take or leave (Cozumel and Grand Cayman).

TR: Universal, IOA, and Magic Kingdom Pt. 4 (11/27/2011)

This was yet another long day. Anyone who does this hobby long enough can tell you when they’ve booked these kind of days into the schedule. 3-4 parks, some driving, lots of riding of stuff, lots of feeling exhausted when its all said and done. While we didn’t go all out the day prior, this was going to be a day involving some appreciable “work”. Fun, yes. But effort was to be expended.

For the second straight day, we arrived at IOA early for Harry Potter time. This time though, we left even earlier, getting to the gates around 7:45AM and then into the section before 8AM and entering the line for the wand shop. I happen to think its a pretty cool little show that goes on there even if its just selling crap no one needs, but perhaps peopleneed a reminder. Amusement parks are really grotesquely constructed monstrosities intended to entertain at the most base level and then use that entertainment to push you in the direction of buying crap you don’t need at a huge markup. Sometimes its easy to forget that, I know.

TR: Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure Pt. 3 (11/26/2011)

Back at Universal for most of the next two days of the trip, we planned to visit Harry Potter early in the AM as part of the hotel guest early entry on both dates. Most of our time in the section would be dedicated to those periods when crowds were much reduced, which meant that we could actually look at stuff and find places to sit and what not.

SATURDAY 11/26:

We arrived to IOA just around the 8AM early opening time and went along to Potter, finding that there was already somewhat of a line for the wand shop by the time we arrived. Really? The lines elsewhere were pretty nonexistent, which meant that we could walk right into Forbidden Journey through the main queue. The last time I rode this, I had some weird issues with being able to handle the motion of the ride with the video, but that seemed to not be an issue on this trip at all. And since the motion wasn’t an issue, neither was the ride action. I came away loving that ride. I still don’t entirely get the story line, but technically its a great attraction and I think its themed tremendously. I don’t need to tell anyone what a winner it is for that park.

TR: Sea World Orlando (Orlando TR Pt. 2) (11/25/2011)

We’ve done long days at parks before many times. Very few times over the last 4-5 years, however, have we dedicated ourselves to going to one park and staying there virtually open to close. That was the case on the first full day of our trip and Sea World. We’ve been to Sea World once prior together and we drove around it twice this past year on other Orlando trips, and while we don’t have any particular dislike of Sea World, its never necessarily been our favorite park in Orlando. This time we would go full blast and try to force ourselves to enjoy it.

TR: Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure Pt. 1 (11/24/2011)

Back in July, my wife and I found a great combo deal through Delta Vacations for airfare/hotel/tickets for Orlando. Things naturally just fell into place from there as far as planning, and we had a big trip lined up. We were exceptionally proud of it because of the length of the trip and the fact that we were using a minimum of vacation time it work to do it (I used 0). The plan would be to do Universal for at least part of 3 of the days, dedicate a day to Sea World, and then try and hit Fun Spot in Kissimmee before attending the Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party over at WDW on Sunday night. Lots and lots to do. The focus for our trip was Universal’s two parks though. With the late hours on Thursday and Saturday, that gave us lots of time to hit just about everything we wanted while also giving us time to relax and do other non-park related stuff.

TR: SFNE/Knoebels/Great Adventure/Lake Compounce 10/16 & 10/21-23/11

Had to head back to New England for a couple days for a family issue and a wedding the week before that, and so the wife and I hit a few parks around those trips. I’ll just touch on the park stuff here and do so briefly. At some point there will be a longer trip report on an actual website but that’s for later.

Six Flags New England (10/16):

We were here an hour. Houdini was closed to be a haunted house thing. Not sure exactly what the deal is there. Meredith needed credits: We got the new mouse there (M#279) and Mind Eraser (M#280), but Pandemonium, the third of what she needed, ended up with a full queue by the time we got over there around 1PM. The mouse is outdoors and so-so; the villains each having their own car is nice or something, but the mouse itself isn’t really exciting or anything. Also got a ride on the redone

Bizarro: Indeed, it is retarded Superman. The audio didn’t work, no fire ball, just some mist and the buildings thrown in for scenery to duck around and through. Oh, and the new restraint is clunky and very restrictive. Sorta pinned me to the seat. I have no idea what my favorite steel coaster is anymore now; Expedition Ge-Force? Nitro? Behemoth? Raptor? Montu? Nemesis? Depends on the day. Who the hell cares anyhow.

Knoebels (10/21):

Never went after Halloween before: the decorations here were really cool. Lots of stuff put out. The Halloween train was a blast. Also enjoyed that they did an overlay on Cosmotron, of all things. As for the coasters, Black Diamond (M#281/A#606) was one of two we rode. It definitely feels a lot like a dark ride, but I feel like the coaster parts are more pronounced than those on, say, Dr. Moriarty’s or whatever the Camden dark ride is called. Plus, it has trains, not individual cars. Somehow that matters to me. The ride itself is very complex and surprisingly long. Its an instant classic for us. Phoenix, meanwhile, was its usual self and we got 4 solid rides that evening. Only about half the park is open for the Halloween weekend days, but its pretty much only the stuff we care about, so that’s not a big deal to us. Plus, still lots of great food available.

Six Flags Great Adventure (10/22):

Thank god for Gold Q-Bots. This place was absurdly busy by about 1PM. When we left at 6PM, the line for Green Lantern was clear out the queue after filling it and deep into the midway, passing the parachute tower and nearly reaching the Top Spin. Even with a Gold Q-Bot, it reached a wait time on the Q-Bot of 59 minutes. I didn’t know that was possible. The same went for El Toro, Bizarro, Superman and even the park’s Top Spin. I’m sure Nitro and Batman were in the same boat.

As far as the coasters went, Meredith really enjoyed the park. The quality of the rides there, top to bottom, is tremendous. Yes, it lacks a classic dark ride, but it has Houdini, which is still plenty entertaining. It has a very good log flume (which we skipped). Coaster-wise, you’ve got Nitro and El Toro, which are elite, top of the food chain rides. You’ve got Kingda Ka, which while it didn’t work when we were there and Meredith won’t ride anyways, is the tallest coaster in the world and at least worth a whirl for most. You have Bizarro, which was a good ride as Medusa, but is actually improved a bit by the addition of the onboard audio, fireballs, etc. Batman is good. Dark Knight is at least fun. Same with Skull Mountain. Green Lantern, having done some soul searching, might be my favorite standup now, though that’s a meaningless statement really. Aside from Road Runner Railway (which is a kids coaster, after all), there aren’t many lousy coaster rides – Rolling Thunder, I suppose? Even it isn’t outwardly horrible like Mean Streak; just middling.

Meredith got up to #293 on her count, which excited her a great deal also. And we liked it so much, we might come back next year for Adam’s event.

Lake Compounce (10/23):

Went for about 90 minutes, talked with the GM, rode very little, left. Its weird to think that at one point, for several years, this place cut me checks. Separated by distance and time, Lake Compounce is, well….not one of my favorite parks. Meredith made the comparison to Holiday World, and its a good one. Some people love Holiday World. It makes them feel welcome or whatever and they overlook what the park doesn’t have and embrace what it does. Lake Compounce, I feel like, is more of a complete park than Holiday World. HW seems like a collection of wood coasters that I love, a couple spinning things, and then water slides. Lake Compounce has one wood coaster I love, a bunch more spinning things, and then water slides. In both cases, there’s free soda and the business is driven as much by the water park as anything. Also, Holiday World’s dry park lacks a great non-coaster attraction. Compounce has its skyride.

Boulder Dash is never going to be one of Meredith’s favorites – the intensity level and the changes of direction and laterals – that’s not her style. She loves the Intamin prefab wood. Me? I like BD a lot. It is actually much better with the trick track removed and the ride itself is tracking very well. Not any big potholes, lots of speed being carried throughout, the disorientation of the out run at night is still there. It sorta runs out of steam at the end, but so do a lot of rides (like El Toro). I’m reticent to say that El Toro would rank above it right now, but gun to my head and both coasters in front of me, and I probably walk to El Toro first. It would still be in my top 5 wood, which I *do* actually care enough about to rank and whatever other nerdy bullshit goes with that. Wildcat, meanwhile, is still there, not terribly exciting, still has potholes, et al.

TR: Sandusky Weekend (Cedar Point & other attractions) 10/8 & 10/9/11

It was a beautiful, beautiful weekend out in the midwest. Highs generally ran around 80, the sun was out, barely a cloud was in the sky. This is, for most, a good thing. For my wife and I though, it was bad. Bad because it meant people would get off their duffs and head outside to join us in our last planned weekend getaway to one of our local parks for the year. We typically hope to get in lots of rides on October Sundays – that was not going to be the case.

Our hotel for one night was the Sleep Inn Port Clinton, a relative bargain at $60 a night. For the area, this is enormously cheap. The hotel room was middling in quality (cigarette burn on the bed spread, shower door barely closes, loud A/C unit, cheap stiff mattress) but yet still happened to be better than the majority of competitors that we’ve encountered. It resides next door to a failed multi-use commercial development called Harbor Lights Landing; nice looking place, but all empty storefronts for the most part.

TR: Toronto (w/Centreville and Ontario Place) 9/24-25/11

There’s a lot of reasons to travel. One of the best is to interact with new people and occasionally make friends. We’re sometimes bad about that, but sometimes we follow through and actually get back in touch with people. Sandy, one of our table mates during our Princess cruise in January, was one of our success stories in that we did in fact contact her back. Even more amazing; she replied! Long story short, we still talk and we took her up on her offer to come visit her at her home in Toronto, which is the genesis of this trip.

I had wanted to go back to Toronto since the last time we left the metro area in 2009. We went to Canada’s Wonderland, but my wife and I never really saw the city proper. Instead we had ended up lingering on the northern suburbs and cruising on the 407. I wanted to show my wife the city’s skyline, visit Toronto Island, and dawdle around gawking at things. But the city was always a little bit too far to justify for most of the next 24 months, especially since we could take urban excursions to the likes of Detroit and Chicago with less driving. And so we never had a really strong reason to go. Visiting Sandy, though, was a real reason. Plus, we could spend some time going to the small and often missed amusement parks in the Toronto area. Win-win!

TR: Pacific Duality Pt. 9: Finality (9/3-5/11)

All journeys come to an end eventually. Our final day on the island wasn’t a terribly active one. To be honest, the majority of it was spent hanging out at the beach on our towels, occasionally moving from the spot to enter the water and snorkel. It was probably some of the best time spent on the entire trip, and it required a minimum of effort. But we did do things. I am compelled to act no matter what. And our actions were to join the fray at an important function of island life.

Every Saturday, the Puananga Nui Market opens up around 6AM and runs till roughly noon. It is not merely intended to please the needs of tourists on the island and their dream of purchasing miniature wood versions of the phallic tiki god Tangaroa or cheesy t-shirts. It is an actual, functioning market also selling fish, bread, and fruits among the neighbors on the island, along with bringing in of goods from the outer islands, entertainment, snacks – the whole 9. We had a fresh papaya smoothie at one booth, chocolate covered donuts at another, and I downed skewers of grilled chicken and prawn at a third. We also made sure to purchase a fresh loaf of bread and hummus to supply us lunch, took in some of the free entertainment, and searched through the goods. My wife couldn’t find a T-shirt she found really enthralling for a souvenir, but I did in the form of an Arorangi Bears rugby shirt. There were some really great looking national Rugby jerseys I saw later, but I was happy with my cheaper purchase. Apparently the Bears are known for being a good squad with a mean streak, having once jumped a ref during a match. Yikes.