Category: decline and fall

Hot and humid here in the swamp. Houston may be the City of Trees, but that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, the humidity is. And it looks like it will be both hot and humid for the rest of summer. It’ll all just be a matter of degree.

Started the day fairly leisurely in WDW, ended at home in Houston. Raining, hot and humid in both places, although Houston was worse. Flight and airports were find. Flying mid day and mid week helped. It was a no stress end to a long week.

FWIW, I don’t think I’m up for 5 days in a row in amusement parks, not with this weather anyway. 20K steps a day. No wonder I’m tired.

Home now though. Blessed be Blue Charmin…

Kids are now out of school and home with me all day. No science camps or daytime activities to suck up their energy, just the enhanced gravity well around the teenager’s bed. I should basically have the house to myself until noon at least…

And I better use some of that time wisely. Lots to do. Starting with a run to my auctioneer to drop off a truck load of stuff, I’ll also do some pickups. I’ve got some Dr visits to fit into the next week or two, and lots of cleaning up and selling of stuff. The list is long, and getting longer.

Plus, hurricane season has started. I need to do hurricane preps on top of everything else. Ay Carumba!

But first, some restorative sleep.

Later, more improvements, and more stacking.

n

And more hot, humid, and probably rainy weather. The overcast was nice, and the rain held off until evening, and then cleared out pretty quickly. The forecast calls for pretty much the same today.

Epic Universal is a new park. It’s only been open to the public for about a week, with soft open for friends and family before that. There are a lot of “tweaks” being made, as you’d expect. There are a lot of unfinished things too. Masking tape still in place, missing electrical covers, building supplies or trash out where they can be seen… The funniest was the rain water dripping out of ceiling mounted smoke detectors in the Carousel attraction. There must be a big leak in that roof, and probably more than one based on the number of places there were drips.

There were a lot of broken things too. 10% of the Carousel was tagged out. I suspect the lap belt system is at fault, based on what I saw them trying to fix. Mandatory lap belts for a carousel, even for adults! Several places already had significant wear, or intentional damage. There were a lot of props and stage dressings that were too close to audience or guests. That stuff will vanish quickly. Sound levels throughout the park were off, mainly too loud, but still unintelligible.

On the other hand, the level of design and detailing was very high. I was using google translate on the signs and waybills in the France area, and they all translated and most were funny as well as being ‘in world’.

I wouldn’t recommend Epic at this time. Let them work out operational issues and do the shake down cruise fixes. Let them figure out how to get wait times down. Nothing there is worth the waits that we saw yesterday.

Today we’re on another Universal property, although I’m not sure what and when. Should be fun if the waits aren’t as bad as Epic. If it rains, all bets are off, as all the outdoor rides shut down. Then the indoor ride wait times skyrocket. It’s always something.

Flexibility and patience will be key- as they are with prepping. Stack stuff, work on flexibility and patience.

nick

Probably hot and sunny today. Yesterday was nice for most of the day, cool and cloudy, but after noon it got very hot in the sun. So I napped. Later was nice, after the sun went down, especially when there was a breeze.

We spent the morning in Animal Kingdom. The Avatar attraction is still cool, but needs some alignment. They’ve redone the intro stuff, replacing Sigourney Weaver, and taking out most of the eco crap. Not all. Basically they took out almost everything that referred to movie stuff.

We spent the afternoon napping, and evening eating in Epcot. BTW, they re-did the intro stuff for Mission:space too, replacing the white man with a black woman. There is a chinese guy in a wheelchair in the background, running a console too.

Apparently this is pride week which someone suggested was part of the reason for low attendance. It explains all the rainbow crep I keep seeing.

Dunno if it’s related, but the low attendance has been nice for us.

Today will be universal’s Epic. No Fastpasses so it’s gonna suck.

I’ll see what security is like there, when the demographic is typically different than WDW.

I’m falling asleep at the keyboard it’s time for me to stack some zzz’s.

nick

Supposed to be another humid, hot day, with a chance of rain. Disney parks are fine in the rain. Universal, not as much. Yesterday was mid 80sF with occasional cooler patches, mostly when it was raining. We avoided most of the rain, only getting sprinkled. I’m hoping for similar today.

See yesterday’s comments if you are interested in my day at the Magic Kingdom.

Today we’re either doing Hollywood Studios, Epcot, both, or something else. Sibling is a planner and an expert Disney user, so I let the wife and sibling plan the days. They’re built around the Lightning Lane availability, I know that much.

My mom has been doing great so far. We have a wheel chair to move her around the parks, but she ‘transfers’ to rides under her own power. She even rode Tron. The chair saves her a lot of energy and lets us move at our walking pace instead of hers.

Surprisingly, the park isn’t full of power chair scooters and double wide baby strollers. It must just be the time of the year. Lots of foreign tourists, mostly spanish speakers, but not the horde of brazillians we’ve had before. They are incredibly obnoxious so I’m happy to not have them. People say american tourists are loud and inappropriate, but the brazillians are horrible.

Just doing my part for international relations…

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FWIW, in the morning I walked through the security scanner without issue. And the entry system read my thumbprint fine. When we returned in the evening, the entry system wouldn’t read my thumbprint and the scanner flagged me for secondary inspection with a wand and a look under my shirt. I had my altoids tin first aid kit in the pocket of my shorts. The guard indicated it was what set off the scanner. They didn’t open it or look in it though. White male with an overshirt… walking alone. FFS, it’s like a stereotype. EVERY time I’ve been alone in the entry line I get pulled out. Airports too. Today I’m taking the kid with me.

I’m stacking some good times, I hope you have some too.

nick

Probably warm and humid here in central Florida. Maybe some rain, although I don’t think we’re in the rainy season. There is a front pushing through that might get us some clear sky for the next couple of days. Or not. We’ll see.

Did my errands in the morning, made it to the chiropractor and Costco for gas and sunglasses, and made it home in time to pack and leave for the airport in plenty of time. Of course we didn’t. And then the airport was all kinds of messed up. We’d have missed the flight if it wasn’t delayed an hour by weather. This has happened before, and I’m pretty much done letting my wife do the travel day schedule…

But we got here.

Today is one of the parks, not sure which. The itinerary was worked out long ago and I’m just along for the ride.

I’ll be keeping my eyes open and looking for the stuff most people don’t see. No stacking except memories and good times.

Stack a few yourselves…

nick

Cool to start but then back to normal. Unless we get more rain. That might keep it cool for the day. Yesterday started with rain, but ended up sunny. The early rain kept the temperature down though and it was pretty nice. More of that would be great. Forecast shows the whole south and gulf coast in potential rain for the next couple of days. I’d like some nice days in Florida though, if we could get them.

Did my pickups Wednesday. Talked to my auctioneer, and generally did my normal routine day. Even did a load of laundry so I would have clean clothes for the trip. Just another day.

And today will be mostly getting ready to leave. Kids have school in the morning, but then we leave for our flight in the afternoon.

I’m not at all excited for this trip, but I should get into it once it gets going.

Can’t prep much, except for my normal carry on bag and relationships.

But these are the good old days, and we need to make sure they are GOOD. Time with family is good.

Building memories is good.

Stack the intangibles as well as the tangibles.

nick

Cool to start, but warming rapidly. It was in the high 80sF or more by late in the day yesterday, although it started cool enough. Sun came out and it was actually pretty bright and sunny later. More of that would be ok with me.

I had lots to do, and it was awkwardly timed, so of COURSE I got a service call from my client on top of everything. I was able to flip some stuff around and accommodate him. I stopped on my way there and grabbed a new APC UPS. We have Cyberpower there, mainly because of cost, but I prefer APC. The store had an open box unit discounted enough I could go with the APC. He was back on grid when I got there, and the UPS was still beeping, so it was time to swap it. They do wear out, they do catch surges. At home, I try to replace the battery once, but after that, the power electronics seem to be just worn out and the unit needs replacing.

Anyway, got him back up and running, then picked up D1, dropped her home, did my trash run, came back to take D2 to the orthodontist, then took her with me to get two pickups before time ran out. Came home and crashed out in front of my PC. Wife took care of the other kid taxi duties last night.

Oh, and I cut myself. Details in yesterday’s comments. We’ll see today if there is any infection. I didn’t really want stitches with the heavy bandage, and water restrictions, especially with my trip to Disney coming up. Fortunately I had the steri-strips, antibiotic, cleaners, etc. Well, it’s not down to “fortune” exactly, but it’s down to preparation and stacks. Which is the whole point of prepping.

So fail for cutting myself, hooray for preps for treating the injury.

Stack stuff you might need, as well as stuff you know you will need. Then stack some more.

nick