Archive for category travel

Plans for the 4th

July 3rd, 2008 @ 1:20 pm - No Comments

Still up in the air.

Since we’ve moved here, we’ve gone to the local fireworks. Everyone takes blankets to one of the bigger parks in the area and there’s a band and food and drink and you just kinda hang out until the fireworks.

This year we considered fighting the crowds at Kings Island. Looks like they’re doing another throwback day and we had lots of fun over Memorial Day weekend, so this looked like a possibility despite the crowds.

Then word came that Steel Hawg might open on the fourth. Looking at the calendar, if we didn’t check it out this weekend, we probably wouldn’t until just before school starts if at all. The catch is that is doesn’t exactly seem like a sure thing even though the park keeps saying it pretty much is. So earlier in the week I booked a room over that way and now I’m just playing the waiting game. If no official word comes out by this evening, I’m just going to call the park and see what they have to say.

So my plans for tomorrow are one of the above scenarios.

America’s Asshole

June 19th, 2008 @ 1:05 am - 1 Comment

Jeff posted a while back about America’s Asshole. I disagreed then and I still do. As of today I’m convinced those guys aimed a little too high. America’s Asshole is clearly Atlantic City.

Off We Go

June 13th, 2008 @ 1:49 pm - No Comments

We’re heading out in a few hours. Not sure if I’ll have anything to post here or not. I’ll probably post all the park related stuff on coasterimage and the personal stuff here. Makes sense, huh?

Of course, it started storming like hell about 45 minutes ago.

Grounded

April 5th, 2008 @ 11:31 am - 1 Comment

Gee, who would’ve thought $10 flights weren’t a good business model?

Skybus Airlines has made its final flight.

Just over 10 months after its heralded takeoff at Port Columbus, the airline that became famous for its $10 fares said Friday evening that its final flight of the day would be its last.

Full Story

Charmland USA

April 2nd, 2008 @ 3:49 pm - No Comments

Visit Charmland!

Amusement park fans rejoice! A whole new season of fun awaits visitors this summer, and Charmland USA is blazing a new trail of excitement with the addition of 450 majestic California Sycamore trees. Perfect for taking shelter beneath on a blazing hot sunny day, the trees are the perfect complement to the park’s wide assortment of foliage, breathtaking streams, natural soil midways and historic rides.

Florida Resident

March 28th, 2008 @ 12:20 am - 1 Comment

So I mentioned we’re going to Disney in the fall a few posts back, right?

Well, since then I’ve been looking into the million-and-one things involved in creating a ‘magical’ Disney experience…

…you know what?

It’s fucking expensive!

So we’ve joined the ranks of the masses in digging up info and discounts and deals and tips and tricks and came up with our own that I hadn’t seen posted anywhere – and with good reason, it’s a tad involved, but things happened to work out just right for us.

So what’s our trick?

Become a Florida Resident and score all the sweet Florida Resident deals that Disney offers on tickets and rooms and stuff.

So how easy is it to become a Florida resident?

Turns out that it’s ridiculously easy if you happen to be in Florida.

You see, I also mentioned in passing a few posts back that Jamie had to go to Florida for a conference.

So with some of her free time on the last day, she hit up the Florida DMV. Turns out that for 3 dollars, a valid out-of-state license, a valid social security card and the ability to spout off a valid Florida address (doesn’t even have to be local to the DMV location – in this case she used her mother’s address – 450 miles away) and you can get a Florida ID card.

The very same state-issued ID card you have to show to take advantage of the Florida Resident discounts at Walt Disney World.

The beauty of it is that her shiny new Florida ID will cover her and the kids. I’m still stuck with poor tourist pricing on my tickets, but she can also book a room on property and lots of other neat things.

But that’s not all. Now she can also score the Florida Resident Seasonal Pass for herself and the kids. The pass has blackout dates during peak times (when we won’t be visiting), but for less than regular tickets with park hopper, we also open ourselves up to passholder discount opportunities both inside and outside the parks.

It might sound like a long way to go, but she was there anyway and it took little more than an hour of her time to get the ID and already it looks like it could save us 4 digits in total.

My Head Is Going To Explode

March 24th, 2008 @ 1:31 am - 2 Comments

I’m sick. I hate being sick. It feels like my head is going to explode.

How is it possible that I, the one in the family who rarely leaves the house and/or has contact with the outside world, gets sick but the three people around me who do leave the house and contact other humans on a regular basis are not?

I hate being sick. Did I mention it feels like my head is going to explode?

I told my family that if it does explode, be sure to eat the remnants of my brain before the authorities get here because if you eat my brain you gain my knowledge.

On top of that the NCAA tournament is driving me nuts with all the upsets. My brackets are fucked. I hate college hoops and don’t need the stress.

We also watched I Am Legend this weekend. Meh. It was a little more ‘monster movie’ than I’d have liked.

Did I mention it feels like my head is going to explode?

Jamie has a conference in Orlando this week. She leaves in the morning. She’s staying at the Hilton at Disney. I told her she’d better not do ANYTHING Disney without us…that trip is just 7 months away. I guarantee she stops by Downtown Disney. I’m jealous.

The Easter Bunny delivered again this year…another bike. This time for my daughter. I have pics and would’ve posted them like last year (we colored 90 eggs this past week too), but I don’t feel like it. Did I mention it feels like my head is going to explode?

A Pretty Good Feeling, I Guess.

March 18th, 2008 @ 12:03 am - 3 Comments

We overnighted a check to Nissan today and as soon as they process it, the Altima is paid off – 29 months early.

That’s a pretty good feeling, I guess.

This past Friday was 2 months without a cigarette.

That’s a pretty good feeling, I guess.

Our new furniture gets delivered on Thursday.

That’s a pretty good feeling, I guess.

I’ve spent the last couple of evenings planning, mapping, researching, purchasing and reserving for the three week-long amusement park trips we’ll be doing this year.

That’s a pretty good feeling, I guess.

Plane Tickets

February 27th, 2008 @ 1:15 am - 7 Comments

I just bought 4 plane tickets leaving DAY and arriving at MCO on October 18.

I guess I just committed to finally taking a Disney trip after procrastinating for three years.

We first thought about doing a full-tilt, two-week Orlando trip in 2005. The kids were 7 and 4. Seemed like good ages. But that was the summer Jamie decided to try to take her career in a slightly different direction – doing so involved quite a salary cut at the time. No Orlando.

In 2006 we wanted to go again, but by the time late spring rolled around, we were moving to Dayton. No Orlando.

We said we’d do it again in 2007. We really thought we would, but couldn’t bite the bullet financially. Two weeks of doing it up Gonch-style at the Orlando theme parks can get costly and we had shit to pay down. We briefly considered breaking the trip into two smaller trips – one week at Disney and one everywhere else, but still kind of never committed and more time passed.

Here we are in early 2008 and with Jeff having just taken another trip to Orlando and actually doing the Disney thing (and telling me about it), I started to get the itch again. I’d spent some time this past week looking at pricing and stuff.

Then oddly enough, Jamie comes home one evening telling me about a guest at the hotel who was telling her about taking his kids to Disney recently and them being totally unamused. Turns out they’re a few years older than our kids and are entirely at the ‘too cool for this’ age. Something just clicked. The window of opportunity was closing. We needed to get the kids down there and do the corny family Disney vacation before it was too late.

We spent an evening or two looking a little more seriously at the trip, still kind of wondering how much we really wanted to drop on a week at Disney World. The I get an email from AirTran going off about great fares through November if you book soon, so I took a look. (we tend to fly AirTran anyway and it’s probably one of the better choice out of Dayton)

They had the nonstop to Orlando available at $99 each way. I took it as a sign. (they had 1 stop flights at $79, but who wants to stop?)

This evening we figured ‘fuck it’ and bought the plane tickets.

Now I have as many as 8 months to fret over the details of a week at Disney and finding the value that works for us. So if anyone can tip me off to some good resources, I’d appreciate it.

So we’ve committed to the third week of October (the 18th to the 25th) at Disney World. I figure that we’ll do the other half of the trip (everything else in Orlando) most likely in 2009 or 2010.

I still want to get back to California and do more parks than Magic Mountain and Knott’s…

…and there’s still Texas…

sigh.

Not A Finger!

November 26th, 2007 @ 1:54 am - 1 Comment

We went home for Thanksgiving as we always seem to. By home, I mean my parents. Normally we hit 70 west from Dayton, through Columbus and Wheeling then 79 north past Pittsburgh to my parents. This time we took 70 to Columbus and caught 71 north to Cleveland and then 80 into Pennsylvania and headed south to my parent’s house. Why? Well, we wanted to make a little stop along the way. A stop where? Here:

A Christmas Story House

So what? We visited an old house in a shitty Cleveland neighborhood, right? Well, yeah. But it was this house:

Screenshot

Still not sure? Well here’s the source for the title of this entry and it’s easily the funniest line in the movie:

It was cool. I’m glad we stopped, but I don’t recommend traveling to visit. If you happen to be passing nearby and are a fan of the movie then it’s worth the stop…otherwise you may be let down if you go out of your way to get there.

For the record, we drove home the normal route.

Kings Island Passes

October 27th, 2007 @ 12:40 pm - 5 Comments

Last year Santa left Kings Island passes in our stockings for Christmas. How cool of him.

Turns out that they paid off more for travel than for local visits. As a family we only hit Kings Island twice. Jamie and I went two additional times…kinda. We used them once to get in for the Weird Al show (and that’s all we did) and we used them again for Halloween Haunt.

We also used them (as a family) three times at Cedar Point, once at Geauga Lake and once at Worlds of Fun.

I guess that makes them worth it, but I’ll have to look into our travel plans for 2008 to decide whether or not to renew. The funny thing about Kings Island is that none of us hates it…far from it. The problem is that no one really likes it either. It’s kind of just there. I’m very indifferent about the park.

Our first visit was a preview weekend in 2004. We also did BeastBuzz in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Then this year we made the aforementioned visits. In all that time I still haven’t ridden 4 of their coasters. How weird is that?

This all just came to mind because we originally planned on stopping by today for the end of the season, but it’s 55 and drizzling out. No one even cared…it was just like, “Meh. Whatever. Screw it.”

I wonder what it is about that park that fails to capture my family’s interest?

Off To The Point

October 19th, 2007 @ 3:31 pm - 2 Comments

We’re off! (in a few minutes)

If you’re going this weekend, we’ll see you there. If not, you lose.

For the record, I think I’ll take route #1.

Best Route To Cedar Point

October 16th, 2007 @ 11:10 am - 4 Comments

I’ve been to Cedar Point thre times since we moved to Dayton last year. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘best’ way to get there – just a few equally sucky ways. I’ve used all kinds of mapping programs – both online and offline – and they all give a slightly different suggestion. In a nutshell, there seems to be three basic suggested routes that are all similar in time, but not distance. I’m still undecided as to how we’ll go this time, but here’s the skinny:

Route 1 (I-75 to 6) – 194 miles, 3 hours 34 minutes


View Larger Map

Route 2 (I-70 to I-71 to 250) – 189 miles, 3 hours 35 minutes


View Larger Map

Route 3 (Smaller roads) – 154 miles, 3 hours 47 minutes


View Larger Map

We’ve tried Routes 2 & 3 in the past. I think we might go with Route #1 this weekend – just to mix it up. I’m not a small roads kind of guy and while the shortest in distance, that route is the longest in time…and also dependent on how fast the people in front of you are going. The Columbus route is decent enough (that’s a long time to be on 250), but if you hit Columbus at the wrong time, you’re sitting in traffic. The Bowling Green route seems to give me lots of highway while avoiding traffic backups and keeping me from getting stuck behind slow drivers.

We’ll see, I guess.

Fall Affair

October 1st, 2007 @ 2:50 pm - 1 Comment

Metal!

(I signed up at Facebook just to steal that picture from Jeff)

And in case you’re wondering, that’s two gigantic slices of pizza covered with a heaping handful of potato chips and a side of fudge…welcome to my heart attack!

Buttfuck, Indiana

September 29th, 2007 @ 1:23 am - 2 Comments

We’re officially at the hotel here in Buttfuck, Indiana. I still have to laugh at how cheap things are here and how ridiculously nice everyone is. We got two pizzas (one loaded and one cheese) for under $15. Then between ordering and delivery we found a ‘buy one get one’ coupon for the place we ordered from and the delivery dude actually honored it. The only thing missing is a Starbucks.

Tomorrow (later today?) we’re off to West Buttfuck for the Fall Affair at Holiday World. Odds are if you’re reading this, I’ll probably see you there. Looking foward to it.

Looking For Some Action

August 27th, 2007 @ 2:47 am - 1 Comment

Next weekend is a three day weekend. Looks like everyone around here will actually have all three days free. We need to find something cool to do (or several things) and I’m not sure I’m really up for more amusement parks this year. (gasp!)

Leaving Florida

July 12th, 2007 @ 1:35 am - 1 Comment

Well, we finally head out tomorrow morning. Not a second too soon.

All this trip did for us was confirm that we never want to live here again. I don’t dig the heat. I don’t dig boats or water. I don’t dig the laid-back, almost bohemian approach to life. I don’t dig drinks by the pool. I despise seafood. I don’t get off on the beach and the ocean (or the gulf in this case) isn’t exotic or relaxing, at best it’s lukewarm asshole soup. A bunch of fat, sweaty tourists and leather-skinned, over-tanned locals sweaty privates marinating in the salty water with the occasional used band-aid floating by for extra flavor. Bah!

I just don’t like anything about it from the scenery to the weather to the activities to the lifestyle. Florida is truly America’s wang. And it’s a sickly one at that.

The wife and I actually got away alone yesterday and headed over to Orange Beach (Alabama) and hung out for the day. Checked out cheesy tourist souvenir shops (a favorite pastime), ate a couple of great meals, and stopped by Waterville USA.

Speaking of which, we set an all time personal record for tickets won to money spent ratio in their arcade. We had some time to blow when we stopped by so we dropped a twenty at the arcade. I ended up hitting a decent jackpot on the Simpsons Kooky Carnival game (or something like that) and my wife hit a smaller on on some token drop game. In the end we cleared 1106 tickets on $20. That’s 55 tickets per dollar. Not too bad. Got a shitload of crap with the tickets and brought it back for the kids…they were pleased.

Earlier in the week we hit up a local mall to escape the opressive heat of the in-laws and found that the Discovery Stores are going out of business. The dude working the register claimed they were ALL going, but the online presence would remain. At any rate everything was like 25% to 60% off. We scored big time and now have the kids birthdays covered and a nice start on X-mas. (thinking ahead!) I’m just glad I have kids who dig that sort of stuff.

Today I hooked up the in-laws home theatre. They’ve had this stuff (big ol’ TV, sweet Denon receiver, DVD player, Bose surround set-up) since Ivan trashed their house and had it all sitting there looking nice, but none of it was hooked up. I got it all up and running and scored some serious brownie points with them.

Speaking of the in-laws, I’ve finally just come to the conclusion that we’re complete opposites. For real. I’m sure you’re familiar with opposites:

- Hot/Cold
- Up/Down
- Big/Little

Well, add Gonch/In-Laws to that list.

Seriously. Every last thing about human existence on Earth is different. General approach to life, things that are important, personal views, ideas, opinions, likes, dislikes – we’re fucking polar opposites.

But they’re nice enough people for the most part and they mean well, so life is what it is. Everyone does their thing and that’s all we can expect, I suppose. (which is just a nice way of saying, “Everyone has the right to suck if they want”)

But after 5 mind-numbing days we’re finally getting the hell out. Here’s to another 6 year hiatus before we get around to coming back.

Fucking Florida

July 8th, 2007 @ 2:12 am - 1 Comment

Sigh. I hate Florida.

We rolled into Atlanta last night about 1am. There’s a really nice Hampton Inn & Suites one exit down from SFOG. I’d recommend it to anyone stopping by the park.

Park opened at 10am and we were there by 10:05. Beelined to Goliath. I estimated a 20-30 minute wait. We stood in line about 10 minutes and no train went. Started getting pissed. Empty train went out a few minutes later and stopped on the lift. Maintenance appeared. We left the line.

About 10 minutes later it started up again, but now the line was ridiculous. I snapped some pics.

Two or three trains later and it stopped again. We started leaving the park.

Another train goes. As we left I snapped another handful of pics. We were in the car and on the road by 11:30.

Rule #1 (and we broke this most important rule today) – never visit an amusement park on a Saturday…especially Six Flags. By the time we left, every coaster we passed had a full queue and the estimated 90 minute wait. I considered a Q-bot, then realized I didn’t want to pay $40 for one coaster ride.

I’ll probably never get a lap on Goliath.

From there we drove to Pensacola.

Never stop at the gas stations at the exit where you get off of I-65 onto 113. The people are stupid, slow, smelly and shirtless.

It’s fucking hot in Florida. Stupid hot. I hate hot. Hot is ugly. I forgot how thick the sucky ass air is down here.

My in-laws idea of having the air conditioning on in the house is setting it to 85 when it’s 90 out.

Shoot me, please.

Happenings

July 4th, 2007 @ 2:23 pm - No Comments

So my DVD & Book were delivered on Monday.

The DVD was great. Watched it Monday night. Amazing how a guy who is generally known for having his shit together can fall into a bad situation and get caught up in it. The saddest part of the whole thing was when he had to sell his sweet ass DW drum kit (valued at $8000) to his drug dealer for $3000 so he could pay rent. It just made me miss that fact that music was such a big part of my life for so long. I’m a rock star at heart.

The book on the other hand did little for me. I read a bunch of it yesterday afternoon and finished it up last night. The basic concept is valid to some degree – and that’s the idea that intuition and initial impressions are more valid than we often give them credit for and that too much info and thought process can acually adversely affect our decision process. The problem is that that idea is laid out in the first 8 pages. The other 278 pages just repeat examples (and add details) ad naseum. If I had read just the introduction that would have been enough and I’d have agreed with the idea in theory. Unfortunately, I read the whole book and while there’s some good ideas and things I do agree with to various degrees, I think this excerpt from Steve Sailer’s take on the book sums it up best:

But as far as I can tell, his book reduces to two messages:
-Go with your gut reactions, but only when they are right.
-And even when your gut reactions are factually correct, ignore them when they are politically incorrect.

So, it’s a promising idea and I believe in a certain degree of validity to it, but the book presents the concept in a way that sucks.

Today I’m getting all the directions and reservations and info and stuff together for next week’s trip. Well, we’re gone for next week, but we leave on Friday. It’s mostly a trip to visit the in-laws. We haven’t been to their house since we lived in Florida ourselves (6 years!) and they moved between the last time we visited and now – so essentially this will be our first time at their place. So of course I’m piggybacking a few park stops onto things. We’ll hit Atlanta briefly to check out Goliath at SFOG, we’ll hit Waterville USA while we’re down that way. The kids will dig the waterpark and I can get a new credit (and the pics for coasterimage). On the way back up we’ll stop by Alabama Adventure and Lake Winnie (finally! third try’s a charm).

Then I have about 48 hours to bust out something new on coasterimage before we go, otherwise I’ll have one of those month-long lags with nothing new. It’s not hard, just tedious. It’s hard to find the motivation to get started, but once I do, I usually bust it out. I have Celebration City pics processed, so that’s probably what will go up.

As for right now. It’s the 4th. No days off around here. The plan today was just to go see the local fireworks this evening, but it’s seriously looking like it’s going to be rained out. Based on what’s happening outside the window (err…sliding glass door) and what the weathermen are saying…I’m guessing no fireworks tonight.

Oh yeah…I got new shoes last night too.

I Wanna Go To The Kwik-E-Mart

July 3rd, 2007 @ 2:11 am - No Comments

As a promotion for the upcoming Simpsons Movie, several 7-11 stores across the country have rethemed to replicas of the Kwik-E-Mart store from The Simpsons. (check it)

Only a handful of locations and none of them too close to me…not even along (or close to) our travel route for next week’s park trip. Sigh.

Looks cool as hell.

There is also a contest going on between the various towns named Springfield with the winner being chosen to host the big-screen premiere on July 26th – it’s a long shot, but Springfield, Ohio is in on the action. Hell, that’s just 20 miles up the road…

I can dream, right?