Thumping Our Way Through Disneyland.

[nebo]

Heather, that backstage tour sounds really cool, I guess now we have to include a trip to Uni when we do D=Land, I
suppose there 's always a taxi.
And that spitting Dino gets me every time on the Yourasshashadit Park, River Adventure ride.

Do you happen to know if Magic Mountain is in the neighborhood, ever been there?
Thanks for the new chapter, we are definately now shooting for next Oct. for our first Dizzy trip.

But first looking forward to meeting you and Bunny Boy next month, should be fun, never been kicked out of a Disney park before! Oh, and tell Mike I was able to pick up the Cherry Bombs after all, but how we get into the Hippo area undetected is still up to him.

 

[dwheatl]

Sorry to interrupt this TR, but here's a message for Nebo.
I think a taxi is about $200. A lot of the hotels around DL have Gray Line bus tours available. If you use them just for the ride (not the tour) it's about $35 per person. There's also a train/subway system that can get you from DL to Uni for cheap. Here's a link - http://socaltransport.org/tm_pub_start.php

Magic Mountain is pretty far from DL (60+ miles) and some of those miles are horrendous, traffic-wise. We just drove past MM today. I've never been inside, but DH has not had nice things to say about it. Quote from my BIL about the clientele - "I'd say the crowd turned ugly, but I believe they showed up here that way."

 

[smidgy]

holy cow! $200! one way? that is so disheartening. I know nebo and I would never be able to rent a car a drive a car from the airport to DLR, and then to Universal, etc etc.

we would either cause a major traffic backup, a major accident, or, both end up with major panic attacks or heart attacks, or (least case scenario) kill each other)

 

[smidgy]

thanks you so much , danielle , for your research!!!!

 

[dwheatl]

Smidgy, you're welcome.
Lady H, those little, spitting dinosaurs give me the willies. Aren't they the ones who killed Neumann (from Seinfeld) in JP?
And I want to know more about King Kong. Is it a 3D movie? An animatronic? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[smidgy]

danielle. yes, they were. I call them the "' h e l l o newman": dinosaurs.
he ran into the mud.. and he thought they were "cute". (I thought that about nebo at one time myself...)

(ok , I have about a day until he sees this, right?)

 

[pkondz]

I call them the "' h e l l o newman": dinosaurs.



he ran into the mud.. and he thought they were "cute". (I thought that about nebo at one time myself...)

I have this vision in my head now of Nebo chasing Smidgy around the house...

 

[Thumper_Man]

you ahve a great way of describing things! we weren't planning on going over to universal whenever we go to DLR, but Ive been thinking otherwise.. I wonder how much a cab would be from DLR to universal> 9no way do the 2 of us want to navigate a car aroud LA)

holy cow! $200! one way? that is so disheartening. I know nebo and I would never be able to rent a car a drive a car from the airport to DLR, and then to Universal, etc etc.

we would either cause a major traffic backup, a major accident, or, both end up with major panic attacks or heart attacks, or (least case scenario) kill each other)

You know, I have offered to drive. Lady H and I like to rent a car while on vacation. Some thing tells me you just don't want us to go.

 

[Thumper_Man]

But first looking forward to meeting you and Bunny Boy next month, should be fun, never been kicked out of a Disney park before! Oh, and tell Mike I was able to pick up the Cherry Bombs after all, but how we get into the Hippo area undetected is still up to him.

One thing is getting kicked out of a disney park. I'm starting to think this might get us banned. So I'm coming up with a rocket launcher instead.

 

[pkondz]

One thing is getting kicked out of a disney park. I'm starting to think this might get us banned. So I'm coming up with a rocket launcher instead.

If you're gonna go... go big.

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

you ahve a great way of describing things! we weren't planning on going over to universal whenever we go to DLR, but Ive been thinking otherwise.. I wonder how much a cab would be from DLR to universal> 9no way do the 2 of us want to navigate a car aroud LA)

oops, that was me above,posting under nebo's name

Looks like Nebo isn't the only masked crusader in the house .

Thanks Smidgy, I definitely try to bring our readers into the action with us. I highly recommend Uni. I don't blame you for not wanting to navigate around. Depending on where you stay around DL, it's easy to get around, transportation is pretty much at your finger tips. I know Mike mentioned a shuttle or bus to Uni, and i think Danielle mentioned it as well. So there are options to get there.

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Oh.... carp. Now I'm two chapters behind.... better get a bucket.

I mean, better get to work.

So you have a crack fetish. Gotcha.

I was hoping it wasn't so obvious...

Makes you wish you lived there doesn't it?
"Sorry I wasn't in all of last week boss. I was stuck in traffic."
"Oh, that's all right then."

Gotta look at the glass half full side of things some times.

My luck, my boss would tell me, "You've lived here long enough to know what traffic is like. Just live in your cubicle and we won't have this problem!"

If you mix up your clothes and accidentally put on Tuesday Disney clothes they won't let you in.

I wouldn't doubt it.

I said Monday Universal Clothes in jest, but technically, when we start packing for our trips, T-Man will lay out his clothes and figure out what he will wear, day by day depending on which park we will be at, if we will end up on a ride that may get us wet, the weather forecast, etc. I blame it on him being an Aries.

Good for you, 'cause only an idiot would charge his one and only battery and leave it in the hotel.

:

No, but I've heard good things. I think he's coming to our city next month, maybe I'll have to look into that.

I love Jeff Dunham. T-Man corrected me the other day, we've actually seen him 3 times live. His stuff never gets old. I will warn you, he does cuss a little, but i've seen all kinds of kids at his shows. This last time he was a little pricey, but as many times as we've seen him, we think it's worth the cost. You walk away holding your stomach because of how much you've laughed.

Ever see L.A. Story with Steve Martin? All these people are driving along the freeway when the radio DJ announces that it's the first day of spring. Suddenly, everyone is pulling out guns and everybody's shooting at everybody else.

Haven't seen that one, now i may have to. I give kudos to anyone who drives in that traffic on a daily basis.

OK. At least you have an excuse. My DW will be looking down or out the side window. I'll see a car stopped far up ahead. I'll ease off the gas... coast for a bit, slowing down all the while... slowly apply pressure to the break... and then as we gently pull up behind the stopped car, she'll look up and suddenly see a car that's CLOSE!!! and freak out.

Gotta admit it's gotten to me a few times. I'm all relaxed and suddenly she's gasping like a semi's about to ram into us at 100PMH. I usually tell her to just keep her eyes closed.

That's probably what T-Man is thinking himself. I don't know if i really gasp so much as grab onto the door handle or start searching for something to hold on to, which drives him nuts. To him, the astigmatism or depth perception thing is no excuse.

Ah, we have the same problems here too. I see some things are universal.

See how I did that?

Good one!

Sorry what was that? Somthing about Tom's Harry something or other? Nevermind. The problem with the merging is that everyone's different. You've got some people who won't let you in, in front of them no matter what. You've got others who let in everybody, which means that lane ain't moving.

I've heard of this zipper merging theory, but I can't see how it could work unless everybody's on the same page... and they never are.

Sometimes i wonder if everyone is on the same road nevermind the same page. I don't think people even bother to look in their rear view mirror when they merge.

I remember back in high school, we had a trip to Chicago for a Journalism training and our teacher was upset about one thing or another, his boyfriend was mad at him, we had a huge layover, by the time we got to Chicago it was like 8pm, so we had one of the students trying to give directions while reading the map, and we had the teacher fuming in the drivers seat, talking to himself. He's all the way in the left hand lane when the student tells him that his exit is coming up, everyone in the back of the van holds on as he just power merges through the freeway just barely making the exit and just barely missing taking out 10 cars in the process. Maybe that's why i'm so tense when others are driving...

Nice save. Did he buy it?

At the time, probably, but i think he's learned his lesson since then.

Where's Ringling Brothers when you need 'em?

No kidding. It was funny to watch but I couldn't believe how many were in such a small vehicle. I guess DL/Universal/SeaWorld wasn't enough for us on this trip, we had to include the circus as well.

So you have to go all the way to the top so that you can let stuff out of the bottom?

Technically yes...but

If the night lights up... that's called 'day'.

Ah...That would explain a lot.

Well, sure. They probably knew you were going to write this TR.

You know, you could be on to something there. We did get through some of those lines pretty quickly...

But you were worried there for a sec. right?

I always worry about those things. Either that the code we use won't work the next time around, that someone will "crack" the secret super duper code, or that i won't remember it.

I might chose this one. I love their oranges.

What?

Actually, Inception is a Warner Brothers movie. But I'll let it go this time.



Yeah. No. Insight is a Braeburn Entertainment movie. You're 0 for 2 here... and you were there!

Or were you? Hmmmm...

D'oh!

You needed 3D glasses for the tour? I think I'm missing something here.

I'll explain this one in a minute...seems I confused quite a few people with this.

And BTW...
Defenestrate: The action of demonstrating the removal of a fence.

See? I knew what it meant.

Ah...Learn something new everyday!

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Wait. Which one is it? Off or on? You can't have both.

Sure I can. With multiple personalities you can have anything and everything!

I first read that a little too quickly and thought, "Wow! Jimmy Fallon showed up!"

Missed the word 'monitors'.

That would have been awesome! I know that he was there personally for the re-opening of it all. But I don't know if he's ever gone back to do the tour in person. That would be interesting to see.

Nah. You don't really need a small child. I say if you drop one, pick him or her up on the way back.

That's the spirit. No need to make everyone wait just because the child decided to go over board. The only hope is that the poor child doesn't wander off on it's own and end up in one of the sound stages. The next show you see may have your child wandering through the set.

Check. Somewhere on Universal Property there's a hot firefighter.

Too bad I never saw one personally.

That's a great movie. Jamie Foxx does an unbelievable job of channeling Ray Charles. I saw it was coming up again on TV and will be recording it to watch again.

I agree. He really did a phenomenal job playing that role. I can't see anyone else playing Ray Charles.

There ya go. Back to the Future was a Universal movie.

Just watched that the other day and I recognized it.

That's awesome!

Oh sure. Plenty of people.

Spelunkers...
Treasure seekers...
Miners...
Batman...

How was this all done, Heather? Was it animatronics? Or implied? On the video? Sounds pretty amazing, though.

I will actually go into that in just a few. It seems a few people are wondering the same thing. so I will clarify in a new post.

That'd be Nebo's tram.

Poor Nebo!

Geez, you'd think after all the trouble they had, they'd learn from their mistakes.

But nooooooo...

Well now I have to start worrying about bringing along dinosaur repellant with me when i travel. I don't know if that stuff will get past security!

That's really funny, Mrs. T.

Why thank you! Hey Mr. T-- Look, I'm funny! Ponzi said so!

No! You can't be done already! I want more! Great chapter! Can't wait for more.

I promise there is more on the way!

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Heather, that backstage tour sounds really cool, I guess now we have to include a trip to Uni when we do D=Land, I
suppose there 's always a taxi.
And that spitting Dino gets me every time on the Yourasshashadit Park, River Adventure ride.

Do you happen to know if Magic Mountain is in the neighborhood, ever been there?
Thanks for the new chapter, we are definately now shooting for next Oct. for our first Dizzy trip.

But first looking forward to meeting you and Bunny Boy next month, should be fun, never been kicked out of a Disney park before! Oh, and tell Mike I was able to pick up the Cherry Bombs after all, but how we get into the Hippo area undetected is still up to him.

I do not know about Magic Mountain. T-Man is always talking about it, but since I can only play "dumb wife" so many times in one trip, I didn't give him a chance to find it and book it too.

Although, if we do end up going to DL around the same time you do, which T-Man keeps talking about so he can chauffer you around like Mr. and Mrs. Daisy, you can be my guest and go with him, as I am sure he would be ecstatic to have a coaster buddy!

We are looking forward to meeting you and Smidgy too! Could the two of you at least give us a heads up so we can start walking out of the park before you get us banned too?

Sorry to interrupt this TR, but here's a message for Nebo.
I think a taxi is about $200. A lot of the hotels around DL have Gray Line bus tours available. If you use them just for the ride (not the tour) it's about $35 per person. There's also a train/subway system that can get you from DL to Uni for cheap. Here's a link - http://socaltransport.org/tm_pub_start.php

Magic Mountain is pretty far from DL (60+ miles) and some of those miles are horrendous, traffic-wise. We just drove past MM today. I've never been inside, but DH has not had nice things to say about it. Quote from my BIL about the clientele - "I'd say the crowd turned ugly, but I believe they showed up here that way."

holy cow! $200! one way? that is so disheartening. I know nebo and I would never be able to rent a car a drive a car from the airport to DLR, and then to Universal, etc etc.

we would either cause a major traffic backup, a major accident, or, both end up with major panic attacks or heart attacks, or (least case scenario) kill each other)

Interrupt away. Thanks for the info. It's good to know in case we ever go back and don't get a car. Sometimes with the prices of rentals now a days it's almost worth it to just get a taxi or take a shuttle.

I can see it now.

Now for your traffic report, -- "In an effort to revive her husband from what could have possibly been a heart attack but ended up being a panic attack, The wife started CPR only to find the husband responsive, so she smacked him unconscious. Unfortunately, this was all while they were on I-5 going to downtown L.A. and before the husband could take his foot off the accelerator. A 50 car pile up is causing some major slow downs at the moment, and we don't know when it will be completely cleared...Back to you in the studio!"

Smidgy, you're welcome.
Lady H, those little, spitting dinosaurs give me the willies. Aren't they the ones who killed Neumann (from Seinfeld) in JP?
And I want to know more about King Kong. Is it a 3D movie? An animatronic? Inquiring minds want to know!

danielle. yes, they were. I call them the "' h e l l o newman": dinosaurs.
he ran into the mud.. and he thought they were "cute". (I thought that about nebo at one time myself...)

(ok , I have about a day until he sees this, right?)

Danielle, I think Smidgy answered that perfectly. I just never thought they would now come after me. I mean, Newman we all knew had it coming...but little ol' me?

I am going to give a more in depth look at King Kong coming up.

One thing is getting kicked out of a disney park. I'm starting to think this might get us banned. So I'm coming up with a rocket launcher instead.

If you're gonna go... go big.

Ponzi, don't give them any ideas!

 

[Thumper_Man]

I did look at Magic Mountain. It's about 62 miles from DL. According to Google Maps, it's about an hour and 15 minutes to drive there. Since I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, and I can't fly, it will take some planning to get there. It is much further out than what Universal is. Universal is about 30 miles from DL. Since we were already doing a couple of long drives (not counting the long drive to/from LAX) to Universal and Sea World in San Diego, I didn't think Lady H would be up for a 3rd long drive. I would love to go and ride some of the coasters at Magic Mountain. Some I would probably be doing alone. The so called "Dumb Wife" I'm sure wouldn't be so dumb and try them. She could surprise me, but she would rather I rode with someone other than her.

Plus we were on a limited budget since we have WDW coming up in about a month. So financially we wouldn't have been able to squeeze it in.

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Apologies to you, it seems I wasn't as clear on my description of King Kong. And here I was priding myself on how well i was doing!

If you remember me telling you about how during the queue, they gave out 3D glasses before moving us over to another line for the actual tram. These 3D glasses would come in handy for the King Kong part of the tour.

Once you go into the "cave of darkness" , not to be confused with the "Cave of Wonder"

or the "Batcave", the director of King Kong comes on the monitors to give us some insight as to how they made everything and then asks us politely to put our shiny new glasses on.

This is how King Kong comes alive. And it is as realistic as it can be, without having a 2000 pound Ape trying to jump on your tram. There are animatronics involved just like any 3D ride, to give the tram the effect that you are in the midst of what is going on. The tram will move, you can feel the thumps and crashes around you, it feels like the whole tram is being picked up by King Kong himself. You are basically pulled into Skull Island and saved by the mighty Kong.

T-man mentioned that there may have been more than one dinosaur that was after us, and as I think about it, it makes sense, because King Kong kept hurdling our tram from one side to the other to try to keep the bad Dino's from attacking.

It really was a fun experience, and the director was involved in the whole process to make sure that it was as close to the real thing as possible. Unfortunately, 3D Special effects, along with a non 3D camera, made for really horrible pictures, so I have none to show you.

I hope this clarifies it a little more. If I am missing anything i'm sure T-man can fill in the voids.

 

[nowellsl]

Plus we were on a limited budget since we have WDW coming up in about a month. So financially we wouldn't have been able to squeeze it in.

When are you guys going to be at WDW? We're going 12/2 - 12/4

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

When are you guys going to be at WDW? We're going 12/2 - 12/4

We will be there 12/1-12/15 I am not sure of the schedule, you will have to ask T-Man for the logistics.

 

[nebo]

Sorry to interrupt this TR, but here's a message for Nebo.
I think a taxi is about $200. A lot of the hotels around DL have Gray Line bus tours available. If you use them just for the ride (not the tour) it's about $35 per person. There's also a train/subway system that can get you from DL to Uni for cheap. Here's a link - http://socaltransport.org/tm_pub_start.php

Magic Mountain is pretty far from DL (60+ miles) and some of those miles are horrendous, traffic-wise. We just drove past MM today. I've never been inside, but DH has not had nice things to say about it. Quote from my BIL about the clientele - "I'd say the crowd turned ugly, but I believe they showed up here that way."

Ok, hang on a second there little "pop your bubble" girl, I'm looking for clarification on a taxi ride for two to the Uni studios, one way. It can't be 200 can it? Or were you quoteing a price to magic Mountain?

danielle. yes, they were. I call them the "' h e l l o newman": dinosaurs.


Diane, rememer not long before my company went under, the two guys I worked with, their names? Paul Newman and Ed Sullivan?

he ran into the mud.. and he thought they were "cute". (I thought that about nebo at one time myself...)

(ok , I have about a day until he sees this, right?)

Oh, and here is my reward for confiding with her on old times. Just wait untill your wheelchair needs a tire changed in the future, I just might be busy!

You know, I have offered to drive. Lady H and I like to rent a car while on vacation. Some thing tells me you just don't want us to go.

OK OK, believe me, Mike, You're HIRED!

One thing is getting kicked out of a disney park. I'm starting to think this might get us banned. So I'm coming up with a rocket launcher instead.

Oh c'mon, we need to get with it. They're called RPG's, ok?
And yeah, that might work. A bit messier I guess, but still,,,At least we'll finally hear Peter Pottamus do the "Hippo Holler"!

If you're gonna go... go big.

Whoa! Where in the heck did you find that "smiley' ?
From the Taliban web site?

 

[dwheatl]

The taxi rate was on some travel website (tripadvisor maybe?), but the yellow cab site makes it look like that is round trip. Here's a link, I'll let you take it from there. http://www.yellowcab.com/rates/