Animal Kingdom

Returning to the Disney World posts after a bit of a hiatus... Posting about our trip was making me a bit depressed because it reminded me that I don't have another trip planned. But I think I'm past that and can enjoy reminiscing about it instead.

I've settled on Animal Kingdom as my favourite park. It has two awesome shows (Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo: The Musical), a cool rollercoaster (Expedition Everest), and I have to admit I'm a closet fan of Dinosaur. Plus it has animals! Who couldn't love it? And I'm a sucker for Disney theming and I think they've got it pretty much perfect in Animal Kingdom.

Minas Elendúr/Delotham

One chapter in Volume III Book 2 in the upcoming LOTRO content release takes place in the sprawling maze instances Minas Elendúr and Delotham. Now anyone who knows me (in real life or in game) will know that I have terrible direction sense. So I didn't get very far into Minas Elendúr before I realised a map. And this being beta, there weren't any maps readily available. So I made my own. But it quickly became clear from GLFF that even people who don't normally have a problem navigating in LOTRO were having trouble with this one. I hope that my maps will be able to help someone.

For those who aren't familiar with these instances, there are two separate instances, Minas Elendúr and Delotham. However, they are connected by 17 doors. Delotham can only be accessed by going through Minas Elendúr, and parts of Minas Elendúr can only be accessed by going through Delotham. The epic quest primarily takes place in Minas Elendúr, but there is also a deed that requires exploring both instances.

I've posted two sets of pictures below. The first is in-game screenshots of the maps; the second is my hand-drawn maps. The hand-drawn maps aren't exactly to scale but it should be pretty easy to match the shapes up (especially with all those Hidden Mickeys...).

Welcome to Enedwaith

With LOTRO's Free to Play launch in a couple of weeks, I'm going to start posting some of my maps from beta. These are mainly intended for my kinnies in Eventide Revelry, but I'm posting them here so that they are accessible to anyone who might be interested. First up is a map of the new region, Enedwaith and the coordinates of all the POIs I've found. It should be fairly complete but if you find something missing or incorrect let me know. Apologies for any typos; I can't always read my own writing when it's not in English.

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Since our last visit, Disney's MGM Studios has been renamed to Disney's Hollywood Studios. While it makes sense in that the park doesn't have anything to do with MGM and at the moment I don't think it's a good thing to be associated with MGM, it makes it kind of hard to know what to call it for short. We used to call it MGM. "Hollywood" is confusing and "DHS" is pretty opaque. I guess the most appropriate name is "Studios" but even that isn't completely clear to someone who's used to it being MGM. I suppose we'll all get used to it eventually.

Epcot

To be honest, I don't feel like I have a great deal to say about Epcot. To me, it feels like it's now the weakest of the parks. I suspect it's because there's not a great deal of new stuff since our last visit. The biggest difference is that Wonders of Life has closed. I liked Wonders of Life.

Magic Kingdom

I suspect that the wonder of Magic Kingdom can only truly be appreciated if you are travelling with kids.  But it still holds a special place in my heart. There's something really magical about walking under the train station and seeing Cinderella Castle towering over you. My only complaint about Cinderella Castle is that the painting seems kind of inconsistent. The bottom half has an awesome stone effect going on, but the top half is kind of meh. And then the top tower is gold instead of blue? They were painting the castle during our 2006 visit and I assumed they were halfway through changing the colour scheme. But it still has the same half-done look to it. I'm not really sure what look they were going for.

Port Orleans French Quarter

On this trip to Disney World we stayed in a Moderate resort for the first time -- Port Orleans French Quarter. One of my primary motivations for this decisions was that French Quarter is a small resort so we were guaranteed a short walk to the food court and buses, which I knew I'd need if my CFS got bad. But it also meant a bunch of other improvements over a Value resort which I appreciated.

Firstly, the theming was a little bit more sophisticated. Still a definite Disney feel about the whole thing, but more of an immersive theme like in World Showcase or Animal Kingdom rather than a bright and cheerful kid-friendly theming. It's themed to the French Quarter of New Orleans (from what I've read, the main difference is it's a lot cleaner :) during Mardi Gras.

Boston

Our first stop in America was in Boston to visit James. We got to see his apartment and his regular haunts, do some shopping (Gap clothes for me and cheap Clinique for Mum), and recuperate from the trip over. James drove us up to Portsmouth to reminisce and Mum and I went into Boston itself where we walked most of the Freedom Trail. We also took the opportunity to send in our spit to 23 and Me for DNA analysis.

It was awesome to see James, of course, and great to see where he lives so that we can imagine what it's like for him now that we're all the way back home. I also enjoyed the scenery (it's so green!) and enjoyed learning about Boston's history.

Airlines

The flights for our holiday were picked primarily based on schedule. As a result, we ended up flying with 5 different airlines, so we experienced a lot of variety in seating, amenities and service.

The Qantas flight from Perth to Brisbane was very good. I slept on the plane (I think being unable to sleep with excitement the night before played a part in that though) and the flight was over much more quickly than I expected. The Qantas flight from Brisbane to Perth on the way back... not so great. Mum had a bit of a panic attack about the lack of leg room, and while it didn't bother me at first, it did get to me over time. And Qantas really needs to put in individual TV screens. But the main problem was that there must have been something wrong with the food because halfway through I started feeling sick and ended up going through 5 sick bags before I made it home to a nice still bed. On the plus side, though, the flight attendants were excellent -- checked on me every time they went past, let me use the business class toilet, offered me oxygen. So in that sense I'd rather be sick on a Qantas flight than on a no-frills airline.

Mum wasn't too keen on the idea of the long flight right from the start, so we decided to go Premium Economy with V Australia between Brisbane and LAX in both directions. Best decision ever. The main plus was the awesome extra room, but we also enjoyed the little self-service bar as a place to wander when we were sick of sitting and the extra service we got. We also got priority access going through security in Brisbane and because we were one of the first off the plane had a shorter queue at immigration on arrival. We didn't get any perks at LAX on the way back but that may have been because it was very quiet and there was no queue at security anyway (side note: Terminal 3 at LAX is horrible).

We were expecting our Virgin America flight from LAX to Boston to be quite nice but in the end it was a bit meh. The seating seemed so cramped compared to Premium Economy and we hardly ever saw the flight attendants. The only good thing about this flight was the novelty of being able to use the touch-screen to order an apple juice. And it was shorter than scheduled.

JetBlue was marginally better. The flight attendants were nicer although it was still limited service. JetBlue advertises itself as having lots of legroom but it didn't seem any different to the other US domestic flights. I think perhaps the seat pitch measurement is a misleading way of measuring room, because the size of the seat impacts a lot on how much leg room you get, and that isn't advertised anywhere. At least this flight (Boston to Orlando) was very short.

We were worried about Delta because we hadn't heard as many good things about it as the other airlines we flew, but it ended up being our favourite of the US domestic legs. It had similar-looking seats to Virgin America and JetBlue but somehow it seemed to give you more legroom for the seat pitch.

One thing I noticed on all the flights is that none of them have the nice koala ears that Qantas has (apparently they're called 'wings' in America). I kind of rely on those koala ears to sleep -- if I don't have them out I wake myself up whenever my head falls over. Would have been really happy with the seats on V Australia and Delta if they had koala ears that folded out close to 90 degrees like Qantas does.

Brisbane

We stayed in Brisbane for 3 nights on our way to America. Dad came along too just for those 3 nights and then went back home. We stayed in a 2 bedroom apartment close to the city which gave us plenty of room (and let me avoid the worst of the snoring), nice views, and a relatively short walk to a bunch of places in the city.

It was generally a pretty laid back couple of days. We did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour which was very good as well as a river cruise. We also went on their big Ferris wheel (I never got around to going on the Perth one before they took it down) and explored the city a bit on our own. In the evenings we stayed at the apartment and watched TV (Lost finale! But that's a subject for another post).

Brisbane was a nice city. Pretty similar to Perth really -- more laid back and easy-going than Sydney -- and I suspect it would be a pretty nice place to live. But I'm glad we went in winter; given that I found Sydney too humid for my liking I don't think I could manage Brisbane during the summer.

Back Home

Got back home on Friday. Trip was awesome but have been sick since the flight back to Perth. I plan to post in more detail about the holiday over the next few days. Trying out a new blog layout too with Blogger's new template stuff.

It's Finally Here

In 12 hours I'll be on a plane to Brisbane on the first leg of my trip to Boston and Disney World. I've been planning this trip for a couple of years, so to finally be going seems pretty surreal. I think I've had tears in my eyes about half a dozen times today. I'm still not sure it's really hit me that we are actually going. My internet access will be fairly haphazard for the next few weeks. I should be able to keep up to date with email and Twitter but beyond that I'll be pretty absent.

Hogsmeade Open to Muggles (kinda)

The official previews of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter have started (first the travel agents at PowWow and now TMs at Universal). Reports (Orlando's World Smile Search, Inside the Magic, The Disney Blog, Orlando Sentinel) coming back sound super exciting. I just hope that at least some of it is open to the general public by June 4th.

Happy Where-does-the-stupid-apostrophe-go Day

To all the mothers out there, have a good Mothers' Mother's Mothers I think this is why they call it Mothering Sunday in England....

Struck down by the Common Cold

I've spent the best part of the last couple days in bed with a cold. The cold itself wasn't that bad -- a bit of a sniffle, a bit stuffy, some post-nasal drip, the odd sneeze and cough. But getting the littlest bit sick is enough to cause a flare up of my CFS symptoms. So I was aching in joints I didn't know I had and struggling to find enough energy to get out of bed. Feeling a little better today. Still seem to have a sniffle and a cough but I'm not hurting so much and so far I've managed to resist the urge to go back to bed. Just hope it's all an upwards curve from here.

One Month to Magic

In one month I'll be getting on a plane to the most magical place on Earth. Very exciting!

Push-crash Cycling

I've been push-crash cycling pretty bad the last few days. Went to Margaret River on Thursday; spent Friday in bed. Went to a birthday party Saturday morning; spent Saturday afternoon in bed. This is making me worry about how I'm going to cope in America. And how am I supposed to manage with a job or with study once I get back?

Happy Birthday LOTRO

LOTRO is celebrating its third birthday at the moment. Since I've been playing since before official launch, that means it's been a little over three years since I started playing. I've done a lot in those three years -- finished a degree, got a job, quit my job, got sick, done a whole Masters degree. But I can still remember sitting in my room with my brother listening to the LotR soundtrack and waiting for Landroval to come up.

I've played a lot of LOTRO in the last 3 years -- according to the in-game /played command, I've played for 2 months, 3 weeks and 1 day on Snowdrop alone. I've met a lot of new people and had a lot of fun. So thank you Turbine for three years of LOTROy-goodness.

Google MindReader

So AdSense kicked in on the blog... and at least half the ads I'm seeing are for Disney World related services. Now that seems like a perfectly logical thing to advertise on my blog, given how Disney World crazy I am, but... how does AdSense know?! Prior to this post, nothing on the blog mentioned Disney World. Is Google reading my mind? Well I suppose, being Google, it's more likely to be reading my search history... but it was still unexpected and somewhat creepy...

New Blog

I've decided that one of the reasons I'm not blogging much is that creating content in iWeb is just too much work, because it doesn't do quite what I want it to do by default so I'm forever fiddling with it. So I'm trying out Blogger instead. I won't link to it from anywhere yet because I'm still changing the layout around. But here it is, anyway.