Fall 2018 Theme Park Trip-plans and planning

Looking back it's been two years since my last post. Time to fix that.

Well, I have another big trip coming up and am totally ecstatic about it. I am about to get a full month off from work. I've been working to make sure there is another person in the office that knows my skills. I'm one that I'm not afraid to share everything that I know.

Travel plans include Dollywood and Pigeon Forge area attractions, going to Boston to visit family. Heading to Cedar Point to the East Coast coaster capital. Time in Florida will include Universal Orlando and Halloween Horror Nights, the Disney parks including Food and Wine Festival and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, Legoland, Florida Zipline Coaster, Star Flyer, and Fun Spots. In California the West Coast Legoland there in the San Diego area and their SeaWorld plus Belmont Park in the "extreme south" are the plans. Traveling north to Anaheim and the Disneyland resort including Mickey's Halloween Party, Knott's Berry and Scary Farms, Santa Monica Pier, Universal Hollywood, Six Flags Magic Mountain the West Coast coaster capital...possibly their Halloween event and then the Warner Bros Studio Tour and their Halloween event. So Heartland, East Coast, Mid West, the South and West Coast will be covered on this trip.  I am so appreciative that I have the ability to do this.

Along the way I plan to meet up with a number of people. Some are coaster buddies, some are Disney pals, others are college friends and some are former co-workers and podcasters. So while I may be traveling solo, I won't be doing everything as a single.

Surprisingly enough, when I was trying to make the travel arrangements, I wanted to maybe do trains between say Sandusky, OH and Knoxville, TN or Knoxville, TN and Orlando, FL as a way to see the country. Those options weren't viable due to how far away trains stations were from starting or ending points needing buses. I looked at maybe buses outright, but the amount of time and transfers were rather awkward and cumbersome. Luckily I was able to make the flight arrangements through one carrier, United, although several legs will be with code share partners. Learned that it is difficult to try to book a trip with more than five legs to the trip. All totaled, I have nine segments. The first leg I have to travel from Honolulu to Newark which is a ten hour flight and then back up to Knoxville. Blissfully the LAX to HNL flight is six hours.

In my big 2010 trip, I had business cards that I gave out for people going above and beyond in their work. Back then, I gave them a card recognizing them for their effort, took their pic, blogged about them and their actions

and then made sure I wrote back to the companies involved to give the person credit. While I don't have the cards ready to go yet, I plan on doing that again this trip. It's really easy to fall into the negative and those cards helped keep me looking for the positive.

During my fall 2016 trip, I lost my wallet while riding Mako at SeaWorld Orlando the day before I was to fly to LAX. Still haven't heard back from SeaWorld if they dredged the pond where it dropped  and recovered it with the $700 still inside. If I ever get that back, really need to make sure to make big noise about that! But with losing my ID, I want to make sure on this trip that I have backups like maybe making sure that I bring my passport and not keeping all the money on my person. Also I need to make sure that I follow my procedures and not rush when I get on a coaster to make sure that I have everything really secured.

One of the other challenges that I have is with the rental car portions. I have a valid drivers license, but don't own a car in Hawaii. When I rent I must do the responsible action have have some insurance and the costs add up quickly. So the RAC company would look at say Friday noon to Monday 6am as just three days, the insurance company says it's four so on those transfer days, I'm having to pay for insurance twice. Plus the insurance itself isn't cheap with charges that have been 15-25% of the daily rental rate.  But, it's something that I have to do since I don't have my own policy.

I use Flickr instead of Instagram. When I would post to Flickr, it would automatically post to Twitter and then a bit later to Facebook. Something has happened to the interface and that no longer happens.  If you want to see pics during the trip, goto flickr.com/frikitiki. For quick updates I'm @coconutwireless on twitter.

If you have comments or questions, let me know. The fall 2018 Coaster Trip begins on September 20th!

DC2CERUMA - Day 13

Today was a fantastic day. Ever since I saw the movie Roller Coaster, I've always wanted to visit Magic Mountain. Today was that day. I was pulling into the parking lot after paying my $15 for that little slice of asphalt that would be called mine for those few hours I was visiting and while I was putting the car into park I got choked up. It was similar to how I felt when I stepped into Walt Disney Studios Paris completing my visiting all of the Disney parks globally. A place that I had seen and heard about for 30 years I was finally visiting there in Valencia!

The day started a little rough. I tried to use the complementary computer system in the hotel lobby to buy a package for the visit. I would have received a park admission, parking and a meal for $55. When I tried to order it on line, the computer didn't have the necessary software. They had acrobat 6 and the current version is 10. The result is that when I got to the park, I paid $55 for admission alone. But since the cost of a season pass was the price of a single day full price ticket, I opted for the pass. SO, I am a Six Flags Magic Mountain season pass holder even though I'll probably not be able to make it back while it is valid. The funny thing is when you order on line they in my opinion, distort the savings the list on line. They say to save $22 on line with a single day ticket and they charge you $5 on line processing fee so the savings is really only $17.

After entering the park I was approached by Black Jack Joe, he's one of the people who attended DPN Westfest. On his way home he stopped by MM since he's an annual pass holder. Joe took the time out of his day to show me the ropes of touring this Southern California landmark park. I really appreciate what he did as in the matter of a few hours we had done almost all of the coasters in the park. Luckily the day was DEAD in the park for numbers of people and almost everything was a direct walk on. If we waited, it was maybe one train. We spent more time putting our stuff into the available lockers per the instructions of the attractions than waiting for the coasters themselves. I kept all the receipts and $7 was spent , one dollar at a time, to secure our belongings while we rode.

The first ride of the day was X2. It was crazy! The trains are HUGE and it does take some time to load people. One of my concerns was would I fit. At Universal Florida, there were two coaster trains that I had to use "the big boy" seating. For X2, I fit. Actually, for the whole day, there were a couple of snuggy moments, and the attendants with a little effort got me into each of the harnesses when necessary but I didn't have any problems overall! Before Black Jack Joe left for the day to continue his trip to Northern California we had done all of the roller coasters except Revolution and Viper. I would be able to do those two on my own.

During the course of the day I was able to give out not one, but TWO Awesome Job cards! The first went to Noelle. Joe and I were walking by her whack a mole booth. I had my camera around my neck.

She stopped us to ask if we would like our picture taken. Normally you have to ask employees to do it, but she just volunteered. She took the shot then Joe and I went and rode Batman and Riddler before I returned to offer her the card. She was totally stoked. She even had her supervisor come over and be in the shot that I snapped with my camera phone!

The second went to Nari. We were riding the Canyon Blaster (Hey, it's a coaster credit!). The operator Nari asked it we wanted to go again. The riders said yes so she hit the button and we were off for a second time! We didn't have to get off or anything. it was cool. I laughed up a storm! So good going to Noelle and Nari on their Awesome Job cards! You both earned those little cards!

NOW, there was one person who shouldn't be in her position. She wasn't Doosh worthy, but the interactions should have been different. I went to SFMM Guest Relations to pass along my comments. Amanda listed to me talk about their team members and she did NOTHING to acknowledge what I was talking about. No excitement in her voice, no real acknowledgment, no nuttin from her. Something that I thought should be recognized is how many of the employees would recognize me as BJJ and myself or just myself would say "Have a Six Flags day" or some other words of acknowledgment. I know that in 5 star hotels, when you get within so many feet of an employee they are to acknowledge you. It was rather nice. Although, I wish they could do something about their uniforms that are the dayglo yellow/green that ask you to pick up your trash.

In the park I paid for water, not once but twice. The first time I was parched. The nearest water fountains were broken. I was dry in the mouth and sweating quite a bit. Similarly, I know that I complained about the cost of a 20oz coke at Disney with WDW at $2.55 and DLR at $3.03, but for that same bottle at SFMM, $3.75!! Only did one of those! I had a burger at Katy's Kettle. The burger was cold, but the onion rings were good! To make up for the bad burger, I stopped at In-n-Out burger in Fullerton and had the Double Double with fries and a large drink for dinner!

So as you can see it was a real good day. I got to accomplish a goal of visiting Magic Mountain, I gave out two Awesome Job cards and I got In-n-Out Burger. I don't think it could have gotten much better!

Tomorrow is my last full theme park day, it will be Universal Hollywood. I should only have to pay for parking and food! Day 14 will bring me to my 10th theme park in this two week trip. That info is just blowing my mind! I've done theme parks or theme park related for two solid weeks. Texting with an old employee who now lives here and it looks like I might have company to Universal. Whoo hoo!

So, there should be 3 more posts covering the full day, the partial day on Wednesday and then some sort of recap. For those of you who have followed along this far, thank you. I hope that I haven't bored you and provided you some entertainment!

Caught doing something right

I have a big trip coming up and I'm super stoked about it! I'll be hitting up a number of theme parks on the east and west coasts. In the plans are the six Disney parks, the three Universal parks and one Six Flags park, a couple of hotels, one airline for four different segments, one rent a car company and four different shuttle companies. I've called it my Disney Coast to Coast-er Universally Magic Adventure. I was thinking of doing something and would like to hear your thoughts on this idea to be executed while on the adventurous journey.

During the trip I know that I will encounter hundreds of people starting and ending with the shuttle trip to and from the Honolulu International Airport with all the parks, hotels, drivers and ride operators in between. We always hear the gripe and complaint stories about companies and employees not doing their jobs right. I want to try to turn that around a little and maybe have some fun with it. The game plan is as follows: get some of those print at home business cards, put something like "You've been caught doing something right" on them, when I catch someone doing something right by going above and beyond give them a card, ask if I can get a shot of them with my phone camera and then blog about them and what they did here at The Tiki Outpost.

With all the different components of this trip there will be a lot of chances for things to go wrong but I'm hoping that I don't run across any junk. I'm hoping all goes well and want to let those people who do things right be noticed. While I can't give them anything like money or prizes, hopefully the little card will act like a certificate that they can show other people. The web address will be on the card and I can point out to them that there will be a post about why they were noticed. The card and post will act as their reward.

I've already had one surprise in the planning. I contacted Universal Orlando Resort and heard back from them the NEXT day with a phone call AND they observed the time zone. Tony was the rep. He waited to call in their day so I received the call at 8am my time and not 2am as some other organizations/solicitors from the east coast have done in the past. I hate when the mainland goes on Daylight Saving Time and it becomes 6 hours between here and there. He fully answered all of my questions. The call was a surprise as they could have used e-mail.

So that's the idea give attention to people doing things right. What do you think? Got any comments or suggestions? Leave them below!