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 10

The ball really started rolling on DPN Westfest activities today! My meet was today and more people show up for the weekend. Lots of the locals come out for the evening activities and even more will show up tomorrow, Saturday.

I tried to work something for my meet today. Yesterday I contacted Media Relations and didn't get a call back. I called again today. While I riding Mike and Sulley to the Rescue I received a call back and a message. It was basically for something like this to happen there would need to be a media relations person present and since they didn't have anyone available it would not be possible to have my request officially filled. David said that I could try the theater itself. Well, I did try and failed on all accounts. I tried the people by the theater and even asked what could they do to help make the moment more magical and basically got blank stares and shrugged shoulders. After viewing the show, I even tried to leave some of the buttons I had made for the main characters and the ushers wouldn't take them. I was told to mail them to the entertainment department and if they saw fit they would pass them along. So, do they deserve the doosh nominations. No, I don't think so, they weren't rude or not following rules. But what disappointed me even more is that Disney prides itself on making magical moments and when even asked how could we make this more magical they didn't have a response. I was sooooo wanting to hand out an AWESOME JOB card or multiple cards for having something coming through and instead they stayed in the card holder.

To those people who came out and watched the show together, a big thanks to you! You are my friends on the DPN, you are watchers of my podcast. There were 35 of you who took the time out of your schedule to join me in watching Aladdin. I know for some people it will be their last time as the show will be retired in August and they won't have the chance to see it before then. To those people who won the 10 prizes, I hope you enjoy them and can put them to good use! I know some others couldn't make it to the meet due to issues like special luncheons at Club 33 or travel, I totally understand. I knew that by having this meet on a Friday afternoon it would affect some people's ability to attend.

Through the day I did manage to make it over to the Festival Markethouse to the fantastic Coke Machine. I really love the ability to mix flavors like peach, raspberry and grape with products like Sprite, Coke Zero, Fanta and other base flavors. Funny story on the second trip there, I mentioned to the girl at the register it would be nice instead of having just a 22 or 32 ounce cup that they could have several say 5 oz cups so you could try different flavors. The cashier said you could go up for free refills. I repeated it out loud to the group of about 8 people I was with. In just a few seconds a manager looking type person came over and made comments along the lines like this is Disney and there are no free refills. He said it in such a way that I'm sure the cashier felt uncomfortable being corrected in front of the guests.

Dinner was at the Big Thunder BBQ. It was a BBQ served family style with corn bread, sausage, ribs, chicken, cole slaw, baked beans and corn on the cob. I had gotten some of the sauce on my face and a couple of the ladies at the table were disturbed because I didn't wipe if off immediately. When I did attempt to get it off, it was high enough that I didn't get it. I was offered a Hello Kitty mirror and a wet antibacterial wipe in order to get if off. As I cleaned, my picture holding the HK Mirror was taken and posted to Facebook.

One funny part of the night was during the Rabble Rousers meet, a large group went over to ride Mickey's Fun Wheel that has both stationary and moving cars. In the one car there were 5 of us and none of us could be considered to be on the carrot stick diet. We got into the car and had a fun time as the momentum of the car on the moving track gave us some good swinging motion.

After leaving the Disneyland park a little after 11pm, I got in contact with the guys from the Skurvy Monkeys podcast. They were in Downtown Disney. I was tired, but I really wanted to meet up with them. I headed over to the UVA Bar and met most of the monkey cast face to face at one time. Samby Monkey, Spider Monkey, Design, IMHO Monkey, and Guerrilla Monkey were in the same place at the same time. Design presented me with two very, very special gifts. The first was the original drawing he did of Movie Monkey. I need to get this framed. The second was a kukui nut lei which he picked up on Kauai when he got married, took it back to the mainland and brought it with him to present to me when he came down for the weekend activities. Both are sincerely appreciated!

These trips to Disney when you know that you are going to be meeting up with others who share your interests are priceless. Several of the events had people who I haven't seen in years or a least a year from the last DPN Westfest. They are a great way to keep in touch with people on a face to face basis instead of just and name and number in an outlook contact card. It's great to connect with people on a face to face basis instead of electronic forums, social media or e-mail. It's funnerer and the bestest

DC2CERUMA - Day 0.5

Today started the Disney Coast to Coast-er Universally Magic Adventure (DC2CerUMA). This trip will take me to Walt Disney World in Orlando and Universal Studios Florida. I'll then be heading over to Anaheim to visit Disneyland for the DPN Westfest event with a day for Universal Studios Hollywood and Magic Mountain.

I'm writing this earlier than I expected and hence the 0.5 day. I was hoping to be writing this after my first full day at Disney World. But I got hit with the bug a boo! Got Delta's flight to Los Angeles from Honolulu. In a weird plus to the event I ended up sitting across the aisle from the guy who invented LOL cats at the Icanhascheeseburger web site. How do I know that it's him? I used to work with Eric. We hadn't taken off when the crew came on and let us know that we were heading back to the terminal for a sick passenger to get off. OK, at least we weren't airborne!

We're sitting at the gate and I see the ramp moved to the plane, see a person leave the plane and then the ramp pulled away from the plane. Then we sat. I was already a bit worried for a tight connection since when I originally made the reservation I had like an hour for the connection. The week before departure I received a notice that flight had moved and had 40 minutes for the connection. So we're sitting for a little bit when the pilot comes on and says that they were receiving additional fuel and that they would be leaving in a few minutes. But we sat. When we finally moved it was almost an hour later. According to the official information on the Delta web site, departure was 1:59pm. Maybe the pilot can put the petal to the metal or put the muster in the thruster and get us to LA on time, 9:30pm LA time.

The airlines have their rules, when the plane pulls away that is departure time and when the wheels hit the ground is the arrival time. That arrival time doesn't include the time to taxi to the arrival city's gate. When we arrive in LA, we approach the gate and then stop. The pilot comes in and tells us that he's got to power down the plane and wait for the tractor to be towed into the gate. UGH! When I checked-in in Honolulu, I talked to the agent about the tight connection and she moved me to the second row in the cattle car section so I was closer to the front of the plane. When the door opened and people started to deplane, as I passed the flight attendants they were making announcements about connections and said the the flight to Orlando had already departed.

Long story short, they couldn't get me out that night. When told about the time of departure and arrival into Orlando for the next day, I told the agent, Azali that I'd be loosing a day at the Disney parks and that ticket was $131 (Single day park hopper). He offered me a $100 travel credit good for one year on Delta. Well, to the best that I can remember, this is only the second time EVER that I've flown Delta. He said I could give it to someone. Asked him why would I give money to someone for me loosing money and told him it wasn't good enough. He had no answer. They are putting me up at the Holiday Inn with a meal voucher for all of $6.00. Heck I can't even buy a combo meal at McDonald's for that amount. Ashley at the front desk of the Holiday Inn LAX said she didn't know what they had that would be covered by the voucher cost. While Azali and Ashley, oh, how funny, both their names begin with A, were pleasant, neither have gone above and beyond to get one of the AWESOME JOB cards that I plan on using during the trip.

I'm gonna cut it here. It's after midnight in LA and I'm going to need to be at the airport for 6am for a 7:55am United flight. When I check in tomorrow, I'll see what else they can do for me and let you know.

Aloha for now!

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!