WDW Planning (Part 3)

The planning continues. Most important was finding Daniel a park hopper ticket for the week. I didn't want to wait and get a ticket at the parks due to the extra cost. My first thought was to buy the ticket at the local Disney Store, but then I read that the Borders Perks program offered tickets at an even cheaper price. All I had to do is join Borders Rewards and then sign up for Perks a week later. After shipping and handling, I only managed to save about $9, but what the heck, every buck counts!

I also called to get my Disney Dining Experience card, a discount card for Florida residents and annual passholders. $65 gets you a 20% discount for a year in many restaurants throughout the WDW resort. The card used to have to be ordered in advance of the trip, but when I called this time, I was told that the rules had changed, and I could now purchase the card at any WDW Guest Relations desk. So this todo item was moved to the "after I arrive" list. I did try to arrange an Advanced Dining Reservation for Boma at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. The earliest seating I could get was 9pm! I hope this isn't a sign that we'll have problems getting table service meals all week.

My biggest disappointment was finding out that a newly-renovated Spaceship Earth would not open by the time I arrive. Apparently they ran into some difficulties with the renovations and have delayed reopening until early next year. I recently heard on Ricky Brigante's Inside The Magic podcast that Spaceship Earth might open for guest testing on December 5th, so I have a slim chance of maybe getting to experience it. I guess that's better than no chance at all, which is what chance I have to take a Segway tour. I called to sign up for one, but both the Epcot tour and the new Fort Wilderness tour were completely booked for my entire trip.

On the plus side, it was announced that the Harlem Gospel Choir would be performing in the Disney/MGM Studios in December. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing them! I have also spent some time learning more about the various MouseFest activities. There are so many meets, but it does look like it could be a lot of fun. I recently joined the Tagrel community and have sat in on a couple of MouseFest-related chats. They seem like a fun, crazy group of people. I just hope I can fit in.

My updated "Must See's" (in no particular order):

• The refurbished Haunted Mansion;


• The new Golden Dream montage in The American Adventure;


• "National Treasures," the new American Heritage Gallery exhibit;


• The new "O Canada!" movie;


• The Gran Fiesta Tour in the Mexico Pavilion;


• The refurbished Spaceship Earth (maybe);


• The Harlem Gospel Choir at the Disney/MGM Studio's Theater of the Stars;


• The Laugh Floor Comedy Club;


• The new Christmas parade (during Mickeys' Very Merry Christmas Party);


• Finding Nemo, The Musical (so I can take photos this time);


• Dream-Along With Mickey (to see the new articulated faces).

iMac Musings

As of today, I have been an iMac owner for exactly a year - I bought a Core 2 Duo during the 2006 after-Thanksgiving Black Friday sale (online, from the comfort of a hotel room in West Atlantic City, NJ - no lining up at 2am for me!). I have to say that for the most part, I am pleased with this machine and its software. I honestly haven't used many of the applications and features it provides, but I do spend an awful lot of time sitting in front of it. Way too much time is spent surfing the Web using Safari. I really like using Mail to manage 4 e-mail addresses and iTunes for my digital music jukebox (one of these days I might actually own an iPod!). I have also installed PhotoShop for digital photo editing. I have played around with some of the other multimedia applications, but I really don't have much use for them, so have nothing significant to report.

My biggest disappointment with the iMac has been Safari. For the most part, it works; however, it has more incompatibilities than it should. I have come across a number of web sites that simply do not work correctly in Safari. Ironically, some of them have been Disney sites. With Steve Jobs sitting on the Walt Disney Company board of directors, you'd think that he might have some influence getting Disney to test its Web applications with Safari.

Since I am into digital photography, I did play around with iPhoto a bit. I was turned off by its insistence on organizing my photos for me, rather than honoring the directory structure I am used to using. There may be a way to turn that off, but I never took the time to figure that out. I do wish that IrfanView ran on OS X - it's a very simple way to quickly view photos within an existing directory structure, and to perform simple editing tasks. I have yet to find something comparable on the iMac. Any suggestions?

A Fraud-Filled Friday

A friend who is away this week asked me to make a major purchase for him, to take advantage of Apple.com's Black Friday Sale. So first thing Friday morning, I got online (from the comfort of my hotel room in South Jersey - no standing in line at 6am for me!) and completed the transaction using my Visa card. I didn't get an e-mail confirmation note by the time I had to leave, but I didn't think anything of it - other online retailers like Amazon often take a while before confirming my purchase.

It wasn't until I stopped for gas this evening that I found out something had gone wrong - my Visa card was declined at the gas pump. Suspecting it may have been caused by this morning's transaction, I checked my phone messages at home. Sure enough, the Chase Fraud Detector's computerized voice called to tell me some questionable charges had been attempted using my card. I returned to my room and got online, but didn't see a note from Apple reporting any problems. Not until I checked my Spam folder, that is. Apple did send a note to me this morning, but since I'd never gotten a note from this particular Apple e-mail address, my e-mail provider was kind enough to mark it as spam and hide it away from me.

Apple gave me a chance to update the payment information for my order, so I called the Chase Fraud Detector hot line to straighten things out. After confirming that the charges were OK, I was told that I would be able to use the card again in 30 seconds. I patiently waited 3 minutes just to be sure, and then tried to update my Apple order, but I continued to get "declined" errors.

Frustrated, I decided to switch the order to my Discover card. That one went through rather quickly, and within a minute I got an e-mail from Apple telling me the order was accepted. That was followed seconds later by an e-mail from Discover Card's Fraud Prevention service!!! So I'm back on the phone, this time with Discover, to see what happened there. Luckily, Discover had accepted the charge before warning me, so I didn't have to go back to Apple and correct my payment information again.

The whole incident left my very annoyed. I make major electronics purchases on my Visa card all the time. I have absolutely no idea what caused this one to be flagged. I realize these companies are just trying to protect me (and themselves). However, what should have been a simple transaction turned out to be very inconvenient. Between having the initial charge repeatedly declined, then having my Visa card itself disabled, losing the "Order Problem" e-mail in my Spam folder, and having to call two card companies to get everything straightened out, I really feel like smacking the heck out of the thieves and spammers who have helped get us to this point.

SquidWho?

Ever since Squidoo announced their SquidWho site, I have been thinking about who I could build a fanpage about. It finally hit me who I should start with: Mary Blair, Disney Legend and my favorite Disney artist. I spent a few hours scouring the web for information on Mary and samples of her artwork. I published the results here. It still needs a bit of work, but hopefully it points to some interesting web pages.

And while I was at it, I also added some information to my Walt Disney World shopping lens. It seemed to be popular earlier in the fall, but lately interest in it has waned. Maybe the Christmas season will stir up more interest in WDW shopping.

WDW Planning (Part 2)

I am continuing to look at what I can do during my December trip to WDW. I travel there frequently enough that I have done most of the common touristy things, and I am always looking for a couple of new activities to make my experience there more interesting.

I'll be there during the pre-Christmas season, so I'm looking forward to some of the Christmas activities, like the Candlelight Processional and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. I also enjoy the special holiday tag on Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, so I expect I'll be viewing that at least a couple of times. Sadly, I recently heard that the Country Bear Christmas Special will not be back this year. It wasn't there last year, either, and I really do miss this holiday attraction.

On the bright side, I will be there during MouseFest! In addition to attending some of the meets that they have planned, I am also hoping to meet some of the people that create the web sites and podcasts that I spend so much time with. I am a bit on the shy side, so I'm not sure how well this will work out. But how could MouseFest not be fun, hanging out with fellow Disney Geeks in my favorite place on Earth?

On a previous solo trip, I took Keys to the Kingdom tour in the Magic Kingdom, and enjoyed it immensely. I am looking at booking another tour or two this trip, perhaps Behind the Seeds or Around the World At Epcot. My friend Daniel will be with me this time for most of the trip, and he's not much into the tours. I'll have to try to schedule around him.

My updated "Must See's" (in no particular order):

• The refurbished Haunted Mansion;


• The new Golden Dream montage in The American Adventure;


• "National Treasures," the new American Heritage Gallery exhibit;


• The new "O Canada!" movie;


• The Gran Fiesta Tour in the Mexico Pavilion;


• The refurbished Spaceship Earth (including the new Project Tomorrow post show);


• The Laugh Floor Comedy Club;


• The new Christmas parade (during Mickeys' Very Merry Christmas Party);


• Finding Nemo, The Musical (so I can take photos this time);


• Dream-Along With Mickey (to see the new articulated faces).

Razzle Dazzle 'em in Zazzle?

I've spent the last week adding new cards to my own little product gallery at zazzle.com. (I call it "Poughtography", a word I coined by combining "Poughkeepsie" and "Photography". I know, pretty dorky, but that's exactly why I love it so much!) Most of the newest photos are from my April trip to Spain. I also added a couple of QSL card templates after a ham radio operator brought that concept to my attention and bought 100 copies of my Bannerman's Island Castle Ruins postcard.

Honestly, very few of my photos have actually been purchased, and I haven't had one sell since late August. It could be for a number of reasons:

• I've chosen the wrong photos to feature on my products - I'm still trying to figure out what photos people are interested in, but it is difficult to do on Zazzle because there are so many other products. And it is quite possible that my photos are just not good enough for people to want to purchase;


• I'm horrible at marketing - I've honestly done very little to advertise the existence of this product gallery. I have told some friends, and put a link to it from other sites where I have an on-line presence, but I'm not sure what to do after that. Print off a few postcards, and leave them lying around somewhere for advertising?


• No one buys cards anymore - with the Internet, I'm sure that people are not sending cards as often. This means I'm screwed no matter what I do.

Maybe things will pick up at Christmastime, as people start looking for gifts for their loved ones...

San Diego Photo Galleries

It took me a month, but I finally finished uploading my favorite pictures from my San Diego trip. I was there for a convention, so I didn't really have a lot of time during the week to explore and shoot. A couple of friends and I stayed for a long weekend afterwards, and that gave us some time to relax and explore. The conference hotel was located right at the Seaport Village, which allowed us to explore the shops and restaurants, and to wander along the shoreline. We also got to visit the USS Midway, Hotel del Coronado, Old Town, La Jolla, the San Diego Zoo, and Sea World. San Diego is a very beautiful city - the harbor provides some amazing views, the weather is very comfortable, and the coastline is simple beautiful!

Photos galleries are at these links:

• San Diego


• San Diego Zoo


• Sea World San Diego

Enjoy!

I won't be touching the iPod touch!

From the first day I saw it, I thought that the iPhone was a pretty cool device. Problem is, as much as I love all it does, I really don't need the phone, nor the EDGE data transfer capability. I'd be happy to simply use it as a video iPod, and to use wifi to access the web and my e-mail. I kept saying, "Can't they just build an iPhone without the phone?"

Well, that's exactly what the recent rumors had been for the next generation iPod - music, video, and wifi without the phone. I was so looking forward to today's announcement, hoping that they'd be offering something closer to my dream gadget. You can imagine my disappointment when I started hearing the details of the new iPod touch. My biggest frustration: no e-mail application! Why the heck not? What were they thinking? They already have an e-mail application that works on the platform, it's not like they'd have to write something new.

I am so disappointed, I have even started fantasizing about picking up a 4GB iPhone from the clearance sale and using one of those hacks to activate it without signing up for the AT&T service. Seems like a waste of money, though. Plus, I'll probably outgrow the 4GB pretty quickly.

Here's hoping that Apple comes to its senses and makes the iPhone's mail application available on the iPod touch.

Time To Start Planning!

My much anticipated Walt Disney World Annual Pass Exchange Certificate arrived in the mail today! I had ordered it last Monday for my upcoming December trip. Its arrival means I can really start planning the rest of the trip - booking a room, arranging flights, etc.

I'm not used to doing all this so early; usually I book about a month out from when I plan to travel. However, when I tried that for my trip last December, I was unable to get a reasonably priced room (like one much less than a few hundred dollars per night) at a Disney resort for the days that I wanted. This year I decided to book early and prevent that from happening again.

After some difficulties logging into the Passholder web site with my Exchange Certificate (the trick seems to be to enter only the last 4 digits of the last group of numbers), I managed to snag a room at the passholder rate of $59/night. Next step is to book my flight. I have to decide whether I want to drive all the way up to Albany Airport just to use a Southwest credit from last year, or fly on JetBlue from the much more convenient Stewart Field.

I've also begun my list of new "Must See's" (in no particular order):

• The refurbished Haunted Mansion;


• The new Golden Dream montage in The American Adventure;


• "National Treasures," the new American Heritage Gallery exhibit;


• The new "O Canada!" movie;


• The Gran Fiesta Tour in the Mexico Pavilion;


• The refurbished Spaceship Earth (including the new Project Tomorrow post show);


• The Muppet Mobile Lab [Update: this is only at Epcot for a couple of weeks, after which it will be shipped to Hong Kong Disneyland. Maybe I can catch it there next year!];


• The Laugh Floor Comedy Club;


• The Country Bear Christmas Special (rumor has it that it will be back);


• Finding Nemo, The Musical (so I can take photos this time);


• Dream-Along With Mickey (to see the new articulated faces).

Any other suggestions?

A Birthday at Walt Disney World

The Disney Blog is running a little contest, and to enter, I have chosen to describe a birthday that I spent at Walt Disney World.

Mine was September, 2002. My friend Daniel was unemployed at the time, I was dealing with a very stressful work project, so we both needed a bit of an escape. We didn't plan to travel there explicitly for my birthday (I would normally prefer that the day just pass by quietly), but Daniel decided that he was going to try to make it a memorable one. With all that extra time on his hands, he scoured the Internet looking for fun WDW birthday things to do. And decided to do every one of them. Well, not every one, but he did try to fit a few into the day.

Of course, it all didn't go as planned. He requested that a birthday card be delivered to the room, and it didn't arrive that day, or the next, or the next... Daniel can be pretty persistent, and kept at them. Balloons and a card were finally delivered on the day we were to depart. I got to enjoy them for about 10 minutes before we checked out. I remember trying to give the balloons away at the Ticket and Transportation Center parking lot, but no one wanted any part of them ("no one" meaning the parents, of course).

We started off the day at the Disney/MGM Studios, where Daniel made sure that I got an "It's My Birthday!" pin. We enjoyed the park until after lunchtime, when we suddenly had to make a detour over to the Grand Floridian. Daniel surprised me with a wonderful chocolate cake from the GF's bakery. He had ordered it a few days before, and understood that they would deliver it to our resort room. However, for some reason, they wouldn't deliver it, hence the sudden side trip. We couldn't carry the cake around with us all day, so we had to eat the entire thing right then and there.

Did I mention that we were scheduled to attend the Ice Cream Social at the Garden Grill an hour later? With our bellies full of cake, facing an early dinner at Alfredo's, there was just no way we could have all that ice cream too, so we cancelled that. We had a great dinner at Alfredo's, though, which included a birthday cannoli and being serenaded by all the Italian waiters. A wonderful ending to a memorable day!

A New Toy

I do love electronic gadgets! It's a struggle resisting the urge to own one of each. However, my recent trip to San Diego got me too close to some of the latest GPS technology - NeverLost was in our Hertz rental car. Pretty cool stuff! I had purchased a small handheld Garmin GPS a few years back, but it contained only very basic maps, and was really more useful for hiking than driving. I knew after our first use of NeverLost that I was going to have to get an upgraded model for myself. It made driving in a strange town more fun than stressful. At times it almost seemed like there was an additional person in the car helping us along.

After a little research, I decided on a Garmin nuvi 350. Reviews seemed to be pretty favorable, and I especially liked that:

• it is TTS (Text to Speech) capable, so it can actually tell you the name of the road onto which it wants you to turn;
  
• it has a built-in MP3 player (Normally I hate when they cram too much stuff into one device (I still don't get camera phones), but since I like to listen to podcasts on long drives, I thought this would come in handy).
  

My nuvi arrived yesterday afternoon, and I just had to take it out on its maiden drive (a quick trip to my sister's house and back). Overall, it seems to work very well. The volume seems reasonable, the voice is mostly understandable. It did make a few strange route choices, but it still got me to where I wanted to go, and I learned a couple of new roads along the way. I think I'll keep it!

I can't believe I'm doing this.

I've always thought that blogs were for people that were craving attention, or thought they were more important than they really are. But more and more lately I've found myself feeling isolated from the rest of the world. I spend a lot of time in front of the computer (thanks to work and the Internet), and way too much time in front of the TV (thanks to my DVR). And I'm kind of on the shy side, so I'm not very comfortable posting on forums and popping into chat rooms unless I have specific information I want to convey. Lots of passive time watching and reading, and very little time interacting with real human beings.

So I thought I'd give blogging a try. Besides giving me a chance to practice my writing skills, I'm hoping it'll make me feel like I am reaching out to the world, sharing parts of my life and my thoughts. And with any luck, maybe someone will reach back in, and I might make a new friend or two. I guess I'm the one who is craving attention now.