FCCQ | Stranger Things

Here's something new I want to try. CT from Nerd Lunch recently gave the podcast's website a new look and one of the cool updates is the Fourth Chair Army page. You can search for episodes by particular guests (like me, for instance) and there's also a section at the bottom that randomizes a Fourth Chair Carryover Question (FCCQ). If you're not familiar with the show, that's the part where a guest one week leaves a question for the following week's guest to answer. It's super fun and there have been a lot of great discussion questions over the years.

So, with the blessing of the fellas, I'm going to occasionally pull up an FCCQ and answer it here. Starting now.



Way back on Episode 51, Rondal Scott of Strange Kids Club asked appropriately, "What's the strangest thing you remember doing as a kid?"

It's always tough for me to know what weird things I did as a kid that were unique to me and what was just me being a regular kid. For instance, I was narcissistic enough to imagine that I was starring in my own reality show and I didn't dream that other people fantasized about the same thing until The Truman Show brought us all out of the closet to talk about it.

I also know that I wasn't the only kid to cast myself in my own adventures and secretly roleplay my way through the day, but I don't know to what extent other kids did it. So I always suspected that the length and details of my imaginary adventures were a little strange.

They got especially involved anytime we went on vacation. Changes in scenery and new things to do were exciting, so I would try to create a story that tied the whole trip together. Growing up in Florida in the '70s and early '80s was a treat, because Disney World was close and not as expensive as it is today. And I had a recurring story that I would replay every time we went.

It was a simple story. I was some kind of space/time-traveling cop on the hunt for a criminal mastermind. But my time machine wasn't a slow, klunky TARDIS; it was a personal device that either fit in my pocket or I would wear on my wrist or something. And it would allow me to instantly transport from one time period or part of the world to another. So I'd chase him from Main Street's turn-of-the-century US to the jungles and seas of Adventureland and then I'd pop over to the American West in Frontierland to track him some more. Then through a haunted mansion and on to Medieval Europe in Fantasyland and finally we'd end up in the "present" of my story: Tomorrowland. Which of course culminated in a wild race through the stars via Space Mountain. Later, my man safely in custody, I'd chill back at my hotel while waiting for my next assignment.

You can tell me if that's strange. Maybe I was a normal kid after all. But please also tell me what's the strangest thing you remember doing as a kid?

Disney World map scan from MousePlanet.com.

32 movies I wanted to see in 2013 (but didn't)

Happy New Year! As I've done the last couple of years, I'm going to spend the early days of 2014 running down the movies I saw in 2013 and ranking them from worst to best. I made it to 38 movies in the theater last year, which leaves 32 that I wanted to see, but will have to catch up on at home. I mention them here partly by way of explaining why some potentially great movies aren't among my favorites, but also so you can tell me which of these need to be at the top of my queue and which I shouldn't bother with.

Here they are in the order in which they were released. Some of the posters are high res, so I put most of the list behind a break for the sake of browsers everywhere.

1. Spring Breakers



Mostly just curious about Disney Princesses Behaving Badly. And I tend to like James Franco.

Back from Disney World (with pictures)

We had a great time in Disney World and I've got pictures loaded on Flickr if you're interested in seeing them. There's some commentary there too, so it'll be just like coming over to my house and being forced to sit through a slide show.

Otherwise, we're knee deep in Thanksgiving preparations, so content here is going to continue to be light this week. Sigh. If you're in the U.S., hope you have a great Thanksgiving with friends and/or family.

Here are a few Disney photos, but there's tons more in the link.

Gone plunderin'

Taking the week off because I'm in Disney World hanging out with pirates and eating Dole Whips.

No loud parties while I'm gone!

The Awesome List: How is that different?

Resurrecting this old Adventureblog feature as a catch-all category for great stuff that I don't know where else to put.

Swimming with sharks



Recent images from Australia show a massive school of unidentified sharks cruising just metres from swimmers. If you go to the Australian Coastal Watch site, you can zoom in to see them better. [Jessica Hickman]

Triceracopter



Actually a hopeful piece of art about the future obsolescence of war-machines, but also just very, very cool. [Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs]

TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!



[Failbooking]

Fantasyland Redesign



Progress is being made on our Disney World plans (I'll update that another time), but I can tell we're going to have to go back again once they get Fantasyland renovated. Their plans for it look amazing.

Winbooking



[Failbooking]

Robot Wall Stickers



[Wall Sticker Shop]

Shoe-Hulk



[Found on TwitPic]

Walt Disney World (or, "I'm too EXCITED to blog!")

I apologize for the lack of a post yesterday. I got caught up in planning a trip to Disney World. If you don't mind a self-indulgent post about those plans, read on. Otherwise, skip this and I'll post some more links to jungle comics in a few minutes. I don't blame you.

We've been talking about going back to Disney World for a few years now and David's at just the right age to really enjoy it. He was just about to hit his first birthday last time we were there and while it was an incredibly fun and memorable trip, there are challenges to seeing Disney World with a baby. As easy as the parks make it on parents, there's still a need to make time for naps and diaper changes and they still won't let infants ride Space Mountain, so you've got to figure all that out. This time should be a lot easier.



What made it awesome last time was The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids. I practically memorized that thing and we certainly made our plans based on its recommendations. What could have been an extremely stressful, chaotic visit was simple and organized. We were able to concentrate on having fun and being in the moment instead of being anxious about the length of lines or being in certain places at certain times.

We haven't figured out exactly when we're going yet (need to work out vacation-time and some other details), but to get started last night I picked up the current editions of both the UGtWDWwK and the larger, basic Unofficial Guide to WDW (aka, "the Big Book"). I spent all evening catching up on the new stuff.



One of the things we're doing differently this time is staying on a WDW resort. I've always stayed with friends or at nearby hotels in the past (though last time we used a timeshare owned by Diane's parents, which was awesome), but I've always wanted to try the on-property hotels. The deluxe ones are out of our budget for this trip, but Disney has some nice, moderately-priced hotels, so we'll pick one of those. A lot of my reading last night was comparing those and I've got it narrowed down to two or three.

The Caribbean Beach Resort is tempting because of its theme. Apparently they even have pirate-themed rooms, which is a huge draw for me. Unfortunately, the layout of the resort is very spread out and the pirate rooms seem to be furthest away from resort's central facilities including its restaurants (no room service) and the bus stop to the parks. I'd happily walk ten minutes to that stuff in order to stay in a pirate room, but this isn't just my vacation. Need to talk that over with the other two first.



The other resort I'm considering is the Port Orleans Resort, which is actually divided into two smaller resorts, the French Quarter (pretty self-explanatory, the theme of that one) and the Riverside (which is inspired by the bayous and antebellum mansions of rural Louisiana). The layouts of these make the facilities much more centrally located and the amenities are apparently nicer, but it's tough to pick between the two. The pool at the French Quarter looks amazing, for instance, and its rooms are supposed to be almost as nice as those in the deluxe resorts. But the only sit-down restaurant between the two is over at the Riverside and the bayou-themed rooms for that location are surrounded by trees and gardens, which is very tempting. Right now, I'm leaning towards the French Quarter, but this also needs to be discussed.

Other details to figure out are whether we want to use Disney's Dining Plan and whether or not to rent a car while we're there. A friend of ours raved about the Dining Plan, but The Unofficial Guide has made me cautious about it. Others who've used it report that you have to use all of it in order to justify the expense, and doing that tends to make the trip all about the food. We're much more used to eating as we go between rides when it's convenient, not scheduling rides around dinner reservations. Also, kids are apparently limited to ordering off the children's menus, which some guests report are restricted to mac-and-cheese and chicken fingers at many restaurants. As much as David loves chicken fingers, I'm thinking he may get tired of that after a week. Apparently there are ways around that restriction, but again, I don't know that I want to make meal times a long, stressful time of negotiation. In order to keep things flexible, I'm leaning away from the Dining Plan, but want to talk to my friend first and get his input on my concerns.



As for the car, The Disney Blog has been reporting some recession-motivated cutbacks at WDW that have begun to affect guest experiences, particularly in the area of transportation. The Unofficial Guide backs this up by sharing complaints from guests about long wait times for buses that make multiple stops before arriving at their destinations. However, the Guide has also done some research and actually measured door-to-door travel times (which includes waiting for the bus) from each hotel to each park. The hotels we're considering all have travel times around 30-45 minutes. Which, yeah, is a lot of time to travel from one part of the World to another, but it's easily planned for. I'm hesititant to give up the freedom a rental car would allow, but I'm not seeing how I can justify the expense. We're not planning on seeing other Orlando attractions or eat in offsite restaurants (a big part of this trip for me is experiencing WDW completely onsite), so I think we can get up early enough to plan around the bus system.

Next step though is to figure out when we're going.