Disneyworld 2009 - Part IV

August 3-11 2009

Day 5 and 7

On day 5, we went to Discovery Cove. We were all looking forward to going there. The park had a dolphin encounter, something that Michelle has been wanting to do for a very long time. The park also has coral reefs and tropical rivers where you could swim with fishes and go exploring. I was looking forward to that since I like swimming with the fishes....but I usually am weary of, you know, sharks and stuff. No sharks at this park. :)

We bought an underwater camera, so I have no digital pics of any of the underwater scenes, including a close up of a school of mean looking barracudas. I probably should develop that sometime soon. But I did take a bunch of pictures of the dolphin encounter.

Michelle being pulled by Flipper

Discovery Cove was pretty expensive. Around $200 per person. I initially thought that was a bit steep, but after seeing them having so much fun with the dolphins, I decided it was well worth it. One of the other good thing about the park is that they only let around 1000 people into the park each day. Once they hit the limit, they do not allow anyone else in. So we didn't feel crowded in or rushed while we were there and were free to roam about and do whatever we wanted. Also all the food and drink is included with the entry fee. They have a nice size dining area where you could order whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. The food was actually really good, like high end hotel quality. And since the park is owned by Anheuser Busch, all the beer was free too.

By day 7 we had done everything that we had planned on doing and then some. So we decided to take in something a bit different.

If you are in Florida, you have to see some gators, and Gatorland seemed like a good place to do it. They had a pretty cool show with some huge gators leaping out of the water chomping down on whole chickens. They also sold hot dogs that you could feed to the gators that were living around the park. We got pretty close to them and let me tell you, those suckers were huge.

Our Orlando trip was totally awesome. Even though we've been to Disneyland a gazillion times, Disneyworld was a very unique experience. I'm really glad we came.

Disneyworld 2009 - Part III

August 3-11 2009

Day 3

Today we went to Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay. We got these tickets in a package deal along with our tickets to Discovery Cove. Since this was out in Tampa Bay (I think it was a couple hour drive from Orlando) we planned on spending the majority of the day here.

Busch Gardens has a bunch of roller coasters (which we don't really ride) and an entire section of animal attractions (which we *ahem* Michelle does like). The first roller coaster we saw was the SheiKra. It was huge, the beginning of the ride took you 200 feet up and suspended you over a 90 degree drop. Looked really cool....but of course we didn't ride it. In fact, we ended up not riding any of the rides. The lines were just too long and it was just too hot. The one line we did stand in seemed to take forever and we left after waiting for 30 minutes and only moving 20 feet. Disney had us spoiled.

The one other interesting thing about the SheiKra was that at one portion of the ride, the car ran through a river of water, splashing the spectators on the ground. The coaster was specifically designed to shoot the water up in two columns....that was cool.

A nice drenching to cool down a hot muggy day.

There were a lot of animals at the park. Nothing really spectacular, but it turned out to be a nice relaxing day.

Can't leave Florida without seeing some gators

Pretty obvious right? But Michelle still wanted to feed them.

After leaving the park, we went to a shopping mall in Tampa since Blake's favorite (for now) team is the Rays. Needed to pickup some Tampa Bay Rays stuff.

When we got back to Orlando, we decided to hang out at Downtown Disney. This one seemed to be twice the size of the one in California....but with basically all the same stores. Nothing new, just bigger and more extravagant .

This was pretty cool at the Lego Store. The Lego people were on the wall behind the register and the magnifying glass thing would move slowly back and forth in front of them.

We also spent a little time exploring the resort grounds. There was a huge lake where you could rent canoes, paddle boats, and motor boats. Not a little motor boat with rubber padding around to keep you safe from banging things, a real, fairly good sized motor boat....Michelle wanted to rent one but I talked her out of it because I thought it would be a bit uncomfortable if I sank one of them. We also checked out the pool. It was pretty nice. There was a slide and some water cannons but swimming in 90 degree weather with 80 degree water is not too fun.

Disneyworld 2009 - Part II

August 3-11 2009

Day 2

We got up super early (as usual) to get in when the gates opened so we could get on 2 or 3 rides before needing to wait in a line.

Today we decided to do the Animal Kingdom. Michelle was really looking forward to seeing this park. (She loves the animals)

The first area we went to was Dinoland U.S.A. They had a pretty cool ride where you went back in time to rescue a dinosaur. It's basically the Indiana Jones ride, but with dinosaurs.

We then jammed on over to the Asia area to ride Expedition Everest. On the way, I did manage to take quick stops here and there to take pictures along the way. During the early mornings, the water is super still and glassy, perfect for picture taking.



Expedition Everest is a pseudo-roller coaster type ride that is very similar to the Matterhorn ride. This one was a lot better, as you would expect, as a portion of the ride has you going backwards and the Yeti that they have lurking in the mountain looked totally cool and very realistic.

Our final morning stop was the Kilimanjaro Safari. This is an open tour bus ride through Disney's savannah land. We saw a lot of animals during the ride but didn't get as close as I would have liked, but at least they were active and out in the open.

We strolled around and rode a couple more rides before we decided to leave and check out Disney's Hollywood Studios park. Before we get there, I wanted to share a bit of strangeness that I saw at the Animal Kingdom. It seemed to me that there were an abundance of Rats around. Not mice, but rats. Not real ones, but an uncomfortable amount of them. Here's a couple that I took pictures of.

I dunno, maybe it was just me, but I thought that was a bit weird.

So anyway, next we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios, which is the Disneyworld version of California Adventure. This was in the early afternoon, which is when the park is the most crowded. We were a bit spoiled already since we didn't have to wait in any line longer than 20 minutes so far, so we went hunting for rides that had short waiting times. We eventually made our way to the Lights, Motors, Action Extreme Stunt Show. Those stunt drivers were awesome and the show was Action Packed.

We ended our day at Epcot. It turned out that we ended most of our days at Epcot. For some reason, we all enjoyed Epcot the most. I think it's because Epcot was unlike anyplace that we've been to before.....plus the food from the different countries were pretty good. And speaking of food. One of the things that I really enjoyed at Epcot was the School Bread from the Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe at the Norway pavilion. That was the best pastry ever. I ate it so quickly I totally forgot to take a picture....both times.

I did get a picture of the Norway pavilion area...the bakery is right behind that Viking. And a word of advice, skip the Maelstrom adventure ride there. It's a lame boat ride (like Pirates of the Caribbean) but taking you through the history of Norway. It could have been better, but they decided to not mention the raiding and pillaging portion of the Viking history AND they make you wait at the end to hear an additional lecture about Norway. WTF?!?! We found a side exit and ditched. Sorry Norway.

Disneyworld 2009 - Part I

August 3-11 2009

This year we went on a trip to Disneyworld in Orlando Florida. As you can see from the date, this was 3 months ago. I had a lot of stuff I was going to write, and I guess it sort of intimidated me. So instead I'm just going to do a couple of short segments from our trip.

So as you know, we've been to Disneyland about 4 or 5 times in the last 3 years. A bit much, in my opinion. But we got such a good deal on the flight to Florida, that we just couldn't pass this up.

Day One

We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort on the Disney property. It was one of the mid-level hotels. The room was very nice and clean....not great, but not bad either.

The weather in Orlando was very hot and humid. Around 90+ degrees during the day with thunderstorms in the afternoon. We were very lucky during this trip. We were only caught in 1 thunderstorm during the entire trip and it only lasted 20 minutes or so.

We got settled into our room in the early afternoon, so we decided to head straight out to the Magic Kingdom.

The Magic Kingdom had a couple of different things from Disneyland. The most notable was Stitch's Great Escape, a totally redesigned Fantasyland, and a much smaller entrance to It's a Small World. But for the most part, it was exactly the same.

We rode a bunch of rides at the Magic Kingdom. It wasn't crowded at all and we managed to get in Stitch and some of the rides that we really like. We then decided to head on over to Epcot.

The best ride at the entire DisneyWorld parks was here at Epcot. Mission: Space.

Mission Space was created in collaboration with former NASA advisors, astronauts and scientists, along with the Walt Disney Imagineering team. The attraction uses new technology, which makes it the first ride system to take attraction visitors straight up in a simulated flight experience.

This was the best virtual ride ever. It really felt like you were going straight up during the launch. It was totally awesome.

We only rode this ride once, though. Some of us enjoyed it a bit less than the rest of us.

The one cool/fun thing about our ride was that it has a little bit of interaction built into it. During the simulated flight, each person has to fulfill their "mission assignment". Basically you need to press a set of buttons at the appropriate time during the flight. Michelle, sick as she was, was a true astronaut, pressing her buttons at the right time, allowing us to get to Mars safely.

Marigold

August 20 2009

We have a new addition to our family.....Marigold.

We call her Mari and she's a Yellow Labrador Retriever. The same breed as our other dog, Cash. Mari is from the same breeder as Cash, so she's fully house trained and very well behaved. At least she was before we got her. Michelle tends to spoil our dogs and Mari has taken full advantage of that.

She's a lot more rascal and playful than Cash was when we first got her. She's already gotten into the trash and ripped opened a bag of dog food. But I only needed to scold her once and she hasn't done it again. She's also very shy and tends to take a long time to warm up to people. She took to Michelle and Blake very quickly but she's still a little timid around me. Maybe cause I'm the only one scolding her.

Her most unusual trait, so far, is the way that she drinks water. She basically sticks her entire face into the water bowl and laps/sucks up the water. I've never seen a dog do that before. I even once saw her doing that lying down. And as you can imagine, water is everywhere when she's done. I'll try to post pictures of her drinking water later.

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY MARI !!!!

Camp Ho'omaluhia

July 19-20 2009

This past summer, we decided to go camping. Since we are not experienced campers by any stretch of the imagination, we chose to go to Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden on the Windward side. We wanted someplace fairly safe, not too far from civilization, and would also let you build a fire.
We went out a week earlier to scout several places. Ho'omaluhia seemed to be the safest because they close the gates at night and seemed to have some security personal roaming around. The camp sites there were nice and clean and were spaced out a good distance from each other so you have some privacy but also close enough together so that you can keep an eye out for each other. Most of the sites have fire pits and there are public bathrooms with showers.

So we got our camping gear together and gathered a bunch of wood for the fire. I went to the beach to grab a bunch of drift wood and also went to City Mill to take some scrap wood that they were giving away. I thought I had enough wood, but I now know, there is no such thing as enough firewood.

Here's some pics from the park. It's really beautiful there since the park has a lake and is located at the base of the Ko'olau mountain range.







The thing I was looking forward to the most was the fire. I may very well be a closet pyro. I researched a bunch of camp fire building techniques and ended up building the classic teepee with kindling and small wood and a square of larger pieces of wood around it. I also cheated a bit and brought along some cotton balls that were soaked in torch fluid. The fire caught quickly and if you didn't already know this...wood burns pretty fast. But the fire burned nice and hot throughout most of the night. We cooked up some steak kabobs for dinner and roasted up some s'mores later that night for dessert.




Towards the end of the night we rolled up some cardboard pieces that we got at Costco and tossed them on the fire. Those burned real nice too.

The next day we walked over to the lake and did some fishing. The lake is full of Talapia and the park has open fishing hours during the day. You basically put your line in the water and you get a fish. That's the type of fishing I like. We used bread as bait and that was working pretty good for us. There were some people nearby that were catching some larger fish and they were using pieces of corn for bait. I think that kept the smaller fish away, since they probably couldn't eat the entire piece of corn. Next time we'll bring some corn.



All in all, we had a great time camping. We're stil not the camping types and more than likely we will do more "camping" at hotels. But it was nice to get out and experience nature and have some quality family time.

Wienermobile

We were driving through Kaneohe one day and spotted the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.



It was close to lunch time and hot dogs sounded good, so we spun around to get some. Well, they don't sell hot dogs at the Wienermobile. :(
The Wienermobile is one of 5 or 6 Wienermobiles that tour the country to spread Wiener-wisdom. So we stopped to get some of that. We also got a Wienermobile whistle and a short rest inside the Wienermobile.



Pretty cool. If only it had a hot dog rotisserie in there. Anyway, it was an interesting stop along our Sunday drive.

About a week later, I spotted this headline in the local paper. Wienermobile in the doghouse with Hawaii's Outdoor Circle
This kind of thing really upsets me. I know that the Outdoor Circle does a lot to protect the scenic beauty of Hawaii, but sometimes I think they take things a bit too far. With certain things, people need to use some common sense and not just follow the "rules" blindly. Enforcing the intent of the laws and using good judgment would probably make Hawaii an even happier place. (A little bonus Wiener-wisdom for ya)

Hilo

We didn't have much time to do anything else in Hilo except baseball, but we did manage to eat at some pretty good places. Usually when we go to the Big Island, we stay on the Kona side and sometimes drive over to Hilo for the day. So we really never get to do anything in Hilo except drive through it. The last time we were there, we did get to go to the Hilo Zoo, which was surprisingly good, especially the white tiger.
So anyway, while we were in Hilo for the baseball tournament, we found several good places to eat. The first place that we went to was the Kuhio Grille for breakfast. Breakfast was great, I really liked the fried rice....just the way I like it, some spam and egg and no green onions. I also heard that the loco moco and desserts were really good there as well.




We found this place called Hi-Ho Mongolian Grill. This place is exactly the same as the Big Wok restaurant that we went to in California. We were introduced to the Big Wok by my sister and brother-in-law (thanks guys, that place rocked). Hi-Ho was exactly the same. It has a huge round stone that they cook the food on. You basically fill a bowl with raw meat, vegetables, noodles, and sauces and they cook it up for you on the hot stone. I forgot to take a pic of the cooks, but it's a very cool setup and the food tasted great.

We had one of our dinners at the Seaside Restaurant. The cool thing about this restaurant is that they have an aqua farm out back where I believe they grow a lot of the seafood that they serve.
I usually don't eat fish, but since this was a seafood joint, I figured I should give one a try. I ordered a grilled salmon that was on the Specials menu. It was prepared just the way I liked it...a nicely grilled, crunchy crust and soft and moist on the inside. It also had a really tasty mushroom cream sauce. Another thing that stood out was the bread. I think it was a sour dough type roll, but it had a slightly sweet flavor to it.

Here's a picture of the Koi fishpond that they had out back. And no, I don't think that they serve the Koi.



Some of the other places that we went to were:

• Ken's House of Pancakes - probably needed to go here several more times since the menu filled over 5 pages.



• Don's Grill - was ok, I had the pork adobo, which I liked



• Two Ladies Kitchen for mochi



• Tournament concession stand - had to have at least one loco moco in Hilo...I didn't think I'd have a chance to get one before I left. But this one was still pretty good.



• Cafe 100 - I actually didn't eat here, but some of the other people said it was good



• Big Island Candies - Chocolate dipped shortbread cookies



• Big Island Delights - Macadamia Nut Snowball Delight Cookies (my current favorite snowball cookies)

Sorry I didn't get too many pics of the food and of the restaurants.
So I'll end this post with a bunch of random shot from Hilo....

They Cool

Best Laundromat Ever

Hilo Bay

Thanks Hilo....we'll be back.

Hilo PONY Tournament

The Hilo Tournament was a lot of fun. We ended up going all the way to the semi-final game. We lost to Maui, who then lost to Windward in the championship game.
Here's a link to the game box scores if you are interested in the details.

We lost our first game against Lihue. We really should have won that game but things just didn't go our way. We left 10 men on base, including 2 bases loaded innings. This put us in the losers bracket, which meant that if we were going to win it all, we'd have to play 6 more games over 4 days. It also meant that our backs were against the wall and one more loss would send us home.



The second game was against the host Hilo team. Our hitters got back into the groove in this game and we won 6-11. The next day would be a double header day, starting at 8 in the morning.
The boys were feeling good and were having a great time in Hilo. They were all getting to know each other a lot better and were having fun, on and off the field.



The first game of the double header was against Makakilo-Kapolei. KAC belted out 15 hits in this game and scored in every inning. The next game would be a rematch against Lihue. We pitched our Ace pitcher in this game. He went the entire game and pitched one of the best games I've seen all season. He had total command of all his pitches and kept the Lihue team off balance at the plate for the entire game. He pitched 7 innings and threw only 67 pitches.

We advanced to see another day. This meant another early game against the winner of Windward vs Maui and then the championship game. By now, the boys were feeling the affects of baseball all day and playing around all night. We almost pulled it off. In the bottom of the 7th, we scored 2 runs to make it 8-5. With 2 outs, we loaded the bases and had our leadoff batter at the plate. But it wasn't meant to be and the game ended there.



So that was that. Our season was over. The boys played great in that tournament. The game against Maui had some spectacular plays. Huge hits... a couple of home runs and triples that were hit to the deep Hilo outfield fence. Great defensive plays... a deep shot to center field that was caught over the shoulder and a diving catch of a line drive to the left field line.

I got to know a lot of the boys a lot better. They are all great kids and I hope to see them again sometime in the future....and that they remember me. :)

The tournament was a great experience. The team played great and I'm proud of what they accomplished. I think we all would have wanted to beat Maui to get a shot at the Windward team but I also think we wanted to win so we could stay together a bit longer.