travel – Page 5 – Ground Control to Major Mom

Our Disney Cruise, Part 5: Disney Art Throughout The Ship

08. February 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: art, disney, disney cruise, disney cruise lines, travel

Disney artwork graces the passageways and staterooms of the Disney Dream. There’s even a full-sized art gallery on board, where guests can purchase original and prints of Disney art. Photo by Flickr user Casajump, used with permission.

I couldn’t get over the beautiful Disney storyboard and concept art throughout the Disney Dream. If you sail on a Disney Cruise Line ship, make sure you take the time to stroll around the enjoy the art.

And if you want to take some of the art home with you, pay a visit to the Vista Gallery. This is where guests can browse original Disney art and pieces related to the Disney Dream and Castaway Cay. Many of the pieces are for sale, and several are featured in a silent auction. In addition, popular prints are sold for a nominal cost and make very elegant cruise souvenirs.

In the staterooms, there were two prints hanging on the walls. It appears that the same prints are in most rooms on the Disney Dream, and Dave and I were disappointed that we couldn’t buy a print of the art deco design of the four Disney Cruise Line ships.

We have nautical art prints and photography in our bedroom at home. This print, which is featured in most Disney Dream staterooms, would be the perfect compliment to our design, but alas it wasn’t for sale. Note the names of the four ships below each hull. Photo by Flickr user Insidethemagic.

I really loved looking at the storyboard art and rough sketches along the stairwells and passageways — designs that we knew would later become the films and cartoons that make Walt Disney famous. They had prints of basic Steamboat Willie ideas, Pixar storyboards and celluoid prints. And now I share some of my favorites with you!

The long passageway leading towards the Animator’s Palete restaurant is lined with rough sketches of over 20 Disney heroines, from Snow White to Rapunzel and everyone in between. I found my favorite among them!

This is one of the “Enchanted Art” pieces, the poster converts into a Silly Symphony with a Russian theme.

These next three pictures are probably my favorites on the entire ship. They were tucked away on either Deck 1 or 2 towards the back of the ship (the “aft” stairwell). Three 4-panel pieces in a row showing a scene from a Pixar movie from storyboard to completed CGI! This is from The Incredibles.

From Finding Nemo.

From Cars.

Our Disney Cruise, Part 4: Biometrics and Photography

07. February 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: disney, disney cruise, disney cruise lines, travel

I took many cute pictures of the boys playing at the beach at Castaway Cay. Disney shipboard professional photographers wandered the island taking pictures also. Because we were in the water, I didn’t have a Key to the World card with which the photographer could associate the picture. “That’s okay”, he says. How can that be?

Here’s what the professional photographer captured just a few minutes later. Thanks to biometrics, this otherwise “unassociated” picture found its way into our stateroom account folio.

Some of you might say, “Wow that’s really cool!” and some of you might say, “Wow, that’s really creepy!”

It’s no secret that cruise lines offer comprehensive portraiture services on board. And it’s also no secret that on a cruise your party will be pulled aside all over the place to grab pictures for your purchase later. There’s an area on all the Disney Cruise Line ships called “Shutters” where hard-copy portfolios of all of your pictures are available as soon as 2 hours after they’re taken. Photography is prohibited in Shutters, so I couldn’t share how cool this place is: touch your Key to the World card to one of the touchpads throughout the shop and a screen will tell you where your stateroom account’s folio is.

In our case, we were assigned “Donald Yellow 5”. Which meant the Donald bookcase, the folio marked #5 in the row of yellow folders. The area looks like an elegant library. This video shows the bookcases starting at about 0:30.

We weren’t shy about the photo opportunities. I think Dave was getting rather sick of it, but I like that there is no obligation to purchase. And you never know when you might have a winner in there. (Especially when I’m usually the one BEHIND the camera and it was nice to be in front of it every once in a while.) We had over 50 prints in our folio by the end of our four-night cruise; only about 10 of them were worth keeping. Jacob blinks a lot, and Dave’s glasses produced a lot of glares.

I just this week got the copyright release for these pictures and will scan in nice copies. In the meantime, you can view slightly better versions of the professional pictures here.

So there we were enjoying the beach on Castaway Cay. We had rented inner tubes for the boys to float around in. At one point a photographer was wading around along the water/sand line, photographing guests. It was nice in that he didn’t photograph children without the parents’ permission, and my son posed like a champ.

But I didn’t have my Key to the World card with which I could associate the picture. “That’s okay,” said the nice young photographer. And he snapped a couple pictures and moved on to the next family.

Lo and behold, that evening when we checked our folio our two water pictures were in the folio!!! You can see the one we bought in the lower right corner of the picture above.

How could that be? Easy. Disney biometrics.

Bio…what? Bio as in life, metrics as in mathematics. In this case, Disney employs facial recognition technology to compare pictures of “unknown” guests to other photos that have already been taken during the cruise. So if you had a picture taken already during the cruise, and it was already associated with a stateroom account via a Key to the World card, the software can find the unassociated picture’s home: your folio.

For those who didn’t have any pictures and didn’t have anything to associate, a wall on one side of Shutters displayed all the “unknown” faces.

You’ve seen this before. Facebook has “Tag Recommendations“, iPhoto has the “Faces” feature, and Picasa Web Albums has the “People” feature.

I had talked about this Castaway Cay photo association with some fellow cruise guests and they pointed out that it seemed rather creepy to them. We all hoped that none of the biometric information is saved once the cruise is over.

What do you think? Biometric face recognition: cool or creepy?

Our Disney Cruise, Part 3: The Animator’s Palate

05. February 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: disney, disney cruise, disney cruise lines, travel

I had heard SO MUCH about the Animator’s Palette restaurant on Disney Cruises. Boy was I in for a surprise on the Disney Dream!

Last summer, before my husband and I had booked our cruise, I had received some recent gouge on taking Disney cruises from a couple of Air Force family friends. One of the families’ favorite parts of the cruise was their dinner experience at the Animator’s Palate restaurant.

But first, a little background on the Disney dinner experience. If you so choose, you and your party will have seating arranged at each of the three formal restaurants. The order of the restaurants is coded on your Key to the World card. For example, my card had the letters “ERAA”, so for our four-night cruise, we ate at Enchanted Garden first, then the Royal Table, then the Animator’s Palate two nights in a row. Why two nights in a row? Because the first of those two nights was the Pirates IN the Caribbean theme dinner — all restaurants converted for the theme night (that’s for another post!).

As I’d mentioned in Part 1, the waitstaff travels among the restaurants so we had the same service team all four nights.

Of the three restaurants, the Animator’s Palate is the most fun and most interactive.

So my friend who was so excited about the Animator’s Palate dinner experience gave me so many details. She told me about how the entire restaurant starts in black and white. The tables, the waitstaff are dressed in black and white, the screens on the wall are covered in first-level black and white concept art. Over the course of the dinner, the waitstaff is slowly adding color to their outfits, and the art on the walls is slowly transforming into Disney’s final visions. Read more about the Disney Magic and Disney Wonder Animator’s Palette experience here.

I was very surprised at how different our Animator’s Palate experience was on the Disney Dream. We entered the restaurant with the very basic sketches on the screens, but our waitstaff were wearing their black and white shirts with bright teal ties — that looked like a bubbly ocean.

Our server Dimi in his Animator’s Palette uniform. The tie matches the East Australia Current theme of the accompanying show.

During our appetizer course, our screens transformed from the basic storyboard sketches into scenes from Finding Nemo’s Great Barrier Reefs. The lighting in the restaurant transformed into a spectrum of blues and greens. Characters from Finding Nemo appeared to greet the diners, and the kids enjoyed numerous games of “guess what the silver fish school is making”.

Characters swim around the coral reef screens.

All through dinner the kids were enjoying the silver fish school making shapes. Sharks, octopus, a clown fish, a cruise ship and in this case, a birthday cake!

Then Crush, the 150-year-old tortoise from Finding Nemo, makes his rounds throughout the restaurant visiting guests. This is a truly enchanting experience — if you’ve ever experienced the Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor attraction at Magic Kingdom or Turtle Talk with Crush at EPCOT, this is similar. Crush singles out dinner guests and carries on direct conversations with them. We were fortunate that Crush found my youngest son and the following conversation took place:

How enchanting is that?

Of course, we adults were curious about how this was working. The technology for this was borrowed from those same attractions at other Disney Parks, thanks to innovations at Disney Imagineering. It didn’t take us long to find the panels that didn’t quite look like the others — the cameras must have been hidden behind them!

Look at the upper left. There is a green-bordered screen with pictures of Mr. Frederickson from Up. What you don’t see is the wire coming from behind the panel. There’s the camera!

The dinner show concludes with some lessons at having fun and being laid back (lots of shouts of “Awesome!” and “DUDE!” resonate around the dining room) before the room transforms back into the storyboard sketches and the colors return to what we had upon entering the restaurant.

So even though our experience was different than what guests on the Disney Magic and Disney Wonder receive, it was still delightful and incredibly memorable, especially for the kids!

Our Disney Cruise, Part 2: The Midship Detective Agency

05. February 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: disney, disney cruise, disney cruise lines, travel

The “Midship Detective Agency” on the Disney Dream lets the kids interact with the Enchanted Art on the ship to solve a mystery.

One of the unique features of the Disney Dream is their 22 pieces of “Enchanted Art” scattered among all of the artwork on their fourteen decks. In a Harry Potter-esque manner, random pictures on the wall will come to life! This is fun for the kids and adults alike!

Our Disney Cruise, Part 1: A List of "The Little Things"

05. February 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: disney, disney cruise, disney cruise lines, travel

I know most of you knew that we took a Disney cruise about 2 weeks ago. And perhaps you were wondering why I wasn’t writing about it? It’s because I had promised GeekMom.com several posts about our trip and I wanted to get those posts out there first. It’s easy enough now to translate the text over to my own blog, which I’m going to do now. I’ve drafted 7 posts about the cruise, and they aren’t the normal “Here’s how our cruise was” type of posts. Enjoy!

Santa brought the family a 4-night Disney cruise vacation this year! The trip happened to coincide with Timmy’s birthday. In a very uncharacteristic move, Dave and I agreed to take the boys out of school for a solid week and drove out to Port Canaveral, Florida, the homeport to the Disney Dream, Disney Cruise Line’s most-recently christened* ship.

Learn more about Disney Cruise Lines through their website. Check out Wikipedia for the Disney Dream‘s amazing statistics. Or better yet, how about the Disney Dream by the Numbers?

Our sons unwrapped big boxes with these certificates inside on Christmas morning.

I don’t plan to discuss too much about the cruise itself. Anyone can write about taking a cruise, right? We stopped in Nassau, Bahamas and on Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay. Our sons got to experience snorkeling for the first time. I’ve cruised with Carnival in the past, but that didn’t hold a candle to last week’s trip! My family was geeking-out at some of the amazing little subtleties that make the Disney Cruise Line experience second-to-none!

1.) Hidden Mickeys everywhere!

Need I say more?

It goes without saying that the “Hidden Mickeys” are everywhere. This one isn’t quite so hidden, though.

2.) Characters everywhere!

Obviously there are Disney characters on a Disney cruise, right? After having experienced many hours in line over the years waiting to meet Mickey, Minnie, Pooh Bear, Rafiki, Buzz Lightyear and Mr. Frederickson at Walt Disney World, it was a breath of fresh air to not have to wait long for characters at all. My sons filled up their autograph book on a family trip to Disneyworld in 2009, so they were rather lassiez-faire about the characters this time around. In fact, we only waited in line for ONE character: Jack Sparrow! Most of the others we encountered almost by chance throughout the cruise ship.

When your very first elevator ride to your stateroom is with Donald Duck, the bar has been set pretty high.

3.) The Key to the World

Like other cruise lines, many things are tied in to the key card. Disney calls their card the “Key to the World“, whether you’re on the cruise or staying at a Disney resort on land. If you are combining a cruise with a Walt Disney World vacation, the same card will have your resort key, park tickets and Disney Dining Plan information loaded onto it.

On the Disney Dream, we used the key card to enter our stateroom, turn on the lights, enter/exit the ship at ports of call, tie into a photography account when the onboard photographers take snapshots, drop off/pick up your children from the Oceaneer’s Club, and charge beverages and souvenirs.

The Disney Dream is so new that instead of swiping the key card in many places, we instead had a touch pad. Similar to MasterCard PayPass touch pads. To enter/exit our staterooms, the kids didn’t even have to remove the keycards from their lanyards. Just touch the card to the pad. We used similar touch pads for entering/exiting the ship.

The little black keypad above the door handle is a touch pad for the key card. The kids didn’t have to pull their cards out of their lanyard pockets to open/close the door!

Another thing the key card is used for is to control the electricity in your stateroom. I found this a great energy-conservation tool. There was a slot near the front door for the key card. A card needed to be in the slot before lights or the television could be turned on. I discovered that it didn’t matter what card was used for the switch — I’m guessing it was a manual connection switch in the slot somewhere. I saw a stateroom host using a Sleep Inn keycard while cleaning a nearby stateroom, ha ha!

Using key cards to control room electricity is not new technology, I know. It’s been commonplace in hotels in Europe and Asia for years.

4.) RFID Bands for the Kids’ Clubs

From MouseTalesTravel.com

Each child ages 3-10 who wants to participate in the Oceaneer Club or Oceaneer Lab kids’ clubs on the Disney Dream are outfitted with waterproof wristbands. Called “Mickey Bands”. These two kids’ clubs together (they’re connected) offer over 10,000 square feet of playspace, covering everything from playground space to arts and crafts to interactive play. You may fit the children for the wristbands in the cruise terminal before boarding, at the registration temporary office as soon as your board, or any time during the cruise at the Kids’ Club check-in/check-out area (which I don’t recommend because there’s often a line of parents that you tend to hold up while the attendant is printing and fitting the wristband).

It seemed simple enough for the kids to tap their wrists to the gate to enter and exit. Very secure! You provide a password through the Disney website that approved adults can use to check out the kids from the secure areas.

NOTE: As a safety measure, the kids club policies changed significantly starting in January 2012. Whereas previously parents could freely participate with their children at any time, now the kids’ clubs offer “Open House” and “Secured” areas. If you desire your child to be at the kids’ clubs without parents present, they have to go to the “Secured” area and no other parents are allowed in. Only DCL child care employees. If the family desires to do the kids’ club activities together they can take advantage of “Open House” periods in 2-4 hour blocks throughout the cruise.

Another hidden feature of the RFID bands — the geeky part — is that in the kids’ club spaces, the wristband is transmitting what rooms you child travels to. This helps the counselors maintain their ratios and helps the parents quickly find their children when it’s pick-up time.

5.) The Automatic Hand Washing Machine!

It’s an automatic hand-washing machine! Before the kids entered the Oceaneer’s Club or Oceaneer’s Lab, their forearms were dunked into this machine for 30 seconds. Washed and rinsed!

Also in the kids’ club areas were these most-awesome machines. Automatic hand-washers! The kids simply stick their arms inside and the machine automatically starts. Water spirals around your hands and forearms, then soapy water, then another cycle of fresh water. All in about 25 seconds. Take out your arms and dry them off!

6.) The Amazing Cast

Unlike other cruise lines, families aboard Disney Cruise Line trips are assigned the same service team for dinner dining and stateroom care throughout the entire cruise. This has both benefits and drawbacks.

Of course, a benefit is that you get to know several of the cast members. This is great for the kids. We had very friendly servers and the stateroom host was a sweetheart. At the end of the cruise, you are presenting gratuities to the servers and stateroom host themselves, instead of their pooling the money. Our boys learned quite a bit about Bulgaria from our assistant server, Dimi. Dimi was relatively new and was practicing his Mickey-Mouse ears-shaped ketchup every night.

One of the drawbacks is that I could imagine if someone received substandard service (which wouldn’t be tolerated for long by Disney Cruse Lines, I’d imagine), you’re left with that server for the duration. I didn’t see this, so let’s just hope this is purely hypothetical.

Meet Drenka from Peru and Dimi from Bulgaria, our dinnertime servers during our entire cruise.

If you’re celebrating while on board, stand back! Disney gives you several opportunities to tell them whether you’re getting married (there were several weddings during our cruise), celebrating an anniversary or birthday, or on a honeymoon. Since our youngest son was celebrating his 7th birthday during the cruise, they gave him a button to wear. Cast members left and right would say “Happy Birthday” to our son as we were walking throughout the ship and on Castaway Cay.

My youngest son was allowed to wear a “Happy Birthday” button during the cruise. Cast members were wishing him “Happy Birthday” constantly. Here, Jack Sparrow is wishing him Happy Birthday. Look at that face! You can’t beat it!

7.) Disney Movies Galore at the Buena Vista Theater

Are there any Disney films in theaters while you’re sailing? If so, you have several opportunities to see them during the cruise for no additional charge.

I was thrilled to see Beauty and the Beast 3D being offered but I didn’t get to see any movies during the cruise. It’s tough debating what items to cut from the packed schedule.

Warhorse and The Muppets were also showing. Other movies offered included The Help, Cars 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

8.) A Cruise Ship Tradition: Turn-Down Service, Disney Style

Anyone who’s been on a cruise vacation knows that the stateroom host makes up your room in the morning, and then during dinner he/she comes in and performs a “turn-down service”. For our particular stateroom, this meant pulling the bunk bed down from the ceiling, laying out chocolates and leaving the kids a cool towel origami animal to enjoy.

Good night!

The bottom bunk is the couch with the back flipped down. The top bunk came down from the ceiling!

Stars and constellations of Peter Pan, Wendy and the other Darling children graced the kids’ top bunk.

How adorable is this? Sleepy Dwarf chocolates every night on our beds!

This is typical for most cruise lines: towel origami. But this is definitely the first time we had a monkey hanging from our ceiling!

Stay tuned for additional posts about our family trip aboard the Disney Dream. Coming soon, the Midship Detective Agency (and other biometrics), the Animator’s Palette, AquaDuck! and the stunning Disney art on the ship.

*The Disney Fantasy is currently undergoing sea trials in Europe and is scheduled for her first voyage in March 2012. Follow her upcoming journey across the Atlantic for her 28 February christening in Manhattan on Twitter.

Road Trip III 2011: Atlanta Braves Baseball!

19. August 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: baseball, road trip, sports, travel, vacation

WARNING: This is a LONG post. I debated dividing it into two parts, but couldn’t find an easy dividing point. So instead I put in some headers to try to break up the story a bit.

It was our entire motivation for our trip to Atlanta last weekend: we had Braves tickets!

During Jacob’s baseball season, we promised to take him to a professional baseball game in the area. We didn’t realize it would be over an hour away (Mobile, Alabama has a AA team). Dave suggested looking into Braves tickets, and we could take a long weekend in Atlanta for sightseeing.

I got a great deal on StubHub.com on a set of four tickets to the August 14th Braves-Cubs game right behind home plate. Someone was probably breaking up a set of multi-game tickets, and I scored some great seats for about $20 each. It turned out to be near Dave’s birthday, so we considered the trip a birthday gift for Dave.

Even better? I found us a hotel room right across the street from Turner Field! Whoo hoo!

Military Ticket Promotion

I had made these arrangements back in May, so the excitement for all my boys was pretty built-up by the time we actually made the drive. They were so happy to see Turner Field and were incredibly excited about seeing Sunday’s game…

…so excited, in fact, that on Saturday morning Jacob and I walked over to the box office first thing and bought tickets to see the Saturday night game. We took advantage of the Braves’ military promotion — Active duty military can get buy-one-get-one-free Upper Box seats. (So can students and AAA members). And they waived the $3 surcharge for same-day purchase! Our original tickets were to the Sunday afternoon game.

The Bullpen

Happy Dave. Sandwiches and beer at The Bullpen. $3.50 bottles here vs. $7.00 bottles at the ballpark! Dave opted for a solid red Braves hat.

After Friday night at The Varsity, then Saturday morning and afternoon at Stone Mountain, we had dinner Saturday evening at The Bullpen, a burger/beer joint between our hotel and Turner Field. We took a risk heading over there — after all, what restaurant next to the ballpark was going to have seating 90 minutes before gametime? We thought The Bullpen would be waitress-served meals, and were expecting the worst in terms of a wait for a table.

We were greeted with a pleasant surprise: cheap food, REALLY cheap beer and plenty of outdoor seating. Sure, it was hot, but at least we had seating.

Parking

Another nice perk — free parking since we were staying at a hotel nearby. We found out that the local businesses near Turner Field (including our hotel) sold extra parking spaces for $20 per game! So over the weekend we saved $40 in parking charges, and we had a VERY short walk to the field, just diagonally across an intersection from the gates behind home plate….although the main entrance was behind the outfield.

The Saturday Night Game!

It’s a sight to see — that look on a kid’s face when he see something he’s been excited for for so long. I remember that look when my boys met Mickey Mouse. We saw it again when the boys saw the bright green field and the HUGE video screen when we got to our seats. For the Saturday game, we sat near the very top row, but it was essentially behind home plate. It was hot, but at least we had a good enough view to command the boys’ attention for most of the game. The Braves lost the Saturday night game.

These giant baseballs were all over the place — the boys wanted to find them all, but we didn’t do that. The boys got Braves hats off a street vendor for $5 each. They are definitely $5 hat quality, but the boys didn’t care and were incredibly excited!

I’m very proud of this picture. This is the 1991 Braves in the upper part of the picture. They had a 20th Anniversary reunion event just before the game. This team started the 14-years-in-a-row of pennant winning. Five of the players simultaneously threw ceremonial first pitches and I caught 4 of the 5 balls mid-pitch! From the top row, too! (the 2nd pitcher from the right hadn’t let go of the ball yet). Hooray for our Canon camera!

The view from the top. Not bad. The giant TV screen (“Braves Vision”) helped us see anything we needed to see in more detail.

You can see how high up we were.

Two of Atlanta’s biggest sponsors, literally: Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A. Each of those things are 40-feet high.

The Chick-fil-A cow does the tomahawk chop with his (her?) right arm when the (FSU Band) music played!

The boys all brought in their gloves, but we were sitting a bit high to catch a foul ball.

Plenty of gimmicks to keep us entertained. When the Braves strike out a batter, the Gas South sign launches two small fireworks and flames fly out of the flames on the sign. Then, if you squint, you can see the letter “K”s underneath the words “Bring the Heat”. One “K” per strikeout.

And if there’s a home run, the 40-foot Coca Cola bottle launches a WHOLE BUNCH of fireworks! This was during the one-and-only home run from both games: Dan Uggla in the 4th inning. Dave took the boys to get snacks. I saw it, they missed it.

A word about this 40-foot Coke bottle. The area that’s usually a label is actually an LCD sign that is constantly changing. Here you can see the tomahawks that were moving around the right. Timmy was a bit freaked out by every single digital sign in the ballpark showing tomahawks during the tomahawk chop music. He learned the cheer pretty early on!

The Sunday Afternoon Game: Foul Ball Drama

The Sunday game gave us a MUCH better view! Unfortunately, the seats remained in the sun the entire time. After 3 hours in the sun, during about the 7th inning, we moved to shady seats two rows up.

Those original seats were in the very front row of the upper deck, behind home plate. About halfway up in the stands…definitely foul ball range! A most-awesome view!

Statistically speaking, what are the chances of a foul ball landing in one of our original — by then, vacated — seats??? I don’t know, but that’s what happened. A man from the group right next to the empty seats ran over to the seat and plucked up the ball, full of happiness and celebration. I tried, but didn’t make it…

Meanwhile, my boys were in tears…Timmy ran back over to the original seats and sat with his glove at the ready for about 10 minutes. Jacob was pretty upset for the rest of the game. Dave — whose original seat the ball landed in — explained that he wasn’t really paying attention at the time the foul ball came in and assured the boys he might have gotten hit on the head.

So to accompany that look of delight when the boys saw their first major league ball field, was the anguish of missing a foul ball that we SHOULD have caught! Oh well…life goes on…

Nice foam tomahawks, right? This was before the foul ball — and the emotion that went with it. It fell right into the seat Dave was sitting in here…except we had moved from those seats when the ball came in.

This was our view from our seats. So much nicer than the night before! But quite sunny…

I thought the sun would head behind the awning…instead it PARALLELED the front edge of the awning. So hot…so frustrating.

The Running of the Bases

When Jacob and I went to the box office to get the Saturday night game tickets, we learned of this “Running of the Bases” activity the Braves hosted on after their Sunday home games. The kids line up after the game to go down to the field and they get one pass around the field. After yet another loss against the Cubs, not to mention the Foul Ball drama, we weren’t sure the kids were going to handle the LONG line to run the bases. The kids didn’t know what to expect, so it was clear Dave and I were more excited about this than the kids.

But they stuck it out, with the help of some other kids in the line who had done the activity before and assured the boys that the experience was really cool. I knew Jacob would appreciate learning how much longer the baselines are on a Major League diamond compared to what he runs in Little League.

After about a 30 minute wait (relatively not long at all), we saw the beautiful field up close! The kids were put in a line and the whole experience — as cool as it is — is very very fast. They are sending kids out about every 2 seconds. I didn’t get good pictures of the running itself, but here’s a video of the boys that gives you an idea.

Yes, Timmy’s wearing a Pirates shirt. Those two shirts came from Old Navy.

Jacob took this picture…I like it 🙂

The kids in the line leading up to home plate. Say nothing about the boys being in Crocs (J’s wearing yellow, T’s wearing red). I didn’t think about how much better this experience would have been if they were wearing sneakers.

The boys received free t-shirts when they finished. The Braves logo is on the front, this beat any $20 t-shirt at the souvenirs stands!

The Braves Kids Club: A Nice Gift Idea

Photo courtesy of Field Trips With Sue.

The boys kept seeing ads for this Braves Kids Club on the video screens and on posters throughout Turner Field. This evening I finally remembered to look up the website and see what this Kids Club involved.

Seems like a pretty cool deal. I was reminded of the old Lego Brickmaster Club from about 2007 or so, when $40 would get you 6+ great little kits, plus coupons, and the magazine. For $20 you get 2 Braves ticket vouchers AND 2 Gwinnett Braves (their AAA affiliate) vouchers. Plus a ball cap, Chick Fil A coupons, a certificate, VIP access to the Kids Running of the Bases, among other things.

Since a Kids Club membership is valid for a single baseball season, we convinced the boys that this wouldn’t be a good idea this late in the season. I put a reminder in iCal to look at the Kids Club membership thing again in mid-November for the 2012 season.

This Atlanta blogger shows how the Kids’ Club items are nicely packaged up for the holidays.

Wordless Wednesday: A Sneak Peek of My Next Post

17. August 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: baseball, road trip, sports, travel, vacation, wordless wednesday

Road Trip III 2011: Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park

15. August 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: railfanning, railroad, road trip, trains, travel, vacation

This is officially called “The Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain”. It’s the largest relief carving in the world…at least until the Crazy Horse Monument is finished. We all know who the guys are…who knows the horses’ names?

As I’d mentioned in yesterday’s post about The Varsity, the only truly scheduled activity we had coming into Atlanta was a Sunday afternoon Braves game. So we had the entire city of Atlanta at our disposal for sightseeing.

What to do…what to do…

Most families staying in downtown Atlanta would have considered the Georgia Aquarium, the CNN Center tour, and/or the World of Coca-Cola. Zoo Atlanta would have been a good option too…if it weren’t for the incredible heat.

Dave, in his typical train-fan fashion, knew of a tourist scenic railroad in the area. So that’s what we sought to do. We decided to grab some same-day tickets to the Saturday night Braves game, and then headed out for the day to Stone Mountain Park which is about 15 miles east of Atlanta. We weren’t quite sure what to expect — several folks at the hotel breakfast area told us we’d have a good time and that there was “so much to do!”.

Those folks were right! Stone Mountain Park is very beautiful and there was no shortage of things to do! We didn’t quite dress for hiking up the mountain (and Dave’s back wouldn’t have been to happy with it either), but we were able to enjoy the scenic train, the skytram right to the top of the mountain, a ferryboat ride, and a fun — touristy — lunch where our yeast rolls were thrown to us by our servers!

Dave and I really enjoyed the Civil War history that’s been memorialized at the park — of course there’s the beautiful bas relief sculpture of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (and their horses!). There is also an antebellum mansion to tour, and a Confederate Museum.

One could visit the park and make a complete vacation experience out of it — from campsite to the Stone Mountain Inn, you can stay on the property. If you want to do outdoor activities, there’s hiking, biking, golf and boating to be had! If you prefer indoor air conditioned stuff, there are the museums, the shops and lots of exhibits and demonstrations.

Stone Mountain is a fascination in and of itself: the dome of cooled magma, which soon became granite rock, poked up over the surrounding geology, rising over 800′ above the surrounding area. There are gentle rolling hills around Atlanta, but Stone Mountain sticks up pretty high…

While you could pay individually for each of the activities we did, we instead took advantage of the one-day “Adventure Pass”. This let us do just about all the theme-park activities (there’s this “Ride the Duck” attraction that wasn’t included, but that’s okay). We had a military discount of $3 off each ticket, yay!

Perhaps because it was August in Georgia, who knows? The park was not crowded at all even on a Saturday, there were little-to-no lines for any of the activities we wanted to enjoy.

First, the 5 mile train ride around the base of the mountain.

The engine that pulled us.

This is the walking trail up to the top (as seen from the train) — it’s straight up the sheer rock surface so it can get quite dangerous if it were rainy.

Next we enjoyed a touristy Southern comfort food lunch at an in-park restaurant called “Miss Katie’s”. They’re known for throwing the yeast rolls at you. I didn’t get a picture of this gimmick, but here’s a picture I found off the web of a Miss Katie’s server throwing a roll, from the Epicurean Family Blog:

We enjoyed southern fried chicken and chicken and dumplings for lunch. Along with free tossed rolls, fried dill pickles, fried sweet potatoes and free fried onion petals…we were glad we ordered 2 entrees and 1 kid’s meal for the 4 of us!

The lunch was yummy, but unfortunately was priced for tourists and our lunch for 4 was over $50.

After lunch we visited the air conditioned Yogi Bear’s 4D Adventure. This was merely a stitching-together of 12-minutes worth of scenes from the 2010 movie Yogi Bear…the 3D version. But we were in a theater that added in real water and wind effects. We had seen Yogi Bear this past spring but it was fun to experience the water and wind effects.

This is what I usually get from Jacob these days when I say “Smile for the camera!”

Next we visited the Summit Skyride, which was the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. The gondola has a capacity of 13,000 lbs., and when we were loading up, it was rather freaky seeing the load weight – displayed in tons – get higher and higher. Luckily, everyone fit on board at 5.1 tons.

We enjoyed the views from the top of the mountain.

Can you see the Atlanta skyline out there? Trust me, it’s out there!

I have a lot of peak pictures of Dave: here and here. I have one of him on North Carolina’s Grandfather Mountain too…but that’ll have to wait till I get home and dig into my photo archives.

I think this is the very peak of the mountain. But I could be wrong….

Timmy was very curious about these circular depressions in the granite. It’s from rainwater “soaking” some of the softer minerals in the rock…when the water evaporated, the dissolved minerals would go with it.

This is the very pretty — and very rare — Confederate yellow daisy. There’s a festival in September to celebrate it’s full bloom, but they were just starting up about this time of year.

Jacob took this nice picture of Dave and me…I like the rainshower on the left side of the picture, in the background.

This black swallowtail butterfly was fluttering among the yellow daisies. Way up on top of the mountain. Love how my 12x zoom captured even the detail of the granite of the mountain top. There was a tiger swallowtail, too, but he wouldn’t land anywhere for me to photograph him.

We cooled off at the air conditioned Memorial Hall Museum, which has exhibits about the geology of the mountain…and a lot of the Native American and early American artifacts found nearby, as well as exhibits about the making of the bas relief sculpture and the Civil War history in the area.

Did you know? The original sculptor of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial was Gutzon Borglum…his design wasn’t used due to differences the artist had with his financial backers in the mid-1920s. Borglum smashed the models of his designs and left Georgia in anger in 1925. He went to Mount Rushmore, South Dakota to design and oversee its construction from 1927-1941.

The Memorial Hall Museum.

A view of the “Memorial Lawn” – laser light shows are held every night at 9:30pm during the summer. We’d have loved to have seen one; apparently their lightshow rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is pretty well known.

Finally, and by this time we were all tired and sore from the walking around, we ended our day at Stone Mountain Park with a ride on their riverboat Scarlett O’Hara.

Dave might actually be sleeping here…we were all pretty tired by this point.

View of Stone Mountain from the riverboat.

We were very glad we chose a day at Stone Mountain Park over the more common tourist destinations in Atlanta! It was nice to get some fresh — albeit hot — air, and learn more about Georgia’s nature and history.

Road Trip III 2011: Atlanta’s The Varsity Drive-In

14. August 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: cooking, food, road trip, travel, vacation

We took a long weekend and headed up to Atlanta. It’s about a 5.5 hour drive with no stops, plus we have a time zone change. We had nice seats at a Sunday afternoon Atlanta Braves game, and we booked a hotel room at a Comfort Inn right next to Turner Field, so we didn’t have to deal with (or pay for) parking.

Other than the Sunday afternoon baseball game, we had all of Atlanta to explore with our sons — but admittedly they were mostly interested in the baseball. We ended up taking advantage of a same-day ticket promotion the Braves Baseball club has for military members: 2-for-1 Upper Box tickets. So we will see two games this weekend. More about that later.

Last night when we rolled into town, I dragged the family to one of Atlanta’s most famous restaurants, The Varsity. Those fans of Rick Sebak documentaries will recognize this restaurant from his 1999 A Hot Dog Program.

Tangent: That documentary fascinates me. I’m not a huge fan of hot dogs, necessarily, but I will admit that I enjoy a hot dog on occasion, and more than the food itself is the culture and the people that go into all the unique hot dog stands/restaurants across the country. Not that I’m necessarily keeping a list, but The Varsity is the 2nd of the restaurants featured on the program. We visited Gray’s Papaya in Manhattan in November 2005. Cheapest lunch in Manhattan! And a trip to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island is on my bucket list. Really, it is!

But back to The Varsity: Dave and I will be the first to admit, the food isn’t earth-shatteringly good. You aren’t going for gourmet cuisine…you’re going for the fast, cheap (dinner for 4 = ~$25!), consistent food. And the atmosphere! Folk who’ve been there before will all warn you: at the front counters where you order is a cacophony of “Whaddaya have? Whaddaya have?” from the dozens of employees all wearing their trademark red paper hats (which are available to the customers).

The drive-in was put near Georgia Tech and on a GT football game weekend is one of the busiest spots in Atlanta — the brick building in the background is on Georgia Tech’s campus, in fact.

A good old fashioned drive-in — America’s largest, in fact! The drive in part is a cash-only operation as you are paying and getting change from the bellhops directly. The food is brought to you on one of those trays they clip to your car door.

I didn’t get a picture of the front entrance, but this is the just-as-retro side entrance. Here’s a picture of the street-side entrance.

There isn’t much to the menu. Hot dogs, burgers, and that chicken sandwich in the lower right corner. There are a few other things, but really…not much. They have this orange frosty drink that I wish I had tried, supposed to taste like orange sherbert! You can also get a feel for how (relatively) cheap meals are — this is downtown Atlanta, where McDonald’s combo meals cost the same!

The paper hats are available to anyone. The kids enjoyed wearing them with dinner.

This was my dinner….the #1 Combo. No points for presentation, that’s for sure. But lots of points for the look and taste of a classic chili dog dinner! You probably can’t see through the chili and mustard, but the buns are sliced down the center instead of split side-wise like buns you purchase at a grocery store.

Timmy got the #6 combo: Two “naked” dogs. He loved that! You can see better the unusually-split hot dog buns on his plate. Timmy devoured his dogs and called them the best dogs he’d ever had — and he’s had a lot of hot dogs in his life!

Dave and Jacob had burgers…and Jacob had this chili-cheeseburger that was REALLY a heart-attack on a plate! Jacob loved the hot-dog style chili so much he asked if he could get a bowl of it in addition to his dinner combo. Sadly, they only come as side condiments, but being the ever-doting mother that I am, I bought him two little cups of the chili (for $0.80 total) and he ate those.

And then I bought a can of it to take home. It’s clearly hot dog chili, not really meant to be eaten by the bowlful. Jacob’s still not convinced of that…after we have that can, I found this Crock Pot recipe that I’ll be trying out for sure!

Jacob wants to go back before the end of the weekend, but Dave and I aren’t sure our GI systems will ensure two trips in one weekend. We still are planning a trip to Dwarf House before we go home on Monday…

The verdict? The Varsity is full of history, and their classic chili dogs are an Atlanta tradition that’s worth trying. It’s cheap, family friendly and close to Atlanta’s biggest tourist attractions. Worth a visit!

Road Trip II 2011: Eufaula, Alabama…Pretty Antebellum Town

03. August 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: alabama, road trip, southern hospitality, travel

Pardon the glare, I had the window down on the driver’s side, but not the passenger’s side of the car.

On this last trip, I changed things up and bit and took US Route 231/431 up the eastern border of Alabama. This took us through Dothan, AL and Columbus, GA. In the past we’ve gone through Montgomery, AL to head towards I-85.

About halfway through this north-south route was a town called Eufaula, Alabama, which sits on a gorgeous lake that straddles the Alabama/Georgia border. The Wikipedia link will describe the town’s antebellum and post-Reconstruction wealth, and this was evident in how gorgeous this town is. Luckily, the town was (barely) spared during the American Civil War. This visitor’s guide has more information about the town’s history, and how the surrender at Appomatox might have spared the beautiful homes!

Not only are there the beautiful buildings and impeccable landscaping, but the lake that winds through the town makes it a popular vacation spot for southern sportsmen. I saw so many boats and RVs traveling up and down US 231/431, likely headed for Lake Eufaula (also known as Walter F. George Lake, named after a Georgia Senator, so it’s mainly those on the Georgia side who give it the latter name).

Eufaula hosts a traditional Southern pilgrimage every spring, I’d be interested in heading up there and touring some of the historic homes.

When driving north last Wednesday through the town, I was delighted at how beautiful it was. I made a plan to drive r-e-a-l s-l-o-w down N. Eufaula Street on the return trip on Sunday with my arm out the window with the camera. That’s precisely what I did. Enjoy these pictures I took…the traffic was very light and I was able to go about 15 mph down N. Eufaula Street.