Specularius

So who are the team members of The ACE Team? Who is Jim Phillips? Are these people of importance at Disney?

Does this help?

Being of an Engineering background, it took me less than a minute to solve it. I was just surprised that my son solved the horse one so fast.

1 hour ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

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Fun Fact:  Spaceship Earth is closer to the Fort entrance than Cinderella Castle is.

TCD

That is a little bit of data manipulation in that statement. The key part being the "Entrance". The distance from the boat dock at Fort Wilderness to the castle is closer than the distance from the bus stop at the Outpost to Spaceship Earth. It is also 1.31 miles from the Outpost check-in to the boat dock as the crow flies.

Looks like they did not have a season at all for 2016 but may try again in 2017. Personally I believe hunting to be a vital part of the management process.

Now that I am almost 100% over this nasty sinus infection, and I have reviewed my report, I see that I missed several things. I have to give props to TCD on his trips reports because writing one is hard. I had this vision of how I wanted it to flow and I guess too much Sudafed is like too much alcohol because it slipped off the path I intended. 

I forgot to show off our Silver status gift, a nice beach bag.

I also forgot our last towel animal.

And our final crayon puzzle. Make the fish go the opposite direction in three moves.

19 hours ago, WannaBeImagineer said:

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Are you thinking about taking advantage of the Disney cruises out of Galveston?  We hope to hit one of those in December.  

WBI

We have looked at the Galveston cruises, and plan to do one in the far future. The schedule there just does not work with school age kids and we still have 7 years of school left. I am hoping that when the two new ships are launched, they will offer more cruises out of Galveston.

9 minutes ago, Seals said:

Reading along I was feeling very very sorry for your wife and was about to ask if she would get a do-over. I'm glad that she will. 

Our first Disney Cruise was a Dream 3-nighter and we drove 10 hours home the day we got off the ship to go back to school/work the next day, a Monday. It became a long week and the cruise feeling wore off very quickly. I vowed we wouldn't go again until we could do at least a 4-nighter with a rest day at the end. We did that with a 4-nighter on the Wonder after Christmas in 2014 and it was a much nicer experience.  

She was more concerned that I would be upset that she didn't do much. I assured her that I was not upset and that the rest of us did have some fun, just not doing the things we looked forward to.

As to the traveling, I spent over 10 years driving a truck for our business. I averaged over 4,000 miles a week most weeks. So over 800 miles in a day is a cake walk for me. Everyone else has their pillow and a blanket so they just lounge while I drive. We love to travel and see things and have done so since the start of our marriage. 

And knew that it was a big gamble with the weather taking a cruise when we did, but it was cheaper than normal, and not nearly as crowded as our first cruise. There were always lounge chairs available on the pool deck this time so I know the ship was almost empty relativity speaking. We just did not plan on the sinus cold hitting so hard and now working its way through the household. Our daughter is now sick and our son woke up this morning saying his throat is sore. 

Sunday morning is here. I am up early so I can eat breakfast in Cabana's, with a table at the stern so I can watch the docking operation at Castaway Cay. The captain brings the ship in, makes his turn and starts backing in to the dock. I am ready for this, had been looking forward to this, and then, I feel a shudder, and we start pulling away from the dock, slipping further out to sea. My heart sinks, knowing that Castaway Cay is a bust. Shortly after pulling away, the captain comes on the intercom, and due to extreme gale force winds of 50 knots (approximately 57 MPH for us land lubbers) we would be spending the day at sea. Oh Joy. So I wandered out on the pool deck after finishing my breakfast, and whoa...It was cold, very cold, and windy, very windy. It was so windy that they closed the upper deck around the pool to passengers. It was so cold that they were handing out blankets to passengers sitting in the lounge chairs to watch the Funnel Vision. The day was spent with the ship hiding behind the Grand Bahama island to block as much wind as the island could. That night, the captain waited till most everyone was asleep to come around the end of the island and head for the port. When he did, the boat got rough. It was impossible to sleep. It felt like you were going to be in the floor at any minute. I could have sworn I heard the main props cavitate coming out of the water once. It was not until we made to Port Canaveral, that I was able to get some sleep. 

So now we are at the end, this trip is almost over, but for a pesky 856 mile drive home. A drive that needs to be done in one day because our son needs to be in school that next day. (he is supposed to be in school this day too, but we made a family decision that this was better than a Monday of school, first day back after the holidays) And there is this other issue, I am now getting the sickness that has plagued my wife this entire cruise. So we have breakfast, say our good bye to the best server we have had, and hit the road to home, after another stop at CVS. 

Around 3 in the afternoon, my wife gets a text from our son's teacher asking if he is ok that she missed him in school today. My wife replies back that well, he was getting off the Disney Dream that morning, but that he would be in school the next morning. She replied back stating that was awesome, but that he would have a pop quiz and this is what he needs to study. I was glad that his teacher cares enough to notice him missing and to give us the information to keep our trip from impacting his grades. So the next couple of hours was quiz time in the car. He knew the information inside and out by the time we pulled into the driveway at home. That drive time, 12 hours 24 minutes, including two fuel stops and two meal stops. I will say, that not much passed me, and I was glad there were no law enforcement officers that saw me, or felt obliged to award me for my driving efforts. 

As I crawl into bed Monday night, exhausted, running a fever, sinuses draining like a leaking faucet, I look at my wife and say, "When are you ready to go back?" and her reply was, "June, I have already booked it." And I spent the next two days in bed, sick.

Our cruising experience is limited to two, with this cruise being our worst. We did not get to do hardly anything we looked forward to, but it was still a trip that I would do over again in a heartbeat. Our first cruise was a 4 night and this one was a 3 night. I am really glad that we had that extra night on the first one, and I don't think I would ever want to do a three night one again.

That is it. My very short and too the point report of our Christmas gift cruise that didn't go off as expected but still glad we had the experience.

The next morning was Nassau. When we booked this cruise, my wife had booked a shore excursion for Nassau since we did not like our first experience there at all. It was a day on a private beach somewhere that you got there by boat. I started watching the weather at ten days out for our trip before we left home. The forecast was showing for cooling and rain all day on Saturday, so before we had left home, we had decided to cancel that shore excursion, thinking that the weather would be bad and not wanting to waste that much money. That turned out to be a bad/not so bad decision. The weather on Saturday turned out to be wonderful, but the wife never enjoyed any of it, staying in the bed sick all day. I went up deck early that morning to watch us enter the port at Nassau. The first thing that got my attention was the amount of smoke coming out of the port side exhaust stack. It was laying down a smoke screen that almost block visibility. It really surprised me. I tried to take a picture but I am not sure if you will be able to make out the smoke trail.

As we were pulling into the port, I noticed this nice little batteau (that is coonass for Yacht) sitting at the dock.

It is named the Waku, is 62 meters long, and has a range of 5,000 nautical miles. I would hate to pay that fuel bill! I never could find an owner's name as there are two yachts named Waku and the owner's name kept coming up with the much shorter 42 meter batteau. 

Me and the two kids started the day watching Moana in the theater and then alternating riding the Aqua-Duck and watching cartoons on the pool deck. It was a beautiful day and the pool deck though busy, was not too crowded. Normally it would take just 3-5 minutes to make a ride on the Duck and be back on the raft for another ride.That was until this foreign dude with his two small girls messed things up. The father wanted his oldest daughter, who was very tiny, to ride by herself. The cast member was refusing stating that she will get stuck, resulting in shutting the ride down for at least 30 minutes. The father argued stating that the cast member at the entrance said she could ride solo. The cast member threw his hands in the air and said fine, there she goes....and there she is....stuck. So sure enough, it took over 30 minutes to get things going again. The next cast member stated that the water has to run for 7 minutes when starting up before the first rider could go. That was the longest it ever took to get on the Duck. 

That night when we got back to the stateroom, this was our towel animal:

At this point, I could feel a little tickle in my throat. Here we go...slip, slip, slipping.

Next up....Sunday, the day we had been looking forward to, Castaway Cay....slip, slip...

The next morning, sure enough, the wife is sick, sinuses draining like a faucet, sneezing, coughing, the whole deal. So she takes some meds and hopes to be well enough to board at our scheduled arrival time of 12:15. Well a couple of hours later, feeling much better, we board the hotel shuttle to the Cruise Terminal. Here is our first view of the Dream.

We check in and since this is our second cruise, we were rewarded with some snazzy Silver lanyards to hold our Key to World cards around our necks and advertise to everyone else that we were returning guest, though some cast members on the ship would still ask if this was our first Disney Cruise while wearing said silver lanyards, go figure. Since we had a late boarding time, after checking in we were able to board right onto the ship. No waiting, just boom, there. So down to 2nd level and Lunch it was. We contemplated heading up to Cabana's on Deck 11, but thought we would like to meet our servers for this trip so Enchanted Garden it was. We met our two servers, which both ended up being great. Our main server was Delarno, from Jamaica. He was great and never played up the accent, though he did pick at me a bit about my accent. (I'm a little bit country for those that don't know me) From lunch it was late enough to go to our stateroom so we headed there. That was then the place that the wife spent almost the entirety of the cruise, in bed, sick. She left the room to go eat and to watch the shows and nothing else.

Supper was back to the Enchanted Garden on deck 2. On our first cruise last May, our server never did any crayon puzzles on the table. To be honest we hardly ever saw our server the entire cruise other than to take our order and to deliver the order to our table. Not Delarno, he was always at the table checking on us, chatting with us, interacting with the kids. He was great. This was type of service we had heard about but had not experienced. Here was his first crayon puzzle: change the direction of the horse by moving one crayon.

Our 10 year old son solved it in the time it took Delarno to turn around and say high to the table behind him and then turn back around. He was amazed and said, "I think I am going to have to find some harder puzzles for you guys." Here is the solved puzzle.

Since the wife was feeling so bad, and we had seen the Golden Mickeys the previous May, we decided to spend the first night watching Star Wars Rogue One while she holed up in the stateroom. Speaking of the stateroom, it was a big portal room on the starboard side, aft, in hopes of seeing the beach at Castaway Cay from that big portal. But that was another slip, slip, slip.

Here was our first towel animal of the trip.

That finished our first day aboard. 

Since we had a few days free, we decided to visit some other parts of Florida that we had never been to before. My wife had heard that there was a beach on the western side of Florida that known for finding shark teeth so we decided to spend a day on that beach looking for shark teeth. So I first day in Florida we spent on Nokomis Beach. 

We found a couple of dozen after figuring out what to look for. 

We got up the next morning and headed to Port Canaveral with a couple of short stops to fill the day since it was such a short drive from Nokomis. Our first stop was at the TECO Manatee viewing area. It is a nice learning center and since the weather was turning cooler we were hoping to see a bunch of manatee's. We saw two, but felt it was a great stop and it was free. I would highly recommend it as stop, especially if you have small ones.

From there, we made our way to Down Town Disney....oops...Disney Springs. This was our first time to visit since most of the updates had been completed. Our last visit was in February of '16. I took the Epcot exit off I4 and in just a few minutes we were in the parking garage and on our way to see the new stuff. I have to say, the parking garage is a marvel in itself. The empty spaces indicator made it super easy to find an empty spot. We spent a couple of hours there looking, but those new shops are in a different price league than I am used to for sure. WOW$$$$ is all I can say. 

From there we zipped over to Port Canaveral. Our last cruise we had supper the night before the cruise at Grill's. They had Lion Fish and Shark on the menu. Both items were very good and my wife had been looking forward to eating there again, mainly to try the Shark again. So with mouth's watering, we headed over to Grill's after checking in at our hotel. This is where things started to go down hill and pretty much set the tone for the remainder of the entire trip. We get seated and go to order, this on a Thursday night, and no Shark.....and no Lion Fish. So with complete disappointment, we had to settle for menu items that we normally get anywhere. 

So after supper, we get back to our hotel, which is just down the road a couple of minutes, and my wife starts sniffling and says, "I am getting sick, I can feel it". She then asked if I could find her some cold meds and a box of tissues. So down the street a little to CVS and back with her list of meds. 

Here we are.....slip, slip, slipping.

Next up, we board the Dream.

I will start this off with a small explanation. Since our beloved Ole Miss Rebels failed to field a defensive squad for the past season, resulting in No Bowl Game, we decided that a day on the beach at Castaway Cay was in order to sooth our sorrow. So with that intention, my wife checked cruise prices and compared to the time that our youngest child was out of school and found we could save over 2/3's of the cost if went after the holiday season instead of during the Christmas/New Year time. We asked our two children what they would like for Christmas, a bunch of stuff they didn't need or a Disney Cruise. They both immediately said a cruise. So there we are, we are going cruising since we can't go to a bowl game.

Somewhat hate that I missed the game. I was too focused on driving home all day and completely forgot about the game. I am scared to look forward to next season. I had such high hopes this past season to see them completely trampled by every offense that ran over our non existent defense every game. So we didn't go to bowl.......and we missed out on Castaway Cay.... Full story to come....

This question is like Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge. With that said, B&W is very highly liked, so is the Anderson raised ball hitch. For a sliding hitch for short bed trucks, the Pullrite Superglide is a premium hitch with a premium price. To be honest, most hitches manufactured today are good hitches.

Smart Move for Fournette. He has a nagging hamstring injury that if he were to get hurt in the bowl game, could really hurt his draft potential costing him several millions. Just look at what happened to Laremy Tunsil last season and his wasn't even an injury.

Merry Christmas to you good Sir. Thanks for taking the time to entertain the rest of us Fiends.

And I hate how those machines are always dripping when you are trying to get ice for the tea. Makes it hard to get clean ice without the drippings from the previous person's soda.

Mini Max

Mini.

Kelly,

The Mini Max nest has a band that goes around the middle with a handle on each side. This is a Mini.

1 hour ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

LOL. I kind of liked the creepy giant heads.  It was certainly unique.  It seems like a generic warehouse in there now.

I agree about the 600 loop.  There is no vegetation near the fronts and between the sites on the "new" part.  I don't care for the openness.

Here's a closer look at that egg- is it a Mini Max?:

Those fries were really, really good- they had a Cajun-type seasoning on them. 

The warmer temperatures are here!  It's going to be up in the 80's this weekend!

TCD

Unfortunately that is the standard Mini. Good to cook one steak at a time or two hamburger patties at a time. 

Well Ole Miss classes start back on the 19th of January and local public schools start back on January 9th. So we have a great window.

So Kiffin plans on taking on all the thugs and rejects to build a team. Now I understand what I was seeing on ESPN at lunch today. The Headline was Kiffin OK with other schools cut players.

After reading the article, it appears this was in the works before Kiffin was even hired, and more so due to the offensive coordinator than Kiffin.

I think you need to get that picture of the deer blocked by the Gator Fence to go viral. How dare Disney disrupt the life of that poor deer. And it also deprives the poor alligator from its food source, thereby increasing the risk of another alligator attack. Did Disney get approval from Biologist before installing all that fencing? I bet not. Now they have impacted the migration patterns and who knows what else. These fences need to be dismantled NOW.

$250 for it is a a great deal if it is a Mini-Max and not cracked or missing parts. Some places are asking $600 for that Egg.

If it is just a Mini, then it is still a good deal. Mini's sell for around $380 here.

I know that my boat pushes a huge wake at anything over an idle but once it is up on the pad running, at say 85 or so, there is almost no wake at all. 

My dream would be to rip off a run across the water bridge, trimmed out and running close to a 100.

Hey, We get to take a vacation this year. No Bowl game for Ole Miss. So we are going on a Disney Cruise.  

Kiffin should have stayed put. But I guess he doesn't have to worry about this team leaving him at an airport on the way home though.