Universal Studios Part I

After our somewhat disappointing day at Disneyworld, we visited Universal Studios with the aim of seeing the new Harry Potter themed part of the park.  We had a brilliant time - so much so that I've had to split Universal Studios into two blog posts to fit all of the photos in.  The queues were much shorter - I think the longest we waited for a ride (on a Saturday) was 30 minutes, vs waiting over an hour at Disneyworld (on a Friday).  

Universal has two parks as well - the "Universal Studio" park which has more of the movie-related tours and shows, and "Islands of Adventure", which has most of the rides.  A smart designer, however, has put the Harry Potter part into Islands of Adventure, and put the tallest rollercoaster in the park into the Universal Studios park - a smart way of encouraging people to buy two-park tickets.  Even better, they put both parks on the same map - deliberately pointing out what you were missing out on every time you looked at the map.

Things are much more modern and better set out in Universal.  It's not groundbreaking by any means, but they have boards all over the place showing you what the ride queue times are - it's good because as a visitor it means you can plan your rides without running all over the park, and from the park's perspective, it would help to balance queues by encouraging people away from rides with long queues and into rides with shorter queues.  More good user experience design.

They'd obviously learned a lot from Disney in terms of theme - I loved how different each part of the park looked.  This is the Superhero Island (Marvel Comics stuff).

Complete with X-Men in their original costumes!  Hi Cyclops!

Toon Lagoon was like hanging around in a cartoon, and contained most of the water rides.

Ripsaw Falls was a log flume ride - after the couple of droplets we received at Disneyworld, we weren't really prepared for the Universal water rides.  

Here's Stephen after Ripsaw Falls - at one point they squirted everyone in the face with water cannons.  We got pretty wet.

Being as we were already wet, we decided to check out the Popeye Barges - your typical tyre-based white-water rapids ride.  This ride was ridiculous - they basically poured buckets of water onto you from above multiple times.  The water from the "rapids" wasn't even a factor.  I think most of the laughter from people on our boat was the incredulous laughter of people who didn't believe that they would design a ride to make you this wet.  

Here's Stephen after the ride.  We might as well have just jumped into the lagoon fully-clothed.  It was crazy.

 Amusingly, they had "people drying machines" setup around the place - you put in your $5, and you basically hung around in the giant air drying machine for 5 minutes.  Not a bad idea, considering how wet people got.

There were a number of Jurassic Park themed rides too - here's Stephen doing his worst impression of being terrified of a T-Rex (while soaking wet).

The Hulk Rollercoaster was their big one - it has 7 inversions and is a launched hill coaster, so rather than having a conveyor belt take you to the top of the hill and then you falling down along the track, they start you moving and then you are suddenly accelerated to 65kph as you're going up the hill, and then straight into a zero-g roll, a drop and then a Cobra Roll (as you can see in the photo).  It was pretty good, although I still think the Superman Escape coaster at Movie World beats it.

The coolest part of the park was without a doubt the Wizarding World of Harry Potter - which gets its own blog post tomorrow.

Disneyworld!

We took Friday off to spend a long weekend in Orlando, Florida - only a 2.5 hour flight south.  The plan was to visit Disneyworld, the Harry Potter part of Universal Studios, and the Kennedy Space Center while we were there.  Here's part 1 of the trip - Disneyworld.

Disneyworld at Orlando has four theme parks plus two water parks - we didn't have enough time for all of them, so we decided to go to the "Magic Kingdom" (what you'd imagine when you say "Disneyworld").

This is the third Magic Kingdom that I've been to after Paris and California.  (Yes Mum and Dad, I know I've been to the Florida one before, but I don't really remember it from when I was 6!)  I was actually a little disappointed - your ticket locks you into visiting one park, but it seemed pretty small, and some of the attractions that would have been in that park in Paris or California (such as Star Wars) were in other parks and thus not accessible.  We went on most things 2 or 3 times and even went on most of the little kids' rides and we still left fairly early.

There were some cool birds and animals around though (real ones) - this is an egret.

Part of what I really like about theme parks is the immersive nature of them when they're done right.

Tomorrowland - because the future is silver and contains many circles.

Frontierland - yee haw!

Stephen waiting in a queue for his favourite ride - Splash Mountain. 

Splash Mountain - no, that's not us.  The Disney rides were fairly tame and you hardly even got splashed on them - we could have done with some splashing considering that it was 30 degrees and blindingly sunny.

It must be really annoying visiting theme parks with me, because I spend half of the time discussing the user experience of the systems and the business ramifications.  

Disney does have one really cool thing - the FastPass system.  (No, that's not my photo - my photo didn't turn out).  Basically you rock up to a ride that you want to go on, and it has a "FastPass return time" on it, sometime in the future (usually an hour or two away).  If you decide that you want to, you can put your park entry ticket into the machine  and get one of these tickets, and then come back to the ride and essentially skip the queue at the time listed on the ticket.  Whoever came up with this idea is a genius - if you think about it, you are likely to queue for a similar amount of time over the day (because you have longer queues when you don't have a FastPass), but this system taps into the guilty pleasure of jumping the queue and makes people feel like they're getting something for nothing.  A really good example of how irrational people are and how you can use that to design something that makes people happier. 

It turns out that I didn't take many picture at Disneyworld - I guess on your third Disney visit, there isn't much left to photograph.  Don't worry - I have too many pictures of Universal Studios and Harry Potter's Wizarding World for one blog post, so I'll start posting those tomorrow!

Victoria Day Weekend

This weekend is a public holiday in Canada - Victoria Day, which is the equivalent of the Australian Queen's Birthday weekend.  Local parlance calls it the "May 2-4 weekend", and there are a few traditions around this time of year that I've been told about.

The name "May 2-4" weekend is given partially because it falls on the 3rd Monday of May, which is usually on or close to May 24th.  The other part is because a "2-4" is Ontario slang for a slab/carton/24-pack of beer, and apparently that's what one should traditionally spend this weekend doing.  It's also the unofficial start of summer, and following on from that, the unofficial start of BBQing season, so it's time to turn on the BBQ and cook up some... I don't know what yet.  I'll let you know when we go to a Canadian BBQ.

Apparently this weekend is also the traditional weekend on which Canadians open their cottages.  From what I've been told, many people own cottages around the nearby lakes, a couple of hours drive away.  These are usually shut up in winter while it's snowing, but in summer, people like to go to their cottages for the weekend and drink beer and BBQ things.  I swear, Canadians are Australians' snowbound cousins - all of these holidays could directly transpose to Australia and no one would blink an eye.

In other news, the tulips are out in High Park:

There are a huge number of tulips around in Toronto and apparently there are even more up in Ottawa.  I had no idea, but apparently there is a significance to this:  during World War II, when the Germans invaded Holland, the Dutch Crown Princess Juliana and her two daughters (one of whom is the current queen) fled to Canada for safety from the Nazis, and lived in Ottawa for the duration of the war.  The Princess became pregnant while in Canada, and they had to declare some rooms in the hospital as belonging to the Netherlands so that the new princess could be born with solely Dutch citizenship.  Finally, at the end of the war, it was Canadian troops that liberated the Netherlands.  For all of these reasons, Holland apparently gifted a huge number of tulips to Canada, and continues to do so every year.

We've been spending our long weekend relaxing, walking in the park, studying and play board games with our Canadian friends.  There has been a distinct lack of 2-4s, but still, it's nice to have a break :)

Goodlife Toronto Marathon

Last weekend, Stephen ran his first marathon - the Goodlife Toronto Marathon.  For those of you who aren't aware, a marathon is a 42.2km run (26.2 miles).  He'd been training fairly well up until we visited Costa Rica, and then fell completely off the training bandwagon, so his longest training run in the lead-up was 26km.  I was pretty concerned for him.

The last few weeks have been pretty atrocious weather here - it rained nearly every day for 3 weeks.  The weather stations were reporting statistics like "until the clouds parted Wednesday afternoon and a merciful sun briefly shone on Torontonians, 4 days had gone by since we saw it last. To make matters worse, of those bleak 96 hours, it rained for 68."  So this was the weather Stephen was running in: 8 degrees and raining.  I don't have any pictures of him actually running, but here's one from the local newspaper to give you an idea of the conditions:

The course started a long way north of the city and ran down Yonge St (the main north-south street in the city), west out along the lakeshore past our house to a turnaround point, and then back along the lakeshore to finish in Queens Park, near the city.

I ran my 5km run earlier in the day as part of my recovery from my stress fractures, and I finished in 29:40 after aiming for a sub-30, with no bone pain or issues, which was good.  After my race finished, I hopped on the subway back home, showered and changed, and then Jax and I hopped back on the subway to get back to the finish line to see Stephen finished.  When we got there at around the 3 hour mark, I saw a guy who'd overdone it - he fell flat on his face 100m away from the finish line, and his legs were so wobbly that he couldn't get up again.  He seemed pretty delirious and he had to be supported to make it over the finish line - this made me more than a little worried about Stephen.  Luckily Stephen was ok, and I caught up with him 2km from the end, jogging along with a smile on his face.

Stephen reported to me after the race that he started getting a sore knee at around the 16km mark, so he dropped back his pace a bit.  It didn't get any better, but he finished the marathon with plenty left in the tank in a time of 3 hours, 37 minutes and 3 seconds - not bad for a first run.  There are some fairly cool statistics for his run available here, including the fact that over the final 12km he passed 44 runners but was passed by 14, and when the winner of the marathon finished, Stephen was at the 30km mark with 12km left to go.

Apparently the marathon organisers took a leaf out of the Vancouver Olympics' books, because this is the medal that he won for finishing.  It seriously weighs a couple of kilos.  It's fairly amusing considering that people were pretty exhausted at the end of the marathon - so they gave them giant heavy weights to carry during their recovery.

All in all, things went well, and he's looking forward to training for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on October 16th.  His overall goal is to run the Boston Marathon, which has a cut-off time for entry - this year's was 3 hours 10 minutes, next year's is 3 hours 5 minutes.  There will be a lot of training involved to make it to that point I think, but he's pretty tough so I wouldn't rule it out.  Either way, running a marathon is something that nearly everyone could do if they trained, but very few people actually put in the time or the effort to make it happen - so kudos to Stephen for making the distance :)

Cherry Blossoms in High Park!

High Park is full of cherry blossom trees, and in May, they suddenly all bloom at once.  We were keeping an eye on them while we were going for our morning runs, and they were starting to bloom on Thursday, so we organised to go to the park with a friend on Saturday morning to check them out.  

It was really beautiful!   

But the entire place was packed with people - it's 15 degrees and that's the warmest it's been here for quite a while.  We took Jax with us, and he was a hit - people even wanted their photo taken with him.  I'm guessing it's because he's a Japanese breed that's not very common here, and the majority of the crowd was people of Asian descent.  I guess looking at cherry blossoms is a stereotypically Japanese pasttime too :)

People were even making origami cranes and hanging them from the trees :)

Blue sky!

The daffodils are starting to come out as well!  Spring in Toronto!

Costa Rica Part 4 - Arenal Volcano

Here's the last set of photos from Costa Rica - it's late and I'm pretty tired, so please excuse the commentary, but I wanted to make sure that I got them out before we leave for San Diego tomorrow.  Jet setters indeed.

We found one tour agent that was happy to speak to us despite it being the Easter long weekend.  Our hotel is where the A is, and the trip was to the Arenal volcano where the volcano is drawn on the map :)  It was a long drive - about 5 hours each way.

We stopped at Lake Arenal, which is a man-made lake/dam, and took a boat trip along the lake towards the volcano.  Here it is off in the distance.  Apparently the story is that it was called Arenal Hill and no one had any idea, until one day it exploded and took out three nearby towns and farmers in the process.  Pretty scary stuff.

Getting closer...

And finally we were there!  It was an amazing view, and apparently it isn't usually this clear.  Some of the cloud at the top of steam/smoke from the volcano, and some is just clouds.   The tour guide told us that this is pretty much a perfectly shaped conal volcano - it was amazing how symmetrical it was.

This is the view from our lunch spot.  This is around the other side of the volcano - apparently the crater has moved over time so you can just see the older crater to the left of the newer one.

Close-up.

After the delicious lunch we went to see some nearby hot springs, which was pretty amusing (although we're not really hot springs kind of people).  They did have three water slides, which were awesome.  

Our tour guide told us that the pools got progressively hotter as you went towards the top of the hill on which the springs were situated.  The second pool we stuck our toes in near the bottom of the hill was so hot that we freaked out - it was uncomfortably warm.  We thought that maybe we were just being wusses and tried to  stomach it - we managed to get in and stay there for a few minutes, but it was still pretty uncomfortable.  We tried some more pools on the way to the top, and it turns out that that was the second hottest pool there - I guess there's some variation in the temperatures.  Pretty funny - we're not so weak after all!

That's it from Costa Rica - tomorrow afternoon we leave for a whirlwind weekend in San Diego with Jess and Chris.  Photos to follow!

Costa Rica Part 3 - Scenery

Lots of beautiful natural scenery to gape at, here's a few pictures.  I'll put the volcano pictures up tomorrow.

Palm tree grove on the beach.

Blue sky, blue water.

Some of the arid Pacific coast climate, from out of the window of the bus.  It reminds me of rural Australia - low withered grass and stunted trees - but there are always those mountains in the background that remind you where you are.

Not quite a natural scene, but this was looking down one of the main roads in a small town.  It could be Cairns!

Some Costa Rican cows enjoying the view over Lake Arenal, which is a man-made dam lake that stretches nearly to the volcano.  Beautiful view.

Costa Rica Part 2 - The Animals

Costa Rica is renowned for its biodiversity - we didn't get to go hiking, but I was surprised by how much we saw from bus windows and around the hotel.  

Crab wars on the beach!

This looks like an iguana to me - huge!  There were heaps of these guys just hanging around the hotel.

This is a toucan - it was actually a fair way away, so it was hard to get a good photo.  Apparently there are six different types of toucans in Costa Rica, and this is one of the less brightly colored ones that inhabit the Caribbean side of the country (we saw it from our long bus trip to the volcano).

Monkeys!  White-faced capuchins to be exact - apparently there are only 4 types of monkeys in Costa Rica, and out of the four we saw these guys and a howler monkey.  We saw this group hanging around in a tree on the beach, watching the tourists go past.  We could literally walk under their tree, but when we did...

This guy seemed pretty angry at Stephen for getting so close to his tree, and ran towards us hissing and showing his teeth.  I was worried he was going to try to claw Stephen's face off.  The tour guide later told us that you shouldn't smile at these monkeys, because showing your teeth is a sign of aggression, so that's probably why he ran towards us showing us his!

It's a little hard to see, but these are some Caimans hanging around in the lake here.  They were only babies, but I still wasn't going much closer.

Finally, a macaw, in the restaurant we had lunch at.  Noisier than a cockatoo!  

Costa Rica Part 1 - Where We Stayed

We're back!  After a whirlwind 4 days in 35+ degrees and sunny Costa Rica, we touched down in Toronto at midnight, arriving to some lovely Canadian spring weather - 7 degrees and raining.

We booked the trip in February, with very little idea of Costa Rica as a country - we just picked it from a list, not even really realising how far south it was.  It was a long way.  We learned a lot about Costa Rica while we were there - it is a really beautiful place and the people are lovely.  We always felt safe, and even the roads seemed pretty tame.  The Costa Ricans ("Ticos") we spoke to were overwhelmingly proud of their country, telling us all about the demilitarisation of the country in 1948 and the benefits of their free education and health systems.

For those of you who are, like us, not very familiar with the geography of Central America, here's where we stayed relative to the rest of the continent.

And here's where we stayed in Costa Rica - on the North Pacific coast in the Guanacaste province.

I'll split the photos up into 4 blogs over the next couple of days.  This set of photos is about the area we stayed in.

We stayed in an all-inclusive resort, which in hindsight was a bit of a bad idea.  The idea was that we'd be able to go exploring during the day, and relax on the beach and around the pool in the evenings.  It didn't really work out like that - the resort was in the middle of nowhere, so we couldn't leave without an organised tour group, and it was full of fat tourists lounging around the pool and getting drunk on free alcohol.  We did try to hire a car, but they wanted to hold a thousand dollars on our credit cards, and our bank wasn't about to let a thousand dollar transaction go through from Costa Rica.  There's always next time.  This is the view from our window.

Here's the hotel from the top of a nearby hill - you can see how isolated it is.

We had some bad luck - because it was Easter weekend, there wasn't much going on, so we spent most of Friday and Saturday wandering around the hotel and its beach, but we did manage to get out to see the Arenal Volcano on the Sunday, before leaving on the Monday.

The beach was a black sand beach - I found it really odd.  I don't think my brain could come to terms with a beach that looked like mud.  The ocean was beautiful though, and so warm - we spent hours lazing around in the shallows.

Around the beach there were a lot of dense, scrubby little trees.  It reminded me of Australia, actually.  The north-west of Costa Rica is very very dry, whereas the central part has the mountains and the rainforest.

It had been so long since we last saw flowers.

Stephen was exploring the edge of the beach - Costa Rica had a lot of spiky plants, for some reason, and our attempt to climb the hill nearest to the hotel ended up with our legs torn up and itchy (we're ok now though).  This was also the first time we'd worn shorts since leaving Beijing in October.

Vacation time!

We're heading to Guanacaste, Costa Rica for a tropical vacation over Easter.  I don't think we quite realised how tropical though...

It's currently 1 degree and alternately raining and snowing here.  Uh oh....