Winter Holiday 2015/2016- Islands of Adventure

Although Dan has frequently vacationed in Orlando, he had never been to either Universal Park: Islands of Adventure (IOA) and Universal Studios Florida (USF). The last time that I had visited, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was still under construction at IOA. The land has since grown to span both IOA and USF, connected through the Hogwarts Express, although each park still requires a separate admission.

Visiting during the week between Christmas and New Years, I knew that it would be extremely crowded. Dan does not do crowds. To keep us both happy, I went ahead and purchased the Universal Express Pass, which includes unlimited front-of-the-line access for all attractions, except anything Harry Potter. The ticket prices are raised during peak times, so our two, one-day park hoppers, plus express passes came to approximately six hundred dollars. Sticker shock! This was nearly as much as we spent on our five day Disney World hopper passes, which included three pre-booked fast passes a day. Universal's ticket value didn't seem great, however, knowing we had only one day to do it all, and I wanted that day to be perfect, I went for it. As a former Universal Studios Hollywood employee, this was the first time that I had paid for Universal tickets. It was painful.

We arrived early, about an hour before the parks opened and headed for IOA.

Although we purchased the tickets online, we still had to exchange them at a ticket kiosk to get our Universal Express Pass. This was chaos. Each ticket kiosk has a mini queue and we picked poorly. The queue took nearly forty-five minutes. They simply didn't have enough ticket kiosks open, and I'm fairly certain that the employee was new for the holidays, making service exceptionally slow. You know the sloth scene in Zootopia? Yup.

Strategically, I thought it would be best to do IOA first and head immediately to the signature attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Every single person in the park had the same strategy. I suspected it, but I still think that it was the right play, as the queue only got longer later in the day.

Here are some snaps as we entered the park and quickly walked to the Hogsmeade in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

My first impression, actually my entire impression, of both Potter sections in both parks was overwhelming. "Wow" doesn't begin to describe it. It really does look just like I pictured it from the books. The creativity and details are dazzling. It's stunning.

Hogsmeade

We followed the crowd and got in the queue at Hogwarts for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Hogwarts looked magnificent. Universal really brought the books to life.

The queue was about two hours and it was absolutely worth the wait. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is one of the best, if not the very best, rides I've ridden. I was blown away. It's a visceral experience. I wish that I had been able to ride it more than once, as I kept closing my eyes during the spider scene!

We did encounter a frustrating issue that set the tone for the day, Dan is very tall. and at the last minute, he was told that he couldn't ride. This was after employees at the entrance and in the queue, told him that he was fine. At the entrance, employees were ushering guest past the area where you can test out the ride vehicle to make sure you safely fit. Since we spoke with the employees, we didn't think there was reason to worry or get out of line.

I used to work at the Jurassic Park River Adventure, I get that sometimes people ( usually little kids) make it through the queue and are turned away prior to riding, but it isn't so much that a mistake was made, but how it was handled: no apology, the rush to push people into the queue. There were plenty of employees working in the queue, how did none of them assess and mention the possibility? As much as I wanted to go on the ride, I would not have gone, if I didn't think that Dan would be able to ride too. To save time, we decided to do single ride ( which was the two hour wait, much shorter than the regular queue), so I was already on the ride vehicle, while Dan was being pulled aside. He was not the only person either, we saw other guests being turned away last minute. Many other guests, angry and frustrated. Safety is always the priority, however it was clear that the park was both understaffed and staffed with new hires during our visit. This was not our only disappointment during our visit.

Hogsmeade was unbearably crowded by the time we finished with the ride. We decided to skip the other attractions in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and see the rest of the park. I did get a quick picture with the train conductor, who was very funny.

We went on the Jurassic Park River Adventure, with ponchos. I'm all about the ponchos.

In Toon Lagoon, the ponchos were little help for the water rides - Dudley Do-Rights Ripsaw Falls ( log flume ride) and Popeye and Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges (raft ride). These two rides get you soaked, right through the poncho. Like the rest of IOA, Toon Lagoon has such creative and fun theming.

One of my all-time favorite attractions is The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. An attraction ahead of its time that still holds up,

The Incredible Hulk steel coaster, which I'm terrified of and have only ridden twice, was torn apart, down for a major refurbishment. I dodged having to ride it this trip!

Suess Landing is adorable. I can never resist a picture under the stack of books. This is my life!

It's totally dated and cheesy, but I made sure that we saw Poseidon's Fury, an indoor show. The show is pretty awful, but I like the special effects and grand theming. Just the exterior alone is fabulous.

And then we were done with everything that we wanted to see at IOA. At this point, we were starting to realize that the Universal Express Pass was useless. We did not need it for any attraction at IOA, as the only rides with a queue, were in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, where our passes were no good. Everything else was a straight walk-on.

It was lunch time, so we headed to Margaritaville on City Walk for food and umbrella drinks, before heading to USF. Lunch was relaxing,with pretty views of a lake. We were fortified and ready for the chaos that was about to assault us at USF. We had no clue what was coming.

Wordstock: Portland's Book Festival 2016

Since moving to Portland, I've been seriously homesick for Los Angeles. However, last Saturday, was a turning point. It was a magical, amazing day.

This most wonderful day, even began with a double rainbow over Portland. This is the view from our bedroom window.

Besides the rainbow, what was so great about Saturday, November 5th?

The second annual Wordstock: Portland's Book Festival was taking place across the street from my apartment. A major book festival, with authors that I love was minutes from where I live. By a long shot, this has been the best thing that has happened during our time living in downtown Portland.

Based on advice garnered from the festival website, I purchased my tickets in advance. The tickets are a steal, just fifteen dollars each. The tickets include first-come/first-serve admission to all of the author discussions, entry into the book fair, and a five dollar coupon good at any vendor in the fair. I bought a ticket for Dan, but work prevented him from attending with me. I did get to use his coupon for more books though!

I prepared for the festival by emptying my messenger bag to fill with festival purchases, just bringing a small notebook to record writer's wisdom gleaned from the panel sessions. After filling my bag with books during AWP, I learned to travel light and leave room for acquired bookish things. I'm practically a book magnet at these fairs!

The staff and volunteers for Wordstock were amazing. The festival was primarily based at the Portland Art Museum, but events spread out over neighboring churches and theaters, everything within a few blocks of the museum. The clear signage and large amount of volunteers, made the festival a breeze to navigate.

When I arrived, I found two lines for tickets; one for pre-sales, and one for day-of purchases. I had my pre-purchased tickets printed and within minutes, I was scanned, given my book fair vouchers, and a volunteer wrapped a red plastic bracelet around my wrist. The bracelets are required for all of the events, making it easier than fussing over tickets.

The first panel started at 10am, so I headed to the book fair.

The book fair was spread over two ballrooms in the Portland Art Museum, and featured approximately a hundred vendors, many were independent presses. I scanned through everything, but honed in on three vendors.

Tin House Books- A longtime favorite of mine. I love much of what they publish and I always like to scoop up the latest offerings.

Rare Bird Books- They are from my hometown and during the 2016 AWP Conference, I discovered their books and had a lovely conversation (book talk and tons of recommendations) with the woman running their booth. I was happy to see her again at Wordstock.

Hawthorne Books- Portland based, I had not yet heard of them, but the very friendly woman at their booth drew me over to check them out. If I hadn't been on a tight budget, I certainly would have purchased more. I have a gut feeling that they may be my new favorite indy press. Their booth was absolutely swarming with book lovers that were very enthusiastic about their love of Hawthorne Books.

The panels were the best part of Wordstock. I attended four panels and was going to try to squeeze in a fifth, but I needed to take a lunch break. I will just have to catch Alice Hoffman another time. I learned the hard lesson at AWP, that you can't attend it all and breaks are key for my overall event enjoyment. Speaking of lunch, I ran home, but this being Portland, there were food trucks a-plenty brought in for the event.

Panels I attended =

Skeletons in the Closet with Jade Chang, Adam Haslett, and Gina Ochsner, moderated by John Freeman. - The topic focused on family secrets, whether entirely fictional or real life secrets tweaked to fit a fictional story. I recently read Chang's debut novel, The Wangs Vs. The World, which made me want to attend this panel. Chang was every bit as hilarious as her writing.

Women First with Laurie Notaro, Chandler O'Leary, and Jessica Spring, moderated by Elly Blue. A funny thing about this panel, is the name wasn't supposed to be, Women First, it was a misprint in the program. This wasn't a Portlandia reference and Blue made sure to let everyone know right at the start. This was a panel on feminism. I'm a huge fan of Laurie Notaro, so pretty much the panel could have been about anything, and I would have attended. This was my #1 event of Wordstock. Notaro didn't disappoint, but neither did the other panelists. I had never heard of O'Leary or Spring, but was fascinated by their, Dead Feminists Project, that combines art and History to tell the story of famous and not-so-famous, deceased feminist from around the world. There was a lot of discussion about female rights and representation in the world of publishing, which is overwhelmingly male and white. Blue brought out an fascinating statistic, that the American demographic that buys the most books is college educated African-American women, yet the powers that be in the industry, does not represent this demographic at all. Change is very slow.

Tale of Two Americas with Richard Russo, Karen Russell, and Kevin Young, moderated by John Freeman. This was easily the most popular panel that I attended. The line was around the block and the venue, First Congregational United Church of Christ, was packed. I was excited to see Russell and Russo, but I was happily surprised by the discovery of Young, a poet with a great sense of humor. I will definitely be adding him to my reading list. The part of this panel that most resonated with me, was Russell reading from her new essay that speaks about her move to downtown Portland and living in a beautiful Historic apartment located over a homeless shelter. She writes about her feelings and experiences with Portland's homeless population. Being new to Portland, I related heavily to her essay and look forward to reading it in its entirety. It made me really think about my own feelings living downtown.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl with Carrie Brownstein, moderated by Jon Raymond. Not quite as packed as the previous panel, but the line was still around the block. I waited in line for about thirty minutes in the pouring rain, no umbrella. It seemed the Portland thing to do, rain Brownstein. I've not yet read her memoir, but the excepts she read, are enough to make me add the book to my list. She was funny, sharp, and entertaining.

I'm already pumped to attend Wordstock 2017. Advice for next year, you can't do it all, so plan wisely. They also offer writing classes, which must be pre-booked, but looked fantastic. Beyond the panels, the fair is filled with "pop-up readings", where authors read sections of their works in the art museum. The pop-ups are listed in the program, so you can plan to attend them. Most of the authors had book signings, but often they were not in the same venue as where they spoke, a majority of the signings seemed to take place in the book fair halls. Really, it boils down to picking a few must-dos and taking whatever else you can squeeze into your schedule.

I'm ending on a picture I took from the queue to see Carrie Brownstein. Portland book lovers in the rain.

Winter Holiday 2015/2016- Winter Summerland Mini Golf

I never thought that I wouldn't be able to handle a full-on theme park vacation, but those days are long gone. To stave-off utter exhaustion, we had to schedule low-key/sleep-in/lazy-river lounging kind of days.

We had a relaxing pool-side morning and in the late afternoon, we headed over to Walt Disney World for a game of mini golf at Winter Summerland.

First, we stopped at Cracker Barrel for a "Linner" (lunch-dinner, 4pm-ish).

I'm unashamed to admit that I absolutely love Cracker Barrel's chicken n' dumplins, with sweet tea, of course. Dan hates Cracker Barrel, so eating here was a huge sacrifice on his part. He loves me. Looking at the picture that I took of his plate, it looks like he ordered fried chicken covered in cheese and bacon. I have to admit, it doesn't very tasty.

Linner done and it was on to Winter Summerland!

Winter Summerland is my favorite miniature golf course. I've played it several times over the years, but this was Dan's first visit. I was eager for him to experience it. It was fairly crowded, so we picked the less busy course; and my favorite season, summer.

Both winter and summer courses have similar theming, but in reverse. For example, summer will have sandcastles and winter will have ice castles. They both have snowmen, but in summer, the snowmen are melting. The overall theming, even on the summer side, is Christmas. The course is located right next to Blizzard Beach Waterpark, which is themed to the storyline of a freak blizzard had occurred in Florida and a ski resort was built, but now everything has melted in the warm weather. It's a fabulous waterpark, overflowing with creative touches.

When we visited Winter Summerland, it was almost like fall, with leaves everywhere. Since this is Disney, they were very on top of keeping the course clear of leaves.

The course is adorable, with interactive elements, holiday music, and Disney characters. The challenge level of the holes is a range, so that little ones have a chance, and adult won't be bored.

I love the Holiday cards! The year before, we spent Christmas in Las Vegas.

The last hole involves a message from Santa over the "Winternet." This is the most dated part of the course, but it still makes me smile.

Here is a look at the winter course, we decided that one round was enough for us. See you next time winter!

To keep the holiday theme going, take a mini candy cane when you turn in your club. The candy canes were not just out because we were visiting at Christmas, but they have them year round. I'm not sure if they still do it, but many years ago, I got a free soda for getting a hole-in-one on the mystery hole of the day. If you get a hole-in-one, ask if they still offer this bonus.

The score board. That isn't my Dan up there, but he did win our game. He pretty much always wins mini-golf. It's maddening.

And finally, the surfing Santa statue at the entrance.

Winter Summerland is a wonderful place to spend a couple of hours. I highly recommend fitting in a visit on your next trip to Walt Disney World.