Tag: vacation

The Galactic Starcruiser experience shutting down pleases me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Surprise, surprise: there aren’t as many people willing to plunk down nearly $5,000 for two days, to live out Star Wars fantasies, as Disney decides to shutter the Galactic Starcruiser experience in September

I like to think that this was some convoluted experiment by Disney, in seeing just how far they could push a price tag before it actually proves to be insurmountable by even the richest of the privileged class.  And it appears that they’ve found their answer with the Galactic Starcruiser, and that roughly $1,200 per person per night for a two-night experience seems to have found that breaking point where they just can’t swindle enough people in order to remain open.

Now I like Star Wars, even though my fandom has been put through the ringer throughout the passage of time and the growth of the internet.  Sure, my fandom has been disrespected, invalidated and questioned by the smarmy segments of fans that feel the requirement to test the level of interest, and the internet has more than opened my eyes to just how shitty and insufferable the base majority of Star Wars fans are, but there’s no level of dedication to the property I could achieve to where I would think it was a good idea to drop nearly $5k in order for mythical wife and I to have a two day LARP in the world of Star Wars.

All through the journey of speculation, development and execution of the whole Galactic Starcruiser idea, it was pretty early revealed that this was something that really only those with the deepest of pockets would be able to partake in.  And when stuff like this is priced out of oblivion for the rest of the, well world, I begin to feel resentment towards it, so it makes me feel smug satisfaction to hear that Disney is pulling the plug on it, in such short order.

At the same time, I feel more disdain for the Mouse at not just, lowering prices, and making the whole thing a little more attainable for the rest of us pleebs, because if it weren’t more than my property taxes, I’d probably be interested.  The idea of shuttering it versus lowering the prices is an egregious act of arrogance of the biggest asshole variety that really could only come from the money printer known as Disney.

But when it really comes down to it, good riddance to an experience that really was catering to the 1%, and it’s very amusing that even the 1% reached their limits with this whole idea, to where even a company that’s so adept at glorifying their wins and hiding their weaknesses like Disney, to have such a public and monumental L on display.

Because as an annual passholder, I can say all this shit, because nobody hates Disney more than their annual passholders.

Dad Brog #106: the Girls’ first Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For #1’s third birthday, mythical wife made the decision that we should go on a Disney cruise.  I’m usually so drowning in dad life that I don’t really have much capacity to think about vacations and trips, and I’m pretty much down to go along with any of mythical wife’s ideas as long as it doesn’t tank us financially and I have the capability to take the time off of work for it, and this was no exception.

It would be a daunting task taking a three-year old and an 20-month old, but we were also being accompanied by my mother in-law as well as our au pair, so with an adult-to-kid ratio of 2:1, it seemed more plausible.

Overall, despite the fact that there were points of the trip where everyone, including myself, hit burnout points of exasperation in dealing with a kid or kids, I would still say it was a positive and memorable trip as a whole.  Sure, it’s not something I like to admit that I lose my cool at times, but the combination of my kids being so drastically out of their routines, not napping, the choppy rocking of a vessel that I had expected to be a little smoother, and piss-poor air conditioning all over led to some instances where it was easy to boil over and get pretty annoyed at circumstances, but that’s basically what parenting is sometimes, having expectations that don’t get met, and being flustered as a result.

Countless times throughout the trip one or both of my kids would be fussy and intolerably cranky, and when this occurred, it just sandbagged everything around us.  I didn’t want to be the parents of the loudest kids in the room, which fortunately rarely occurred, but at the same time I’d like it of my kids behaved like angels all the time, which is the utmost pipedream for parents all over.

A thought I had is that my kids have been raised with such structure and routine, that putting them in an environment such as a vacation cruise, where their settings and beds are different, the food is richer and restrictions have been relaxed, and they’re basically not on a very structured schedule anymore, leads to what felt like chaos.

It was these moments of frustration and despair that I began to think about all the other parents I know, who have basically stated that they don’t feel that it’s worth taking their kids to Disney or any Disney-related things like cruises, until they were like 8-10 years old, where they might be a little more manageable than basically two toddlers.

But on that same token, I’m grateful and glad that my kids can already say they’ve been outside of the United States, and although they won’t really remember much, I’m happy that my girls have stepped foot in Mexico and been outside the country, which is something that I really couldn’t say until I was an adult.

And no matter how much my kids might have acted like pills at times, one of the consistent things was that the sight of any Disney princess or seeing Minnie or Donald Duck, immediately snapped them out of their angst and into awe-struck children who were all smiles and hugs when given the opportunity to meet them.

I had the foresight to go ahead and plunk down for the unlimited photo package, and I would highly recommend it to really anyone who takes a Disney cruise and has the expectation of wanting at least 5-6 good photos from the on-site photographers, because that’s the threshold in which it basically pays for itself.  My party ended up with 142 photos, which are basically the best souvenirs I could ask for.

Overall, this was a vast improvement over the vacation experience from two years ago where I was taking a 16- and a 2-month old to Disney World and absolutely everything in the world was a colossal undertaking, and I know that as the kids age these things will become easier.  I had high expectations for the Magic based on my experience on the Fantasy, and they fell short because of all the differences I was unaware of.

But damn, after this vacation, I could use a vacation.  I love my kids, but I’m completely incapable of relaxation when I have to be a dad.  I wanted to at least one opportunity to run a train on the breakfast buffet at Cabana’s, but that didn’t happen because of needing to tend to my kids’ needs first, and the fact that the lines and demand for it was way harsher than I had expected, and it was impossible to get in line.

But at least I was able to get another La Parka lucha libre mask when #2 and I spent a few hours walking around Cozumel on our one shore day.  Shit was so cheap that I didn’t feel right trying to haggle with the locals, even though I used to enjoy such in the past.

Dad brog (#103): Dad’s solo blow off trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think any of my zero readers might have been able to tell through tone and topic, especially in these dad brogs, that parenthood has been challenging throughout the last year or so.  Two kids at their ages in the conditions we are in societally, have taken their toll on me, and I’ll be the first to admit that since the start of COVID which coincided almost perfectly with the birth of #1 have put me into a bubble that I often struggle to get out of and it’s up for debate on whether or not I’m even out of it at all.

I know that I’ve struggled tremendously with keeping my cool, and that I will never accept the perceived shortcomings of the rest of the world as being the norm now, as reasons for my mental wellbeing, or lack of it.  I’m extremely irritable, little makes me happy, I struggle to enjoy just about anything and I’ve basically forgotten how to live for myself because so much of my life is spent being a parent and taking care of just about everything but myself.

It’s hard for me to really let go of things and unwind, when I’m constantly in this state of feeling overworked and taken for granted.  That if I don’t do things, things don’t get done, at work or at home, and that there are many instances where if the result of me taking any sort of time off is just a backlog of bullshit for me to have to deal with when I get back, then I question having taken it in the first place.

The last few trips I’ve taken with my family have been challenging, because two kids as young as my own are a tremendous handful and I’m always trying to be cognizant of their safety and wellbeing to the point where I can’t enjoy myself at any point.  Any time I am afforded to have to unwind always feels inadequate and too short and I’m left wondering why bother, like an ungrateful ingrate.

Regardless, what this all amounts to is the very obvious need for me to have some time away from dad mode, even if it’s on my own.  An opportunity to where I can not be a dad for a few days and try and hope to unwind and relax and recharge just a little bit.  Stare at a walls or screens and not have to worry about clocks or the schedules of other people for a few days.  Let other people feed my kids and hope that they don’t fall victim to their pickiness and that it’s really just dada’s shitty cooking they’re tired of and not really hating things.  Not being the only one cleaning my house on a nightly basis, preparing for the next day when it all has to get done all over again.  Go to sleep with no alarms on, and hope I can actually stay asleep for at least eight hours.

Yes, dada needs this little break.  If it were any more overdue, it would have already been fully foreclosed upon, and being prepared for demolition and the property already sold to CubeSmart.

And in true burned out dada fashion, I slept through my morning alarm to get to the airport, and if not for the Lyft driver to call me at 5 am to ask me where I was, I probably would’ve fucked everything up and everything would’ve been 690% worse.

Better believe I tipped my driver well this morning.  Here’s hoping the rest of my weekend will be successful.

Dad Brog (#099): The Worst Parenting Product Ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout the last two-plus years, mythical wife and I have come across plenty of products that weren’t that useful, and/or drawn frustration from mostly me.  Things like wipe warmers, butt paste applicators, the 78 different types of sippy cups that mythical wife purchases despite my protests that we don’t need any more god damn cups, can fall into the category of being useless.

Our ridiculously expensive double stroller has been a tremendous source of frustration for me throughout the journey of parenthood, because it was ridiculously expensive, but it’s also absurdly cumbersome, heavy, doesn’t fit into my car at the same time as an extra human being, and taking the thing down to Disney is a sure-fire trip-ruiner based on how often I have to break it down to fold because it’s either fold it to ride a shuttle or a Skyliner or fold it to put into the car to drive somewhere with.  But at least in spite of it all, it provides massive utility as the sturdy, smooth-rolling stroller to both my kids, when we need to roll them around.

But this past weekend, I discovered the absolute worst parenting product we’ve ever had the misfortune of being duped into spending our money on: the SlumberPod.

It’s basically a supposedly portable blackout tent that you put over the sleeping peripheral of a child, so that they can sleep in simulated darkness.  It has vents and even a clear plastic compartment to tuck a camera into so that you can monitor your child still.  The sales pitch of this product is that it’s perfect for you to use in hotels or anywhere where you have to shack up with your children in the same room, and you want to be able to sleep in the dark but not have to give up the convenience of lights outside of it.

But for my kids?  Colossal failure.  The SlumberPod seems like a great way to inflict trauma or cultivate claustrophobia to my kids.  We got it for #2 originally, because she typically needs a nice dark, isolated setting to sleep optimally, and sharing a hotel room with her seemed like a daunting task.  When we finally got it set up and put over her pack and play, it lasted all of two seconds before she was screaming bloody murder, and it didn’t even make it ten minutes before we realize that this wasn’t going to work.

Alternatively, we tried it on #1, to see if it would prove useful with her, but not only did she hate it as much as #2 did, she had the capability to fuck around with the camera compartment, reach outside of her crib to monkey around with the sound machine, and was just overall physically capable enough to jostle the entire thing to where we I threw up my hands and declared this the worst parenting product we’ve ever had.

Sure, there is no one-size-fits-all parenting product that is guaranteed to work on every single kid out there.  That’s not entirely why I’m so disenchanted with the SlumberPod.  My primary point of frustration with the SlumberPod, aside from its bullshit $170+ price tag, is the fact that it’s pitched like it’s this easy-to-assemble jesus tent that will help put your kids to sleep, but the reality is that you basically need the surface area of Lambeau Field in order to have adequate space to put it together.  Works kind of counter to the idea of assembling and using these in hotel rooms with limited space.

It’s a Christmas miracle that I didn’t, or my kids didn’t get hurt by one of the bullshit tension rods that requires an unnerving amount of bend in order to assemble, and I was afraid that one wrong move would result in a violent whiplash of a metal rod whipping the shit out of either myself or one of my kids.  It would’ve probably been violent enough to slash out an eye on a human being, and probably rip a massive scar into drywall.

It’s definitely not easy to assemble, and once it is, it’s this giant fucking blob of useless that you don’t want to break down on a daily basis and have to wrestle with it all over again the following day, so you leave it assembled and let it take up a giant chunk of space in your limited hotel room’s real estate.

And when it doesn’t work on top of the aggravation of having to assemble it, it’s a really easy call to make that this is basically the most useless and regrettable parenting product ever purchased.  Basically, my prevailing thought after having to put up with this failure, is that if you don’t want to have to deal with the stress and struggle of having to share space with a child that requires adequate darkness in order to sleep, don’t fucking travel with them.  At least it wouldn’t cost $175 and an entire weekend of sleepless nights because the kids are struggling to sleep in a shared space far from home.  But fuck the SlumberPod, I hope I’ll be able to recoup anything for it, because I sure as shit don’t want to keep this in my house full of kids stuff any longer.

Thoughts from a much-needed weekend off

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Paris – my #2 favorite place in Las Vegas

As mentioned in the fanny pack post, I was actually in Las Vegas over the Labor Day weekend.  This was effectively the first real, multi-day, kids-free breather that mythical wife and I have had since, before the arrival of #1 back in March of 2020, right before the pandemic shut the world down.  Since then, we’ve literally never had longer than a single day where we were both not without children.  We obviously love our kids and our budding famiry very much, but we’d also be kidding ourselves that having gone through such a stretch has been difficult at times, and it’s amazing we’ve gone this long without a true break and not ended up going insane in the process.

Needless to say, the highlight of the trip was without question, simply getting to sleep in for two straight nights.  As in, turn off all alarms, pin the blinds shut, and go to sleep, only to wake up naturally, once our bodies deemed it no longer necessary to remain asleep.  I know we were in Las Vegas, the city that never truly sleeps and we’re supposed to be out gambling, drinking and being total shitheads all night every night, but damn if it wasn’t so refreshing to wind down the evenings knowing that we could sleep as long as we wanted.

To any of my zero readers who might be under the age of 32, I can imagine just how depressing of a paragraph the preceding one was, as a glimpse of what life after the age of 40 and with multiple kids can await but I really do love my famiry I really do.

As for Las Vegas itself, it was a good weekend to get away from the grind of daily living, but I have to say I had a lot of thoughts about not just Las Vegas, but the experience of traveling, and the state of the world itself.  And not to shit on what was a very welcome weekend to relax some, but me being who I am, of course these aforementioned thoughts are quite critical.

If I could get right to the point, I would have to say that I feel like there is a pretty wide disconnect when it comes to the world of business and the people of the world, and where they stand on how “re-opened” everything really is versus how re-opened everyone thinks it is, or should be.

Case in point: travel to Las Vegas is expensive as fuck, due to supposed demand and inflation.  What should be no more than really a $350 RT give or take anywhere in the continental United States was like an $800 RT per person, resulting in mythical wife and I settling with Greyhound Spirit Air in order to not get to the casinos already broke.  Except when you get to Las Vegas, casinos and restaurants all over the city are operating at less than pre-pandemic capacities, almost all of the buffets are either shut down or completely impossible to get in on account of them being the only ones left, table minimum bets are way higher than they used to be, and it’s basically impossible to be spontaneous or do anything substantial on short notice anymore.

Aside from sleeping the fuck in, two things that I wanted to do at my first time in Vegas in like 5-6 years was to eat at a buffet, and visit Ellis Island.  Neither of which happened because pretty much every buffet in Las Vegas was either closed or required a massively advance reservation, and nobody in my party wanted to go to Ellis Island and even if we did go, there’s no doubt that their restaurant would’ve had a massive wait and been impossible to get in at.

Not that they were that bad by any means, but we had several meals at places I probably wouldn’t have gone to if there were buffets available, not to mention that they were all way more expensive than good Vegas buffets were.

But due to the general feeling of restrictions and handcuffs here and there, I found myself breaking a couple of my own neurotic rules in Las Vegas, out of a feeling that I didn’t have any choice.  Two of them, at the same time, which was no playing where you stay, and no playing at tables with robotic female Asian dealers, because to me, both are omens of horrible luck.  But I did both anyway, and found myself down a good bit in short order, and going to bed feeling agitated and dejected.

Fortunately, a positive gambling session at Paris the following day helped salvage my gambling exploits, but I still left the city an overall net negative in the process, not that such isn’t always the case when it comes to going to Las Vegas, but the point is, there’s a noticeable disconnect between how much the city wants to operate versus the demand of things from the people who are visiting, leading to a lot of obnoxious waits, crowds, rushes and rejections.

Such sentiments weren’t limited to Vegas itself, just the traveling experience in general, is very similar in the sense that airports want to operate in these pandemic-era manners with skeleton crews, early closures and basically taking away all seating from travelers, but not taking into consideration every single flight is basically oversold, because of the reduced number of flights is making every ticket a hot one, and all these people are stacked on top of each other, sitting wherever there’s floor space and an outlet on the wall.

Either way, I don’t regret the trip, and I’m grateful to have gotten away from ordinary life for just a few days, and could sleep in and feel like a self-absorbed adult for that time.  By the time it was time to pick the kids up from grandma’s, I couldn’t wait to see my girls, and give them big hugs and kisses again.  But obviously me being the headcase that I notoriously am, nothing goes by without me overthinking about it, even good shit like small vacations.  But I would wager that I’m not the only one who feels that it’s kind of obnoxious that the commercial world is trying to have their cake and eat it too when they try and use the pandemic as an excuse to operate at 75% when the consumer world is ready and itching for things to be operating at 110%.

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While out in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend, I couldn’t help but notice that there was an unusually large number of people who were wearing fanny packs all over the place.  Not only were they wearing fanny packs, they were all wearing them slung across one shoulder and chest, like people used to wear messenger bags.  And after seeing the 350th person wearing a fanny pack like a satchel, it begs me to ask the question that this post is titled:

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

I choose my words deliberately, and I don’t say cool, because to me, fanny packs were never not cool at any point in my lifetime, but there’s no mistaking that there was a large swath of time in which they were just not deemed acceptable by popular social standards. 

When I was a kid, I rocked a fanny pack between the grades 2-4; not only was it a great place to keep all my cash on hand, but it was the perfect place to stash absolutely anything, anything at all, without having to burden my hands.  Cool rocks or sticks I found in the woods, my WWF or TMNT action figures, the metaphorical golden treasure to a fat kid that was candy and/or gum.  I always had shit on hand, thanks to the utility and convenience of my fanny pack.

But at some point in time, I began to get ridicule, and I was eventually branded some sort of nerd for having my fanny pack.  I wasn’t sure if it was the culture shift I had gone through moving from rural Virginia to prestigious northern Virginia, just the changing of the times, or asshole kids being bullies to me, but it got to the point where I stopped with the fanny pack, and short of zubaz-wearing professional wrestlers, they were mostly unseen for the next three decades.

Obviously living under the rock I do, I have no idea of when specifically they’ve suddenly become so acceptable again, but I’m just noticing just how everyone seems to be getting their hands on them these days, and amongst the kids of today, they’re being treated like some brand-new innovation of style and convenience.  I’m sure a fanny pack is perfect for holding your phone without bulking up your pockets or if you don’t have pockets because male rompers seem to be acceptable too.  Battery packs and charging cables because everyone is so glued to their mobile devices that a single day’s charge is insufficient are nice to be able to stash close to your person too.

Man, fanny packs sure are fucking cool for all the utility and convenience they provide without having to commit to an entire backpack or messenger bag!

But I have to question the part where they’re being worn around the shoulder, because fashion not-withstanding, that’s just a poor distribution of weight, and on the long-term, can have some physical detriment to the body.  I used to carry around a messenger bag, and wear all my duffel bags over the shoulder, but after long periods of time, that shit begins to wear on you, with all the weight they’re putting on a single shoulder.

It’s not lost on me just how bitter old man this all makes me sound like, but you have to understand that the backlash fanny packs got back in the early 90s was pretty fierce, to the point where they practically went extinct overnight in like 1991.

I suppose this is something that generationally, everyone eventually goes through at some points in their lives.  Perhaps in the near future, I’ll get to the backlash on fanny packs a second time, but as a judgmental bystander, and watch with smug satisfaction as all the dumb kids of today shamefully hang theirs up as discreetly as they can, and be sad that the sheep of the world don’t like utility and convenience anymore.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge fails at first impression

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While mythical wife and I were down at Disney for #1’s birthday, we earmarked one evening to go see Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios.  Paid for the lightning lanes, made reservations at Oga’s, etc.  Capitalize on one evening away from parenting to see something with a monumental amount of hype behind it.

Now I like Star Wars just fine.  I’ll admit I’ve soured over the last few years because the fandom of the property has become insufferable and taints everything the IP produces, and I’m over other fans and the property itself at invalidating my fandom because I happened to really like all of the novella in the past, like Timothy Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson’s respective trilogies.

But I like Star Wars enough to watch all the movies and Disney+ originals with expediency, and enjoy them as is without even trying to entertain the idea of seeing what others have to think on the internet.  It works out best that way.

So I was looking forward to visiting Galaxy’s Edge, mostly to ride the new rides, as well as hoping I could maybe find some place that might sell reprints of the storyboard sketches from The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett.

Conditions were great to have a good first impression; the Florida evening was not hot and not was rather pleasant. The lightning lane mythical wife paid for would help us avoid oppressive lines, and the park itself wasn’t stupid crowded, going right at closing.

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