Tag: Orlando
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 232 – From Anaheim to Orlando
After an early morning Virgin America flight, I returned home, greeted at the airport by plenty of Disney sights. Coming home from Anaheim is sad, but not as bad when living in Orlando. I’m sure I’ll be at Walt Disney World soon enough! (But not by Magical Express…)
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 88 – Food truck MADNESS
The first-ever Orlando Food Truck Bazaar was held tonight near downtown Orlando, featuring 10 or so unique food trucks in a single parking lot. It was scheduled to run from 7pm – 10pm and they expected 400-500 people to show up. But the event ended up drawing what seemed like thousands. Michelle and I got there a little after 7pm and immediately got in line for the Korean BBQ Taco Box food truck, which seemed to be the most appealing on the event’s web site.
After realizing the line was moving quite slowly, I stayed while Michelle went through the Yum Yum cupcakes line to make sure she got a few cupcakes before they sold out. By the time she returned with 6 cupcakes, I had barely moved. We then waited in line for Korean BBQ for THREE HOURS. I have no idea why we stuck around that long, but it became a mission to make it to the end and get our food. Hundreds of other people waited in long, slow lines as well. In the end, we were one of the last people to get food from the truck before they were forced to shut down at around 10:30 pm.
The good news is that the food was excellent! It wasn’t worth waiting 3 hours in line for, but it helped that it was so good. I will gladly return to the truck again (it’s normally parked on Colonial and Primrose).
I’m going to write more about the event over at InsideTheMagic.net tomorrow, including a few food pictures, so check there if you’re interested.
THURSDAY THEME PARK: Ticket Kiosks in Hotels
While recently delivering some free promotional copies of Orlando Attractions Magazine to hotels on International Drive, I noticed that several of the hotels featured a handy new feature in the lobbies in the form of…
Ticket Kiosks in Hotels
These kiosks exclusively sold tickets to Universal Orlando and have appeared some time within the last 2 months or so:
As you can see, each kiosk is hard to miss, both because of its brightly-glowing screens and colorful standee of The Simpsons that was stationed near each one. The interface on the kiosks appears to be a retooled version of Universal’s web page. It allows the instant purchase of admission tickets to Universal Orlando’s two theme parks using a credit card. No lines, no wait. If you’re staying at one of these hotels, just head to the lobby, swipe your card, and you’re off to enjoy a fun day at the theme parks.
Both Disney and Universal have had self-service ticket kiosks available at select locations near their regular ticket booths but this is the first time I’ve seen any in a hotel. I think they’re a great idea and would love to see more showing up throughout all the tourist areas of Orlando.
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Inconsistent HD Switching on TV
After being sick a week, I’m playing a bit of catch-up here, so I’m going to post this and five more posts in rapid succession today. I was reminded of this/last week’s whine last night while watching Wheel of Fortune. Regularly, on this and many other primetime television shows, I find myself annoyed by networks’ ability to have…
Inconsistent HD Switching
If a TV show is available in high definition, I watch it in HD. In fact, I try to avoid standard definition whenever possible. At least once a week, however, the choice between SD and HD is out of my control as a show that is supposed to be aired in HD is inexplicably broadcast in SD. Sometimes there will be a message scrolling across the bottom of the screen letting viewers know that there is some technical difficulty that is preventing the network from displaying the HD feed, and I can live with it in these situations. However, more often than not, it’s obvious that someone at the local network office has simply forgotten to flip the magic HD switch.
Last night’s episode of Wheel of Fortune was the one that I attended a SeaWorld Orlando taping of back in December. There, I had a chance to interview Pat Sajak and Vanna White and walk amongst the camera crew for the duration of the taping. I had a wonderful time at the taping and really looked forward to seeing the final product on TV. Unfortunately, WFTV, the local ABC affiliate, forgot to flip the HD switch last night, even after Jeopardy was shown in HD. It left viewers like me stuck with watching the SD feed instead. It even said that the show was in HD at the beginning of the show, despite the truth. Very frustrating.
Even more annoying are times when part of a show is broadcast in HD, it goes to commercial, and then returns in SD, only to flip-flop between SD and HD throughout.
Some day, all programming (including commercials) will be in HD and this won’t be a problem anymore. But until then, if anyone out there works for a television station, can you please stop forgetting to flip the HD switch?
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