So this week’s new adventure is all about putting a plane in new and exciting places. Namely, wet ones!
There’s a lake out the window! What’s that doing there?!
I’m getting my Seaplane rating added to my pilot’s license! The plane I’m doing it is called an Icon A5, and it’s basically a jet-ski with a wing attached, with retractable landing gear so you can land it at a regular airport as well.
Learning to pre-flight the plane!You can see how low you would be to the water from this angle.We pulled back into the ramp just as one of the local business jets was leaving. The jet pilots were definitely checking out our plane.
To get your seaplane rating you have to learn a number of different landing and takeoff techniques on the water, as well as several different ways to taxi the plane around on the water, or even “sail” the plane by turning off the engine and letting the wind blow you.
Today we learned how to do that, and got out of the plane to sit on the wing while we floated!
It’s so wild just to to be floating out here.This view gives you a better idea of how low to the water we are when sitting on the wing. Out in the middle of Lake Lewisville, just sitting on an airplane!Looking down into the cockpit with the canopy open, just floating backwards with the wind.
My instructor, Maddie, is big on remembering why we do all this work and making sure we have fun and enjoy flying. Stopping in the middle of a lesson just to float in the lake and enjoy the experience was absolutely amazing. Then we took back off again and did a few more landings, before heading back to the airport!
There’s a lot about flying this particular plane to love. It really is like a jetski when you’re high-speed taxiing across water, because you’re so low down to the water. In the air it handles really well. Flying with the windows out is an amazing experience, both on the water and in the air.
I’ve got a couple more flights for practice before I take the test to become an official seaplane pilot, I’ll try to get some more pictures as I go!
(This post is backdated, because I’m terrible at remembering to post things!)
Seem to be sitting in an airplane again!
Where am I headed to this time? Well, I’ll give you a clue: There’s not a lot to look at, other than quite a lot of trees and swamp.
Just ‘cruisin.
I really didn’t take any pictures, because there really isn’t anything out there. For hours and hours. But sometime later, finally a landmark!
The great (and dirty) Mississippi.
She is not a pretty river, the Mississippi… I started singing “Roll on Columbia” for a bit though, missing the big river of my homeland.
Finally stopping for a break!
4.9 hours later it’s finally time to stop for a break. Having overflown all of Louisiana and Mississippi, I am now arriving in Troy Alabama. Spent most of the flight cruising along up at 9,500 feet, coming in towards Troy I had to duck down to get under some clouds, and then had to start dodging military helicopters! This area is a huge military training ground for hundreds of miles. Primary helicopter training, fighter training, all kinds of interesting traffic flying around out here.
In fact, on my way in, I heard regional ATC ask a military flight if they had a minute to do a low pass. The military flight said yes, at which point I started tracking them on my iPad to see what they were. When I found them they were doing 350 miles per hour, about 1500 feet off the ground. After they left the airspace my curiosity got the best of me and I asked ATC what they were. Turns out it was a flight of F-15s doing a training mission, and the tower guys wanted a little airshow. Very Top Gun, it was pretty cool!
Not sure what Sikorsky is doing here, but they’re the only thing on the field!Getting ready to head back into the sky!
After landing at Troy I take a look at the remaining flight, and I’ve got about 3 hours to get to my destination. I could technically make it with my remaining fuel, but without a lot of margin, so I get the tanks topped off, refill my water bottle, and back into the sky I go!
Headland Airport, the furthest east I’ve previously flown.
A couple minutes after takeoff I flew over KHDL, basically the far south-east corner of Alabama. I flew to Headland previously in order to help pick up a plane to bring back to Dallas for our school, and that was the furthest east I’d ever flown. So now I’m into the unknown territories!
Headland Airport, the furthest east I’ve previously flown.Dodging the clouds that form over the coastThe Elbow (armpit?) of Florida is in sight!Still cruisin’Florida looks pretty much the same as everywhere else along the way. Farmland, swamp, and what is either a prison or a factory farm.The map says that this is “Chocktaw City”. I call shenanigans.
As I came around the corner to start heading south down through Florida I ran into a weather phenomenon I was warned about: steady-state clouds form in this corner as water from the gulf rotates around over land and back out to sea again. I had to detour inland a bit in order to dodge these low-level clouds forming. (I could’ve filed a flight plan to fly right over them, but that comes with some additional difficulties and I wanted to stay VFR, so around we go!)
After that it was smooth flying all the way to Apopka, on the north west corner of Orlando. Landed straight-in to the runway, followed the person I was meeting to their hanger, and got a ride back to Orlando airport for my commercial flight home!
It feels weird to be going through these arches without so much as a Dole Whip or Disney pin to show for it!
Hopped on a Southwest flight about 45 minutes later and headed back to Dallas! Round trip all in one day from Dallas to Orlando and back to Dallas. 7.8 hours flying to get there, about 2.5 hours to get home on one of the big-boys.
The purpose of this trip was to take one of the planes from our school back to its owner, who’s going to be using it for personal flying instead of leasing it to the school. I’ll miss that plane, its the one I did my commercial cross-countries in, and it’s a real joy to fly. A Piper Arrow is definitely up there on my list of favorite planes!
Got home just after midnight, and back up the next morning to get to back to work, another adventure successfully completed!
And at the end of it all after arriving home there are a couple of cuddly cats wondering why I’m waking them up so late at night.
Disneyland Day 2, and the Spring Break fever is in full effect! Today we start with early-opening hours, and (spoiler alert) we go all the way until tomorrow!
We used our early-access time to get to the rides that we can’t “lightning lane” later, to get them while the line is short. The fun part about this is that these are three of the oldest rides: Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Mr. Toad’s wild ride. We did Mr. Toad first. If you’re going to get sentenced to hell for theft you might as well get it out of the way early in the day. (Boy, Disney morality tales used to be dark! Yes, this is literally the plot of the ride.)
The least crowded we will see Main Street today…Emily is meeting Mr. Toad for the first timeThat’s right, we’re going to never-never land!
It’s actually pretty fun to do the old rides. They’ve definitely done some minor modernization to these, but for the most part they’re still very old-school original Disney. Personally I love that. Imagining what riding something like “Small World” was like when it was the height of technological entertainment is fascinating. And I love the way they had to be clever with things like mirrors to create effects, rather than the modern rides that just use projections and hidden TV screens.
In a similar vein, we also went on the old “20,000 Leagues under the sea” submarine ride, now with a Finding Nemo overlay over it instead.
A submarine with a spiral staircase? How wonderfully decadent!It may not be real coral, but it pretty!Bubbles!Submarines and Monorails, truly tomorrowland is the future!
I remember being so fascinated by this ride when I was a kid, even without the Nemo and friends aspects! The illusion of diving under the ocean was so fascinating! There was another party with a 5-ish year old in the same ride vehicle with us, and the kid’s surprised exclamations, as well as slight terror at one point, really made me smile.
Walking past the Matterhorn. It is both pretty, and the screaming pleases me.The queue for Runaway Railway is fun, lots of random big props to look at.Bevin is about to do regrettable things to a cinnamon role.
After our morning snack it’s time for a whirlwind through some more rides! Lightning Lane to the rescue, so we don’t have to stand in lines for too long!
Yes, we’re doing Pirates again. Yarr!Trivia fact: Above the captain, that’s a real human skull. Because back in the day that’s how you did it.I identify with this pirate, beset by cats and taking up drinking to cope?Star Tours time!It wouldn’t be a Tiki Room without dole whip.In the tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-room…Apparently space mountain is no longer exciting to Julian?
Yes, we’re wearing sunglasses on space mountain. What of it?
Actually it was a test. I had decided I disliked how bright this version of space mountain is, due to the cool star-projector effect. Matt suggested sunglasses might dim it down enough that you get more of the “AHH, WHERE IS THIS COASTER TAKING US?!” feeling.
He was definitely right, however we decided that it dims down the colors too much, and the stars effect is too nice to cover up. Next time: no sunglasses.
Julian has heard from the internet that buying the cheesy pretzel roll from the snack shop by Matterhorn, and then going to Adventure Land to buy meat skewers and putting them on the pretzel roll is quite good. Can confirm: was tasty. Worth another back-and-forth all the way across the park.
The Roll in QuestionBeards required cleaning after this.Spinal realignment back in the room.
After lunch it was time for our mid-day break. Spring-break crowds are in full force right now and the park is a bit crowded, plus apparently we’re all old and infirm.
After a bit of a rest we head back to the park via the monorail!
Monorail!Entry gate looks empty…Park is definitely not! Small World!TomorrowlandBaby monorail!
The Disneyland monorail is much smaller than the World version. Both the monorail network, and the physical cars themselves. But it offers some fun views of the park, and it’s better than walking back!
Time to do Small World, because, well, you have to? You can’t SKIP Small World!
It’s interesting that this version has both more Disney IP (Lion King and Nemo characters, Snow White, Aladdin, etc…) and possible better audio.
The facade is more fun than the World versionThis version has more IP.Caught by a parade on our way to the Matterhorn.We’re off to see the Yeti
Spinal re-alignment is once again necessary, so we’ll ride the matterhorn! Dune has been the topic of humor for us lately, so Matt screaming “THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!” as we go through the cave after the Yeti was pretty damn funny.
Time to leave Switzerland and head off-planet for more Star Wars adventure! Rise of the Resistance is an amazing ride. You start out walking through a cave complex, and then you board a spaceship to escape!
Into the caves of the resistance base we go!Boarding our shuttle to the secret resistance hideout.On the ship
After you get on the shuttle, it takes off for your adventure… And then you get back OFF the shuttle as a prisoner!
In the shuttle bayOur poor shuttle, what will we do now?!Waiting to be interrogated…I volunteered to tell the guard everything I knew, they weren’t impressed.Imperial AT-AT walker, look out!
It’s such a fun ride. The entire Star Wars land is themed so well. The only thing they couldn’t theme properly is the fact that in the “real” place there should be two suns overhead. Someday they’ll figure that one out too I’m sure.
Off to pilot the Millennium Falcon!
The Dusk FalconThe life-sized Falcon looks really cool at night.More FalconLet’s play space-chess!Which button lets the Wookie win?Our former pilots, now demoted for crashing into everything.Bevin is way too happy, considering that’s a bad-guy ship…It’s so pretty in this land at night.
Next up, more food, before we have food.
Bevin demanded Beignets…
What you really need after a bunch of sugar is a roller coaster! Fortunately for us Big Thunder Mountain is right there!
And here we gooooLook out for the dynamite goat!We escaped with our lives! Barely!It’s also a very pretty ride at night
We made the choice to keep our reservation and go back to Oga’s Cantina for some drinks rather than watch the fireworks, and decided to make a quick detour to the Storybook Land ride. It’s a simple outdoor boat ride through miniatures of a bunch of the Disney stories. Basically: Baby’s First Jungle Cruise.
What we DIDN’T know was that if you’re on the boat when the fireworks start, they stop the boats and you sit there watching the fireworks from inbetween the close fireworks by the castle and the ones further back. You don’t get the audio from the show, but fortunately for us we got stopped right by the Agrabah miniature, so we got to listen to “A Whole New World” over and over while being in the middle of fireworks. It was actually surprisingly fun!
Back at Oga’s! It’s not as busy!
The cast members in here are really fun. There’s a drink called a “Fuzzy Tauntaun” which has a foam on the top of it that has a numbing agent that makes your tongue a tingly and slightly numb. The bartender here was giving the customers at the table a hard time for asking for a straw for their Fuzzy Tauntaun. He kept turning on his headlamp and watching them to make sure they were drinking it without a straw. And there are some little easter eggs that they do too. Poor DJ R3X.
What drink to get is a big decision here…
I didn’t get any more pictures here because we were busy singing and clapping to songs and such… Here’s the main playlist for the cantina though, if you want to sing along with us!
(There’s also a 2nd album, but it’s new and doesn’t get used as much.)
After Oga’s it’s now 11PM and we have time for a few more late-night rides! We didn’t actually walk through Swiss Family Robinson, but it looked cool, sadly the camera didn’t really get it. And as usual, on Indiana Jones, Emily looked into the Idol’s eye and doomed us all.
Swiss Family Robinson!Indiana Jones!Space Mountain!A busy night in space!Someone always nods off on this one it seems.
Matt opted out of this one after sugar and drinking and Emily stayed with him. Amusingly, the car we were supposed to get into had to be taken offline because the previous rider had, perhaps, had a little too much to drink before riding? Whoops.
It’s now almost midnight. Just as we get off the ride the park officially closes. It’s still both surprisingly busy, and quite empty. By time we reach the exit gate it’s after midnight, and we started at 7AM. This may actually be my record for longest Disney day ever? Sweet!
The Park Is Now ClosedThe main street shops, however, are still open. Goodbye Disneyland!
What a fun day! Fortunately we don’t have to get up at 5:30 in the morning, our breakfast isn’t until 8:45. I think we all hit the pillow and crashed as soon as we got back.
In case you were curious about the DVC 2-bedroom suite at the Disneyland hotel, here are a couple more pictures, as well as pictures of the rest of the art in our Fantasia themed room!
Behind the murphy bed.The picture doesn’t really convey this one. It’s several panes of glass, so it has a lot of 3D effect.
Breakfast was at the neighboring hotel, the Pixar Place. The restaurant theme was “Maple”, so there were maple donuts, maple bacon, etc… We will all be in food comas for the entire trip home.
After getting back to the room and packed up we waited around a little while before heading to the airport. Of course this meant more playing with lightsabers!
After that it was a ride to the airport, and home we all go!
Well that was Disneyland! An excellent 4 day adventure. As Julian says we “sucked the marrow from it’s bones”. I think he’s right, we did pretty much everything possible to do! And now most of us get to return home and go back to work in the morning. Matt and Emily were smart and get an extra day off.
Here’s a couple more pictures that were leftovers that didn’t get uploaded in the right order!
Lightsaber building experience!
Lastly, Esme has been quite upset while I sit and write up this blog post at home, she very much wanted me to be playing in a sunbeam with her in the kitchen instead, and is now angrily snuggling on my lap.
So what’s our next adventure going to be? Currently the next scheduled vacation is in 2025, but we’ll try not to make you wait that long!
Day 3, we’re back to California Adventure for… more adventure?
Our adventure started with…. standing in line. Unfortunately the one ride that we wanted to get to early (because the line gets very long) was having problems, and after we used our entire early-admission period waiting for it, they finally said they weren’t going to open for a while and kicked everyone out of line. Oh well, it was worth a try! So we poked around Cars land!
Cars Land and the Dancing Cars ride!
After that we went to Pixar Pier and road the Incredi-coaster! This one is the one Bevin didn’t want to go on, because it goes upside-down briefly. But she went! We had fun, there was screaming.
Bevin is actually going to go on Incredi-coaster with us!
Didn’t get too many more pictures in the morning. We moved fast and zipped around the park doing rides while it wasn’t super busy yet. The cloudy weather seems to dampen everyone’s spirits around here. Worked great for us though! As usual we went pretty fast the first part of the day, and then came back for a break after lunch, and then went into the park for the evening. Both parks here have sections that are really beautiful after dark, so we always want to make sure that we have plenty of energy to spend the time in the evening.
Hanging out after our midday break before we go back to the park. Bevin loves her Remy shoulder friend.Sunset over Downtown DisneyRadiator Springs at nightCars Land at night is really REALLY pretty.So much neon.
After we were done in the park for the evening we stopped by Trader Sam’s tiki bar on the way back for a little while before turning in for the night.
Matt and Emily sharing a drink that comes in a bowl: the Uh’oa. Possibly named for the “uh oh…” sound that is universally made when it is delivered.
Matt and Emily’s drink was fun. It arrived, was lit on fire, and then they sprinkled cinnamon on the flame (causing sparks) to appease… pele perhaps? Anyway, gods were appeased, and drinks were had. Everyone wins.
The two sugary non-alcoholic concoctions Bevin ordered for us caused almost as much “uh oh!!” as Matt and Emily’s drink!
Also bonus like Ukelele player!
I also had a Dole Whip. Delicious pineapple soft-serve, with pineapple juice over it.
And then sleeping. Early to bed, early to rise, for tomorrow we go back to Disneyland proper again!
We had a mixed sunny/drizzly day today, so we got a few more pictures!
We bounced around the park a lot, it was a 20,000+ steps day. We managed to do a lot of stuff and not stand in too many lines though, so it was worth it!
We had lunch at Blue Bayou, the restaurant inside Pirates of the Caribbean, which was fantastic. Julian gets up very early in the morning months in advance to get us the best reservations so we can do things!
We didn’t get to see the fireworks because there were winds so they cancelled the fireworks portion of the show, but otherwise it was a great day. Didn’t get rained on too much, didn’t have any significant difficulties getting the rides we wanted. Very successful.
Heading down main street!We stood in line so that we could… stand in line. But hey, we’ll be one of the first people into the park!And we walk right on to Millennium Falcon!Julian is considering a lightsaber umbrella.These pirates have been attempting to get the key from that dog for a loooooong time.Always good to see Red, even if she’s still terrorizing the locals.From the musty land of piracy, directly into the musty land of forbidden temples.Everyone seems remarkably calm for being about to enter a forbidden temple.We seem to have been captured by stormtroopers.I don’t love the new style X-Wings, but it’s still cool.Got to do the remodeled Swiss Family Robinson tree!Another view of the park from the top of the tree.I would definitely live here. Bevin exploring the tree.Maybe our living room could look like this?We’ve gone to the bayou for lunch! In the backgrond there are people sailing off for pirate adventures!Bevin is about to undertake a very dangerous Monte Cristo…Happy Birthday was sung to Matt. He hated it, which made us happy.It’s been raining on and off. I sort of like cloudy Falcon.Oga’s cantina! DJ R3X in the background.If anyone ever asks: we shot first.Was Matt… sleeping on Space Mountain?The castle at night. It’s…. tiny.We could watch fireworks from here…Fireworks were cancelled, so we decided to sail into the jungle in the darkness. We went back to pick up Matt and Emily’s lightsabers before we left for the night.
The build-a-lightsaber experience was fun. Matt and Emily both built their own, so we got to go in with them. Anyone who’s a major Star Wars fan will definitely enjoy the experience of building their own saber.
When we did the Millennium Falcon ride we did the “Chewy Mode” where instead of getting instructions you can understand you just get yelled at in Wookie for the whole ride. So of course we ran into absolutely everything, and barely succeeded. But it was super fun.
Jungle Cruise after dark is always fun too. As we sailed past the gorillas “Anyone wearing yellow try not to sit still, and don’t make banana noises!” cracked me up.
After a long day we went back to our room and everyone crashed. Up extra early tomorrow for the resort-guest extra time!
After just over 3 hours on the nearly empty plane, most of which Bevin spent sleeping on my shoulder, we arrived at SNA in Orange County. None of that LAX business for us! Our flight got in about an hour before the Portland gang arrived though, so we grabbed a drink and played some Tak.
After everyone arrives we take our ride to the hotel with a California driver who clearly thought most every traffic law was more of a suggestion. But we survived, got to the Disneyland hotel, and then off to the park we go!
Our room is a 2 Bedroom suite that’s Fantasia themed! There’s cool art everywhere, including a mosaic in the master bath.
There are two parks at “Disneyland”, one is Disneyland proper, and the other is California Adventure. That’s where we went next!
Wait a second, we just got off a plane, why are we doing a ride that’s putting us back on a plane?!
Soarin’ is a motion ride that puts you up into this big half-sphere screen and takes you flying over the landscapes, while shooting scents that match the landscapes at at you!
Cool thing is that right now they’re doing the classic “Soarin’ over California” version, rather than the Soarin’ over the USA that’s normal, so all the scenes are from CA. And there are even more scents! (Pine forest, orange grove, ocean mist)
We didn’t take too many pictures through the afternoon because it was raining so hard and phones were tucked into pockets. But we grabbed a few!
Radiator Springs is one of the absolute best forced perspective things I’ve ever seen. It looks huge, it looks real. Photos don’t really capture it well. It’s really impressive. And it’s a fun little race-car ride too!
And because we’re all adults, and can do what we want, we went on the Little Mermaid ride, and sang along. Sha-la-la-la-la-la my-oh-my!
And that’s about it from our first 3/4-ish day at the park! We got… slightly damp. We had a great lunch, and a great dinner, none of which we took pictures of, and then went to the “fireworks” show, which is actually lasers and lights and water at California Adventure. Also not pictured, because it was cold, and damp, and we had our hands in our pockets.
