But love is a long, long road

Tom Petty

Since last Friday I have logged more than 1900 miles and 32 hours behind the wheel of one automobile or another.

Pictures from trip are here (What I have loaded anyway)

Last Friday,  I visited Metropolis, Illinois. I was lucky (?) enough to Priceline a hotel directly across the street from the Harrah’s Casino there for a total of $50 for the evening. That was the last win I booked that day. The drinks were stiff though not free.

On Saturday I headed  further into Illinois to pick up the kids and turn around and head South back to Georgia.

Sunday morning we headed out a little late only partially due to the time change. I ended up booking a second connecting room at the DoubleTree so we would not be so crowded.  I ended up paying twice as much as the name your own price feature I had gotten on first room, but it was worth it.

After stowing all our gear we headed out to Giordano’s. It had been too long since my Deep Dish friend and I had seen each other. It was a joyous reunion.

The only down side to the evening was our ride for the evening had a rough go of it. He was a nice young man from Brazil who was having difficulty locating the Giordano’s as it was a new location. Since it was only two miles from hotel and we had already been tooling around for over 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he had a very nice vehicle with a navigation system and he should try it out. he informed me it only worked when vehicle was in park. So he put it in park in the middle of the road, blocking 1 lane of traffic. Horns and fingers were both working for drivers from the opposing side.

Pizza was great and I see they will now ship meat pizzas. Now I need to make up a special event as an excuse to order one. If not we will probably stop in Orlando on our way to Miami for cruise in May.

Monday we walked over to Universal Studios to check out some rides. We (I actually) decided wince we couldn’t stay until closing time, that we should start there. In order to avoid some lines I spent an additional $100+ dollars for a pass that allowed you to skip to front of some lines. I did not realize that it only allowed you to do it one time per ride. It was worth it but still disappointing.

Quick notes about rides ans shows we saw.

We started with Shrek 4-D and while I thought it was pretty good but it was just another 3-D show .

The Men in Black ride was okay. it was similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disney where you are given a laser gun to shoot things. It kept spinning us around and it was a little unclear on what to blast. Being the sport I am I just kept firing but my son ended up with the highest score.

The Simpson’s Ride was a fun 3-D ride that took the place of the old Back to the Future ride. We liked it so much we rode it a second time and dragged Laila’s butt on it.

We next rode the Jaws ride without Laila. She was the big winner there. It was the lamest river ride ever and I would have rated it lower if we had to wait the 45 minutes everyone else did.

We then rode the Mummy roller coaster. It was unlike other coasters I had rode before and it incorporated the Mummy movie theme through out. Lots of Mummies and lots of fire. It was completely inside and allowed single riders to go straight to the front of the line. So Joseph rode it twice and the kids and I rode it three times.

We attempted to ride the Rip Ride it Roller coaster numerous times but it took no passes and the single line was never open when we tried and we didn’t want to wait over an hour.

We did the twister show and even though I had fond memories of it, if not for the Jaws disaster it would have won the award for lameness.

We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for Medieval Times.

I will finish trip report with another post.