Things you hate IV

Now that’s an ass blast.

They’re the WORST. A few years ago my wife’s parents organised a big trip to Florida because it’s something they used to love doing with the kids before they all grew up. It barely cost me anything so I dutifully got on the plane and agreed to do a lot of driving. They all had the time of their lives, I sat like a miserable **** in the blazing heat with the bags and wondering why we weren’t by the pool in the ******* enormous mansion they’d rented.

Went to Kennedy Space Centre though, which was great and a snip to get in compared to the $150 each we’d paid to spend a day at Disneyworld…. Which was ******* ****.

 

I thought they were ok as a kid, and I get why kids like them, but they are my idea of hell now. Even as a kid I went to each of them once and then wasn’t fussed about ever going to them again.

 

My 14 year old daughter has just come back from a France trip with school for 3 nights (and appears to now think she's a full adult, but that's another story) and they went to Eurodisney as part of it. She said it was "absolute ****", with the lowlights including:

Queues so big they only made it onto 4 rides all day
Queuing for 45 minutes for a ride that broke down as they got near the front and had to give up
Really low grade food at 3 times the usual price
A shop full of tatt, coming in at about €10 for a keyring

My sister in law and family are one of those that save for several years then go to Florida to be subjected to this daily at huge expense. I know some people like it, but to me it seems like a completely plastic experience from start to finish, spending the whole time in a pure corporate bubble from landing to departure. They seem happy to get financially raped at every turn, with companies seemingly happy to openly fleece them and essentially take the p1ss out of them.

One of their kids is disabled with a genetic syndrome, so at least they get to jump the queues, but it's really not for me.

 

If I wanted to pay over the odds to watch a bunch of clowns and have tatty merch shoved down my throat I’d buy a season ticket at Vicarage Road.

Boom boom!

 

Fair comment.

 

Sadly, this just echoes my experience of more than a decade ago. A mostly unpleasant day of queuing, horrible food and underwhelming rides of which we only did a few.

What my son really wanted to see was the Lego World and trains. I think it would be great if that was somewhere else on its own and there was a stand-alone park for those who want to queue for rides.

Generally, the little places have been much better. When my lad was in his train loving years, he really enjoyed Beconscot model village and Bewilderwood in Norfolk, which in some ways is an underwhelming series of tree houses, but is actually a lot of fun just running around and building dens in the wood.

If anyone wants theme park rides, do them when in Europe is my advice. Less packed.

 

Harsh, but fair.

 

Banter.

 

My one of my mates was something very senior at Legoland. Things I remember him saying about the place:

1. The food prices really aren't that steep as they buy premium, not bargain, level raw ingredients (Lego insist upon it high quality so as not to detract from the 'brand') - we had a number of comp year passes to the place & even then a 'free' visit ended up costing well the other side of a ton before the fast-track passes.
2. They are one of the best theme parks in Europe - most don't come close to their four (4) rides on average per visit.
3. Each one of those poncho vending machines at the 'Viking Falls' ride brings in £30K per week.
4. The place is so successful that 'footfall' outstrips parking. They've had to introduce charges as the temporary 'overflow' carparks are actually situated on the Crown Estate who charge an absolute fortune for use of the land (with fines and caveats for environmental damage).
5. They've looked into their own railway and station to the park or building a hoverport/hydrofoil terminal (shipping people in from London) and mass transport system (under or overground) to get them from the river to the attraction but the levels of nimbyism (and the Crown Estate's greed) always defeats them.

 

When did you go? We were there yesterday, first time for our girls at a theme park too. I don’t mind them but only as a once every three or four years type thing and so generally agree with everything you say. We didn’t bother with the queue jumping thingy given the extortionate cost but can see the appeal. Most of the rides were pretty naff and I agree short too, but I reckon we just about did all the ones we wanted to. Think it makes a big difference if you go in expecting to queue, mix things up a bit with some of the minor rides - which in truth aren’t that much more naff than the major ones - and have a bit of a plan. We got there for opening time, which gave a couple of goes on rides which later had horrendous queues, and then just ignored everything with a wait time of more than 45 minutes. Plus double backed to a couple when times dropped nearer the end of the day. Think we got on 6 of the notable ones.

Wouldn’t be going back to Legoland I don’t think. There’s better theme parks out there and our two will outgrow it by the time we next contemplate going to one. But the kids came home super happy so it’s a win.

 

Depp wins! Time for a mega pint!

 

Didn’t push Kate Moss down the stairs. But is still a **** on multiple grounds.

 

Chinos. They’re a lot of nonsense aren’t they?

Look nice when they go on, like a crumpled rag after ten minutes. And it’s never the right weather for them. Useless in cold weather and after about ten minutes too hot in warm weather.

It’s shorts when it’s warm and jeans when it’s not. Unless you have to dress for work, those are the flavours for the middle aged fella, get used to it.

 

Yeah was yesterday too. We were there from opening until 4pm.

The queue jump things just allow you to join a slightly shorter queue.

I just don't understand why people are seemingly happy to pay weekend break money to stand ina queue for a 3 min ride every hour and a half.

The very idea that you can run a business where you sell so many tickets to your park that you then effectively admit that the only way to access the benefits of the park, is to pay again for a queue jump ticket is perverse. How about only sell as many tickets per day as can reasonably be accommodated by the number of rides you have, so your customers actually get some value for money?

Capitalism is sick.

 

I think he's a damaged man, but not the worst I can think of by any means.

 

When ours were young we bought Merlin passes for a few years and used to hit the theme parks regularly but only for a few hours early in the day, after that it gets too busy. We're well worth the money at the right kids ages.
Now the short cut people make the regular queues so long that I'll never go again.

 

I was at an IBM conference in Orlando a few years back and they hired out the entire of Universal Studios for an evening for the attendees.

My wife and I went on every ride in there we wanted to without having to queue at all - walk to ride, get on. Many of the good ones we went on 4-5 times. Was a thoroughly excellent time.

I'd never do the traditional theme park experience though. Extortionate prices to basically stand around doing nothing for 95% of the day. No thanks.

 

During my aforementioned trip to Florida I had a full on panic attack with tears near the Jurassic Park log flume due to it being so crowded.

It was quite a good ride IIRC, enjoyed the Spideman 3d one too. Spent the rest of the day being a grumpy **** and mingling in the Simpsons area and chain smoking while the rest of the party had fun.

Good times.

 

Ha, those were our favourite two rides. We went on Spidey 6 times I think. Great ride.

 

Just remembered, the keys to the rental car fell out of my pocket near the revolving universal sign. That was another crap experience for the day. My brother in law and I discovered that you could get 1.5L bottles of wine in the local Publix that night. Saw an alligator while we were playing night golf (trespassing with a golf club and a tennis ball) on the course our house backed on to.

 

FTFY

 

Yes this. Ok for kids, expensive hell on earth for parents.

 

Any man who wears shorts, unless he is a postman, a sportsman, or on holiday, should be utterly ashamed of himself.

 

Ok, that’s weird.

 

I'm in two minds. On the one hand I saw fat, middle aged men with VIP passes, covered in badges and wearing shorts, making a beeline for the front of the queues at legoland like an adult tweedledum or tweedledee.

But on the other hand I wear shorts a lot because I've got such shapely legs.

 

I think the young lads have lost the plot on shorts a bit. Those tight, very short shorts, with a turn-up look bizarre.

You are going to look back in a few years and wonder what you were thinking.

 

Is that why next season's uptake is surprisingly high?

 

Chinos? Far too redolent of the 'business casual' 5h1te our US colleagues used to declare the required attire for global management meetings. For me, it was always either full suit & tie ("I am at work cos I'm wearing my work uniform" mode) or jeans and casual shirt. And when they started introducing company-branded polo shirts to wear....
Luckily they always seemed to f-up the sizing. Size 'L' was big enough to convert into a 2-person tent, whilst 'XL' was probably big enough for a small group of steppe nomads to live in, most of us Europeans never had to wear them. It did make you wonder how large many Yanks must be.

 

Hey I love a funny animal video I do. Cats lol, they’re so funny, dogs hur hur, they do funny things too.

What they don’t need is humans doing some goofy soundtrack over the video pretending to speak for them. It’s never less than cringey.

 

What’s weird is a middle aged man thinking that the rest of the world wants to see his pasty, hairy legs.

It’s just about acceptable when on holiday. Otherwise not.

 

I could list 11 things much worse.

1. Overweight people with tight leggings.
2. People with bad nails in sandals.
3. Hairy women sunbathing.
4. Topless men not on the beach.
5. Floppy ear hole things.
6. Tongue piercings.
7. Bad tattoos, (tons of those about).
8. Giant fish lips.
9. Makeup put on with a catapult.
10. Canal people with the stupid hats.
11. Football shirt wearing melts at the snooker.

 

Well yes, these are all bad too. Particularly 1 and 4.

 

I've expanded the list but that'll do for now.

 

Had this in a research group who employed a US 'star' scientist. They came up with a series of 'corporate branding' ideas for our attendance at a 'massive' biannual conference in North America. What started out as "...advisory..." very rapidly became "...advisory but failure to adhere to dress code at conference and events will result in the non-refund of travel/accommodation expenses..."

• Corporate attire will be 'chinos' (long trousers/above knee skirt), brown shoes and university supplied polo shirt.

Errrmmmm... OK

• Two polo shirts will provided, failure to wear clean (and in good upkeep) polo shirts to all conference official (non-social) events will be viewed as a disciplinary matter.

Errrmmmm... OK

• Shirts will have embroidered University logos, group name and your 'designated' name. Defacing, altering, obscuring any of these will be viewed as a disciplinary matter.

Errrmmmm... OK

• Designated name. This will be allocated to you by Prof US 'star' Scientist - you will have of choice from three suggestions.

This turned out to be the farking yank dipshit used the "Spelling Correct" function of an ancient copy of WordPerfect on their laptop to suggest "...amusing..." or "...wacky..." suggestions of our names.

 

Guys, guys, what are we saying? What are we saying?

There’s no right way to live. No right way to dress.

What we need is more love. C’mon. C’mon. Big hug fellas. Just mind my nipples as my top’s off.