Tag: video

A Travel-Related Remembrance Of Tim Conway

Veteran actor Tim Conway passed away the other day and his was one of those passings that, to coin a phrase, “got me right in the feels.”

Like so many others of my generation, I mainly knew Tim Conway from his years on the Carol Burnett show. Being able to stay up all the way until 11pm on Saturday nights to watch the show in the 70s was a huge treat, and Tim Conway was, for me, one of the highlights of the show. Whether he was playing Mr. Tudball, The Old Man, Mickey Hart in the “Mama’s Family” segments, or any one of hundreds of one-off characters, I knew he was going to make not only me laugh, but definitely Harvey Korman laugh, and probably most of the rest of the cast in whatever sketch it was, too.

As a variety show, The Carol Burnett show had sketches of all different themes and genres, including travel. Like this one, which features Tim and Harvey…

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The Daredevil Superfans Who Snuck Inside An EPCOT Attraction To Explore & Document It Before It Was Destroyed

With time comes change, and there’s no greater example of this than at Disney parks. In fact, Walt Disney himself was said to say, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

Growth can sometimes be a whole new park, or a new land within a park. But sometimes that change is in the form of tearing one attraction down to make room for another. At Walt Disney World, attractions such as The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh replaced Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Journey Into Your Imagination With Figment replaced Journey Into Your Imagination (which replaced the original Journey Into Imagination – we wrote about that whole hot mess in this post), and an entire nightclub complex, Pleasure Island, was “reimagined” into the current Disney Springs shopping district (granted, work on Disney Springs didn’t even start in earnest until about half a decade after they closed Pleasure Island but let’s save that for another blog post).

Horizons was a dark ride attraction at Epcot that opened in 1983, closed in 1994, reopened in 1995 while Test Track was being built and Universe of Energy was under renovation, and closed again, this time for good, in 1999. It was demolished in mid-2000 to make way for the current Mission: SPACE attraction. Horizons had something of a cult following and to this day, there’s lament of the loss of what some think is the best attraction ever seen in the history of Epcot.

Horizons1
PC: Sam Howzit/Flickr

When Disney attractions close, there’s historically no official documentation, at least not that fans ever get to see. Two young adults in Florida who loved Horizons decided to change that…

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A Humorous Look At First Class Travel (For The Rest Of Us)

For some people in the points/miles/travel world, flying First Class is an everyday occurrence to the point where it’s no big deal to them. Maybe they have a bajillion miles because they churn credit cards and know how to spend well or something like that. Or maybe they’re fortunate enough to be able to spend the ridiculous amount of money airlines ask for a First Class seat. Or maybe their company is willing to foot that bill. Perhaps they’re able to pull First Class every once in a great while, with careful frequent flyer mile savings. Or perhaps they’re like most of us who might get to glance at the First Class section while walking to Coach, but that’s as close as we get.

Welp, for the rest of us, here’s a funny (and clean!) video of a “only see First Class as they pass by it” passenger during his very first experience in First Class, as well as after he landed:

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Disney Homage or Ripoff? You Decide. Nara Dreamland Theme Park: The Lost Video Footage

Several months back, I wrote a #TBT post about our visit to Nara Dreamland, which was a theme park in Nara, Japan that opened in the 1960s. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Disneyland should have been very flattered, because Nara Dreamland was an obvious knockoff of (or shall we say “was very much inspired by”) the famous park in Anaheim, CA. As the story goes, the people who were going to build Nara Dreamland were in negotiations with Disney and then…weren’t. But they still kept the Disneyesque look of the park.

Thanks to the building and growth of Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan, the years hadn’t been kind to Nara Dreamland and by the time we got there in April 2005, it was obviously on its last legs. The park closed in August of 2006 and after sitting abandoned for more than a decade, demolition of the property began in October, 2016.

I had mentioned in my #TBT report that Joe was positive we had video footage of our visit. Well, guess what? We found it!

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Famous Last Words: “Hooray, I’m In Boarding Group One!”

I’ve already written a post about my disdain of the “cattle call” methodology of getting onto a plane. Oh sure, Southwest has figured out ways to make it more bearable but for most of the other airlines, it’s still a matter of everyone standing by the gates, waiting for their group to be called. It sure can one LLLOOONNNGGG wait, though, even if you’re in Boarding Group 1, as the man in this video quickly discovered:
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