Dec. 13 – While we await Universal’s next epic theme park project in 2025 that will blast them into the future of Universal Destinations & Experiences, this review takes a look at their current newest theme park from 2021, Universal Studios Beijing, which will likely serve as the capstone to the last decade or so of trends by Universal Parks & Resorts… and all the good and bad that entails.
Nov. 16 – Taron. F.L.Y. Klugheim. Rookburgh. It may have taken me three years to write, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. I’m pleased to finally publish Phantasialand (Part 2)!
While my first update of 2024 didn’t arrive until November, I’m hopeful it won’t be the last update before year’s end. I’m already 90% finished with another big review piece (from a visit this year, even!) that I noodled on the last few months while overcoming writer’s block on finishing Phantasialand. And there’s a more personal written project I’m working on that I may be able to share at some point in the near-ish future.
This has been, for better or worse (mostly worse), a major year of change and transition for me (and, now, for everyone else). Earlier this year I updated my About page for the first time in over a decade, including a new Portfolio page where you can see some of the projects I’ve worked on in that time span. There was even a time this summer I got to show the L.A. Times around Six Flags Magic Mountain to help rank all their thrill rides! In the meantime, you can keep up with my latest goings-on at Bluesky, which has become a much nicer online social experience than the website formerly known as Twitter has become. Until next time, take care.
Dec. 22 – My last update was from June 2022 of a park I visited in April 2022. I’ve finally gotten a review published just before 2023 was set to expire, from a park I visited in… November 2021. Tale as old as time. But it’s for Germany’s Phantasialand, beloved by both coaster enthusiasts and theme park aficionados in a way that few if any other parks have as successfully brought together both affinities. If any park review is worth the wait, surely it’s this one? Be warned, this is just the first of a two-parter review. Klugheim and Rookburgh will be coming in a future update, which I am sure you all will enjoy reading from the comfort of your retirement homes.
Jun. 12 – Today’s update is partially about appreciating and even loving works of art from across the political spectrum. Silver Dollar City is one of my favorite parks in the country, both in spite of and because of a lot of locally-flavored weirdness on display. Plus, Outlaw Run is still top-tier RMC, and Time Traveler figures out how to do spinning right. This update is also somewhat unique in that the photos (and reporting) are a hybrid of two separate visits, one from 2015 and the other a few months ago in 2022. (I also visited in 2006, making Silver Dollar City the most remote park from my various homeplaces that I’ve been to on three separate occasions.)
May 11 – This essay took a while longer to write than expected, mostly from procrastinating from having to wrestle with the more complex ideas presented by this subject matter. Last August I finally got around to experiencing Meow Wolf, the original. Now I wrote about how we choose to navigate the world and how those choices weigh on us over time; about Nietzsche and art and multiversal portals and the business of maximizing dwell time. Like the attraction this essay is based on, I’m not sure if the themes all fit together neatly, but maybe there’s a couple of ideas that stick.
Jan. 16 – I want to make very clear before reading this travel journal that I enjoyed my time in Santa Fe. It’s a beautiful city filled with lovely art and culture and good people. And I have some other thoughts about it.
Dec. 30 – Before we enter 2022, I wanted to wrap up this year with a few quick posts looking back on my 2021 travels. This first set looks back at Albuquerque, which is a city I enjoyed with a decent family-run amusement park with a pretty good wooden coaster at the center of it. Nothing major or revelatory, but the kind of experience that’s still worthy of at least a couple of words.
I’ll return sometime a bit later with a “part two” to the New Mexico trip focused on Santa Fe and a particular attraction there that everyone’s been talking about. I’d also like to write something about Phantasialand which, if you follow my Twitter or Flickr, you may know I had the special opportunity to visit this past November. I also very recently completed a cross-country road trip with quite a few unique stops, but I don’t expect anything from that to make it to these pages; expect that story to live in photo album and tweet form. Until then, wishing you all a safe and healthy 2022!
Oct. 9 – I wrote about the new Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure, the meaning of theme parks and superheroes in the age of COVID, the difference between designing smartly and designing for expectations, and small acts of heroism of attempting to make a better world. Also reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT and Web-Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, with thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of both of these surprisingly (refreshingly?) low-stakes narrative attractions.
Full disclosure: I originally intended to finish and publish this within a few weeks of my first visit shortly after the land opened in June 2021, to prove that I could still write something timely and relevant. Well, you know how that goes. Honestly, this essay didn’t shape up quite the way I wanted it and it went on the back burner for several months until I completed a second visit. It’s not quite what I hoped it to be, but it’s still decent enough that I wanted to finish it and share.
If the last several months weren’t already an indication, I’d expect the pace of updates to this site to slow down once again now that life is resuming and my attention is turning to some different projects that can’t be announced. I still expect to post here from time to time when a park visit or topic strikes me, not that this Avengers Campus essay was really the best example of that working in practice. But I’ll be back again soon. In the meantime, if you’d like something more to read and hadn’t already read the massive report I finally completed from the half year I spent in Asia in 2011, why not start here?
Jun. 13 – I’m finished!
May 24 – Ten years ago I visited Tokyo DisneySea for my first (and still only) time, and for ten years I’ve been keeping and developing thoughts about this park that many claim to be the World’s Greatest. I won’t contest that it’s not a Very Good theme park, but I also don’t believe the park is above criticism. A decade in the making (and over a month of writing and editing), please enjoy my review of Tokyo DisneySea.
(P.S., I’d also like to celebrate FINALLY completing my reports from my nearly six months in Asia all the way back in 2011, but I’m not quite there yet. I still need to do a quick conclusion page to the whole thing, which I hope to have online as soon as I can. THEN I’ll be 100% done, and can breathe a huge sigh of relief.)
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