Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: June 2008 Archives

On our last excursion to the exotic, mysterious environs of Central Florida, we decided to wander up north of our usual haunts around Walt Disney World and check out Universal Studios. We hadn't been there in quite some time - maybe four years or more. My primary impetus for the visit was the opening of a new ride at the Studios based on The Simpsons. Of course I had to go and check this out - some might say it was a calling. I know that some consider Citizen Kane or a John Ford Western to be the pinnacle of American entertainment, but the truth is that they're all wrong. For me, and similarly right thinking types like me, the apex of Art will always be The Simpsons. With that in mind you can see why it became necessary, nay imperative, for me to go and sample the ride.

When we arrived, the ride was still in a soft opening. In other words, there was no assurance that it would be actually be operational, since the engineers were still working out the manifold bugs that come with any new piece of technology. When we got there the ride was running, so after a short wait we got a chance to try it out. As it turned out our ride did suffer a glitch and we got stuck for a short while in the motion simulator until the mechanics could lower us sufficiently to allow us to exit the car.

The Simpsons Ride, though similar to other motion simulator rides, definitely has a different feel to me. For one thing it really does convey the feeling that you're inserted into a cartoon. For another - it's the Simpsons, man! What more could you want? There's beer and doughnuts - virtual ones, true, but still! The ride itself replaces the Back to the Future motion simulator ride, which is one I always kind of liked, but The Simpsons Ride is so much better that I can pretty much live with the substitution.

So the ride was pretty awesome, being stranded on it notwithstanding. We hit a few other attractions, including The Mummy, which was quite cool, but we were pressed for time since we were going to check out the Universal hotels, which was Mary's primary reason for the trip.

So the third of the business class only airlines has cratered, or flamed out, or gone down, or experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure, or whatever airline related simile you want to use. Silverjet we hardly knew you. Seriously, I always did want to do a European trip on one of these airlines (which included Eos and MaxJet) but now I've missed the boat, that ship has sailed....I think I'm going to stop right there.

When all three airlines launched in close proximity to each other we felt that there would eventually be a shake out but all three failing wasn't something even the most pessimistic of us foresaw. But then again we also didn't foresee oil rising up above $130 a barrel or we'd have been putting a lot more of our money on oil futures. It probably didn't help that the three airlines were all servicing the same market - New York to London, either.

Ah, well, I guess we'll have to scrape together our gold chains, sell them, and fly on Virgin Atlantic in the future. We're not altogether broken up by this turn of events as one might expect. Well, except for the bit where we have to get rid of the gold chains. I keep telling the wife that the disco era will rise again someday and we'll be sad we got rid of the chains and the platform shoes and the polyester shirts.