I’ve used my laptop with the dvd slot before. Bigger and better picture. If you meant movie choices, can’t help. I hate the stupid movies they put out for kids these days. Even if Trump loves them.
We had a Panasonic portable DVD player which we used for years. Child is older now and can pick his own entertainment on his phone, but that DVD player was a lifesaver on a bunch of trips. We went with Panasonic because we trusted the brand, since my wife was working with their batteries when she was at Tesla. I'm pretty sure there are still Panasonic portable DVD players out there but any knowledge I have of the field is ten years old now.
My daughter (16) read Jack Kerouac's On the Road recently and asked me if I did anything like that, since "it was from about the same time." Yeah, like I have ever uttered a phrase like "we had wild bop to urge us on," or ever asked someone "Whither goest thou, man?" And I remember when you could buy a car for a nickel.
Take a day, or half day, to visit Manhattan Beach. Or are you talking movies? How old are the kiddos?
Going off season makes a huge difference. When I lived in FL, I worked at Disney for a couple years, in the Magic Kingdom (Haunted Mansion and Jungle Cruise). It was an extension of working there as a seasonal employee. Prior to working there, I was not a huge fan of Disney, particularly Disney World (Orlando). Up until the early 2000s, Disney had a huge influence politically in Orlando, and was a turn off. But after working at Disney, I had a different view. Sure, they maintained huge political influence*, but I got a different view. One of the things they do is tell a story really, really well. The next time you (anybody) visits a park, take a look at how smooth the transitions are from one "land" to the next. But there is also a lot of external Disney "goodness" as well. When I was there, it seemed about 50% of all businesses had some kind of Disney discount. And not just restaurants and such, but it also got into auto dealerships and at least one of the malls promoted the discount to employees of the Parks. Plus, there was a whole lot of off-Disney talent. Musical dinner theater all over was outstanding, and the opera got consistently good reviews. And I'm just speaking from working in the park. Working in the offices was a whole other level of amazing. We would get the occasional intern work a ride for a day or so to understand what we go went though, and they would tell us about life in the office. And occasionally we would get somebody more corporate come speak to us before opening talking about what they offered (and it would be confirmed on occasion). But working there, off season is the best. @rslfanboy It is also necessary to plan the park trip. Things have changed, but when going off season, it was possible to hit every ride (yes, we did hit every ride, not just the priorates), and this was with Fast Pass (I think they call it something different now). But, from experience as both a former employee and also a visitor, don't focus on getting on ALL the rides, just what y'all want to see/experience. Also, consider the parade(s). If you need a rest, that is a great time to take one (but get there early to get a good seat). If not, the parade(s) are a great time to take in a popular ride. * - As an example, when high speed rail was first proposed in FL, Disney submitted an official proposal for consideration that had the ONLY stop in Orlando to on Disney property. Disney also uses and abuses the College Program and International Workers program to keep wages low (or they used to, not sure if they still do). College Program and International Workers Program got university credit, so Disney was able to pay them below minimum wage.
We never really had bad trips. Planning was a lot easier back then and planes weren’t like Greyhound busses. A couple of time I had to switch plans. If I didn’t get back for my next scheduled shift I would get fired so I would leave a bit of time. But got caught in a BA Strike in London. Surprise!! But I found a flight to Vancouver BC and a Western flight to LAX. I spent 15 years with airlines.
The SIL insisted on us going in October. And it made all the difference. We went once between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it was a mess. It was very overwhelming. Of course, there was the SIL's family with 2 kids, MIL, and the wife and me. It was a lot of fun, but there were people everywhere. Now my wife wants us to all go (both sides of the family) to Disney. The issue is her family will burn in the summer sun of Orlando. They barely cope in Virginia in the summer. so those months are out. The week of Thanksgiving is the only time we can go. That or Christmas week. We've had several rounds of conversations about moving that idea to sometime in October, but the sister and SIL won't pull their kids out of school. So, to ease the blow, we think the lesser of 2 evils is Thanksgiving. The last time we planned a family trip, my older sister invited friends, who invited their friends. It ended up being 13 people, with 7 actual family members. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/florida-man.2016549/page-24#post-40436317 Oh yeah, I forgot my sister said they were bringing their kids. Come to find out their "kids" have a 401K, can rent a car. and have debt.
Lol. My brother’s daughters are coming. They are 18, 21, and 23. We are kinda going with his accounting firm on a slight group discount (10% or something). They picked the days and we chose whether or not to go. No haggling. We don’t even have firm plans to dine together.
We decided not to go last time as we saw the writing on the wall when my sister invited her friends and they started inviting people. Since my sister is not a planner and more of a "along for the ride" person, it went as well as expected. They got a VRBO that took longer than expected to get to the parks. The coup de grace was my sister did not know Universal was two theme parks and you had to pay for each separately. My niece and her girlfriend were the only ones who picked up on it, but their warning fell on deaf ears. So they bought tickets to both parks. This time we circumvented the decision and I, the younger sister, and SIL will plan it. We explicitly told my older sister not to invite people, since it is a family affair.
Back from Disneyland. It was crowded, but it was the Friday and Saturday of a national holiday weekend. I did two rides in two days, but in my defense, a bunch of time was spent on my kid's musical experience (long story, but the short version is that his 8th grade band trip was cancelled in the spring of 2020 due to Covid, and the band teacher put together this informal trip with alumni to try to give them the experience they were denied before they graduated from high school, and there's a lot of moving parts in getting a performance at Disneyland accomplished). It was my wife's first trip to Disneyland since she was a teenager, so we spent a lot of time strolling the parks to see what it was like, and while the immersive nature of the new lands (e.g. Cars Land and Avengers Campus in California Adventure, and Star Wars Land in Disneyland) were impressive, it was way too crowded for her to really enjoy anything. She also did two rides in two days - one with me (the Little Mermaid ride in California Adventure), and one with our kid while they were waiting for one of the call times for the music stuff (the Monsters Inc ride in California Adventure). My kid and I managed to get the Star Wars Rise of the Resistance ride done with less than an hour's wait, but my wife does not have the patience to wait that long for anything. I think my kid got a few more rides in on his own or with his band buddies but he's also not the all day in the park, shut the place down kind of guy. There was an incident with a chipmunk - all I can say is that if you turn around and see a six foot tall chipmunk right behind you, it's totally normal to scream like a child. I'm not ashamed. So, expectations for rslfanboy - probably gonna be crowded, hopefully not as much as our trip but don't expect too much.
So, day 1 went OK, until it started to rain. They shut down everything outside, which meant everything inside had insane waits. There was a lightning watch, so pools were closed too. Day 2 was better, but we were trying to do stuff together as a family a bunch, so it moved a little slow. At night, things got frustrating as electrical issues kept shutting down attractions we were in line for or had reserved. Kinda soured the experience. Day 3 was magical. Everything except dinner went well. We had figured out the lay of the park, the reservation system worked great, we did all the rides we wanted, and even hit a bunch of the side-attractions like an abbreviated Lion King musical, met Tinkerbelle (and a bunch of characters just walking around), watched the Main Street parade. My oldest (6) went back out at night with me because she really wanted to see the fireworks. We got there a bit late, but it was absolutely magical and a memory I will hold dear. The genie thing was a complete waste on day 1 (rain day), so-so on day 2, and fantastic on day 3. Friday (day 3) seemed the easiest to get onto rides and navigate the park. It was just as packed, but everything just ran smoother. Maybe it was just better staffed, or the rain on Wednesday just messed up with the flow of the park? The car ride wasn’t a complete failure! We only had to resort to video (laptop with dvd writer/player powered by inverter plugged into the cigarette lighter) for the last 1.5hr stretch of the drive. The DJ Funkyfoot book on tape won the day. We are kicking it in Santa Monica visiting some family and going to museums and beach for another couple days, hitting St. George for Thanksgiving, and then making it home on the weekend. Solid 2week trip. I don’t think we’ll do another Disney trip for years. Maybe one more before the oldest is out of elementary?
Forget DeSantis, Disney World hits an incredible milestone. Meatball Ron's woke war on Disney has had little effect. On a side note, my SIL and her family are Disney-crazy. She used to work there until recently. She wants to have a family vacation there during Thanksgiving week. I am ok with the idea. Thanksgiving is known to be busy. The real downside is the SIL turns into a dictator when planning and doesn't know how to go with the flow. The wife and I know things never tend to go 100% as planned and we try to be as amenable as possible. We all went in 2017 or 2018 and the best thing about I remember when we broke off and did our own thing. Hopefully, we can have a day to ourselves
Well, back from Disney World. Flew out on New Years Day, back on the 5th so 3 days at the Parks. In order, did Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. Out the door well before sunrise each day but home early, lights out and kids asleep by 7:30 (they are 4 and 7). We stayed at one of the value resorts on property (Pop Century). Basic room, but were were only there to sleep. It is connected to the Skyliner which is great. Favorite rides at each park were Seven Dwarves Coaster at Magic Kingdom (refused to go on it 30 years ago with my family ), Ratatouille at Epcot, and then Rise of the Resistance and Smuggler's Run (basically all the Star Wars stuff) at Hollywood.
Looks like Meatball and Disney have come to a cease-fire Disney Reaches Settlement in Florida Lawsuit Over Theme Park District The settlement included that Disney may drop its federal complaint against Meatball pending negotiations between Disney and the Central Florida Oversight Tourism Board. Last month, Disney filed an appeal after a federal judge dismissed its free speech case against Meatball, saying the governor was within his rights as appointed to him. Also, countersuits on both sides are being withdrawn. Disney will also rescind the last-minute deal that neutralized the state-appointed board and publicly humiliated DeSantis. Not sure how much autonomy Disney gets after this. Having said that, Meatball spent a year talking about how he's taking on woke corporations. So he decided Disney was going to be his target, his poster child for his attack on woke corporations and wokeness. That was going to be the thing that distinguished him as a presidential candidate. Well, a year later he goes back to governing Florida.
I found this video really interesting. It's about the recently closed, insanely expensive Star Wars hotel / immersive experience at Disney World in Florida. "But Sam, that's four hours long. You expect us to watch a four hour YouTube video on this?" No, you don't have to, but if you had heard about this hotel / experience thing and were considering it (at least until you saw the price tag) and you want an in-depth discussion about how it failed, it's an interesting video. You can watch it in little bits. I still can't get over the price tag for that "experience". I paid way less for a luxury rooftop suite in Zermatt, Switzerland with a view of the Matterhorn, and she had a teeny windowless cruise ship room that she could barely unpack in.
Update on Thanksgiving for the Raza family. It is going terrible planning-wise. My sister and her family (family of 3), other sister and family (family of 3), my wife (2), MIL(1) all found out that the SIL (family of 3) booked a hotel without consulting the rest of the group. We tried to coordinate for the fall school break but the SIL unilaterally decided that Thanksgiving week was it. Honestly, there are a lot of family dynamics in play.* Both my sisters and wife were very upset when they found out. Both my sisters family cannot take the days off that week. That cuts out my entire side of the family. So two people (SIL and BIL) made a decision for 12 people, cutting out 6 people in the process. *She is the youngest plus the favorite. Plus a traumatic event that made everyone overly protective of her. To give an example of the stuff she has pulled, for one of my wife's birthdays she was supposed to book my wife's favorite restaurant, a steakhouse. The SIL is a foodie and decided to book a French restaurant instead because she wanted to try it. I ended up footing a $400 bill to a restaurant that my wife and I didn't want to go to. It is still a sore spot to this day.
Sounds like you need to send a note to the SIL along the lines of "It's great you were able to make Thanksgiving plans for yourself, but since you did so without consulting the rest of us, we're sorry we won't be able to join you. However, if your plans change, we'll be staying at ---- it would be great if can join us. If not, have a wonderful Thanksgiving."
If the weird and fraught family dynamics could be solved by being reasonable, they wouldn't be weird and fraught. Raza, give us a heads up before the next installment so I can get some popcorn started.
If Thanksgiving, the most reasonable of holidays goes like this, don’t let us know how other holidays go.
TBH, I was essentially repeating something I had to do in my own family which has its share of weird and fraught dynamics. The only difference was I ended my note with "Nobody is interested in enabling your childish, narcissistic bullshit you selfish cvnt."
Yeah...that isn't going to work. Experience has taught me that somehow I (more importantly my wife) end up being on the short end of the stick. A decade in and I still haven't cracked this particular code. Heck, my wife still hasn't figured it out. The Disney/Thanksgiving thing came to light a few weeks ago and I am just now to the point of discussing it without grinding my teeth. All in all, she is a great person. All interactions with them, however, are on their terms. And it's subtle. This is the first time I can remember it being this blatant (somehow it needed to be immediate and conveniently fit their schedule) Her husband is as much to blame but somehow he manages to skirt by. This is my side of the family's 2nd interaction with the SIL and they are not impressed. Sometime before COVID my younger sister and family came to DC to visit. We planned a dinner for both sides of the family. The SIL (and her husband) kept adding "small request" multiple times and it caused my sister's family to make a choice of scrapping their visit to the African American museum or missing the family dinner. At the time, you needed to RSVP well in advance to visit. Somehow when this was brought up, it was viewed as my sister as being unreasonable. Sorry for venting. We now have a decision to make - drop money on a vacation during the busiest travel time of the year and go to one of the busiest family destinations in the world for a week where - let's face it -- we will be on the itinerary of the only grandkid. Or not go and have my wife take the brunt of the blame of ruining the family vacation.