Travel – Ryan Voigtman

26Feb 2018 by Ryan No Comments

Universal Studios Hollywood

Travel

It took 2 hours...to drive 36 miles over to Universal Studios. Such a short distance made really long by traffic. As soon as we got into Universal Studios around 10am we immediately went to Hogwarts and rode Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. The Harry Potter ride and land was basically the entire reason for making the trip to Universal Studios. The ride was a really cool mixture of Screens/projections and animatronic models. There are a few transitions that feel natural and seamless in the ride that leave you with a wow that was really cool feeling. We rode this ride twice once first thing at 10:30, and again as the last ride of the night at 7pm. The wait-times at Universal are a lot longer. For lunch we ate…

25Feb 2018 by Ryan No Comments

USS Iowa Battleship Museum and the Hollywood sign

Travel

On February 19th we visited the USS Iowa museum in Los Angeles. My brother really likes US Navy ships and wanted to see a Battleship. It was neat to see, and well done. they are still opening some of the rooms up on the tours. This was a ship that carried Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference. We got to walk all the way up to the pilots deck, seeing crew cabins, officer cabins, the captains quarters, and numerous gun emplacements on the way up. The highlight for me was listening to a Veteran talk about the ship and its history. [gallery columns="4" size="medium" ids="783,784,785,786,787,788,789,790,791,792,793,794,795,796,797"] Next we went on an adventure to see the Hollywood sign. Google maps took us all around on this backstreets on the way to Griffith park…

24Feb 2018 by Ryan No Comments

The Void: Secrets of the Empire

Travel

This was pretty much the entire reason for the trip down to Anaheim. Ever since reading about Secrets of the Empire I wanted to see it for myself. It is Hyper Reality, meaning that you wear a VR headset but there are actual walls and objects you can touch as well. It is around 35 minutes long. This was a lot of fun to do, so much fun that it seemed like we had barely started and it was over already. The backpack feels heavy at first, but once you get started it feels comfortable. The story is satisfying and immerse. You really feel like you are part of the story and on a mission. Spoilers after the photograph. (more…)

23Feb 2018 by Ryan No Comments

Disneyland

Travel

On February 18th I was at Disneyland in Anaheim CA. The park opened at 8am, but they let people into the main street plaza at 7:30. Both parks have an Opening ceremony for the Park when they let people enter, and it usually involves a family that gets selected, and sometimes includes a character. The opening on Sunday had three characters, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Pluto for the opening. We immediately went to Tomarrowland and lined up for Space Mountain. By 8:12am we had completed the first ride of Space Mountain, and what a fun ride to start the day with. Although it jerked us around quite a bit (we were seated in the middle. When we rode it later in the day and got the front cart it…

22Feb 2018 by Ryan No Comments

Disney California Adventure

Travel

On Saturday the 17th we went to Disney's California Adventure park. This park is a lot of fun, even though it doesn't have the same status as DIsneyland itself. We actually saw more characters in this part then we did in Disneyland, and while it was busy, in hindsight it was not nearly as packed as Disneyland gets. We saw lots of Marvel characters around and that is always fun to see. We even saw Groot. There was also a cool Avengers Jeep that we saw a few times, one of those times was with Black Panther and this guards. They recently remodeled The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror into a Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission Breakout! (Opened on May 27th, 2017). We started with that ride as soon…