Universal Orlando announces summer concert series

by Leigh Caldwell on

Train (“Drops of Jupiter”), Rob Thomas (Matchbox 20) and Counting Crows (“Round Here”) will perform on Saturday nights this summer at Universal Orlando Resort.

It’s the second year for the Summer Concert Series, with seven concerts planned on Saturday nights between June 12 and July 17.

The concerts happen inside the Universal Studios Florida theme park, and they are free with theme park admission.

There’s some great balance in the list of artists performing. Several decades of stardom are represented, which should draw in folks of all ages. (This 30-something will definitely be there on July 17!) Here is the full lineup:

  • June 12, Train
  • June 19, Pitbull
  • June 26, Earth, Wind and Fire
  • July 3, Pat Benatar and REO Speewagon
  • July 10, Rob Thomas
  • July 17, Counting Crows

Universal Orlando has one of the best outdoor concert venues at any theme park, anywhere. Music Plaza opened last year right in front of the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit roller coaster.

White Collar Travel: Five reasons to book your hotel stays in blocks

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Cost-conscious businesses are always looking for ways to reduce travel expenses. So, if you can find a way to cut yours a bit, you’ll get some credit for budgetary discipline, which is always a plus when times are tough. Take the right approach, and you may be able to improve your travel experience, too. If you plan to stay at the same hotel for several months, it may make more sense to make a long-term reservation than to book a week at a time. In addition to saving some money, you’ll be able to cut the amount of stuff you tote with you on the plane and have the same room every week, which means fewer trips to the wrong door when you’ve been at the hotel for sixteen weeks in a row (or longer).

If your project is both long-term and unlikely to change, contact the hotel and ask what they can do for you. Explain the situation – it won’t take long; most of them are incredibly familiar with the business travel dynamic – and ask if they can work something out with you. You’ll have to commit to paying for weekend days as well, but if the overall cost works out in your favor, it’s still a savings, and that makes it inherently valuable.

This won’t work all the time. But, even if the long-term rate works out to a breakeven proposition, it still may be worth accepting. Here are five reasons why:1. No more check-in lines
Checking in is a pain in the ass. Even if you have super-duper-elite status, the short line still takes time. You have to step up to the desk, leave your credit card and get the rundown on the hotel. Some of the introductory remarks may be curtailed when the front desk staff recognizes you, but it still takes time that you don’t want to spend – especially when you’ve just gotten off a plane or left the office. Book for the long run, and you’ll be able to go straight to your room.

2. Lighter load
Since you’ll have the same room every week, you can leave a lot of your stuff there. Run the numbers and see if it’s cheaper to use the hotel’s cleaning service because of the money you’re saving. You can have your clothes picked up the night before you leave and find them waiting for you when you arrive. If you’re working in a major city, you can always drop your clothes off at a wash-dry-fold service and pick them up when you’re back in town. You’ll only have to carry your laptop and books Kindle.

3. Predictability
Peak periods can sneak up on you, especially if you’re staying in the same location for months at a time. Rates can spike with little warning, putting you in a position to have to explain the increased cost to your boss or client. You can avoid this with a long-term reservation, which makes budgeting and forecasting much easier for those who have to do it.

4. No more wrong door
It happens to the best of us. You get to your hotel room, swipe your key and push – nothing happens. You try it again … with the same result. The third, fourth and fifth times, you get angry and finally march down to the front desk ready to raise hell. The polite, professional employee then reminds you of your room number, which isn’t the same as the one you just tried to enter. Embarrassed, you go to your room – the right room – to find that there’s nothing wrong with your key. If you have the same room every week, you won’t have a sheepish look on your face the next time you walk by the front desk.

5. Informal perks
The hotel staff will be told that you’re going to be around for a while. Everyone will know who you are and how valuable your business is to the property. Occasionally, you’ll get your bar tab comp’ed or find a bottle of wine in your room. From time to time, the general manager will keep an eye out for you and ask how your stay is (which the staff will notice). You can’t always quantify this, but you’ll definitely feel the difference.

Read more White Collar Travel here.

Disney Parks testing new, talking Mickey Mouse for character greetings

by Leigh Caldwell on

Meeting Mickey Mouse has been a pivotal part of a visit to Disneyland for generations. Park visitors wait in line for up to 90 minutes to meet Mickey, get his autograph and pose for a snapshot with the Disney icon. But all of this interaction took place in silence, until now.

Some Disneyland guests are reporting that they have participated in tests with a new Mickey Mouse character – a walking, talking Mickey. The Disney Blog has posted videos of one of the interactive character greeting sessions.

When I first heard about this, I expected to see Mickey saying some generic phrases to each guest, but that’s not at all what the video shows. Mickey Mouse greets a group of guests and invites them to take scrapbook photos with him. But then, he interacts privately with each group of guests, speaking their names and reacting to what they do.

Now, this was a test. It is likely not going to happen to you at Disneyland tomorrow, and it may never happen on a large scale. But it seems to work very well in the short videos below:

Don’t Park in Austin: a long-winded travel tale with a moral at the end

by Andrew Evans on


I try so hard to love Austin, really, but Austin doesn’t make it easy.

Yeah, I had so much fun there, what a cool city, it’s not like the rest of Texas, blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t matter. In life, bad memories so quickly suffocate the good ones, like a python squeezing the life out of some innocent Bambi lookalike. Bambi’s not what we remember–we remember the python . . .

When Gadling decided to hold our annual get-together deep in the heart of Texas, I was elated. For one, I’m Texan, born and bred. I planned on flying to Houston, spending some time with family, then heading up to Austin for a weekend of blogger decadence. I drove my parents’ car up and made it all the way to tiny Bastrop, Texas when my vehicle overheated (it’s darn hot in Texas). A mechanic in town said he would fix the car but that it would take the whole weekend. Luckily, this tiny Texas town had an Enterprise Rental with one last remaining rental car which allowed me to be back on the road to Austin within the hour.

Our first day in Austin was super fun as I met all the legendary magicians behind this fabulous website that you know and love. On Saturday night, the fun-loving Gadling crew went out for dinner and settled on Ironworks BBQ, which claims to be “Real Texas Barbecue.” I parked in their parking lot which had a sign that read “For Ironworks customers ONLY”, which we all were. We spent about two hours at the restaurant and probably around $300 on food collectively. Afterwords, we hit one of the nearby clubs. When I came back to the get the car (around midnight), the parking lot was empty. Apparently, once the restaurant closes, they tow. (Really? That’s how you treat your out-of-town guests?)
Now, what in the world could possibly be worse than getting your car towed? Getting towed by J&J Towing–that’s what. Apparently even weird cool hipster Austin has its share of sheisters and they all work for J&J Towing. Thanks to the internet, I discovered that J&J Towing actually has a long and strong reputation for illegal tows for which they’ve been successfully sued in several courts of law in Texas. They’ve even earned a single brave star on Yelp with the best review being “These People Need Jesus”.

I concur. These people do need Jesus, but a simple conscious would also suffice. At 1 AM, I called them up to retrieve my car. Not only were they rather rude and unhelpful, all they told me that there was, “No way you’re getting your car back this weekend.” Since I was driving a rental car, the towing company requires a notarized affidavit from my rental car company stating that the car was in fact in my name at the time of getting towed. This is a new state-wide law in Texas, according to Justin, the man I was speaking with (Justin refused to give me his last name for fear that I would send some Texas-style justice in his direction and perhaps he was right).

Realizing I was now legally liable but legally powerless, I turned to Enterprise Rental for help. I called their Roadside Assistance number, waited through 10 minutes of hold advertising and then was told by a bored employee that there was nothing she could do. And then (I kid you not) . . she hung up on me (Gasp!). Now a little angry, I then called the Customer Service line, held for another ten minutes and was told again that there was nothing they could do for me. When I asked, “That’s the best you can offer me?”, she hung up on me, too. No she didn’t!

I fell asleep angry and powerless at 3 AM, then woke up at 6:30 AM and contacted the Enterprise Rental at the Austin airport (the closest office that was open on a Sunday). I then took a cab out to the airport, handed over my first rental keys and convinced them to give me a new car for the duration of my rental. They agreed that getting a notarized affidavit on a Sunday in Texas was impossible but that it was now their problem and that this kind of thing happens “all the time.” Yes,you heard it from Enterprise: rental cars in Austin get towed all the time and are never successfully recovered by their renters.

By 11 AM on Sunday, I was situated with my third car in two days and left the final throes of Gadling’s fun-filled weekend for another day of work just north of the city. The next day, Monday, I returned my second rental car to the office in Bastrop where I discovered that my first rental car had still not been recovered. I was charged $280.00 for the towing and impound but promised that there would be no further related expenses. Enterprise confessed that they too were having a very difficult time retrieving the car from J&J Towing and that it might take days more, if not the rest of the week.

In retrospect, seeing as I had purchased full insurance on the rental car, I should have just reported the car stolen, which is actually kind of what happened. If you park in the parking lot of the establishment at which you are eating and when you come back you find the car is gone, then your car was stolen.

Now there’s a Texas way to deal with this situation and there’s the nicer way. Since, I’m a nice guy, I’m sticking to words. Frankly though, y’all disappointed me! City of Austin–you fail. Ironworks BBQ? You fail, too. And Enterprise Rental? You get a D minus (have fun getting your car back). As for J&J towing, I leave you to your own heavy stack of karma. I imagine when you eventually do get served, it’ll look something like No Country for Old Men and the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The travel moral of the story is don’t park your rental car in downtown Austin, ever. Better yet, just skip Austin and head straight to the Hill Country. They can’t tow you out there and if they try, you’re legally allowed to shoot them. The other moral of the story is that the state of Texas has a bunch of cockamamie laws regarding rental cars, so watch out!

The final moral of the story is: Don’t Mess With Gadling! Just like you don’t mess with Texas, you don’t mess with a bunch of travel writers. We may be limp-wristed computer nerds with passports, but these days, the keyboard is mightier than the tow truck.

*The real casualty in all of this was Mike Barish’s Hello Kitty piñata, who at this very moment is still sitting locked up in the scuzzy backlot of J&J towing and enduring who knows what kind of hellish torments.

Mountainfilm Festival unveils 2010 line-up

by Kraig Becker on

Organizers for this year’s Mountainfilm Festival, scheduled to take place from May 28th through the 31st in Telluride, Colorado, have announced the line-up of films scheduled to be screened during the event. The list of films deal with some very diverse, and often provocative, subject matter, with topics ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the impact of plastic on our lives and the environment to the looming extinction crisis, and beyond. Whether you’re a budding climber, an active environmentalist, or just have a love of good cinema, you’re sure to find something in the line-up that well peak your interest.

The most well known film on the list is, without a doubt, The Cove, which made the rounds on the film festival circuit last year before going on to win the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary. The movie struck a chord with viewers and critics alike for its no nonsense, and often graphic, portrayal of the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan. The Cove returns for an encore showing at the Mountainfilm Festival this year after having a single, surprise screening last year.

Other intriguing films to make the cut include an intense and personal look at life on the front lines of the war in Afghanistan entitled Restrepo and a climbing film called Point of No Return that follows mountaineers Jonny Copp and Micah Dash on what would ultimately be their final climb. The festival will also mark the U.S. debut of The 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about Rebiya Kadeer, an activist from the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Kadeer has been very vocal in her criticisms of the Chinese government, and as a result she was thrown in prison for more than six years. The film explores her activist lifestlyle and the toll it has taken on her family.

The films being screened at Mountainfilm are just one element of a very active weekend in Telluride. In addition to the movies, there is the Moving Mountains Symposium on the opening day of the festival. This year’s topic is the Extinction Crisis, and there will be a number of speakers on hand to discuss this very important subject. In fact, there will be great speakers attending the festival all weekend long, with the likes of Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and Ed Viesturs, America’s preeminent mountaineer, on hand to share tales of their adventures.

Passes are still available for the film festival in a variety of packages. Click here to check out the details. And for a complete list of the films that will be screened at Mountainfilm, click here.