Blackpool has changed. That's what I constantly hear. Money is flowing into it like some sort of economic tsunami. They even have a premiership football team now, the ultimate badge of approval. Personally, I was pretty sure it still smelled of grease and horse shit, but Louise has a shorter memory. So, it was decided we'd go to the promenade after we'd finished at the Zoo (more on that later), which was the main reason for the trip.

What the hell is going on with the Stag and Hen Nights? Actually, it's not so much the Hen Nights, it's the Stag Nights. Within three minutes of getting out of the car I was surrounded by people dressed as school girls in tight white shirts and short skirts with long socks and trainers. Win. Well, it would be if they weren't big hairy blokes. This gaggle of hairy schoolgirls also had two vicars complete with their arses on display like Baboons. No prude, but it was a pretty gruesome sight. It also left me thinking of exactly what conversation could actually lead to seven blokes thinking it was all a good idea? They weren't alone though, five minutes later it was five blokes dressed as sexy nurses. I'm not sure these retina scaring experiences were worth the group of gorgeous 'Daisy Dukes' parading around in the rain.

They do seem to be doing a lot of work on the promenade. The 'beach side'. I have no idea what they are doing as at the moment, it just seems to be a mounds of building materials. The trouble is, I'm not sure the coastal side of the promenade was or is the problem. It's the crap on the other side that makes the whole place feel like a complete dive. The various 'hotels' look like grime palaces and the various attractions are just a complete joke. The thing is, people must actually spend money on them. It was frightening to see one really shoddy looking 'hotel' after another with 'no vacancies' hanging in the window. How do people spend more than one day haunting the dismal promenade? What needs to happen is a serious gutting and upgrade of the 'hotel and attraction' side. Blackpool needs to become too expensive for its current customer base by providing better attractions and better hotels. Oddly, the McDonalds towards the South Shore is the way to go. There are versions of 'Blackpool' across the world that have done this to one degree or another (one example being the upgrade of International Drive in Orlando, slowly but surely).

At the moment, the Blackpool target market seems to be two totally different segments. I suspect it's all a bit night and day with early evening seeing both markets clash. The groups of young people, often same sex, turning up for drunken weekends and Stag and Hen nights is obvious. They were on display as early as 1600 hours. There are only so many places that actually allow large same sex groups to invade the accommodation, Blackpool is obviously still one of them. The second group seems to be families on lower incomes, which I still find surprising as I'm not 100% convinced that Blackpool is actually a cheap holiday. I suppose it's all relative, but the hotel would seem to add up over seven days for a family group and then there is the continual expense of the cheap but not cheap attractions along the promenade?

As for the potential candidate for the Ultimate Ghost Train? Well, we started at the North Shore and by the time we'd walked all along the promenade to the South Shore, in the wet, our eyes being scarred by a range of trashy attractions, really bad 'hotels' and the low grade gene pool we couldn't be bothered. It also didn't look that impressive from the outside, but then nothing probably does in that weather. It was mostly a mental thing, our brains had moved on and we just couldn't persuade ourselves the 5 GBP each was worth it. I'll have to wait until Universal gets its act together.

The only positive thing I can say is it didn't smell of grease and horse shit? I think the rain just washed it all away.

There are various things that just seem to disappear from this world rarely to be seen again. One such thing is ghost trains. I used to like ghost trains. Let's face it, in the majority of cases they were totally crap, but there was something about them. I think it was more the potential of them than anything else. The potential of them actually being scary, atmospheric or eerie. Where did they all go? Or have they gone nowhere and I just don't frequent the same places any more? Who knows?

One question that comes to mind is: why has no one built the Ultimate Ghost Train? Surely someone is missing a trick?

One of the best ghost trains that still exists is The Haunted Mansion at the various Disney Parks, but that isn't good enough. They need an extreme version. Teenagers love being scared witless and The Haunted Mansion ain't going to do it. Plus, the ride is a bit dated and a bit too nice. Give those Imagineers a kick up the arse, this thing has legs. The trouble with Disney is they probably couldn't push the envelope enough to make the experience truly brilliant. After all, the one truly atmospheric and edgy experience in Disney World, Alien Encounter, was re-branded to coincide with their Lilo and Stitch film and was seriously hamstrung. Pity that. Universal is probably the one to do it. They even have a number of iconic horror brands and their brand accommodates the edgier experiences.

Think about it. All the wonders of modern movie and attraction technology applied to a Ghost Train with the goal of it being being scary, atmospheric and eerie? Personally, I'd make it a blended experience so that it was partly a ride and partly a walk through attraction. I'd also pace the experience, given people time to soak up the atmosphere, engage with the story, have intense personal scenes and big grand sequences. Use the latest prosthetics and actors in great costumes. It's not like the individual parts of this haven't been done, it's just no one has brought them together under the banner of a 'horror' experience. I'd give the attraction some length so the narrative could rise and fall, say about ten minutes or so.

Since neither Disney or Universal are going to create this Ultimate Ghost Train any time soon I shall have to satisfy my curiosity elsewhere. The answer may be Carnesky's Ghost Train at Blackpool. While I suspect it may not be the most terror inducing experience, it certainly looks interesting. It's a 10-minute long experience and involves live performances, actors and theatrical effects and the train has a driver so all these things can be coordinated without having to deal with a train on a set schedule. Even the name of the experience sounds like something mad out of Dr Parnassus. It has a sense of boldness, grandeur and artistic flair to it.

I may be reporting back on the experience soon.

It's been announced today that Disney World has chosen which town it will be twinned with in the UK. They had a list, and out of that list, they chose...Swindon. There was a shortlist of 25, featuring places like Blackpool, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Chester, Milton Keynes and Wigan. No idea what towns were on the complete list of 25, but are we really saying Swindon is a better option than say Cambridge or Chester? I'd have thought those old towns would have appealed to the US and Disney mindset much more. Hell, if nothing else, I'd have thought Disney executives looking for some international junkets might have preferred a bit of history-laden Chester.

What does this mean for Swindon? Almost certainly they are going to pimp it on some signs, which I'm sure they'll be able to squeeze Tinkerbell or the Mickey glove on. Let's go even further and have a statue of Mickey in the middle of the town or a parade every month! They're getting some Disney ambassadors, with Disney characters coming to the town to bring a 'whole lot of magic to the town' in January. Will the occupants of Swindon get a reduction on tickets to get through the illustrious gates of their twinned town? Possibly the Magic Kingdom will see a new ride in 2011 called the Seven Magic Roundabouts? Let's push the finances and give Swindon a monorail, who wouldn't want that?

I'm sure the 'possibilities' are endless. Swindon will be honoured in the UK Pavilion within EPCOT.

I don't think the Sea Life Centres are branded according to the facilities they have, but if they were, then the Scarborough one would get some sort of prestige or flagship label. While anyone visiting may want to make sure they have discount vouchers, as 14 GBP per adult and 10 GBP per child is quite expensive. Still, you are funding a good cause. We got in by virtue of the Merlin Annual Pass.

The strength of the Scarborough Sea Life Centre comes from the fact it doesn't just have the usual aquarium offerings that most Sea Life Centres deliver. It has those, and it does them well, but it also provides 4 sanctuaries: Seal Rescue Centre and the Otter, Penguin and Turtle Sanctuaries. All these attractions are fantastic, as well as offering key rescue services to endangered species. They are amazing experiences, bringing you close to the animals as well as providing interesting talks on the rescue services, the status of the various species and why they are endangered. It is both an inspiring feeling to see the animals, but also a bit sad, as most of them are in danger of extinction, or are technically extinct already. They are endangered for the usual reasons, but the one that hits home the most is the fact some of them, such as the Loggerhead Sea Turtle, are suffering just because of our flagrant proliferation and expansion across the planet.

The best part of the whole experience? Hard to say, but the majestic sight of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle probably gets the vote. The giant turtle was a rescue, its skull having been fractured in three places via propeller blades. This means it's slightly brain damaged. Despite having the whole of the aquarium tank to swim in it tends to stay close to the sides, the surface and a series of jets so she is swimming against the current. It's like she was trying to find the Eastern Australian Current like in Finding Nemo. There was a smaller turtle in another tank, which was addicted to peas, so they give it peas in a ball of ice, which it enjoyed pushing around the tank and 'jumping' on the peas as the ice broke.

Fascinating and educational place.

I have a soft spot for faded, British seaside resorts. I live at one, so this is only natural. As a family, we also spent a lot of time at them on holiday, namely Scarborough, due to going to Butlins at Filey every year. Ideally, they wouldn't be faded, but you can't have everything.

At times, this soft spot doesn't work out, my last experience of Blackpool didn't go well, just leaving me with a lingering smell of burgers and horse crap. Thankfully, our visit to Scarborough, on Staycation 2009 Day One, didn't go as badly. We only had a day, only saw the North Shore, but based on the experience, indications are Scarborough is going through a re-branding, and may well be on the up. This is a good thing. It was a brilliant day.

Scarborough is no longer just Scarborough, it is now modern, sophisticated Scarborough. This can be seen on the buses that run people between the two shores, along with posters advertising Scarborough as a University town by virtue of the Hull University Campus. It is an attempt to move the place away from just being an old seaside resort, to still benefiting from its coastal location, but appealing to a younger, more sophisticated customer, along with younger families. It's marketing communications seem to focused around surfing, cosmopolitan restaurants, wine bars and even a world class theatre. It works on a marketing communication level, how much they are delivering in actuality is hard to say.

We spent all day on the North Shore, so our exposure to them delivering on the strategy is limited to that, but the North Shore has certainly been revitalised and is a great place. The Sea Life Centre is there, as it has been for a while. What was a seriously run down set of beach huts have either been given a lick of paint or totally re-built in a kaleidoscope of colours and they look fantastic. Where a series of tatty chip shops, waffle stalls and shops selling sea front crap used to be, there is now, The Sands, which are luxury seafront apartments (for holiday rental). These have a series of commercial lots on the ground floor offering a bar, ice cream parlour, a small supermarket and various food outlets. They look great as well, and there is a seating area to enjoy your food looking out over the sea and the castle. The holiday apartments even seem to be competitively priced.

We sat outside Waves today, taking in the sun, eating our chips and it wasn't significantly different to being at St Kilda, Melbourne. It's not perfect, there is still some of the old infrastructure there, such as the remains of the skylift and the site of the old Atlantis water park, but if the work continues it will hopefully go from strength to strength. The people enjoying the North Shore were of all ages, and it included a lot of young families as well as organised groups of children enjoying activities put on by one organisation or another. The same was true in Peasholm Park, which also looked great. It had a much more vibrant feel than when we visited Whitby a while back. The re-branding may just be working, though I'm sure the recession is having an influence. It seemed exciting, less faded and more happening.

As I've mentioned before, 2009 is the year of the Staycation. It's been taking shape on or off over the weeks and we've recently added Chessington World of Adventure and Thorpe Park to the schedule. At the moment the list of attractions is as follows:-

• Scarborough Sea Life Centre*
• The London Eye*
• London Dungeons*
• Madam Tussauds*
• London Sea Life Centre* (ex-London Aquarium)
• Chester Zoo
• Alton Towers* (Spa and Flambos)
• Monkey Forest
• Warwick Castle*
• Chessington World of Adventure*
• Thorpe Park*

The attractions marked with an * are covered under the Merlin Annual Pass. It's a bit like the Merlin Annual Pass UK Tour. At the moment I'm intrigued by Warwick Castle, though you have to cross your fingers for warm weather on that one.

Yesterday the Merlin Annual Pass got activated and we went to the York Dungeon in, you guessed it, York. As an experience it wasn't exactly what I expected. Actually, that's not true, it was what I expected but was just a bit too tame.

The idea behind York Dungeon is to take you through the history of York, they don't necessarily follow in chronological order, but each part of the dungeon pertains to a specific point in history. This is done through a mixture of sets, actors and special effects. There is 9 sections to it, each different from the last, and it takes about 70 minutes to get through the whole experience. Obviously, some of the sections are better than others.

I'll not detail each section as that would be gross spoilers, but it's suffice to say the first three sections are the weakest, and based on these it's easy to feel you're in for over an hour of bad amateur dramatics with no escape in sight. Thankfully, things improve a lot once you get past the first three. This is because the set-ups improve (being especially good in the Viking section) or the acting gets a lot better or both. The actor who takes you through the last three sections (torture chamber, Guy Fawkes and Dick Turpin) is particularly good, providing just enough authenticity and humour to carry the whole experience.

The essential question is: would I have paid circa 30 GBP for the experience? Probably not. If I'd paid that much money I'd have been disappointed. I think the main reason for this, despite 6 out of the 9 sections being good, is I felt it should have drawn you in more. I think everyone was expecting to be frightened more, to be pulled into the experience, when in truth you got something else. It's not that scary, instead being more informative and a lot less interactive then I expected. It has its interesting moments, and some of the sections have an interesting educational element, but on a 'pure experience' level I found it a bit wanting. It's a far cry from the Halloween experiences at Alton Towers, for example. At the same time, it probably wasn't trying to be, and delivers more history, context and educational elements instead. I still think a bit more interaction, with a focus on scares, would enhance the experience, as that seemed to be what many people were waiting for.

I suppose I just think it's a bit expensive. Still, if you're ever faced with the thorny endeavour of whether to pay out your hard earned pound to experience York Dungeon or The Yorvik Centre, York Dungeon wins by a mile.

It'll be interesting to compare York Dungeon to London Dungeon, which we'll experience in July. London Dungeon is about 90 minutes long, I believe.

In a suitably recession friendly way we are planning on having Staycation 2009 this year. We might have jumped on a plane to ridiculous degrees in the past, and we certainly enjoyed the food-fest that was Disney World 2007, but this year good old Blighty shall be our holiday location.

As many people will appreciate, staycations are actually quite hard to pull off. If you conform to the definition literally, and essentially use your home for a base to visit attractions that can be travelled to, then it may be easier. If you're casting your net wider it's not long before accommodation, petrol, food and entry fees start adding up to the point you start thinking that amazing deal on a holiday in Spain ain't that bad. We have a bit of an ace in the hole though: Merlin Annual Passes, gained through Tesco vouchers. This allows access to all the Merlin attractions. These attractions include Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures, London Eye, Sea Life Centres, The Dungeons, etc. This radically cuts down on entry fees. The goal is to get the costs as close to 250 GBP and then as much of that pushed and moulded into the general budge for the month of the holiday.

We also thought of camping. It seemed a good way to keep accommodation fees down. Then we actually thought of sleeping in a tent and having to walk to communal showers and decided it was to be avoided. A part of us still likes the idea, but it's not for Staycation 2009. It's certainly not for Staycation 2009 when you can book a Travelodge for only 3 GBP more than a good camp site. We have the skeleton of Staycation 2009 sorted, with a few variations to assess costs, and as a result we've booked two nights worth of Travelodge bookings before the deals vanished (before our eyes as we booked).

This means the Staycation period is now set in stone. We shall see how it progresses. Watch this space.

Yesterday I was looking forward to a sunny, semi-warm day at Durham University, after spending the first seminar in the cold. Regrettably, it didn't work out that way, the early spring weather collapsed just before the cohort arrived from the various corners of the world and we got strong winds and rain. I wasn't at the Seminar today, and guess what? We got the bright blue skies again. In celebration of all things bright I decided to take a break from presentation preparation and go to Saltholme. You know, since it's just down the road.

Saltholme is a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserve in the middle of the industrial complex south of Seaton Carew in the Tees Valley. This is because as well as being the site of numerous chemical factories, the place is also home to an extensive plain of wetlands. It always amazes me how people miss read things. People visit the area and see the industrial side of things, missing the fact it's a hotspot for birds and even seals. That's right: seals.

The area has always been a hotspot for those into avian spotting, you often see them on the roadside with their massive telescopic devices trying to catch specific birds that come to the area from around the globe. They can bunch up in great numbers when the hot birds move in. Salthome basically makes the whole thing official, with walks, a visitors centre and various lookout points looking out across the various wetlands. It's pretty impressive. Well, to be honest, it looks like it's not fully complete at the moment, and needs a bit of landscaping around the edges, but it's getting there. Strangely, the contrast between the wetlands and the industrial complexes seem to work.

We had a good walk around, and in an even warmer day, I'd go back and do it again. They do have an excellent landscaped area, like a rock garden, which is a great place to sit in the sun. At the same time it is pretty surreal if you're not into the whole avian thing. At each outpost are people sitting looking out across the wetland with the latest in equipment. It's deadly silent, you can feel the intensity and the total focus on looking at the birds. It's a bit weird, because to the uninitiated all you can see is the same ducks and swans we have a minutes walk from our house. Still, looking at the details in the visitors centre there is 'interesting' birds that show up. I know this because one of the interesting birds only shows up on Wednesdays and Thursdays when a guy is at work. I know this because I heard him say so as he walked past with a massive telescope on his back.

It's an interesting place, more so because it's hidden away in what the casual observer thinks is an industrial nightmare.

The Islands of Adventure theme park opened in 1999 and were lucky enough to go there in its opening year, combining it with the Disney Cruise. The theme park is one of the best in the world simply because the work put into the various islands is astounding. Disney is good at this stuff, but it was well and truly trounced when Islands of Adventure came along. The beauty and madness of Suess Landings has to be seen to be believed, the feel of Jurassic Park has to be experienced, the grandeur of The Lost Continent taken in in exquisite detail and the comic book awesome of Marvel Superhero Island is just great if you are remotely interested in comic books. You can even meet the Marvel Superheroes, albeit it in costumes that just show why most superhero costumes should stay in drawings. Marvel Superhero Island is good, and there is nothing like the Spider-Man ride for putting you in the middle of a grand superhero battle. Very clever ride.

It is unfortunate that The Lost Continent is being taken apart, as it is an amazing place, but it was inevitable as it isn't linked to any particular film, just generic films like the old Sinbad movies. What it is being replaced with has the potential to be amazing: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. While it could be argued they are a bit late in the game considering the books have finished, if they put half as much effort into it as the other islands it is going to be one amazing place. You will be able to go into Dervish and Banges, eat at the Three Broomsticks, see Hogwarts Castle and visit Hogsmeade. I suspect the Duelling Dragons ride will be re-skinned as some sort of take on the Tri-Wizards Tournament. There is probably little doubt you will be able to literally walk into the pages of the books.

While I shall mourn The Lost Continent, it sounds like its replacement might be pretty fine. It all opens in 2010.

I was looking through some photos last night, as we have a number of small albums that include pictures not taken with a digital camera (madness I tell you). One of the albums contained photos of the Disney Cruise. We went on the Disney Cruise during the great holiday-fest of 1998 - 2004 (this is the list until 2003). We'd been to Florida to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace earlier in the year and we went back to Disney World with the Disney Cruise tagged onto it in the second half. We did a week at Disney World, staying at Caribbean Beach Resort, a four day cruise and then 3-4 days back at Disney World. It was probably one of the more expensive trips we undertook, but it was a great experience.

Strangely, despite the Caribbean Beach Resort being a moderate resort as opposed to the value All Star Resorts we normally stayed in, we found we preferred the All Star Resorts. It was mainly an issue of design and not putting any value on the 'upgraded elements'. We never used the pool at the Caribbean Beach and the size of the Resort was also an issue. While the All Star Resorts are big they don't feel big, the Caribbean Beach took up so much space they didn't have a central bus stop for Disney Transport, there was numerous bus stops throughout the complex. This meant it could be ten minutes just to get out of the Resort and depending on where you got on the bus it might have filled up. It was nice, but we did decide not to choose it again as the expense wasn't worth it. To be honest, we only chose it that time because back in 1999 the type of cabin on the cruise was linked with the type of hotel at Disney World and we wanted a cabin with a nice big window (we couldn't bring ourselves to pay the substantial fee for a balcony and the associated luxury resort).

The main selling point of the Disney Cruise for us was its casual approach, which was quite new at the time, though many cruise companies are dressing down these days, and dismantling the highly structured experience. While we don't have kids, the family approach to the cruise appealed to us. You had set meals every night with the same people at the table, but there was options to eat elsewhere. You also had a show every night to go to if you wanted to (it was either dinner and show or show then dinner). Everything else was completely flexible and the smartest clothes ever demanded was casual smart.

The ship itself was amazing, the size of it was a lot to take in. While I'm sure it's nothing that significant now, it was a pretty big example of a cruise ship at the time, complete with its own cinema, something quite unique back in 1999. We saw The Sixth Sense for the first time on that cruise. It had all the usual stuff, a number of bars, entertainment venues, pools, restaurants and a central 'atrium' that would have put a mall to shame. That was one of the most embarrassing moments, as you enter the ship for the first time they announce your presence throughout the atrium like you've just walked into a Royal Ball or something. The three shows you saw over the course of the cruise, while shorter than West End productions, were certainly West End quality in terms of the costumes, acting, singing and special effects. The only trouble was staying awake after they'd filled you full of food at the restaurant (we had meal then show).

We stopped at The Bahamas and the most amazing part of that was The Atlantis hotel, similar to the one they've recently built in Dubai. The place was luxury in the extreme, but it was well worth a visit just to see the ridiculous commercialism at work. We also got to see the Aquarium they have as well as the themed area telling the supposed story of the hotel. It was very nice, and the cove they created exclusively for hotel guests was somewhere you could spend days beside. You could even do the odd bit of water sports in it, as it was that big.

The most amazing part of the cruise was the stop at Castaway Cay, an island that Disney owns, and landscapes into the perfect remote island experience for each batch of visitors. The day is basically what you make of it. We spent most of it lying around with the ship just pulled up by the beach, like living in a postcard, but you could also cycle around the island and as usual there was numerous activities to keep the kids busy if the adults wanted to do nothing much like we did. We were lucky to see the place as there had been a hurricane before we arrived in Florida and they were frantically dredging where the ship 'docks' for our arrival, but they did it in time and got rid of all the machinery. You'd have never known.

The legacy of the Disney Cruise was a permanent weight gain. I don't think either of us have ever got back to our weight before the cruise. We both permanently moved half a stone or so up the scale. It got ridiculous. Not only was there the set meals every night, at every opportunity food would appear or be constantly available. While staying at Castaway Cay they produced a whole massive barbeque from nowhere while you lazed by the sea. While watching the entertainment and the fireworks out of the 'smoke stack' moored at The Bahamas they somehow produced a massive buffet complete with multiple ice sculptures from nowhere.

We sometimes query whether we'd ever have the opportunity to do it again or whether we'd want to. The answer is often inconclusive, but it was certainly worth doing once.

If there is one fault with our holidays it's that we tend to go somewhere and pretty much stay there. We're not as bad as some, with the ubiquitous holiday to somewhere exotic that ends up being just a pool, beach and hotel and you could be anywhere, but we don't travel extensively. When we went to Las Vegas we spent most of the time in Las Vegas, we went to Disneyland California Adventure and the Grand Canyon, but that was it. When in California we spent virtually all the time in Anaheim and the theme parks the most adventurous trip being to the various beaches.

A part of me wants to investigate the romantic notion of travelling around a bit. In a deep part of my mind it's something grand like driving across the US, but that would never happen, and unless you do something really odd would probably largely be an exercise in interstate hell.

So, what is a man to do to satisfy his wanderlust? Jetting around by plane isn't really that romantic, and you don't get to see much apart from the final destination and quite a few airports. The logical answer, and one I've had in the back of my mind for some time now, is to travel on trains. Now, these fit the romantic notion perfectly, but the risk is that's all it is and the reality is pretty crap. After all, there isn't anything romantic about using trains in the UK. Is the whole Amtrak experience as old fashioned, romantic and as visually exciting as one might think? They certainly try and sell it that way.

To be honest I don't know, but the idea is probably worth some investigation. There is a number of routes that offer excellent scenery at ridiculously low costs. This is assuming you target specific runs. A part of me likes the idea of going epic and travelling from New York to Chicago (Lake Shore Limited) and then Chicago to Los Angeles (Southwest Chief) stopping off at places along the way. A bit of an epic trip, but if you can do some investigation to ensure the visual splendour en-route it'd be a pretty epic thing to say you've done. It may also be too far, resulting in you spending too much time on the train, it may be a case of stopping more and doing one side of the country, say New York to Chicago, sampling those two places and stopping off at Niagra Falls en-route and making a journey to Glenwood Springs before flying home. I'm sure you could fit in other places like Boston. It'd take some planning, and there are quite a few options.

There is something about travelling right across though, if you can break it up with stops. The danger is it's pretty mundane, irritating and crap, rather than being anything close to the romantic notion of it all. Still, it can gestate for a while, as it's something to consider when cash liquidity is more fluid.

So, a trip to Alton Towers and three encounters with the macabre, including mad caretakers, zombies and carnivorous hunchbacks. How did it go?

The first one was The Boiler Room, which was good, but not great. Basically, you're in a boiler room complex and people have gone missing and the caretaker has gone insane. The first problem was the group size was larger than we expected. We hoped we'd be in a group of four, so it'd only be us, but this wasn't the case. This wasn't so bad for me as I was at the back, but I could see how the experience would be diminished for those in the middle. You go through a series of rooms encountering different people. The best bit being the scientist in the control room, they'd somehow done his costume and make-up so he could move really eerily within the strobe. The mad woman in the bedding was also pretty eerie, mainly because she followed you through a dark corridor and the lighting allowed her disembodied head just to float forwards. Overall though, it didn't meet expectations, apart from a few moments, the overall experience just didn't work. This one was similar to events at Port Aventura, and they did it better, offering a much more intense, bloody and visual spectacle which ramped up the tension.

While The Boiler Room suffered because of the group size and composition, the opposite was true of Field of a 1000 Screams as it was enhanced by the group interaction. The major selling point of Field of a 1000 Screams is it's scale, it's pretty large, it's very atmospheric being outside in the dark and you can't beat a field of maize (all grown to at least head height) to induce the eerie factor. If you throw in with this the much better story, delivered consistently from the very beginning you get a much better experience. A core of this experience is due to the small things they do to ensure group bonding before entering the scenario.

Basically, a year ago strange events happened at Altonville, essentially the Zombie outbreak of the previous year's event, now the place is in quarantine. In typical horror film style you are a group of idiots who have decided to seek excitement and adventure by going to have a look. In the introduction you're given the names of the first person (Paul) and the last person in the group (Barry), who are given rather crap torches. You then enter the maize. The true strength of the introduction is to name the first and last person as they become the focus of the groups interactions and humour, which is all induced by the bravado, nervous tension or abject fear in some cases. This results in calls for Paul to slow down, and often in panicked tones from the back speed up, and the half-comedy shouts regarding whether we'd lost lost Barry yet.

The scenario was really good, as from the very moment you enter the field of Maize you're thinking Children of the Corn or Jeepers Creepers, and when you hit the security fence the atmosphere steps up as you are in the moment. Needless to say, you make your way through a small break in the fence and end up caught up in the plight of the individuals living in the quarantine zone: cue mad teenage girls, survivors, insane slaughterhouse occupants and a rather demented woman living in a farm house with her long dead husband. It was good stuff, it being particularly tense and funny (they're almost the same thing I find), such as when a zombie came from behind as we approached the farmhouse through the dirty washing as suddenly Barry and the final four wanted Paul to speed up.

Terror of the Towers was probably the most intense, to the point I'm not sure how they get away with a lot of it due to health and safety or something. Terror of the Towers is spread across a couple of floors of the actual Alton Towers, and it takes place in almost pitch blackness, or candlelight or sections blinding you with strobes. The plot involves the mad, deformed, carnivorous son who occupies the place. I was first, which made the whole experience interesting. What they did was really good. The three best bits being the grand dining hall, all lit with candles with the hunchback son dancing about obviously having just partaken of a feast of human flesh. You know this because the next section is all the hanging body bags you have to push your way through complete with 'the butcher' hiding among them. You know the feeling you get when watching the teenage girl of a horror film pushing her way through the body bags, washing, hanging drapes, etc? Have to say, that's what it felt like being at the front, with the twist of being among it. The maze section with strobe light was also quite tense as you felt at times you'd never find your way out. It was very good, and since it's included in the park price, everyone should do it.

Ultimately, the success of these things depends on a number of criteria: how willing you are to get drawn into it all; the effects, makeup and sets; the composition and interactions of the group; and whether you are at the front or the back, which tends to make some of them a very different proposition. All in all though, they are very good, especially Field of a 1000 Screams and Terror of the Towers. I can't help but feel Field of a 1000 Screams could have been off the scale with a few modifications.

Theme parks deal with Halloween in different ways. Disney goes the family friendly route as would be expected, while Port Aventura in Spain plays host to stuff that really is scary. I've not been to a Universal Park for Halloween but they seem to offer something between the two extremes. By all accounts the Alton Towers Scarefest events are elaborate and very scary. This is what we'll be doing this weekend, travelling down to Alton Towers to enjoy the attractions and hopefully have some seriously scary experiences.

They're not doing the events by half. They obviously have the towers the theme park is named after and they are playing host to the Terror of the Towers which gets a five pumpkins rating on the scary scale. I've been in the towers, during the day when it was nice and bright and they do have an eerie quality. I'm not even going to imagine what it's going to be like in the dark, atmospherically lit with people in costume pulling off all sorts of shenanigans. We also have the boiler room, which takes place in a special location built in the Alton Towers hotel grounds. You join the caretaker as he investigates reports of strange noises and the disappearance of an employee.

Personally, I'm most looking forward to a Field of 1000 Screams, because they seem to have put so much effort into it. They actually grow a field of Maize. Think Children of the Corn. They also set this up with numerous different locations: an old cabin, a wrecked car or whatever else. The key being a scenarion is played out with costumes, actors, live dogs and everything. The scenario often being a zombie attack. Now, this may all prove to sound better than it actually plays out, but it's certainly worth giving a go.

I shall report when we return.

Back in 2007 we had the Disney World 2007 trip, and despite the number of times we've been it was probably one of the best experiences, up there with the first few times. The primary reason for this was getting the Disney Dining Plan for free, which meant lots of eating in the best restaurants Disney has to offer for absolutely nothing. While it took Louise a while to persuade me to go on that holiday, as it was a bit of a financial risk considering long-term projections and the like, she was right in her assessment that it might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Disney have changed the free dining plan in 2008 and are changing it again in 2009. In 2008 the Disney Dining Plan was the same as what we got in 2007 but the tips got taken out of the deal and your table service tokens only get you two courses. This meant the deal was still very good, in that you could still visit all the restaurants on the plan, but it wasn't no longer a free deal as the tips would obviously add up. In fact, while I've not sat down and done the maths a quick quest-imate in my head would tell me the cost of the tips at all the top restaurants would probably add up to the same or more than the food bill incurred at places we'd normally eat at. Still a good saving though, but not a patch on eating on the whole holiday for absolutely free.

In 2009 it changes again, and they've done the inevitable: linked the Dining Plan you get for free with the resort you are staying at. They will have done this for numerous reasons, the most likely one being to save money, as it must have cost them a fortune to give those full Dining Plans away to every UK guest. It will reduce costs because I suspect there is a weighting of UK guests to the lower priced hotels, so only giving the full dining plan to the top tier reduces the outlay. It may also reduce the demand on restaurant seating. It also plays into human psychology, and the privilege factor. One of the key things about the US is while the UK is supposedly the society based around class, the US often seems to do a lot more and people are often more vocal about privileges, however they come about. There was a massive outcry that UK guests were getting the Dining Plan for free (in an off itself that is a valid complaint if you are American), what was more interesting was the belief it would lower the tone of the restaurants or that people paying 'out of pocket' are in some way more worthy, etc. The linking of the full Dining Plan to people staying at the Deluxe Resorts keeps the prestige factor and also plays into the fear the 'wrong sort of people will end up at the restaurants'.

Another interesting twist in all this is I suspect Disney did a bit of data mining and they may well have discovered that too many people who got the Disney Dining Plan in 2007 didn't use it to the fullest. We can only go an anecdotal evidence but we encountered many people who had loads of credits left and certainly hadn't visited any of the better restaurants. In short, they wasted it. The reason for this are numerous: people feeling the top restaurants aren't for them, feeling it's too much hassle with kids, not being prepared to put in the planning to get a seating (there was quite a lot of people drifting from restaurant to restaurant trying to get seated), etc. The data may well prove that while we would lose out under the new regime, the average person on the Dining Plan in 2007, especially one at a Value or Moderate resort, isn't losing out by having the stripped down offering as it may be more what they used it for.

If we go to Disney World in 2009 (I'd rather go somewhere different) the rumour is the Dining Plan would consist of two counter service tokens a day, 2 snack tokens a day and a re-fill mug for the resort you are at. This isn't that bad really, and you certainly can't complain if it's free, as it can only reduce your food bill. It is a far cry from the fine dining offered in 2007 though. It has totally removed any of the table service restaurants from the Dining Plan for people staying in Value and Moderate Resorts. This makes it a nice to have, but it's hardly the thing that persuades you to actually book and get on the plane.

While we saved circa 1600 USD by using the Disney Dining Plan in 2007, I'm pretty sure it costs more than that to upgrade to the top tier hotels (plus you also have to consider it's not money we'd have spent if it wasn't for free). Still, as an incentive to stay in that gorgeous Animal Kingdom Lodge with a view across the Savannah it's not a bad one if you're feeling the need to seriously splash out.

This morning I downloaded seven new videos from Xbox Live. All the videos belonged to the Bring it Home brand, which tend to involve going to some event, making video segments and then making them available on Xbox Live. In my view they should be making more of the Bring it Home brand, actually turn it into a whole TV show and really focusing on visiting all the big Pop Culture and Video Game Industry conventions. The content should be more frequent, harder hitting and more complete. What they do is good, but it could be much better.

This series of seven videos was from San Diego Comic Con.

I've said it before (in 2005 and 2007 at least), but I'm going to bore people by saying it again: San Diego Comic Con is, without a doubt, the last, great convention frontier and I'll not be happy until I've walked its hallowed halls. I may have got the UK science fiction convention scene out of my blood twelve or so years ago, and have zero interest in revisiting that, but these grand pop culture conventions are the place to be. They are a grand orgy of games, TV, film, comics, panels (involving actors, writers and directors) commercial grandeur and people in fantastic and lame costumes. Brilliant.

The only problem you get into is the damned event always takes place at a time when travel costs are at a premium (never mind the current exorbitant travel costs generally). Still, San Diego has the advantage of not being too far away from Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which means it could become two weeks of commercial, pop culture entertainment nirvana involving the highs and lows of Americana in Las Vegas, checking out the the theme parks and beaches around Los Angeles and then Sea World and Comic Con in San Diego.

When we take walks along the beach in the sun, on those miracle days when it stops hiding behind the clouds, we often talk about what our next holiday will be whenever it comes around that we can afford one. Las Vegas comes up, as does Dubai, so does Los Angeles. I think I'm onto something here, it's just a matter of making sure everything coincides around a particular weekend. The amazing advantage I have is it's something I'd not have to put much effort into persuading Louise to do!

One day, it'll happen.

Yes, you heard it right. 3 billion feet of world class entertainment across 7 themes: theme parks, culture & art, science and planetariums, sports and sports academies, well-being & health, shopping & retail and hotels. In a place with all round fantastic weather. The scale of the development can only exist in one place: Dubai. Home of ridiculous developments like The World and The Palm.

Welcome to commercialism on steroids: Dubailand.

It's hard to comprehend the scale of this endeavour. It's set to dwarf (no pun intended) Disney World, and that's saying something. At the moment it has at least 6 theme parks scheduled to come on-line, and they're not 'no name deals' either, as they include a Legoland, a Six Flags theme park, a Universal Studios Park and the first Dreamworks park based on their intellectual properties and characters. If you throw in probably the largest wheel in the world and a gigantic water park you're not doing too badly.

The scariest thing is this is just the start. There is also Sarah Kingdom, which is set to cover 5 million square feet and it will include such delights as the latest in high end virtual and physical theme park rides, gaming zones and an IMAX theatre, live and virtual entertainment shows as well as shops and hotels. It's also decks it all in a theme of a Thousand and One Nights!

I could go on and on about sports city, the planetarium, the shopping mall that is planned to be the largest in the world and numerous other features. The Falcon City of Wonders full of cultural facilities and structures based on famous sites and architectural marvels along with a Pharaohs Theme Park. It's impossible to do anything but scratch the surface.

I have to say, my mind boggles. It's like Disney World and Las Vegas on steriods. There is a lot of variables in play, but we may well be checking flights to Dubai post-2010.

The Disneyland Paris Resort has six hotels, namely: The Disneyland Hotel, The New York Hotel, The Newport Bay Club, The Sequoia Lodge, The Cheyenne and The Santa Fe. That is in descending order of exclusivity. This ensures they are descending order of a few other things as well. As you go down that list of hotels you get further and further away from the parks. The Disneyland Hotel is essentially in the Disneyland Park, while The New York, The Newport Bay and The Sequoia Lodge are surrounding the lake (separated from the parks by a walk through Downtown Disney) and are in order of distance, but the difference is negligible. The Cheyenne and the The Santa Fe are further back along the river that flows from the lake. If you are the furthest room away in The Santa Fe you can face a walk of about ten minutes, or the Disney bus services.

That's not all that differs though, as things like rooms and services get better as you pay more. The Sequoia Lodge and above have pools, for instance. I'm sure a sauna is gained at some point in the hotel value chain. The rooms also get bigger and better decorated, though in some cases this is questionable as the basic aesthetic of The Santa Fe can sometimes be better than the over done 'white lord and master' feel of the posher hotels like The Newport Bay Club. The strangest difference is the breakfast, as the more you pay the better the breakfast. As you travel up the hotels extra things appear on the menus. If I remember correctly, staying in The Newport Bay Club guaranteed us boiled eggs. I think The Sequoia Lodge slipped in a selection of yoghurt. The poor souls at The Santa Fe have to make do with the standard fair of cold meats, cheese, crusty rolls, croissants, cereal and random fruit choices (most likely fresh orange).

So, in reverse order of cost, we have the Disneyland Paris Resort hotels.

The Santa Fe is the cheap option. Imagine if you've set out from Las Vegas, driven for miles without finding a gas station and ended up deep in the Nevada Desert a bit desperate. Luckily, you find yourself a remote hotel in the dry, arid, remote and desolate surroundings. It's a poor area, so you have the odd car wreck half buried in the desert. Due to the unrelenting heat you have a river, but it seems to be on a very dry, bed rock base and looks a bit worse for wear. You're also near Area 51, or you guess you are since a bright silver UFO seems to have crashed in the hotel grounds. There also seems to be a miniature volcano, though no one seems to know why. That's the Hotel Santa Fe, home of those hitting Disneyland Resort Paris on 'the cheap', and what was the perennial home of UK bus trips before the 'off site' hotels opened.

The Hotel Cheyenne looks like a Frontier Town in the Wild West, just without the mud, the horse shit and the terrible smells. It's a lot more Lone Ranger, but in technicolour, than it is Deadwood. It's bright and colourful, but it is very well done in its own way as all the blocks of rooms masquerade as different parts of the town. They even have a very nice saloon. It's a nice upgrade from The Santa Fe, in that it has a better, more colourful theme, which looks great in the sun, and the bar is nice.

Imagine a deep forest, probably like one of those forests on the X Files that go for miles, have mist hanging in the air between the trees, county sheriffs driving down lonely roads cut into the red woods and spooky music playing. In that wood is a lodge, a lovely, big wooden hunting lodge for all those hunters with guns, plaid shirts and boots to retire by a great, big roaring fire. That's The Sequoia Lodge. It really works to, easily being the most warm and welcoming hotel of the whole lot, largely due to the fact it's theme allows it to have a bit of class while avoiding any problems with being too crass or pretentious. It really is a nice hotel, the reception area combined with a bar and seating is lovely. The Sequoia Lodge is also the first hotel to sit you down at your own table at breakfast.

The Newport Bay Club is very white. It's obviously supposed to be a lovely building on the New England coast because it even has a light house. It's supposed to be an exclusive Yacht Club, you tend to get the impression it's an exclusive Yacht Club for white folk. It's a nice hotel. It's a very nice hotel, but it doesn't sit well with me. I'm not sure why. No building should be that white. It just lacks any character I can connect with. It does have a nice pool though. We have stayed there but were largely indifferent to the experience.

The New York is all about conjuring some idealised feel of the big city. This means having an ice skating rink outside so people can skate in front of the hotel at Christmas, including a Christmas tree and trees with lights in them. All it needs is a fake sewer grate that spews out steam every so often and the image would be complete. Inside is a New York bar, no doubt with arcane tipping rules. New York also means big business, so it's this hotel that most business conferences and the like end up in. In fact, it's the hotel with the most business feel. It's look is also helped by the fact it looks like a New York hotel that might appear in a stylised comic book.

I'm not sure what to say about the Disneyland Paris hotel other than it's very big, serves as the entrance to the Disneyland Park and it's very pink (though some might give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's salmon coloured). The typical Disney Paris Resort trip can cost you thousands if you choose to stay in this pink edifice. Personally, I think anyone who stays in it is slightly mad, as I wouldn't stay in it even if I was a millionaire. At the end of the day, if you're holiday is going well all you're going to do is sleep in the damned place? If you fancy sitting in the posh lounge areas in a jacket or wearing your jumper over your shoulders, drinking tea and eating scones while your delightful child prances around as a Disney Princess then it's time to go pink. Still, I bet you get bacon for breakfast in the grand, pink wonder!

Disney is an ideas company in many ways, and it is also a details company. This is specifically true when it comes to the theme parks. It is this attention to detail and going that extra 5% that makes their theme parks what they are. It can even be argued only committing 95% is what makes the Disneyland Paris Resort an amazing place, but just short of the Disney World experience.

One of the best ideas that came from a Disney brain is Fast Pass.

Fast Pass deals with a problem all popular theme parks have to deal with: when the park is packed the best rides are plagued by massive queues. People don't like spending their hard earned cash in queues. Fast Pass works by giving you a window to turn up at the attraction and wait for a substantially shorter time, usually about 5-15 minutes. While you wait for your 30-minute window on the Fast Pass ticket you are free to do what you want. Even if the queues for the attraction aren't ridiculously long, Fast Pass can work really well to do a double hit. Get a Fast Pass ticket, join the normal queue, when you've ridden it once join your Fast Pass queue for a shorter second wait as the chances are your slot has come around. We did this numerous times on Soarin' during our Disney World 2007 trip.

We're usually lucky, and due to the times we go to these places, we don't see excessive queues, but we still say: Fast pass is your friend. We've used it a lot to get the most out of the Tower of Terror in Disney Studios Paris this trip, for instance.

Well, Fast Pass is your friend if you understand it. It would seem a core of people travelling the length and breadth of Europe to see Mickey Mouse in Disneyland Paris Resort have no idea how Fast Pass works. They seem to turn the simple process of getting a Fast Pass ticket, note 30-minute window, do something else, turn up in thirty minute window and wait 5-15 minutes into a much more complicated process.

This more complicated process tends to be get Fast Pass ticket, sort of note 30-minute window, turn up ahead of window, and strangely, form a queue, wait a while, then join the Fast Pass queue proper and wait 5-15 minutes. It doesn't take a true genius to understand this means the Fast Pass system is totally pointless for those individuals (as they often end up queuing for just as long as the normal queue) and puts the system at risk of failing for everyone else. As an example, it's all too easy for some people to assume that IS the Fast Pass queue? Or in the case of Big Thunder Mountain the Fast Pass queue is structured within fencing so if idiots have started queuing early there is no way to jump it (as is your right) because you've arrived in your 30-minute window. The idiots may get filtered out later, but you've still queued when you could have walked straight through that section.

Strangely, this never happens in the US.

Disney Studios Paris currently has two High School Musical street shows. The Europeans can't get enough of it. While the Americans had to suffer the original show coming to its natural end to be replaced by the High School Musical II experience, the Europeans complained so they got both. Excellent. The only trouble is 'street show' means an element of spontaneity, which in turn means no queuing apparatus.

This can only mean trouble.

It would seem a lot of our European brethren don't understand the polite, organised and general nirvana of an organised and fair queue. It's a bit like European laws, they think they are good until they realise they have to follow them. The best example of this is the characters that appear in the parks. The characters that appear in set places with queuing apparatus work well. The characters that appear in 'open play' are a different story. The only way to describe it is they get mobbed. They get surround by parents and children and assaulted by cameras, pens and autograph books. It's a dangerous business being a character in Disneyland Resort Paris, it's certainly not the nice organised affair their colonial cousins get. I'm glad we don't have kids, as this would force us to take part in the melee.

So, High School Musical. The system is simple, turn up to watch the show and there is a series of stars on the ground to show the position of the front row. The front row being those who turned up first. Anyone with a bit of Disney experience knows to look for these clever markers hidden within the theme of the place. Pretty logical? Not so much. It seems many people think they can turn up later and have the right to have their child push to the front past any adult. I'm not mean, it's High School Musical after all, and while any adult should understand a man's right to see Cheerleaders prancing around, I am nearly six foot and so I'm not adverse to children going in front of 'me'. That's the thing, the important bit: in front of 'me'. The trouble is, if you let too many through, and everyone does the same, what actually happens is a new front row is formed in front of the kids who have been waiting patiently for substantially longer. They waited patiently for longer so they could be at the front. The ultimate irony is this new front row is in front of the stars so the staff have no option but to wave everyone back behind the stars including the new front row, when this happens it's all too easy for kids who have done the good thing and turned up early to loose out.

It's this the adults who believe their kids can just go to the front, no matter how 'late' they arrive, who don't understand because each one is only thinking of their child, not anyone else, certainly not the kids already at the front who have been waiting for ages. What were they doing for that twenty minutes (or longer in some cases) the patient kid spent waiting? Probably doing something more productive? Or wandering around clueless and just making an opportunistic bid for the front row? Either way, they should be told by their parents they'll have to do it another time as they've missed out. Sounds mean? Possibly it is, but then they should maybe learn these life lessons early.

Normally, we see this happen and just get a bit irritated. Not so much for us but the kids we see lose out, but what the hell, they're not our kids. This time a German couple next to us didn't take it too well that kids were pushing through and putting their daughters experience under stress. Discussions occurred. Louise even had one with one other person trying to get through in a canny pincer movement. They weren't heated ones. It remained relatively polite despite both sides speaking in tongues to each other. Though I believe he swore at her in some foreign tongue as a parting shot. You can always count on the Germans to understand the need for some rules and some order rather than letting chaos, personal ego and selfish passion rule the day. It's a pity the French don't realise it as well.

On the Cheerleader front: Disneyland Resort Paris should be warmer.

The problem with Disneyland Paris Resort is it sounds great when you say it's only an hour away on the plane, but the reality is quite different. First you have to get up ridiculously early for your plane. Even though we'd checked in via the Internet so we could go straight to the gate still ended up having to set off at 0600 which meant Louise was up at about 0400. We probably could have got up half an hour later, but we never like risking getting there late. We flew at 0830.

The flight itself is an EasyJet special, which means it's a bit kill or be killed when you get on. No idea why, as there is enough seats for everyone. Now they have a priority system, which seems to involve an order of speedy boarders first, then the Group A people consisting of people with very small kids, people who booked on the Internet and then the first 50 people to check in. After that it's everyone else who gets lumped into Group B. You have to pay for speedy boarder, it was 20 GBP for both ways on our flight. We relied on the fact we'd booked on the Internet. The trouble with all this is you invariably have to get on a bus to get to the plane as EasyJet, being the cheap and cheerful option, rarely pulls right up to the gate, as a result it's entirely possible you'll all get on the same bus anyway (or at least some will). Still, it's a good way to wring that 20 GBP out of anyone who can't abide taking the same chance as anyone else to get a guaranteed seat.

Then you hit the tarmac in Paris an hour later. The trouble is you then have to get to Disneyland Paris Resort itself which involves the shuttle bus or the train. The shuttle bus is the second kill or be killed process as it's the first time you usually encounter the chaos theory inspired European queuing system. This is different to people from the UK who seem to form a queue automatically whenever there is more than five people stood behind each other in a line. Normally, I'm quite calm in these circumstances, but there is a risk here, as if you don't fit on the bus you may find yourself waiting a while for the next one. Amazingly, the people organising the shuttle bus had staff on hand to make sure their European brethren understood that they did need to walk to the back of the rather long queue and not jump in front of the English couple at the front (we had wisely not taken hold baggage). It wasn't perfect, as one European family did decide to just stop at the front as if the queue didn't apply to them, but still, it was much improved on the 'take small children by the hand in case they are trampled' approach of yesteryear.

The shuttle bus invariably takes about 45-minutes to drop you off at your hotel. If you're staying at the Santa Fe it may take a bit longer depending on how confused, dazed and stupid the people staying in the more expensive hotels are (as they are dropped off first). The new wrinkle in the process is the people staying in the nearby non-Disney hotels as they have to get off at the Disney Park (usually the Disneyland Paris Hotel) and get the hotel shuttle buses to their hotel. They invariably don't realise this and think the bus is going to drop of them directly off (only a very small amount are scheduled to do this).

We hit our hotel reception at 1315. If you knock off the one hour time difference it's a 'journey time' of 8.25 hours. At least when we did arrive it was bright blue skies and really sunny. It was very warm.

In the not too distant future we'll be at Disneyland Resort Paris. Hopefully the weather will be on the warmer side and we can enjoy that surreal environment of the quintessential American attraction full of Europeans and staffed by the French. It's a trip on a budget, so we'll be staying in the gloriously cheesy Santa Fe Hotel. You've got to love a hotel that has a big Clint Eastwood bill board above the entrance and features a crashed flying saucer in its grounds. We've stayed in all of them other than the way overpriced Disneyland Paris Hotel so it's no big deal. The Sequoia Lodge is our favourite though.

As with the Disney World 2007 trip, one of the advantages is we've not been for a while so they've had a chance to add some new stuff. The main attractions we are going to hit are all in the Walt Disney's Studios Park. The first is the new Tower of Terror, which means we'll have been on two of the four in existence. To ride all four we'd have to go to California and Tokyo to complete the set. You never know, one day. There is also Crusher's Coaster, which we know very little about but it's supposed to be very good. The other new attraction we are interested in is Stitch Live, which is similar to the Monster's Inc attraction in Florida. It's a 3D show but the 3D animation interacts with the audience in real-time like a real comedians at a comedy club (which is what's happening, technology aside). I'm sure we'll catch the High School Musical on Tour show as well, completely by accident, sort of. I'm also missing out a few parades and fireworks displays.

Due to the ever dropping exchange rate, and the fact the only way to eat cheaper would be to survive on junk like crisps and pies from the nearby petrol station shop, or gorge on McDonalds, we've decided to go for one of the restaurant plans, albeit the cheaper one. It's hardly the grand Disney Dining Plan we had for Disney World 2007, but then we did get that free. Still, we'll probably use it to eat at Annette's Diner, Agrabah Cafe and Rendez-Vouz des Stars. Not exactly fine dining, but they are fun, good and interesting.

A week ago we went to York because the Viking Festival was on. It sounded great on paper, plus I'd not been to the Yorvik Centre. I should have had more sense. You see, I've done the battle re-enactment thing and for the most part the people who do it like real ale and have beards. They are their own special kind of Geek. As an example, I spotted one guy walking around York in costume, with no shoes on. It was a few degrees above zero and he was wearing no shoes. I could have risen above all this strangeness masquerading as something educational if the whole thing hadn't been oversold. It's really stretching things when the 'Viking Settlement' turned out to be a tarpaulin with two old Methuselah in it dressed as Vikings.

I did get to go to the Yorvik Centre though, but regrettably that was a disappointment as well.

The trouble with the Yorvik Centre is it doesn't have the good grace to be really bad, it's just good enough to inspire you to think how fantastic it could have been. It's very much the typical British attraction in that it's a good attempt, but they've just missed the boat, not had enough vision, or they didn't get given enough money. What the Yorvik Centre needs is a serious injection of Disney imagination. I can hear people screaming in outrage now, but if you've been to the Yorvik Centre, and to Disney World, you must see that parts of the Yorvik Centre are a Disney attraction done on the cheap? Not only that, the added gloss that extra money and a bit of imagination could provide need not detract from the fact the Yorvik Centre is an educational attraction.

The first part of the attraction is the Time Machine, which is an attempt to do something the Americans do very well: turn a queue control mechanism into an attraction in itself. It's something we British have never mastered. The idea is quite simple: you need to control the flow of people or keep them engaged while in the queue, or both. So you put something in place that not only does all those things, but actually builds up the theme and story of the attraction and thus becomes part of it. In the Yorvik Centre the theory is you are boarding a time machine that is going to take you back in time. Basically, you sit on benches in front of a screen. The screen shows two young people in front of some bad blue screen images who go back in time changing clothes and background images as you go 'back in time'. Your benches shift rather lamely with each shift backwards. Needless to say this could have been much better. In a strange sort of way though it does set the 'correct' tone for the experience, right down to the bored attendant trying to convince you something exciting has happened. It's hardly the Cyberdyne Systems presentation before the Terminator 2 3D attraction in Universal Studios or the Helicopter simulator as you journey to Wild Arctic in Sea World.

Now let's look at the centre piece of the Yorvik Centre: the tour through the city of Yorvik. I don't think I'm completely mad when I say it's like a cheap version of Peter Pan's Flight? It's so cheap its money shot is a man taking a shit. Are we seriously saying someone couldn't think of something more grand than that? I say it should be exactly like Peter Pan's Flight, but focus on imparting the history. As an example, the tour spends a lot of time trying to establish the size and importance of Yorvik, but it immediately puts you in the city streets. Why does it start with a close-up when it should start with an epic panning shot from above? Money, we know that's the case, but our imaginations aren't limited by money so we can throw ideas around. They already use the same types of cars as Peter Pan's Flight so why not have the tour start above Yorvik, thus showing it's size, it's position on the river? You can then move on, descending down towards it showing the commercial activity on the river, and the hustle and bustle. Once that's established you can descend into the city streets and get the close up detail. Show the grandeur that the tour tries to establish with words despite throwing you straight into the squalor. It's possible, if you've got the millions. It's easy to imagine how it could have been fantastic and educational.

The final part of the Yorvik Centre is probably the best bit and it was probably the least expensive. It's a museum with various historical items in glass cases. There is also some people playing characters you can interact with, and the odd special effect that displays 'holographic' people in some of the glass cases. There is some good stuff in this section. I found myself drawn to the various skeletons showing the damage they had suffered in battle. It was an interesting reminder of how harsh the times must have been. It's brought home when looking at the various leg bones with sword cuts etched into them.

Overall though, the Yorvik Centre suffers from being a typical British attraction, in that it's a case of nice try, but it just seems to fall short. You also have to consider it costs 8 GBP each to get in. A grand total of 16 GBP for two people. I can think of much better things to do with my money. Luckily we paid a grand total of 90 pence so we didn't feel too bad. The sad thing is, the queue waiting to get in had all sorts of nationalities in it, people who had come from as far as Australia and thought it'd be a great place to visit on their travels. I shake my head in shame.

One of the strangest experiences when you go to New York is the feeling you recognise the place. There is the various iconic landmarks, obviously, but you'll also spot the smallest or the strangest of things that ring a bell in the back of your brain. It might be the steam rising from the manhole covers. It may be a building you pass that you recognise as the one the Ghostbusters ran out of after being scared by a ghost in a library. It could be anything.

What makes Cardiff interesting is the exact same thing happens, except the locations are uniquely linked to Doctor Who and Torchwood.

I've spent Tuesday to Friday of this week (it's now Saturday) travelling literally around the country, the only bit I've missed is the north west. I've accumulated 780 miles in three sections, going from Seaton Carew to Cardiff to Stevenage and then back to Seaton Carew. I arrived in Cardiff late Tuesday night and left at about 1700 on Thursday. Since it was a business trip, Louise actually saw more of Cardiff than I did, as I just seemed to see most of it in the dark, while she had two good days to walk around.

My one evening in Cardiff wasn't really spent looking around Cardiff, it was spent exclusively at Cardiff Bay, which is very nice, and with a few exceptions aside, the part of Cardiff that is always shown in those Torchwood scenes. At Cardiff Bay you can stand above Torchwood Operations, or outside the Tourist Information centre that acts as a front (though only seen in the first series). The place is very recognisable from numerous scenes in Torchwood both large and small. The place is very nice, and is a bit of an entertainment hub due to having the Millennium Centre, restaurants at Mermaid Quay, the Red Dragon Centre, a Doctor Who exhibition, Techniquest, a comedy club and a myriad of other things. There is undoubtedly a lot there and we didn't really have time to look into it in great detail.

One of the most impressive buildings around the bay is a grand vision of glass, steel and wood. It is really impressive, one side of it almost completely made from glass allowing you to look into a vast open plan complex on multiple levels. Naturally, you assume it is some form of museum or art exhibition, with an outside bet of being an expensive corporate headquarters. It's none of these, it's the National Assembly for Wales! It's good to know what they are doing with all that funding they get from UK coffers, because that building must have cost an absolute fortune. No cost cutting on their 'parliament' building put it that way.

One key thing that is reinforced while in Cardiff is the popularity of Doctor Who. I've no doubt said this before, but there is no way anyone could have predicted how successful Doctor Who is. There are numerous examples of this in Cardiff, but one of the best ones is the TARDIS in the Red Dragon Centre. It's obviously a good photo spot, and kids, families and pensioners all get their photo taken beside it alongside Doctor Who and Rose poking their heads out from inside. I still find the success and general buzz surrounding Doctor Who astounding.

The time I spent in Cardiff was great, even if it could be better described as the time I spent at Cardiff Bay. I'm easily pleased though, as I find it cool doing simple things like looking out over Cardiff Bay just like Tosh at the end of episode four of Torchwood in season two.

Screw the Two Towers of Lord of the Rings fame, the true quest in life involves the infamous Four Towers of Disney fame. One of my favourite rides is the Tower of Terror at MGM Studios in Disney World Florida. As an overall experience it represents an excellent combination of theme, imagineered real-estate, special effects and above all else, an excellent ride. When we go to Disney World it is the attraction we visit the most by a large margin.

I want to experience them all, the trouble is there is four of them in different locations: MGM Studios, Florida; California Adventure, California; Disney Studios, Paris; and Disney Sea, Tokyo. Rather frustratingly, we've actually been to California Adventure, as we spent a day there last time we went to Las Vegas, but they hadn't built their Tower of Terror yet. Still, we do hope to visit the west coast of the US again at some point so we shall partake of the experience then. Disney Studios at Disneyland Paris isn't a big problem, and that shall be ticked off the list in early May 2008.

That leaves only the Tower of Terror at Disney Sea Tokyo.

Obviously this is a much larger undertaking, as a holiday in the far east is no small thing in terms of time and money. When looking at this sort of exercise you also start thinking of a bigger goal of having visited all Disney Parks. This is slightly more complex as that would mean adding Disneyland Hong Kong to the mix.

I remember, nearly a decade a go now, when we seemed much more youthful and exuberant than we are now, we did have this as a vague goal. You never know? One Day.

I can't remember every single moment of our first trip to Florida, but I remember key moments. In many ways getting to Disney World was the end of an odyssey. I'd wanted to go for quite a while, but just lacked anyone to go with. Money wasn't a problem, but anyone who would have went on the trip didn't have the money, whoever they might have been. Anyway, a couple of years after getting married we jumped on a plane to Florida.

One of the key memories is a simple one: the bus transfer from the airport to the hotel. In many ways the journey was a microcosm of the place and the culture. You got your first snap shot of how alien the US can actually be, and also the two sides to a Florida holiday as the bus stopped at some real dives as it dropped people off. You also got to see the outrageous madness of International Drive, such as the massive FAO Schwartz (no longer present) and the building that looks like it's been picked up by a tornado and dropped by the pavement upside down. Luckily, since we were staying in Disney World, our hotel was an awe inspiring sight rather than a disheartening one.

It was in 1998 we went, which was also the year Disney's Animal Kingdom park opened. We've liked that part ever since, in a way it's surprising an article on Disney's Animal Kingdom has taken so long.

One of the reasons we went for the Disney World holiday this year, as well as it be being the deciding factor on exactly when we went, was the dangling carrot of the Disney Dining Plan being absolutely free. As described before, this is basically an all inclusive offering, giving you credits to eat very well in all the Disney property restaurants, including third-party restaurants in Downtown Disney, and it even included all tips. Since the Dining Plan was a focus of the holiday, we did the sensible thing and booked all our table service restaurants 180 days in advance. This proved to be correct, as key restaurants like Le Cellier were effectively booked till January 2008 due to the volume of people on the Dining Plan.

The plan went well, and the schedule of restaurants held, apart from the fact we cancelled Raglan Road on the day we arrived, which proved sensible as the plane was delayed, and shifted a few things around as a result in the first few days. We also cancelled Narcoosees, mostly because we wanted to see Fantasmic and the day we planned to do that had heavy rain on the evening. It was also true that we didn't feel like to signature experiences in as many days (as Jiko is also a signature restaurant). The actual scheduled was as follows:

While it was heavy going eating out most nights, we found that the schedule wasn't a problem. We did think we might get sick of being tied down, but it worked out fine. The volume of food was a bit of a problem, in that it was a three course meal pretty much every evening. As far as I was concerned it was a bit like being out on business for an extended period and eating out for one reason or another for days in a row. It got a bit punishing over 14-days, but ultimately we found a balance.

The counter service and snack credits above and beyond the above uses of the table service credits also got heavily used. We used the counter service for lunch, which we tended to have as early as possible due to not having breakfast. The snacks got used for a myriad of things like drinks and ice cream, odd things like dole whips and various sweats, some of which got brought back with us. In short, other than a unique trip to Fuddruckers, we didn't spend a single dollar on food. We didn't have any credits left when we left, apparently this wasn't the case for some, with some people leaving with substantial credits remaining.

In total, the various snack, counter and table service credits we used amounted to 1559 USD worth of food, which at the current exchange rate is about 790 GBP. While we can't technically call that a saving, as we'd not have spent that much on food if we didn't have the Dining Plan, and we'd have certainly not got to the majority of the restaurants on the above schedule, it does represent a ridiculous amount of 'spend' that we got absolutely free. It's safe to say the Dining Plan was fantastic. It allowed us to experience a whole side of Disney World we don't normally engage with at all.

Regrettably, it is going to be a one off experience, as the Dining Plan you get free is being cut back by Disney for future years. The list of restaurants is being reduced, the tip is not being included and you don't get a starter on the table service. This is because they are scaling the Dining Plan to different prices, and they're only giving the lower cost one away for free to tempt people to the Disney World Resorts during off peak months.

The last day of the holiday is always a bit problematic, as you want to make the most of it but it's inevitable that your mind has started to turn back to all the things that plague your mind at home. In order to relax a bit we decided to go to a water park, but not Typhoon Lagoon, instead we went to Blizzard Beach. Amazingly, despite going to Disney World eight times, we've only been to Blizzard Beach once, and that was on our first trip. We walked in, had a scout around, and didn't like the place much. We must have been in an odd mood. We decided to try it again since we wanted to do something different and Blizzard Beach, despite the focus on the massive and extreme water slides, has a main pool with constant bobbing waves.

How does Blizzard Beach compare to Typhoon Lagoon? Well, it's more crowded, or it would be if it filled up. In Typhoon Lagoon the various loungers and chairs don't seem as congested, they were almost on top of each other in Blizzard Beach. This wasn't a problem for us as the Disney World complex has been relatively deserted for our whole visit (at one point walking around the World Showcase in Epcot was like something out off 28 Days Later before the Zombies showed up), but it would be a nightmare if at capacity. The Blizzard Beach experience can be summed up as follows: If you like the slides, then Blizzard Beach is for you, if you want to relax then Typhoon Lagoon is better. Blizzard Beach feels like a water park, while Typhoon Lagoon is just like you've found an isolated, sandy lagoon that just happens to be perfectly 'cleaned' every evening. The quality of the sand isn't as nice in Blizzard Beach either, and while the bit around the pool is fine, the park overall isn't as idyllic, largely because the environment is more fake: a snow capped mountain. The only thing that throws a spanner into this is the bobbing wave pool in Blizzard Beach, as it's sort of ironic that the bobbing wave pool in Blizzard Beach now seems more fitting to the relaxing environment of Typhoon Lagoon than the constant seven foot wave. We liked the pool in Blizzard Beach. Typhoon Lagoon has the same feature in a much bigger pool, but they rarely run it any more.

The only slide I went on was Slush Gusher, which is one of those fancy new slides that has you going uphill due to the force of the water. It was fine, but nothing fantastic. It didn't help that the Splash Landings Hotel at Alton Towers has a similar experience in its water park. The slides are so similar they suffer from the same problem, hapless souls being blown off the rubber ring thus bringing the slide to a grinding halt. I was tempted by numerous slides, but since Louise isn't as confident in the water she won't touch them, so it never feels the same queueing for a load of slides on your own (she wouldn't even go on Steamboat Springs). As for Summit Plummet, I have to admit even I was nervous about that one, thus allowing me to use the long queue as an excuse to not give it a shot. It's a seriously extreme water slide.

Our last supper at Disney World was in Jiko - The Cooking Place in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, since we wanted our last meal on holiday to be a good one we decided our best chance was Jiko. We weren't wrong, and as far as I'm concerned Jiko's has the best main course and the desert I'd had all holiday (and that's saying something). To be honest, the starter was fantastic as well, but the cheese soup at Le Cellier probably just has the edge. I find it hard to describe the Tanzanian Cheese Cake, other than it was gorgeous and just managed to pull past the mousse desert we had in Coral Reef. An excellent experience, brilliant atmosphere and fantastic food, everyone should give Jiko a try.

The wise among you will be aware that a Disney World holiday is not necessarily all fortune and glory, roses and honey, or however else you wish to describe it. At times things can go wrong and it can seem the most frustrating place on the planet. Planning can remove a lot of these frustrations. Turning up and wondering around expecting the place to fall into place with your whims is a sure fire way to encounter one frustration after another. At times though, you just can't avoid them. Usually it's little things, such as all the umbrellas only being available from the bowels of the shop during the Halloween Party despite the fact the Disney World complex has had heavy rain somewhere for the last 4-5 nights and Disney monitor the weather constantly.

The latter half of today was littered with irritations and annoyances.

It started well, as we'd cancelled our restaurant booking tonight in order to see Fantasmic, and instead had a booking at Chefs of France in Epcot. On the way though we popped into Le Cellier to see if they had any lunch availability and by some quirk of fate they did and we managed to score another meal in Le Cellier, which was great. We walked that off by walking around the World Showcase and then jumped over the the Magic Kingdom to divorce ourselves off a number of snack credits we'd been unable to use by doing a candy raid on the Main Street Confectionary. We also had another Dole Whip. Almost dying from the heat we then went back to the pool. Later on we went to MGM Studios and watched Fantasmic. All good. It didn't even rain, despite taking our umbrellas.

We then went to Downtown Disney and our good karma turned into bad karma.

We got the bus to Animal Kingdom Lodge as it seemed no one wanted to go there (all the other buses had massive queues due to everyone coming out of Fantasmic). We got on the Downtown Disney bus from the Animal Kingdom and it took forever to get there. He seemed to circuit the Disney World complex twice, and spend ten minutes waiting at one T-Junction because the bus in front was unwilling to move. We also had a deafening bus, with one family having a 'hilarious time', finding everything funny because they seemed slightly drunk. Then there was the constantly talking, whiny voiced emo duo, basically two older teenagers, a skinny guy who obviously liked musical theatre and a fat girl. He talked constantly, with a loud whiny voice.

When we eventually got to Disney Marketplace after about an hour, it seemed everyone in the Disney and the local area had decided to descend on the place. Okay, it is Saturday night, so we probably should have expected the place to be busier, but in my head I thought Pleasure Island would be busier, not Marketplace. It was packed. World of Disney was just annoying. You couldn't move for people, everything you wanted to look at seemed to have someone else move in on it just before you got there. People with pushchairs always seemed to want to leave them blocking major routes through the store. You really wanted to do something violent after about five minutes inside.

We decided to eat at the Earl of Sandwich, as we'd had it on our agenda as a place to try for a while. It was chaos personified, and getting our food was the most irritating experience I'd had all holiday. We queued for a while, then the restaurant adopts a 'place your order' and 'collect your order later' sort of regime. This isn't so bad if not for the fact the place was packed and you can't leave the place till you have your food as you can't hear the person calling out your number outside. It came quick, which was good, as I was about to go postal. We ate outside, as it was just too chaotic inside. We still didn't escape all the drama, as a family next to us seemed to be having 'veiled argument' with the 'staff' they'd brought with them. Lazy buggers. The sandwiches were great, and I'd recommend the food, but it's a bit of a nightmare when packed.

So, there you go, even with planning and experience on your side, it can be frustrating. Luckily, today was the only day with such annoyances, and they were isolated to only the late evening, which turned it into a sort of semi-interesting sideshow rather than something indicative of the whole experience. I believe for some, a larger proportion of their holiday is like this, though I don't know how they dig themselves into that hole (though I can hazard a few guesses).

Disney celebrates all the major holidays across all its parks, and it celebrates them for quite a long time to make sure everyone gets a chance to come. As an example, I'm not sure how long Disney World celebrates Christmas but Disneyland Paris Resort celebrates it for about three months. It's the same with Halloween, with the Magic Kingdom at Disney World playing host to the Mickey's Not So Very Scary Halloween Party on a regular basis throughout September and October. Tonight was the very first one.

Basically, the Not So Very Scary party is a ticketed event that allows special access to the Magic Kingdom from 1900 to 2400, along with key activities like the Halloween fireworks and parade. The park is also decorated suitably, numerous characters are out on the prowl, such as a focus on the villains, and you can go trick or treating. The trick or treating element is typical Disney, they basically have numerous trick or treat points throughout the park, at these points there are cast members with literally drums full of sweets, you walk up to them with the trick or treat bag provided when you entered the park and they toss a load of sweets in.

The only problem with the Not So Very Scary Party is it relies on good weather as a proportion of the trick or treat points are outside, and the majority of the events aren't going to happen in torrential rain. Regrettably, the weather pattern during the second week of the holiday has been significant storms from about 1800 onwards, and it's just a matter of luck whether it's occurring where you are. We've been both lucky and unlucky, in that we've missed the majority of them, but tended to hit them when we were doing something significant. We walked out of Fantasmic before it started due to heavy rain and we had bad luck at the Not So Very Scary Party, as it rained....a lot. It came down in buckets, with thunder that made you duck instinctively and lightning that spread across the sky jumping from cloud to cloud.

This blew the whole schedule of the event apart.

The other disappointing thing about the rain is some people had really put some effort into their costumes, and while we didn't have costumes, it did bring up all those memories about conventions and how great it would have been to dress up. We didn't get to see all of the costumes due to the size of the park, and the rain, but we saw a number of good ones. There was an excellent Indiana Jones, which I was particularly jealous off. There was a young daughter, mother and grandmother dressed as Alice, the Queen of Hearts and Tweedle-Dum. There was a mother and daughter dressed as the bride and her bridesmaid out of the haunted mansion, they looked fantastic walking around with the daughter holding the train of her wedding dress. Quite a lot of pirates of varying quality, though one group truly was excellent as they had leather elements to their costumes, and the women had the gathered skirts one one side, etc. There was even a group walking around as Dorothy, Tin Man, Lion and the Scarecrow. Lots of witches. It was good stuff. We did comment in the park that there was a time we'd have had a selection of costumes we could have used, but thinking about it now at least half of those wouldn't have been viable as they involved replica BB Guns - oh well, days gone by.

Still, not to be deterred we got ourselves a couple of 10 USD Disney umbrellas and set off to make of it what we could. We went on a number of rides, including the renovated Haunted Mansion which only opened a couple of days before the event, saw a couple of the dance parties that were taking place inside (they kids seemed to be loving those) and collected sweets from the trick or treat points that happened to be undercover. The rain was so heavy, even Disney couldn't force it's poor staff to stand out in it handing out sweets. The fireworks also went ahead, though they sprung them on everyone at a random time to try and get them in along with the parade. They fireworks were good but we happened to watch them from an odd position, directly underneath them, which didn't really help. I didn't think they were as good as the regular Wishes fireworks either, which was a pity.

They also managed to squeeze the parade in by conducting a typical feat of Disney fast-paced planning. They had the cast members out in large numbers sweeping away the water and drying out the street, and they must have cancelled the Headless Horseman riding down Main Street as he didn't appear. Other than that though the parade seemed to go ahead in all its glory - and glory it was. Parades are one of those Disney things that quite often sit more towards the childish and schmaltzy end of the experience and, as a result, they can be a mixed bag. The Not So Very Scary Parade was amazing. The music, the costumes, the various floats, the lighting around the park, everything just combined to make it great. You had people bouncing around on the street and everything. It was really good. In typical Disney fashion, they managed to ensure it appealed to kids while being cool and sexy enough for the adults.

It's a pity that the rain really sent the whole event in free fall, but we enjoyed ourselves a lot, and for us the sheer brilliance of the final parade sort of wiped away any thoughts that you'd paid for something that turned out to be a waste of money. Disney recognised the weathers influence though, and gave everyone a card giving them a free day in the park within a year. It's probably not going to be something we can use, but it's the thought that counts, I guess.

Due to the Not So Scary Halloween Party we had no restaurant scheduled for today, and we spent a core of the day at Typhoon Lagoon.