So as I mentioned above, I hadn't actually planned on running Avengers until Thursday. Without getting too political, I found myself in a funk after Tuesday night, not just with the results but by it's aftermath that still continues. So I was happy I was still able to register at the last minute and join the race, because it was EXACTLY what I needed. 

Considering how busy Disneyland (and other theme parks in Southern California) were over the weekend it seems I wasn't the only one in need of some escapism. 

Keep in mind, some of the race pics were taken on my old point and shoot camera so the quality may not be up to our usual standards. But the Star Wars Land Pics taken from the Parking Structure were from the DSLR.  ​

I had run a 1/2 Marathon 2 weeks ago and while my time for Avengers was essentially the same as that one I didn't really push myself for this one as much as I probably could have, I was just having too much fun on the course. (I need to remember this for when I run the LA Marathon in March, but also still wanting to have a good time for that one) 

Of course, because much of the race goes backstage I was able to get some pics of Tower of Terror. It really IS tacky in person. 

Having not actually been to Disneyland in 2 years I wish there were some rides open. I mean, if they can have character stops, why not ride stops. ;) 

Of course, having heard from some friends who have been AP's since 1992 that this was the busiest weekend they've EVER seen at DL (Holidays included) made me rethink visiting soon. 

Have heard that the new Holiday World of Color is nothing short of breathtaking. 

I will admit, I got a bit emotional entering the gates of Disneyland for the first time in 2 years. 

I was shocked we got this close to Star Wars Land construction ... definitely just dirt on this side. 

Throughout the race it was awesome to see all of the amazing volunteers, the spectators and fellow runners. All races, religions, orientations, just together to have an amazing time. I wasn't in the race for a new Personal Record, I just wanted to have fun. ​

More Tower of Terror. You know, in theory I'm really not opposed to the makeover of the ride (and YAY for random drop sequences) but this is just REALLY bad show. They should have just closed it already. 

Towards the end, two different schools playing together ... what it's all about. 

Had such an amazing morning running through the parks and Anaheim. The course was SO much more improved than the inaugural race 2 years ago (I didn't do last years race) and again it was just the RunDisney therapy I needed. 

Ok, you've waited long enough, here are some pics of Star Wars Land for you to enjoy. It helped that they parked the runners on Minnie, so I didn't even have to go that far from my car to get these. ;) 

This was my first time seeing it in person and I have to admit, pictures really don't give the scope of this justice. 

At least it's not all just dirt anymore. ;) 

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed the update and a rare Disneyland update from us. I guess in the future when we're in the area we'll have to take a detour to track Star Wars Land construction, even if it's just from outside the park. 

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Some of you already know this, but for those that don't, in August my wife Kristi had to have major back surgery, her fourth major back surgery since 2008. Which has meant a big change in our theme park going life and which meant a HUGE change in our 2016 Haunt Season. So much so that it necessitated a cancellation of our first trip to HHN Orlando and Howl-O-Scream this October (don't worry, plans are already being made to go next October). 

This also meant that our SoCal Haunt Season was very different, one of us couldn't do, well, anything and one of us felt incredibly guilty for doing things. Such is the nature of almost 21 years of marriage. 

But, as luck has it, Universal Hollywood extended their event for the second time this year which meant that she was well enough to go to the event, but would have to do so in a wheelchair. Not only due to the walking, but to help control any scary "jerky" motions in mazes.

​So hopefully this report will be beneficial to somebody who may want to do HHN 2017 but has otherwise been wondering if they can do so. So we'll DEFINITELY be re-running this update next October, well, September. ;) 

I'll also point out that we did attend Fright Fest in October but at the time it was kind of a "test" so we only did the Scare Zones and Aftermath 2. But all indications are that that event and I'm sure every other theme park event would be just as awesome to navigate for somebody in a wheelchair. 

Once we arrived at the park we picked up our Front of the Line passes and headed into the park. You don't need to have a Front of the Line pass to do the event in a Wheelchair, they will simply give you a return time at each maze, but we were able to get Front of the Line passes at the last minute, so we did. And it made the night awesome. 

Our first stop of the night was Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and if you saw our initial HHN review you'll remember this was down at the bottom of the list. Not so much this time. Such is the curse of going on opening night as you'll see in this report. 

We had a great time in this maze and because I was pushing her and not worrying about picture taking and filming I got to enjoy the maze and see all of the amazing detail in all of them. 

Next up was The Walking Dead which we've of course done before, which also turned out to be the easiest maze to navigate due to it's permanent nature. It was also the only time ALL NIGHT that I ran over somebody's foot (one of the security guards in the maze). Sorry about that. 

Because it was the last night of HHN they were running a test and had Wizarding World open. Because we hadn't tried the hot Butterbeer yet, well, duh, we had to spend some time having Butterbeer and dessert because we didn't think Butterbeer would go very well with Fish n Chips. Grandma would be proud that we had dessert first. 

One of the other HHN experiences that was kind of low on our list from opening night was Terror Tram. First off, the tram attendants are AMAZING when it comes to guests in wheelchairs. So HUGE kudos to all of them. 

The other thing we noticed very early in the night were the monsters were actively going after Kristi. A LOT. I can't count how many times she got her "throat slit" during our night, but it was at least 25-30. 

The Terror Tram also produced the best "scare" we had at any event all year. We were going through one of the "rooms" and came out and got bombarded by chainsaws from three different directions. It was amazing. Too bad we weren't filming. 

After a quick dinner in Springfield we made our way downstairs. Because Kristi is mobile enough to use the Starway we went that route to leave the shuttle for those who aren't able to transfer out. It was interesting taking an empty wheelchair down but after the first level we had no problems. 

Down on the backlot mazes we were able to do Krampus and Freddy vs Jason 2 times each, both were AMAZING and FvJ in particular was so much more improved than opening night. So much so that it was probably my second favorite maze of the night, after Krampus. 

AHS was also really solid again, but I really would love to see them just limit it to one season of the show. I'd love to see it come back and go that route in 2017. 

After a quick break down on the lower lot we made our way through Exorcist, and this was the only maze all night I actually ran into a wall pushing the wheelchair. It's just REALLY dark in this maze and I literally had no idea where I was going. But it was funny and we all laughed. 

Oh, and the maze was of course amazing. 

Last but not least was Halloween which was, duh, amazing. 

Going up the starway with the Wheelchair was significantly easier than going down. 

We spent some time going through The Purge which was literally on fire that night, being the last night there's just a different kind of energy, this is true for all Halloween events. 

I really  hope they bring the concept of the "Gauntlet of Fear" back in 2017. It was a test that worked out REALLY well and everybody seemed to enjoy it. I just hope the theme is something actually "horror" based next year. Would be a GREAT fit for the Shawn of the Dead scarezone again (hint, hint). 

Overall our night of going to HHN in a Wheelchair was a VERY positive experience. There were only a couple of times we got stuck or ran into lots of hanging corpses (FvJ) but all of the staff in every maze, in every line, at the tram was amazing. You can tell that HHN and Universal goes above and beyond when it comes to taking care of all their guests.

And because in some mazes there were parts where I literally couldn't see in front of me, it turned out monsters were kind of waiting for us, which was of course amazing. 

​Yes, parks are required to be accessible due to the ADA but you can tell Universal has taken special care to go even beyond that. And it's very much appreciated. 

Thanks for reading and we hope this report will help some of you as you make plans for next years Halloween season. 

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Welcome to Islands of Adventure 

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Why are we at Universal before the sun is up?

I love Disney races but this weekend we're skipping those for something different instead, the UO Fun Run!

The UO Fun Run took us through both theme parks, starting with Universal Studios.

On to Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando where we took a lap around the entire park.

And the finish line was at CityWalk near Hard Rock Cafe.

More from the finish line at the UO Fun Run at Universal Orlando . Great race!

We were greeted by some minions after crossing the finish line. ​

Really enjoyed starting my day with the UO Fun Run. Thanks Universal Orlando for a great morning!

​Related Updates: 

• Photo Tour of Universal Studios Florida 
• Grinchmas at Universal Studios Hollywood begins December 3
• Hot Butterbeer now featured at Universal Studios Hollywood
• Opening Night of Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood
• Opening of Halloween Horror Nights 2016 at Universal Orlando 

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Welcome to Universal Studios Florida 

And there's our look at Universal Studios Florida. We hoped you enjoyed seeing some great detailed pictures of this amazing park instead of just the normal "what's being built" type updates. 

Stay tuned the rest of this week as we kind of found ourselves with a plethora of Universal updates. Tomorrow we'll have an update from the UOR Fun Run, Thursday a trip report from HHN Hollywood, but this ones a bit different as we had to do it with a wheelchair (so that was different) and then Friday we'll have our photo update of Islands of Adventure. 

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First and foremost, as always, I want to take some time to thank those of you who enjoy our website for your support. This year brought with it more challenges than we could have ever anticipated (mostly away from Park Journey that we hope didn't impact your enjoyment of the site). 
​
Without all of you we wouldn't be able to or even want to do this and for that we thank you. ​

As always, to my 3 brothers Matt, RD and Chris ... we've never wavered in our support of this thing through so much stuff going on in our personal lives for good and bad. Sure we've all had times when we couldn't give all we wanted to but the desire has never wavered and I simply couldn't think of any other people I'd want to do this with. I just wish there was some way we could bottle up our disagreements to create an amazing podcast. Because that would be fun. =) 

To the rest of our team, once again Renée has been amazing with so many updates from Florida and keeping us all updated through Hurricane Matthew, Steve and Jenn with some great updates from Busch Gardens (love Steve's Roller Coaster Day update from Busch Gardens Tampa and Sea World). To Andrew and Stephen ... you've all probably noticed we've increased our coverage of Northern California parks this year and hanging out with you guys at media day for Joker was amazing as always. Hope we get to see you guys at Winterfest at CA Great America soon. 

To JoAnna, Scott, Randy, Chris, Gary and SO many others who have done an update here and there you'll never know how thankful we are that you chose us to share your adventures with. 

And of course, to my own family for continuing to support this crazy thing I decided to start on some random night 3 years ago. To say that Park Journey wouldn't exist without your support and understanding (and grabbing me a beer during Facebook Live chats) would be an understatement.

Just as I was last year, I'm incredibly #Blessed to be able to do this with people I care about, love and respect. 

So as you may have noticed, we just launched the "new" Park Journey over the past week. We really hope you enjoy the new layout, we sure do. 

The reason for the change is two-fold. 

First: The web service we use (Weebly) until very recently was basically for online stores, which meant doing updates was actually not easy to do (or it could have been my old POS computer). So with some new site designs this actually made it easy for us to abandon our plans to move to a WordPress site (and not have to spend the $$ to do so) and actually be able to do a bit for those who write for the site. Yay. 

Second: All of the content you see on this site has been uploaded by 1 person for 3 years. Yep, even though we have many different writers, all the updates were done by me. The reason for this was the aforementioned site layout issues with Weebly and me not wanting to hassle others to take on that annoying role. Because it really was annoying. But this way our contributors can start doing their own updates. We're also going to start adding bios to our updates so you can know who's writing them. Because we have the best damn writers and you should know who they are. =) 

We also updated the way our "past updates" were organized to hopefully be able to find things easier and implemented a Search Function on the site. Hopefully this makes looking for past updates and information easier for everybody. 

As far as updates, we really did try to minimize them to 2 or 3 per week, and some weeks we were successful, but in months like October, there was just too much going on to do that. Even having 5 updates a week for a few weeks still meant we were pushing stuff. But we didn't hear any complaints on that. Obviously we go where the updates take us and sometimes we have more updates than we anticipated. 

Social Media: 

​Facebook: 1758 "likes" - Like last year this is an increase of approximately 700 in the last year. I think the new Facebook issues of "see first" kind of impacted these, but as always we are very happy with this.  
Twitter: 1999 "followers" (SO CLOSE) - This is actually a pretty significant increase over last year as we've had more people running the Twitter (something your editor in chief sometimes forgets). Thank you for all the RT's. =) 
Instagram: 3571 "followers: - This is over a 2000 follower increase over last year. I still don't get it, I sometimes forget to post stuff on IG for a week or more at a time yet those hashtags just get it done. So obviously we're doing something right. Yay!! 
YouTube: 645 "subscribers" - While this is about an increase of about 300 people this year it's still not where we want it, or where we think it should be. We've posted some damn good content this year from Ride POV's to Halloween stuff and even some Throwback videos. So come on folks, give us a "subscribe". Are we begging? That's pretty pathetic if we are. ;) ​

We also did some fun Facebook Live Chats over the past few months and we had a blast with them. This is something we're going to be continuing over the next year, maybe once a month or so (we'll pick a set night and stick with it). We think we've figured out a way to get more people involved in this and if it takes off, maybe some special guests. 

Oddly enough, we had more Six Flags updates in 2016 than we had in 2015. Not sure how that is since we had about 20 updates just on Twisted Colossus last year. But this just goes to show the power of Team Park Journey as we were able to greatly expand our coverage this year to parks outside of the Southern California Market. 

Favorite Updates:
​Behind The Scenes at Six Flags Magic Mountain's Fright Fest
Our exclusive look at the behind the scenes make-up process at SFMM's Fright Fest

​VR Coasters: We had updates from 3 of the Six Flags VR Coasters and they turned out AMAZING, so we thought we'd share them again.

Be sure to watch these in full screen and let us know what you think of the new HD Video Feature!! 

​Cedar Fair - 19 Updates

This is actually a couple less updates for this year even though we again had more updates from parks outside of Southern California. Of course, having no updates from that big park in Ohio probably cut down on possible updates. ;) 

This was also a few less from last year because, well, Wizarding World opened and after February there wasn't really any construction going on out west. But that doesn't mean we didn't cover the hell out of the opening because we of course did. 

We're also going to have a couple of "photo tours" of Universal Orlando Resort next week courtesy of Matt. 

How many "theme park" sites can say they have a ratio of WDW to Disneyland updates of 27 - 2 ... well guess what, we can!! Thanks to the amazing Renée and Morgan we owned WDW updates this year. And even our two Disneyland updates came from Renée. We really to find a new member of Team Park Journey with a Disneyland AP. Contact us if you want the role!! 

Without question this is the area of the site that has grown the most over the past year mostly thanks to, you guessed it, those Florida people. We even did have an update from SeaWorld Texas this year. 

With new rides coming to the San Diego park next year we'll surely have more updates from that park in 2017. 

From small parks in California, to Dollywood and all the way south to Colombia we had some amazing updates from some amazing parks this year. 

Favorite Updates:
Colombian Adventures with Chris - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
Another easy choice. How often do we get to see Colombian parks with a host as amazing and fun as Chris? 

RD and Randy take on Lightning Rod at Dollywood
The story of how Randy got RD on Lightning Rod at Dollywood ... the before and after effects of that ride will haunt RD forever, or a day or two. 

We had such a fun year away from Theme Parks this year, and I'm so happy to see this area of the site continue to grow. Because we love all kinds of things. This year we definitely expanded our "Con" coverage with some great fun at WonderCon and Midsummer Scream (hopefully ComicCon next year). We also had an awesome update from the Walt Disney Family Museum as well as all of the awesome Halloween event coverage in September and October. 

Favorite Updates: 
Walt Disney Family Museum 
Andrew and Renee visited the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco in September and obviously enjoyed their visit immensely. Definitely make sure you plan a visit here on your next Bay Area trip. 

From The Mind of the Editor - Enjoy All The Things
Gregg takes some time away from talking about random theme park stuff and shares a story about his family that also involves theme parks (shocker). 

To say we're humbled and thankful for the growth of this site that wasn't really supposed to ever be a thing would be an extreme understatement. Hopefully with all the growth we've never lost sight of where we started and that we're just here to have fun. Considering the amount of people we've had to block or ban in 3 years can be counted on 1 hand this hopefully says something about the team we've assembled and the people who enjoy our content. 

So thank you again for another amazing year of Park Journey and we're looking forward to an amazing 2017 and beyond. 

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