·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
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The Wendy’s in Hamburg is making a run at being the most disgusting restaurant in the area.  I guess you get what you pay for when you choose to dine at a fast food joint, but this place has been going steadily down hill for some time.

Just walk in and look around.  It is clear that the tables and floors get little to no cleaning with any effort.  If you dare to let your child enter the play area, arm yourself with disinfectant for afterward – that section gets even less attention than the dining area.  Finally, the coup de grâce – visit the restroom.  I walked in and decided it wasn’t worth the effort and left.

The adjoining KFC and Shell gas station are guilty by association.  For the love, the three of you at least draw straws for who gets to take a hose to the potty.

An easy way to earn Jason’s two thumbs up rating: three flights, no accidents!

Seriously, I hate to fly.  Think about how your body reacts when you get into some emergency situation and your survival instincts kick in.  You know how your pulse rate climbs, your heart pounds and you become very alert and aware of the things around you?  Well, imagine being in that state for the entire duration of every flight that you are ever on, and that is why I hate flying.  I can’t explain to you why it happens, it just does.

Jenny finally talked me into flying to Disney World for our recent vacation and there were several things about Southwest that I liked.  First, while the flight to Orlando was delayed a bit, the rest were actually early. I also enjoyed the humor of the flight attendants… “If at any time you are not satisfied with our service, there are six exits from the plane – two front, two center, two rear!”  While it may be corny, it does help people to relax… an ever so little bit.

In addition, I would compare the financial and safety success of Southwest with that of Honda.  Unlike American car makers, Honda does not have hundreds of models with thousands of options.  Instead, they offer about a dozen vehicles and maybe four variations of each.  This strategy surely results in less overhead and costs.  Not only does it save on tooling, parts, training, etc for the number of combinations, but it allows them to concentrate on the important details instead of managing all that complexity.  So it is with Southwest.  Check out fleet statistics for the major carriers – Southwest’s fleet is made up entirely of Boeing 737s, of which they use  three different models.  The same can probably be said for their selection of cities served.  They don’t fly everywhere under the sun, but they hit a good number of major locations.

Finally, Lindsay really likes the colors of their planes.

One other cool thing from my travels… check out flightaware.com – very cool tracking of live flight data.

In the spirit of comparing apples to apples, the Go, Diego, Go! Live show is much better than that Disney Playhouse crapper. All the things that were bad about the Disney show – the poor sound, the terrible seating on the side (they didn’t even have those edge sections open at the Diego show) and the general cheapness of it all – were not a problem at the Diego show.

My only small complaint is about the “flying birds”. During the show, there are many animals that are controlled by sticks and wires off stage. But in a couple of scenes, a human in some crazy camouflage garb walks right out into the show while holding one of these birds up in the air. There are certainly less obtrusive ways to get the bird to go across the stage, such as hanging it from wires or having the operator hide further behind the backdrops.

Something I also found interesting was the absence of the “gauntlet of flashy, expensive toys” while entering the show. At the Disney show and every other kids’ event we’ve been to, booth after booth of the stuff lined the path from the Rupp Arena entrance to the doors of the arena. However, there was not a single vendor to be found outside. I do think I saw some inside, which is fine with me. I like having the option of choosing whether to approach that booth.

I’ve given so many thumbs lately that I’ve had to create a new category for it.

The latest downer came from a visit to a Playhouse Disney Live show in Rupp Arena. My daughter adores all things Disney, as do most children. She watches all kinds of Disney shows and movies, she has all kinds of princess stuff and dress up clothes, and we went to see Disney On Ice earlier this year and it was a fantastic show. Jenny said it best – you spend money on Disney and you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, this show was the first thing we’ve run into that did not follow that tenet.

We paid about as much for these tickets as for the Disney On Ice ones, but the seats were a little to the side. No problem – you could have sat anywhere at Ice and had a good time. Ah, but not so here. This show consists of characters dancing around on stage like your average play along with a big screen in the back that provides a backdrop and even shows a few scenes. It sure would have been nice to have seen that magical screen! Now, I know what you’re thinking – we bought the cheap seats and sat over on the edge, right? Nope – we were maybe halfway around to the side, but only the folks directly facing the stage would have had a good view of that screen. What a mess. To make matters worse, the sound was not so great, either. I maybe caught half of what was said the whole way through.

Toward the end of the show, though, Lindsay was hanging in there. She was dancing to the music and seemed to be enjoying it, so I figured we’d be OK. Then at the end, *all* of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters come out… well, you know, except for Daisy and Pluto. Mickey had made a few appearances during the show, and after they introduced Minnie, Donald and Goofy and said “The gang’s all here!”, you could just hear all the children ask in unison “Where’s Daisy?”. Brutal!

I’ll bet if you pulled Walt’s frozen head out of the vault, thawed it out and told him about this, he’d… well, maybe what they should do instead is pull out one of the movies we haven’t seen in a while and re-release it as some special edition so that they can afford a couple more actors to dress up as Daisy and Pluto for all of ten minutes. Woof!

After a not so pleasant visit to some other distillery recently, Jenny talked me into returning “home” and seeing the Maker’s Mark distillery this weekend. On the first two Saturday evenings in December, they dress the place up with lights and wreaths, serve bourbon balls and apple cider and even have Santa on hand to make it a kid-friendly event.

We got to roam about on our own and talk to some of the Maker’s folks. They have employees at several stops to show you around and tell you all about how they make their bourbon. Imagine that! A self-guided tour at a historic landmark – outrageous! The place looked very pretty and we had a wonderful time. Lindsay especially loved seeing the lights and running around to look at them.

A friend commented on my other post that distilleries are “very slick branding and advertising opportunities”. Maker’s does so many interesting things like these special December weekends that it is no wonder so many of us are fiercely loyal to them. Indeed, their Ambassador program is one of the coolest “clubs” I’ve ever been in. Woodford and others should takes notes. It surely costs Maker’s money to put these events on, but I am guessing they more than make up for it by getting the best type of advertising of all: word of mouth. And I’m sure the sales of all those special bottles don’t hurt, either. They could dip the things in mud and sell them, if they wanted.