#(which is what a mac normally is. Only apparently I have the worst mac version in a while)

[edenorisshitposting]

My mac may be dying. I don't know if I should upgrade to a newer mac, or go back to windows.

Mac pros: very good at running design software, which is what I want it to do.

Mac cons: Expensive. I miss playing bideo games

Windows pros: Less expensive. Bideo games :)

Windows cons: Fucking awful operating system, I can't believe we let them get away with this for so long

[felinalain]

Cates garbage list of problems

- Eddie being retconned as a “ egregiously depressed suicidal bastard “ (thanks Symbean) which is against Eddie very core.

- Symbiote being retconned as a cruel manipulative abuser.

- Both main characters being retconned several steps back into their character development, for the sole purpose of Cates getting to develop them again, except he’s doing it by destroying everything that made them “them”. And it’s even worse compared to the run that came just before (like Carnage 2016 and Costa run). Like, this wouldn’t be so bad if this run was happening right after the 2000s. But it’s not.

- Eddie cancer arc being retconned: makes no sense because of anti-venom and mister negative. Also if the symbiote gave Eddie cancer, why would he abandon him because of the cancer in the 2003 hunger?

- Eddie memories being changed by the symbiote: makes no sense because other character remember the same events like Eddie did, and other symbiotes could/would have told him about it

- Mary being retconned, only to be replaced by Cates OC Dylan (note, I like Dylan, but the way he’s being shoehorned in is what I have a problem with)

- Dylan entire origin (codexes?)

- Anne have been raped by the symbiote. (forced pregnancy is rape) edit: Recent issues have mentioned that symbiote codexes can only “affix” to existing foetus, so Anne was pregnant, from Eddie? And somehow the codexe made the baby an hybrid? Unsure and unclear, better than rape option, still stupid overall

- Codexes as a whole being nothing more than plot gimmicks. They can do anything and everything depending on what the plot need. They can resurrect the dead, imprint people, transmit info, make hybrid babies, and probably do the washing and coffee while at it

- Red is dead and Cletus barely reacted

- Cletus HATES fate and destiny with a passion, why is he going along with Knull bullshit?

- There is no Carnage in this event, only Grendel and Cletus. Garnage? (thanks mushroom for the name, it works)

- Why do the Venom symbiote codexes matter so much to bring Knull back? Who knows! Not Cates apparently!

- Shriek and Scorn being killed off as sacrifices goes against all of their respective characters: !Shriek was never a meek submissive, even if she WAS obsessed with Carnage. She was always shown as strong and fighting. She even fucking SLAPPED Carnage once when she had enough of his bullshit! !Scorn fought against Carnage in Carnage USA and she was shown to hate him and want him caught at all cost... we never get told why she’d become a zealous follower of his, and she dies with her character butchered

- Shriek being killed to bring back demogoblin, who never even got that well along with Carnage, only to then give him tits and have him make out with Carnage, because it’s fine to do that now that he has tits, but Carnage couldn’t just make out with Shriek, that wouldn’t have worked, got to have those monster-tits

- In fact, every single named women that Cates wrote into this shitshow is dead, or was retro-actively raped. Every single one. The only survivors so far are in side-stories that he didn’t write himself. (and that’s not saying all side stories women survived) Here is a full list, to not loose track, adding the most recent entries as they appear, because apparently he’s not done yet:

Scorn: character butchered, killed Mary: erased from existence Anne: retconed into a rape victim (of sort, see above point about her) Shriek: killed to give Demogoblins tits, so he and Carnage could make out Louise Kasady: rectoned to have died in child birth Alejandra (A ghost rider): Killed Sadie and Tess (from the family taken over by the life Symbiotes): alive, in tubes in the makers lab? Traumatised. Patricia : Killed by Garnage Aunt Sarah (Andi’s aunt) : killed by carnage worms Andi: Still Alive (now sharing her body with Donna and Scream) Misty: Still Alive (for now)

- In Alejandra case, she died for her codex, despite that she never, ever had a symbiote herself. The excuse for her death being that the spirit of vengeance had the codex because it bonded to Venom once, so it passed her the codex (because spirit are known for having spines, as we all know) That is literally making up bullshit to get to kill a woman character.

- Now let’s compare this to the number of male characters that got the short end of the stick this run: Lee price: dead (cf more on that below) Mac gargan: paralysed Osborn senior: still crazy The Judge (from the side story): dead Jameson Junior (wolfman): escaped carnag-ification, probably traumatized? Miles:  escaped carnag-ification, probably traumatized? Sadie brother and father (from the family taken over by the life-Symbiotes): alive, in tubes in the makers lab? Traumatised. 

Now assume any character not on this list is still alive, and the worst they got was normal super-hero type injuries while fighting Garnage legions... When you know that there is an overwhelming majority of male characters in comics, do you see the problem with the fact that nearly all the victims are women?

- The entire scene with Miles getting caught by Carnage, being told by two writers, and cates version makes no sense and makes Eddie an idiot “Mac get to Carnage!” “Mac Get away from Carnage!” (thanks lobac for nailing this)

- On the subject of Miles, let’s go back in time to earlier Venom issues when Miles got mad at Venom, as if he’d forgotten about his reality jump, except Miles had SEVERAL issues in which it was proven that not only he remember he jumped universe, he already MET Venom before this, when Flash still had the symbiote. So WHY would he react like this now? (we all know why, Cates doesn’t give a damn about anyone run but his)

- The symbiote was braindead, suddenly it’s not. We never got told why or how

- Venom symbol was never copied from spider-man, it’s actually a dragon because knull symbol is a dragon! Look at my edgy oc design! I didn’t copy Venom, he copied me!

- Making Carl Brock a physical abuser, and a poor man, when we were told in ASM that he’d never raised a hand on Eddie and it was emotional neglect that turned Eddie into what he was. Less important but making Carl poor when in ASM when we first met him he had a maid and a fucking mansion on a hill.

- Everything of Eddie’s past actually seems more pulled from the cursed Dark Origin than from the ASM issues where Venom first appeared. (Carl, the house, the grimdark, etc)

- Eddie personality being reduced to “gruff bland dudebro with manpain” instead of over-the-top, literate, dangerous, lethal protector. Heck, Dylan feels more like Eddie than Eddie himself!

- On that line, Norman feels more like Carnage than Carnage has the entire run!

- Absolutely no acknowledgement of the symbiote abuse of Eddie, it’s being brushed over without so much as a single line mention, like “we’ll talk about it once Carnage is dead” Edit: we are now several issues past the whole abuse thing, Garnage event is over, and their relationship switched back to being happy partners with still no explanation or acknowledgement, leading me to ask: “Why the fuck retcon all that shit in, if it’s to then ignore it? What was the point, aside from pissing off the fans by making shit up in a desperate (and failed) attempt at edginess?”

- The life fondation symbiotes being once again treated as monsters with no personality when their stint with deadpool AND scott both proved the opposite. Yes they’re being possessed by knull, but it’s barely made clear and barely shown whether or not they’re fine with it. (And they should not be)

- Lee price character was murdered before he was. He always was a cold, calculating bastard working from the shadows, and was created and used to demonstrate that host can abuse symbiotes. In Cates run he was just a stupid braggard. His death wasn’t satisfying because he wasn’t himself.

- Ravencroft and the people in it (mentally ill people) are represented as monsters, and the establishment itself is made to look like a b-movie asylum. I know comics have a hard time with respecting mentally ill people, but I still wasn’t expecting it to be that bad

- Why does Eddie still have so many wounds? He got a big-ass black eye, why isn’t the symbiote healing him like it always did in the past? Eddie never stayed hurt, the symbiote never LET him stay hurt... so why is it doing that now? (never solved, past Garnage event Eddie is now healed)

- Eddie and Sleeper reunion (AC3) is as cold as an iceberg. All past interaction they had, Sleeper called Eddie “father” and Eddie called Sleeper “his child/baby” And now it’s “... oh yeah you’re here. Cool I guess?” Also Sleeper is a cat. Why? Who the fuck know!

- Eddie refusing to kill Norman Osborn. Norman Fucking Osborn. And why? To not set a bad exemple for Dylan. Who is not even present at the time. Who is in deadly danger because of garnage. Let me re-iterate. Eddie LETHAL protector Brock, refuse to kill Norman Green Goblin Osborn.

- (AC3) The symbiote suddenly doesn’t mind dumping Eddie, to jump on someone more powerful. We spent months with shit being shovelled at us about how possessive it is, and how it fucked up Eddie to keep him forever, and then suddenly, poof. It’s jumping ship.

- (AC3)  The symbiote is evil because it's staying with Eddie, then it's Evil because it's leaving Eddie. Not even mentioning that it did this because it's trying to kill Garnage. Ya know the thing that's trying to kill literally EVERYONE?

- (AC4) Garnage can see the green door, when only gama-radied people can. Garnage is not gama-radied. This is apparently a dig from Cates at the writer from Hulk who think Knull is not that good. The whole dialogue certainly seem that way.

- (AC4) Eddie “I can’t fight I need to protec my child!” Brock “Wait, spider-man protect my child I must fight” Again with the constant change of motivation that give you whiplash. Of the bad kind.

- (AC4) Eddie spent the whole run being made to hate symbiote, bath into codices to create a new Venom.

- (AC4) Miles who had previously gained control of the Garnage piece attached to him, now somehow has lost control again, and Eddie has to fight him. Anyone who read the Miles tie-in know this is bullshit. Cates did not consult the other writers on this, once again.

- (AC4) The bonus note at the end, presenting Eddie having lost the symbiote as an addict, when at the time, Eddie reaction was to exercise like a madman to get stronger, to get revenge for the symbiote. The only one to ever make Eddie a sad mopping mess is cates and yet he mocked that very concept. Am I the only one seeing the arrogant irony here?

- Garnage die in one-shot. After all the hype and build-up and “he’s invincible! we’re doomed!”. He dies. In one shot. In the most anti-climatic way possible.

- Dylan kept a piece of Garnage. Why the fuck would he do that?! Why the fuck did he become suddenly so stupid?!

- Ravencroft side story can be summed up in a single (if long) sentence: “Hey what if we changed everything that ever made Cletus interesting, like the chaos and killing, and made him an agent of destiny, born from a lineage of serial killers, while throwing in some racist bullshit in our comic! Doesn’t that sound neat?”

- I’m astonished at the length at which Cates will go, to avoid writing the main characters of the serie he’s supposed to be writing. He retconned Eddie into an entirely different man to not have to write him, and he use every single excuse he can come up with to avoid writing the symbiote. So far, the symbiote:  (numbers aren’t fully accurate I went from memory) - Was there but silenced with medications - Was brain-dead  - Was a dog  - Was gone and got used in a space viking elf war  - Was back to fight Garnage and kept being treated like everything it said or did was evil  - Was held hostage and silenced by Garnage - Got blown up with a nuke, on the “Honeymoon Island” as we call it

Please someone tell me: if C*ates hates Venom’s character so much, why is he still writing them?

I probably forgot some, but if I did, feel free to add

Also, a personal thought but the pacing of the whole run is awful. We go for half a dozen issues of nothing but exposition dumps, then cluttered rushed action scenes, and then back to expo-dump... that’s not a good story-telling pace.

edited 17 TIMES.

[lonesomealley]

Borderlands 3 Review

*Writer’s Note: I played this game when it came out and have based my review on the version of the game that I played then. Some of this information may become outdated with time. 

DISCLAIMER: This review is going to contain a lot of spoilers for Borderlands 3, if you don’t want that then this is not the review for you. My overall opinion of this game is that it’s… okay. It entirely depends on what you value out of a video game. Borderlands 3 is, at heart, just another Borderlands that’s been somewhat dumbed down, and if you don’t like the Borderlands series’ base mechanics (i.e. farming, constantly throwing away weak gear, getting stomped on for being underleveled) then this is not the game for you. If you value storytelling in your video games, this game is absolutely not the game for you. However if you’re someone who just wants to shoot some guys and already like, or think you’ll like, Borderlands’ looting systems then this game is going to range anywhere from okay to good. It should be kept in mind that this review is meant to take into account many of the different aspects of the game, hence why this review is going to have a far lower score than many other reviewers/media publications seem to be rewarding it.

I don’t really know if Borderlands 3 is worth the $60 asking price, and I would ultimately say to either wait for the game to go on sale or at least wait for it to go up on Steam. This is because the game really is just a dumbed down Borderlands entry, you could easily just go buy the Handsome Collection for $60 (if you haven’t already) and have just as good, even better, of a time. Also that Steam has more laid back refund policies than the Epic Store (which can be blamed for this review existing in the first place). But this is where the spoiler free section ends, anything past this point will contain heavy spoilers for the sake of in depth discussion. You have been warned.

When the Borderlands 3 reveal trailer came out back in March I was entirely skeptical that the game would be anything good. The story looked like a mess, the guns looked like complete shit, and overall it appeared that a lot of the things they were promising on were too good to be true or would end up simplified. Also, at the time I had just played through the entirety of the existing Borderlands series (excluding Tales From the Borderlands), so this new game was going to have to spike a certain chord with me. This definitely wasn’t helped by the “additions” that they tried to make to those games such as second game’s graphics enhancements, and the Borderlands 1 remaster. The former, while making the game look prettier, had the problem of cutting off cross platform play (across PC, Mac, Linux, etc.) which left a small crowd of people very disappointed. And the latter had the issue of being a complete load of garbage with many of the same bugs, new performance issues, clunkier menus, new menus not working, and of course Gearbox’s patented golden chest. They pulled a BL2 and just gave you OP guns at the beginning of the game as to make the beginning area more trivial than it already was. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they suited you out with 75 golden keys for connecting your shift account, meaning that you could destroy any sense of value the guns originally had.

There was also the new BL2 dlc that was meant to tie the game into BL3’s story. However I can safely say that after having played through BL3, this dlc’s campaign in no way whatsoever connects these two games together. I guess at best it explains how Sanctuary fell, but that in of itself has a lot of problems. You get attacked by some Dahl commander (who has never been brought up in the story before) where he infects Sanctuary, and by further extension Pandora, with this plant virus. Your job is to kill this guy and stop the plant virus. There is no motivation established for this guy besides that he wants to make Pandora into some paradise, and the story has absolutely no effect on BL3 at all. The crew was already set on going to outer space, this invasion only served to speed up this process. To further this claim, there is no mention of this dlc’s events in BL3 and Pandora is still the same sandy hell scape that it normally is.

Which finally brings us to Borderlands 3. A game that feels surprisingly devoid of passion and love despite how much effort went into it. A game that feels like there wasn’t enough time to flesh out ideas. A game owned by a company who sold out to Epic for money- let’s get a couple of things out of the way first. 1. Borderlands 3 isn’t an entirely bad game per se. 2. I have relatively no issue with the game being an Epic exclusive and my opinion is not biased or soured due to Randy Pitchford’s constant fuck ups.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t outright despise Gearbox and 2K for their actions. They take an exclusivity deal with Epic which actively disrupts consumer convenience and confidence in purchasing their product (not a big deal). But then they have the audacity to push this game out in the buggy, unpolished, and unoptimized state that its currently in (kind of a big deal). The menus are buggy on a basic, functional level, the performance tanks constantly, and items would quite literally disappear out of thin air from my inventory. All of these made Borderlands 3 just that much more of a painstaking experience to play through.

It was the unpolished game and the Borderlands’ trademark shitty introductory area that made me want to refund the game. And believe me, I tried to refund the game. Unfortunately I got denied my refund because I had accidentally played over 2 hours of the game, when the Epic client doesn’t even show your playtime. So ultimately I had no choice but to play this game in order to get my 60 dollars worth. In that time I learned that this game is exactly like the other Borderlands games. Right down to the pacing and the disappointing endings. The beginning of Borderlands 3 is a complete slog. You’re just slapped down on Pandora and have to suffer through Clap Trap’s “hilarious” writing and get formally introduced to the mechanics of a Borderlands game for the 4th time now. Gearbox has apparently never figured out that people really hate playing through the beginning of their games because it refuses to give the players a skip tutorial option or a way to just outright bypass the introduction. Now I will say that this introduction isn’t as bad as BL2 or The Presequel, but it's certainly nowhere near good either.

The problem with these introduction areas is that they aren’t engaging or really even play into the story in any meaningful way. In BL3, you arrive out of thin air on Pandora and are forcefully met up with Lilith and the Crimson Raiders so that you can prepare to take off into space. Between meeting up and going into space you’ll be doing menial tasks such as fixing Marcus’ shops, getting a basic vehicle, and doing some really boring boss fights. Your motive for killing these bosses is because Lilith is on the hunt for the vault map. That thing that they had in BL2, how did they lose it? Nevermind that because it’s just sitting with Mouthpiece, a painfully easy boss that expects no brain power out of you other than just avoid the giant speakers that go boom. Apparently it was in Vaughn’s possession before he was betrayed by his Sun Smasher clan in return for good boy points from the Calypsos. Why the Crimson Raiders thought it would be a good idea to leave the map with Vaughn beats me, but I can safely say that this theme of Vaughn being a complete fuck up is consistent throughout the entirety of BL3.

Vaughn at best feels like a comedic relief character, and at worst feels like padding. This character has no important role throughout the story, just plainly isn’t a funny character, and comes across as a complete waste of space. He could literally just disappear from the entire game and nothing would change. You (luckily) don’t even see him for most of the game because his ass is left back on Pandora to do…  something. I’ve heard that Vaughn is a far better character in Tales from the Borderlands, however as I haven’t played that game I cannot say for certain whether or not Gearbox really just dropped the ball on this one. Vaughn also isn’t the only character I have this opinion of, however as I am still discussing the game’s intro I feel that I should hold off until later.

So after you acquire the vault map and experience a “high stakes” encounter with the Calysos, Lilith loses her siren powers. I feel like this was supposed to be some big, “Oh shit,” moment but I have to express that I simply don’t care for Lilith’s character and people who are new to the Borderlands series won’t care either. Lilith is not necessarily a “good guy” in Borderlands. She has done some fucked up things that have drastically changed the overarching plotline and a lot of people’s perception of her both in the story and by players experiencing it. In The Pre-Sequel, she is framed as being the reason for Handsome Jack’s insanity as Lilith literally branded a vault symbol onto his face. In the epilogue of TPS she actively commands a firing squad to gun down Athena after she tells her story in its entirety, completely against the judgement of her colleagues. And she makes incredibly rash decisions in BL2 that causes detrimental results for the crimson raiders such as being captured by Handsome Jack after being explicitly told not to come to Angel’s prison that greatly changes the dynamic of the story. These are only a couple examples, and I could keep going, but the point is that I don’t value Lilith as an entirely productive or a beneficially proactive member of the Crimson Raiders. And new players who have never played Borderlands before literally won’t even know who Lilith is or why she is even important. Hence when Lilith loses her siren powers after a pretty pathetic fight with the Calypsos, I can really only roll my eyes and just go with it.

From here the story relatively picks up and becomes a bit more bearable (but not really), however I don’t want a couple thousand words of this review to be about the story. Overall it’s trash, and I’m going to try my best to summarize just why it’s trash. Firstly is that the Borderlands writers might be writing for way too many characters. Seriously you have: ProZ-oh I mean Flak, Amara, Zane, Moze, Vaughn, Lilith, Brick, Mordecai, Tiny Tina, Ellie, Tannis, Marcus, Zero, Rhys, Lorelei, Aurelia, Hammerlock, Typhon Deleon, The Calypsos, Katagawa, Bosses also have some writing with them, Ava, Rhys, holy shit I could just keep going. This isn’t to mention that the the only returning vault hunters from BL2 are Zero and Maya. And then factor in that the writers had to write up a ton of audio logs, some Typhon logs, Eridian logs, side quest dialogue for meaningless bosses, etc. and you have just this disaster of a story that churns everyone out to be really shallow characters. There aren’t any truly good characters in this game. Some of them are passable but that’s because they either aren't main characters or they have some somewhat funny writing and redeeming qualities.

Characters like Ava and Maya (and Vaughn) are completely devoid of any purpose within Borderlands outside of being fuel to the drama fire or just outright being an obnoxious brat. It’s pretty obvious that Ava is just a spoiled teenager who has no idea what she’s getting into, but even in the context of Borderlands her character doesn’t fit at all. For example, after the player kills the first vault monster (Rampager) and returns from the vault, you’re suited to a cutscene where Ava and Maya go pants on head retarded. Ava, a defenseless, tiny, teenager with no powers whatsoever, tries to tell Maya that, “We should be kicking [the Calypsos’] asses!” after the Calypso twins show up to absorb the powers of the vault monster. Mind you, this is after her and Maya debate about how Ava is a piece of shit that’ll get herself killed if she sneaks off to more vaults. Ava then has the audacity to tell the vampire sirens that eventually she’s going to be a siren and she’s going to, “Mop the floor with assholes like you.” These actions ultimately gets her put in her place, and Maya killed. Bottom line: She’s an obnoxious character that makes playing through the story of BL3 worse the more you’re exposed to her. And speaking of Maya, her character in Borderlands is completely useless. She introduces Ava, and then gets killed so that the players can go grrr at the big baddies. Her only significance to the story is that Maya is a siren so that the Calypso twins can steal her powers. Otherwise she is an absolutely useless character that now we’ll never get to see again without Gearbox pussying out on their own writing.

I’ll be completely honest here in saying that Typhon Deleon was the best written character in the game, and you hardly get to hear anything from him outside of backstory and the final couple hours of the game. If Typhon Deleon was a main star of BL3 I think the story would’ve went in a much more favorable direction. However I can’t discount the good writing moments within the story. Even though I absolutely hate Flak’s character even down to his voice, he does have some lines that made me chuckle. Rhys’ entire gag about Rhys ball had me laughing for that entire section, especially the line, “Suck on my big ball, Katagawa.” In fact I think most of the jokes that I laughed at were sexual jokes. I frankly don’t think a lot of these sexual jokes make the cut in a lot of games nowadays outside of obvious fanfare or really out there stuff like Grand Theft Auto 5. This was really unexpected and pulled off well in BL3 as weird as a compliment this is.

I also just want to express my disappointment for how the old vault hunters were treated in this writing: Axton, Gaige, Krieg, and Salvadore aren’t present in this game outside of some echo logs. It could be plausible that Axton and Gaige will come back for a future dlc, but I’m not holding my breath. We ultimately got Maya and Zero, and oh god these characters are bad. Maya dies only a couple hours after you meet her and Zero is comparable to a boomer dad trying to be hip with the kids. Maybe that’s the joke, in which case all I can say is, “Wow, they pulled it off really well and I’m not laughing.”

And finally, the Watcher. What the hell happened to this dude and why isn’t he in BL3? He appears at the end of TPS and is like, “You’re gonna need all of the vault hunters you can get,” however, not only do we have a very restricted roster of vault hunters, the Watcher is literally never mentioned again. Unless the Watcher is the Eridian that left all of the audio logs laying around, but what a disappointment.

I could keep going a good while if I wanted to, but that’s reserved for my videos. The next part of the game that should be brought up is the world design. Most of the world design is okay, I wish Pandora wasn’t just set in desert hell ala BL1, but other than that they seem to have enough content and discoverable areas to make them interesting to explore. My ultimate problem with the world building comes in when considering the planetary system in the game. Now this point can be entirely perceived as me just being an ass but when I think “planets” I expect a lot more than the world hubs in BL3. The planet’s levels are relatively small scale for being on, you know, a planet. And this isn’t just a problem with BL3, many other games that have incorporated planets like this, such as Destiny and Warframe, ultimately fail at capturing the scale of planets. A planet is often scaled down to a simple level within a video game, and it’s somewhat shameful to see a game boasting, “tens of planets to travel to” and then those planets have the same (and even less) scale as their previous title entries that were based on a singular world. Now I perfectly understand that this is a hard request to answer to, and having to build and construct one world is difficult on its own. Despite this, if a development/marketing team wants to promote their usage of a planetary system in their video game, it’s implied that the levels are going to be gigantic. It’s not at all impressive to see planets being used in BL3 because BL2 had the same, if not more, level variety and the same, if not more, amount of levels without the pseudo use of large scale.

This isn’t to say that the levels contained in the game are bad, just that I wish they weren’t pushed into a planetary system. Generally speaking, the levels aren’t bad. I hadn’t ever reached a part of the game where I thought, “Wow this level is trash,” or found levels that were broken. In fact, the gameplay and level design seem to be the real highlights of this game. Gameplay this time around has been modernized and sped up. Players are suited with a slide, ledge grabbing, barrel throwing, and melee slams. Sliding in of itself is important because of how non-committal it is as you can cancel a slide instantly by jumping. These additions ultimately make combat faster and more varied in how you approach the game. See Borderlands 1, 2, and TPS (while it tried) suffered from each fight encounter being basically the same shootout with basic cover systems. This time around, while you can still use the basic playstyle from the older games, you’re provided the methods to really make your gameplay interesting. Personally I never used the melee slam or the barrel throwing, and the new ledge grabbing system only serves to add verticality in map exploring from my experience. However I did use a lot of the slide, and given the right gun (especially shotguns) it became very satisfying to slide into an enemy and pop them into the air with a shotgun.

On this note, I feel like I have to express how much I disliked the feel of the guns. And clearly I am on the contrary opinion here because I have heard everyone on the planet say that, “Wow the gunplay is soooo good omg!!!” but I’ll be honest in saying that I didn’t see it here. Sure, the gunplay now feels more weighty and the new animations and stuff are nice to making the player character good gameplay feel. But the guns themselves, despite apparently having tons of funding behind making the guns sound good and being completely reworked, still have the chronic floaty-ness issues of the previous games. Some guns (primarily early game Hyperion SMGs, Maliwan guns, and some shotguns) just felt so awful to play with that I put them down and never touched them again. I’m not too sure what I was expected as I slid into an opponent and shot them in the face with my shotgun, only for them to fly away a couple feet and just get right back up only having lost about half or less of their health. Jakobs guns were consistently the best weapon, feel wise, despite me always wishing they had a bit more of a kick to them.

One of my major issues with the guns is that they are way too sci-fi and not enough like guns on wastelands and battle driven hell hole. Seriously for how terrible a place Pandora is, you don’t get weapons that reflect this attribute, Instead you get these futuristic Hyperion smgs that will project a shield out in front of you or a Torgue gun that will home into your target when thrown. This is a consistent theme throughout the game where guns won’t aesthetically match the environment. I could understand if you found futuristic guns on Promethea, or even that you find technologically advanced weaponry in the form of Hyperion leftovers on Pandora(given that they’re consistent with the styling of BL2). This would 1. Appease me, because I am the only person worth pleasing, and 2. Would allow the Gearbox developers to create more variety with their weapons so that the game actually feels like it’s hitting its promise of, “Billions of guns.”

Another issue I have is the sound design for these guns, which is probably the point I’ll get absolutely grilled for but: Using actual sampled gun sounds apparently does not work for video games. Seriously every time a game tries to improve the sound of its guns, the new sounds somehow turn out to be worse. This can easily be explained off as having a bias against change, but let's talk about it. Firstly, the guns are way too quiet in Borderlands. And they seem extra quiet in BL3, like worse than BL1 quiet. Maybe it’s a difference in subtlety, because let’s face it: It’s not like a microphone was stuck right next to an actual gun. In reality the sound designers probably had the microphone a good many feet away. This gives the gunshot more of a subtle popping sound rather than the huge blast that the person holding the gun actually experiences (hence why you wear earplugs when shooting guns in real life). But I’m going to put in my take on this matter: Guns need to have an impact in their noise. Now this doesn’t mean that guns sounds even need to be based on real guns or realistic in any shape or fashion. Borderlands is a game with a unique artstyle, so why can’t Borderlands have unique sound design?

It seems that every game nowadays wants the best sounding or most realistic guns to boot, however what happened to all that stylistic choice? Some of the best examples I can think of are Counter Strike’s western inspired whiff sounds for its older titles, Enter the Gungeon’s wide arrangement of different gun sounds, the cartoony gun shot effects for Wasted, and even Borderlands unique sound designs such as The Bane and the beam guns from TPS. These unique sound designs are missing for BL3’s guns and, despite Gearbox making an algorithm to suit one gun sound to thousands of guns, they all really sound the same. Not like you can’t tell the difference between what you’re shooting but in that all snipers sound like a generic sniper, all pistols sound like pistols. Of course you have to discount certain weapons like the Occultist that don’t even shoot the bullets respective of its weapon type. But the point is: this is a missed part of the game. I don’t necessarily like or dislike the realistic approach to the sound design of weaponry, but in a game that feels anything but realistic, the sounds aren’t doing it for me here.

But let’s reel it back to the game again, and get into the basic looting mechanics for this game. Upfront: It’s dumbed down, and takes little effort to get good gear. This is the part of the game where I fall out of my element (if I haven’t already), because I don’t really appreciate Borderlands for its RPG mechanics. It feels nice, and the act of finally getting something you grind out for hours if exhilarating (4 times magic missile), but it is far from how I prefer to play my games. Given this though, even I feel that legendaries drop way too often. Over my playthrough of just the main game content (I did 6 side quests on my first playthrough, and we’ll get to this) I collected tens of legendaries. When I was finished with the game I had 10 legendaries just sitting in my inventory that I was either actively using or keeping as a memorial item. This isn’t to mention that you literally get a chest at the end of the game that contain 4 legendaries in it. The loot dropping system is no longer satisfying at this point. And this isn’t just a matter of, “Oh they buffed the loot drops a little bit,” it’s a matter of the looting system becomes a complete joke when bosses can literally drop multiple legendaries without Mayhem, and will consistently drop multiple legendaries with Mayhem.

Assemble this with a forgiving leveling system, and now it’s just a dumbed down Borderlands experience. In previous Borderlands games, you couldn’t just do the main quest from start to finish. At some point you would eventually become underleveled, and paired with Borderlands’ trademark unforgiving and shitty rpg mechanics, meant that being 3 levels beneath an enemy granted you 10% damage reduction. This is no longer a worry, you can now play the main quests from start to finish with zero leveling hiccups. Or at least from my experience. Some reviews that I indulged in have said that they did have troubles with the leveling system, to which I rolled my eyes and had to immediately question what the hell they had done wrong. On normal mode I finished the campaign having only completed 6 side quests in total. One of these, to tie back to the looting system real quick, gave me a legendary elemental pistol that melted enemies for the next couple of zones. I also asked someone about their experience playing Borderlands 3 so far, only to learn that he had been doing every single quest that he was given and was massively overleveled come time for the first vault boss (he was level 21).

The bosses of Borderlands, this time around, were the best and the worst that the series has ever gotten. They’ve been massively revamped from the older system of AOE insta-kill moves to having actual attack patterns that you can skillfully avoid. To compensate for this, the bosses have been relatively tuned up to be more aggressive, throwing out more attacks. These new bosses range from very good to very, very bad. Some of my favorites were the Graveward, the Penn and Teller styled boss (Pain and Terror), and Troy Calypso. The bosses that I ultimately ended up hating were Katagawa, the Rampager, the Warden, and the Anointed. These bosses either suffered from boring attack patterns, bullet spongy-ness, or a lack of direction on what you’re supposed to be doing to beat the boss. Katagawa and the Warden fit into this last category. For Katagawa I was confused by him taking inconsistent damage (he loses a ton of health on shield break) and the Warden I couldn’t figure out whether or not I was allowed to kill him early. This is because the Warden is styled around the Goliath from BL2, so whenever he kills one of his teammates he gains all of his health back and then levels up. It turns out that you can kill this boss early, I just had garbage guns for this fight. So to answer your question, yes I did get the Warden to max level, and what pursued was a 20-something minute boss fight where you run the boss around in circles and turn around to deal damage when you can, and then he would kill a minion and level up. The only way I managed to kill him was that when he did eventually hit max level, he would stop focusing his minions when on low health.

The bosses that were truly good were the ones that kept the player busy, while not being too spongy or time consuming. It should be noted that the spongy factor of a boss can be easily biased by what type of weapons you enter a boss fight with. Some of the bosses I thought were easier may have actually been harder for you or another player, and vice versa. However, I will speak more of a general design philosophy and less of a, “This guy had too much health,” philosophy. I loved the Graveward (while admittedly being underwhelming for a vault monster) because of his unique battle area and clear attacks that would make his weak point exposed. Having the entire floor tilted to the side while you’re spamming jump to save your life was a fun mechanic to work with, especially when you factor in dodgeable acid balls. This was a simple boss fight that had a unique spin on an FPS boss. Terror and Pain I loved for stylistic reasons and the meta-humor around putting characters themed around Penn and Teller in a game made by a company with a CEO who is super into magic. This boss is comparable to Mouthpiece, but actually just a straight upgrade. The arena you fight Terror and Pain in is far more interesting, the boss itself looks cool, and while I have honestly forgotten the attacks that the boss had, it was still a fun encounter. One of the attacks I do remember though is the floor lighting up to indicate that fire was going to shoot up to incinerate you, and felt far more fitting than getting blasted by a speaker turned up too loud.

Something that I disliked across the board with these bosses, and this is a massive opinion piece, is that the bosses were too easy. Sometimes I honestly wished I was playing Borderlands: The Bullet Hell. I really wanted a boss that wasn’t just going to engage my attention, but make me feel like, “Holy shit, holy shit, oh my god, I am going to die.” Actually, the entire game was pretty damn easy. Although this can come down to a lot of reasons such as ally NPCs now being able to revive you, and the upped pacing of the game causing players to need to rely less on cover.

And I mean, it’s not like the game stays easy forever right? After you complete the campaign on normal mode you then unlock True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM) and the brand new, super cool, “Badass-,” oh whoops I mean, “Guardian Ranks.” The end game is perhaps the most disappointing thing is this game for hardcore veterans of the Borderlands series. Firstly, that “reworked” end game comes in the form of the new badass ranking system, only this time you can’t disable it (This pieceo of information has become outdated with time, a future update has included the option to turn off these gaurdian perks and the passive bonuses). I mean, this time you get some rewards for using the guardian ranks? Meh. Otherwise the game still revolves around making you play it multiple times in order to get to the level cap. The only real reworked thing here is the new mayhem difficulties, annnnd they’re bad. So what the mayhem system is supposed to do is make the game more difficult while incentivizing you to play it by giving you consistently better loot rewards (more blues, purples, and legendaries). This system would otherwise be okay if not for just one problem: Mayhem 2 added no difficulty to the game, while Mayhem 3 felt typical to Borderlands end game difficulty (It should be noted that the Mayhem system has been revamped to include 10 Mayhem levels). Again, this may be because of my own personal experience with the game, see apparently Flak is outright broken when it comes to crits (Future updates have severely nerfed Flak). So this could be influencing my opinion greatly on this difficulty switch. But I’ll say that I had no reason not to play Mayhem 2, because for essentially no difficulty increase, the game started commonly dropping me blues, purples, and legendaries, while rarely spitting out a green.

At this point I had essentially had enough with the game, as my terrible, clunky inventory was constantly filling with valuables, and I had to make constant stops to dump stuff out of my inventory. Given this, the fact that Mayhem gave you a ludicrous amount of XP for very little difficulty on Mayhem 2, and a quick Google search about the raid bosses in the game, I’ve ultimately put the game down. I went from level 39 to 44 in the span of an hour, was being drowned in good loot, and the biggest sting of all: There are no raid bosses in the base game of Borderlands 3.

This is a massive review for a game that probably doesn’t deserve it. Borderlands 3 has a lot of ups and downs. It’s not a game that many people will enjoy for the story. Veteran players may have a distaste for the lack of an interesting end game. All in all, if you’re playing Borderlands 3, you’re probably playing it for the gunplay and the loot, which still, somewhat, hold up. I didn’t see how the game had a billion guns, but you know what, that’s alright. And after all of the controversy, and now that Gearbox is releasing patches, performance fixes, and balancing to the game, it’s not that bad of a game. The game just doesn’t strike me as the godlike triple A, return to Borderlands that many had hoped for. Overall, I would give the game a 6/10.

EDITOR'S NOTE: There used to be a video here demonstrating a supposed XP glitch that had occurred to me while playing through True Vault Hunter Mode while using Mayhem. It turns out that, at the time, this was an intentional mechanic for Mayhem to give you massive XP gains. To correct for this error, the video has been pulled from Youtube and this paragraph has been written, as well as all mentions of the XP glitch being pulled from this article.

-Count_

[lisaalngindabu-blog]

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[cosmosogler]

a job offer was made.

i woke up early, but left late. felt lethargic and didn’t want to see people. 

class went fine, until the end. we got out 13 minutes late so we only had 2 minutes to prepare for quantum. i didn’t get to go to the bathroom. that ended up being ok though.

we got our midterms back. i got a 58%.

well, quantum started, so i had to put it away quickly and get my other notebook out. i made it 35 minutes into that lecture before i got up and went to the bathroom.

when i got in the stall i turned around and put my head against the door. well, i put my arm against the door, and put my head against my arm, because i don’t know what happens in there. 

i didn’t really, feel very strongly about it, at first, but i knew i needed to be alone for a few minutes. the thoughts got to be a lot though.

it feels like nothing i do even matters. why even try. i’m so stupid. i thought i could make things better... 

not every day, but a lot of days, i wonder if i made the right choice. but i don’t really want to make any other choice. i guess my parents spoiled me. i always need to get what i want.

i mean, i barely ever do, even when i ask for it or work hard for it. but i am stupid, and i was thinking, maybe, this time, it would be different?

i don’t understand. i knew what the questions wanted. i knew i’d gotten that information before, twice even, for some of the questions! nothing on that test was a surprise and i knew that. i even found myself understanding what was happening better as i derived some energy equations. i used my accommodation time and took it slow and felt satisfied with what i could accomplish without running up against the clock. 

what happened?

did i just not... study enough? i know “it’s a start” isn’t the same as “i did good,” but... this was the most i’ve ever done, aside from when i studied for the physics gre. 

people who did really good on this midterm got the same gre percentile as me. why am i so different when i take written tests? why am i so stupid that i can talk about quantum and explain stuff to my classmates, but the second a professor asks me to demonstrate what i know, i suddenly don’t know ANYTHING?

i don’t understand.

so i continued my grade school tradition of crying in the bathroom. this time was kind of better because i didn’t make any noise. i waited until the red left my face and went back to class. 

a couple of my classmates seemed pretty down too. i found out after quantum that i actually didn’t do the worst in the class, by a kind of noticeable margin. suzanne said that it might not get curved, but that the percentages don’t work the same way in grad school. she said the class grade typically gets split into two major groups with the higher group getting an a and the lower group getting around a b.

it was really discouraging because if i had done as well on the rest of the test as i did on the first third, i would have passed with a good grade. something in my brain stopped working after i got through the first problem and i didn’t notice.

i didn’t put any effort into making jokes today but i did mumble to luis on the way out for lab practice that “at least i moved up in the class rank since the prelims. since i did infinitely better on this one than that one.” 

he didn’t talk about his grade with me. i didn’t think about it really but i did notice he didn’t put much effort into looking not dead today either.

the lab was good. i looked around and said “ok who’s going to be my victim this week?” and i immediately picked soham and said i wanted to get to know him better. by working for several hours on a basic physics lab, we would accomplish getting to know each other better.

he was a little bossy at first but he cooled off once we got everything working properly. it didn’t take long to figure out why he was kind of fussy about the lab though. 

we were really, really good at it. i joked that he lined up the radius on the thing so well that there couldn’t possibly be even an atom out of place. he laughed and made rock-out fingers at me.

the professor said errors on the order of 5% would be good if you knew what you were doing. ours were under one percent. we finished first.

“yeah, team hypercompetence!” i cheered when our second error reading came out to like 0.8%. after that he started leaning on me for calculations a little more while he took data. and we took notes for our lectures.

we also didn’t leave the hanger on the spinning bar to get launched off even once. a couple tables around us did. forget to take off the hanger before starting to spin the thing, i mean.

that gave me a whole hour to mope before my e&m test. i sat at my desk and clicked idly at a logic puzzle while everyone else sat at their desks and clicked idly at their computers. none of us really offered any jokes. i was so bummed i didn’t know what to do with myself. 

at 2:55 i went to take my test. suzanne wished me luck and i thanked her and told them all to have good luck during their lecture. wasn’t sure what else to say.

the test went kind of awful? i knew what the questions were and how to set up the problems and the general procedure, it was basically harder versions of what i had just gone over with suzanne last night. i felt like i was forgetting a step somewhere even though i made sure to explicitly show how the boundary conditions affected my theoretical model of the system and where infinite series could be chopped up to lead to “more efficiency” in calculations based off my conjured equation. the professor had been big on that in class. 

i think i got one answer either completely right or almost right, but i don’t want to commit to that. i didn’t finish the first problem though even with the extra half time. 

i dunno man i guess being bummed AND intimidated by the professor had like a negative effect on my ability to perform on a test or something? that was mysterious.

afterward i went back into the office and we all dicked around for a while before anyone wanted to leave. harrison tried to cajole me into joking about my sarcasm some more but i wasn’t really having it. i don’t really remember what it was like to just be nineteen. 

like i had started this blog by then and i remember when i was nineteen. but it was so eaten up and engulfed by how severe my depression was getting that i just... don’t remember anything else except feeling so horrible that reality stopped meaning anything. so it’s hard to gauge how much energy a nineteen year old should have or what kinds of things people that age would normally think about. he is in the unusual position of being a graduate student but at the same time, like, he’s practically my brother’s age. being a teenager sucks.

i wasn’t really going anywhere in particular with that. just trying to understand my classmates a little better i guess. where they’re at and where they’re coming from. what a good response might be.

anyway my writing time is ended but i’m gonna keep going because important stuff happened after that too.

so around 4:50 or so we left for the bar, me and jennica and keegan and rebika. harrison was really dodgy about our invitation and left pretty abruptly when we were ready to go. i expressed the desire to beat up his mother to the others after he left.

like he doesn’t have to drink or anything but he is an adult and should be able to go out with his colleagues on a friday at least.

we sat outdoors since the weather was basically great. a bunch of guys sat at the table upwind of us and started smoking huge cigars which really irritated my throat. i started having coughing fits again so we moved tables.

i’ve noticed over the last week or so that i jump about three feet in the air every time i am touched unexpectedly. and if my classmates get too close to me when we are clustered together for whatever reason, or when jennica tries to lean in and gestures wildly, i shuffle away. 

she’s a very enthusiastic story teller. she was showing me a map on her phone today while covering basically the whole screen with her hand and scrolling around violently so that i actually felt motion sick.

anyway i didn’t drink. i told suzanne i wasn’t really in a very good position to be drinking right now. i had to wait like 20 minutes at the bar to even ask for food though. i guess someone has to go last. and by “last” i mean “after every person who comes up to the bar after all my friends have gotten their drinks and left.” the bar apparently is able to substitute tempeh for basically any meat in any of their dishes so i got buffalo tempeh mac and cheese. it was interesting. keegan expressed interest though. maybe he’ll get it next time.

i stayed at the table talkin with the other graduate students (some first year, some second year, some later, one from astronomy, etc) until it was dark. i didn’t stop feeling sick and miserable though. but i did find a time to visit the bank with jennica to set up my own private account with no mom germs on it. we’re going on tuesday after we’re done teaching. and suzanne told me about a much cheaper apartment complex that seems to have everything i pay for here AND more space. it’s like 300 dollars a month cheaper. actually my classmates seemed concerned that i was spending so much money on rent for a studio apartment. suzanne’s the only one who’s actually been into my home so far though and she was able to compare a lot for me.

i think i will move into that place next year instead of staying here. i like it here, it’s perfectly acceptable, but the money i could save would really add up... i could buy nice food instead of 7-minute rice sides. or, like, buy a ticket to disneyworld every month or something, i don’t know. or pay for my own insurance, or something.

on my way out i was stopped by some grad students i’ve spent time with but not personally spoken to. i mostly heckle the one guy while he plays ping pong but he’s really super good at it. he bought his own paddle and everything, but sometimes trick shots on a wobbly uneven table just don’t work out and it’s fun to tease. 

anyway this guy motioned for me to come over and said his friend was required to do some recruiting. and that he’d been smoking weed, i guess? the guy looked like he’d been hit by a truck. and he misheard a lot of my questions but we got that cleared up pretty fast when he was having very strange reactions to questions like “is this a shadowing-for-a-day sort of thing or is it a work-all-summer-i’ve-sold-my-soul-to-you sort of thing?”

he wanted me to work in his lab. he said he’d seen me loitering outside the e&m professor’s lab a couple times this semester. i’d seen him too while i was loitering. 

i’ve read all the posters in that hallway a couple times over each. the e&m professor doesn’t really do short answers to short questions. everything’s gotta be a 30-minute production. like that time i had to wait outside his office for 35 minutes.

anyway he said i might like working in his professor’s lab, which works with ultra low energy matter. i brightened. he said it was mostly helium isotopes. he might have said other stuff but i was trying to get, like, the location of the lab out of him so i didn’t hear everything he said. i made a memo on my phone to go talk to him on monday before my office hour.

i kinda struggled with this new information while i was heading out of the bar and dislodging my bike from the rack outside the church next door. and while i was biking home. and while i was taking off my backpack, and while i was brushing snoopy and giving her a good pet-down. 

like i’ve been so busy... i’ve had “talk to a faculty member about their project” on my to-do list for a week now and i haven’t been able to even go upstairs to look at their project titles. i’ve been trying so hard to be proactive but i really don’t have energy to actively do literally everything in my life. and this, kinda random, opportunity gets dropped in my lap. i feel kind of suspicious about it. like this could go a number of ways.

on the one hand, it might be a fun thing to learn about for a few days while i get introduced to other faculty members. or i might stick with this for a while. or forever. i get the feeling this is going to be a major life point coming up but i don’t have any real evidence other than an uneasy feeling. 

i also don’t have the grades to justify being really for real actually hired to work under a professor. i just really like working with machinery and i feel like i’m decent enough at it. “born to be an experimentalist,” suzanne smiled during our lunch break today. we get pizza during the practice lab sessions. we are supposed to be paying for it but i think our supervisor forgot about that. i wonder how many groups of grad students he’s “forgotten” to get payment from.

i’m decent with machinery, but i get the feeling if i spent time developing the skill i could get really good at it. i like fixing things. even during our advanced labs in undergrad i kinda liked troubleshooting and seeing all the very strange ways stuff could go wrong. it was frustrating because we were on a serious time crunch, especially with the part we needed not actually available any more, but i dunno. i get it in a way i can’t very well with math.

just gotta figure out how to link the two and i might be good to go as far as having a real life job that’s not teaching goes.

i liked programming too. computers always do exactly what you tell them to do. i think it’s really funny how badly stuff can go sideways, even if troubleshooting for eight hours might get “i’m going to give myself a hernia” levels of frustrating.

tomorrow i’m going to bike over to gamestop and see about getting that marshadow that’s been distributed. and i think i want to swim, too. groceries will probably be on the small side this week since mom never paid back that 900 money that i actually do need. she never explained why she took it either. 

i’m very suspicious that it’s a “surprise” that i neither asked for nor approved of, and which a very large portion of my money has been used for.

might be a paycheck +10% i’m just not going to get back. basically an entire rent payment down the drain.

opening a new bank account for myself will be a good thing i think. i’m glad jennica is going with me.

it’s now 11:10, which is 25 minutes past when i have decided is my “stop writing” time. it’s been a long day... next week is gonna bring a lot of trouble i think. between the bad grades and the “free speech” exhibition on thursday and not being able to see my drc aid for another week in a row and the new lab arrangement which is still very nebulous... i dunno. i’m real tired. 

at least snoopy had a good evening. i petted her, wiped her down with the dandruff wipe thing, brushed her, gave her cookies and some catnip, AND played with her for a while. she didn’t feel like playing back today but after talking with other people about their cats i’m starting to think that might be normal for some cats.

also i scratched my face REAL bad last night and it’s been hurting all day. i did a pretty good job of not messing with it today though. i will try to continue not hurting myself. i promise it was an accident, i was half asleep at the time.

[twentysomethinginorlando]

Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase 2018

New Post has been published on https://twentysomethinginorlando.com/fairy-tale-wedding-showcase/

Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase 2018

Disclaimer before any of my relatives freak out: I am not currently engaged or planning a wedding, but I like research. 

A few months ago, the Disney Ever After blog announced the 2018 Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase, a miniature expo designed to show off all the magical wedding options Disney has to offer. I read a few reviews of previous years and figured why not? It sounded fun. There were two ticket options- one that included just the Expo for $45, and one that included the Expo and a Happily Ever After dessert party for $90. I considered doing the dessert party, but we wound up deciding it made more sense to do the less expensive one, and buy a second ticket for Jay. 

Somehow, I didn’t think Duffy would need one. 

Before the Expo, they were having an Open House at the Wedding Pavillion at the Grand Floridian Resort. Neither of us were off work in time to make it, since we didn’t want to take the whole day off, but I really wasn’t concerned. I’ve wandered all over the Grand Floridian. If there’s nothing going on, you can literally walk right up to the Pavilion and stare in the glass doors. 

I did manage to get out of work early enough to get to the Contemporary Resort around 2:30 p.m., and Jay was joining me when he got off work at 3:15 p.m. The night before we had put together last minute Disneybounds, and I was super excited. I had my Meg dress and Wonder Woman boots on and he was going to be Hercules. (I would like to state for the record that this was another case of Jay saying no one would get it, and me proving him wrong, as multiple people told us how great we looked.) I got checked in and sat down to wait for the doors to open. The name tag was already falling off my dress; it wouldn’t stick, so I put it on Duffy instead. 

The doors opened about five minutes after three. The Expo was set up in the Fantasia ballroom with vendors up against the walls, and tables spread in the center. It was a really low lighting setup, which, from what I saw online, was different from previous years. I started to wander with no real plan in mind, after dropping off my raffle ticket. I didn’t want to talk to anyone until Jay arrived, so I focused on taking photos and somehow found myself in line for raw cookie dough. Pretty awesome line to accidentally wind up in! 

The room was divided into four themed sections: Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Tangled, and Classic Fairy Tale. Basically, what this meant were there were four decor examples scattered about the room, in addition to the light projections on the walls and the Cinderella Coach. 

I had read online about spa treatments so I wandered over to the Senses booth. They were doing mini facials and make-up as samples of what you could have done for your wedding. I figured I’d save that for last since I didn’t want to mess up the make-up I was already wearing before pictures. 

The well has actual running water!

I wandered around a bit more before heading out to wait for Jay. I didn’t want to miss anything but being by myself just felt awkward, and trying to handle the backpack, camera, and Bear all at once was getting tricky. I had jumped in line for the bar but realized I didn’t have a hand to find my ID with. Thankfully, he wasn’t far away, and arrived about ten minutes later. We checked him in and grabbed his wrist band. I proposed starting with the alcohol and then working our way around the room in a circle, and he agreed. 

There was the big open bar with the wine options, and a smaller table to one side with shot glass samples of mixed drinks. I grabbed the “Cinderella’s Glass Slipper”, which was a blue drink with vodka. Jay got the pink mai-tai since he prefers rum, and then we both jumped in the line for wine. One of the men pouring the drinks explained that all the drinks had ties to Disney. Some were from family wineries with Disney connections, including one owned by Lily’s family, and others were from Disney properties like Skywalker Ranch. My favorite was the Fairy Tale Cuvee Champagne, which is apparently created exclusively for Disney weddings. There were no limits on how much you could have, and I noticed they were filling Jay’s glasses higher than they were filling mine. To be fair, I was carrying a Duffy Bear. I had two glasses and he had three, the first time through the line, and we went back twice. 

Rather than going to the next booth, we crossed the room to start our loop next to the stage at the cake displays. Not intentionally because we wanted cake or anything. They had about seven different pictures of cakes, and four or five on display. I don’t understand how anyone eats something so pretty! We waited our turn for samples. You got to choose what cake base you wanted, and then the icing. I got Marble with Cookies and Cream, while Jay opted for Chocolate with Churro icing.  

I have long said the only things I care about with a wedding are the cake, the dress, and the photos, so I jumped in line to talk to cake artist. He explained that all the cakes are three tiers and they feed about fifty people. 

“That’s great. Now can you make it look like him?” 

I held up Duffy.  

Apparently, they aren’t allowed to do actual Disney characters because they’d never get them 100% right and Disney wants them to always look perfect. I’m very curious about the chocolate Chip and Dale on the table then, but that’s fine. He suggested making the cake look like Duffy’s fur, and I asked if ears could go on it too. The answer was yes! 

The next booth was a bunch of food samplings. They had chicken pot pie, Sheppard’s pie, mac and cheese, and something with fish. I grabbed the chicken pot pie and glared at Jay as he got the mac and cheese. Stupid dairy allergy. (For the record, I acknowledge chicken pot pie is likely not dairy free, but I can do it in small doses. Cheese is about the worst thing on the planet for a Chelsea.) 

The next table had a painter who apparently can be on site for the ceremony or reception, and paints as the day goes on for a memorable keepsake. Sounds awesome, but we kept walking and trying to balance our food to eat it. The next booth was all food as well, but for some reason it was all cauliflower themed. While I understand they were trying to be different… cauliflower? Jay doesn’t eat vegetables in general, but even I won’t touch cauliflower. We moved on. 

Next to the cauliflower food booth was the beautiful Tangled wedding display table, complete with Snuggly Duckling sign and chocolate frying pans. Out of all of the décor sections, Tangled was definitely my favorite. It looked the most like the movie. 

The next table was actually more in the middle of the floor than on the sides like everyone else. They had a frame photo prop like you see in the parks with Photopass, and we stopped to see what the deal was. There were two different kinds of cameras on the table from HP Sprocket. Essentially, they’re modern versions of the Polaroid camera and you can have them out for guests to document the wedding day. They took our picture with the photo frame and it printed out as a sticker.  

Apparently, this was the photo section because the next area was a display of different photo offerings. We skipped that. There’s not really anything Disney can tell me about photo printing other than prices, but there were some beautiful options. 

We couldn’t figure out what the next booth was, so Jay jumped in the long line while I went to find out. It was a virtual photo booth, sort of like a second generation to a green screen. Instead of a traditional photo booth with a background, they had different options you could choose from. For the Expo, they had all four parks represented in about twenty options. Normally your guests would have four photos to choose from, that you picked out ahead of time. They promised me they could get the Jungle Cruise. I actually picked one that wasn’t from any of the parks but seemed the most fitting. 

Now we were back at the doors and moved over to what was probably the first booth most people hit, the Honeymoon planning service. I talked to the girl for a minute. She herself had gotten married about a year ago, and now was getting to help other people. 

The next booth was for Vero Beach, the resort about two hours south of Orlando that everyone forgets about. They also do weddings there, and had their actual wedding planner at the Expo. She explained both the indoor and outdoor venue options, and handed me what was probably the thickest packet of information I got all day. 

We spent a long time talking to Alex at the Disney Cruise Line section. He was super informative and didn’t mind taking the time to answer all my questions. Disney Cruise Line weddings are surprisingly some of the most affordable Disney weddings, with the basic package starting right at $3,000 for up to eight guests. However, they are some of the most limited. Where the sky is the limit of what options you want at a Walt Disney World wedding, the Cruise Line weddings have a set number of options. I was told I could bring all my Duffys though, as my own decorations, so there’s that at least. (His eyes got a little wider when Jay mentioned there are fifty of them.) 

Disney Springs had the next table, most importantly with chocolate samples from the Ganachery as examples of add-ons you could do for your guests. 

The next booth was a display from Themes Come True, which is a service that provides anything printed you could possibly need for your wedding. I should have taken more pictures but the graphic designer in me was too busy geeking out. They had everything from Haunted Mansion Stretch Room invitations to programs that looked like park Times Guides. 

We had made it back to where we started and jumped in line for our second pass at the bar before we headed past the spa booth to another food station. 

This food station was slightly less strange than the cauliflower one, but I’m still surprised by the choice. Given I haven’t actually been to that many weddings, but soup just doesn’t seem like something you were serve, much less in little goblets. Jay got a sampling of one that I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it was frozen with nitrogen. They had four options and it all looked fancy- I’m just not a soup person. 

We had reached another decor section, this time dedicated to Snow White. There was a wishing well with actual running water and a beautiful table of red roses and mirrors. Next to it was the Zales Jewelry table with samples of their Enchanted Jewelry collection. It was all super pretty, but none of it seemed wedding themed, unless maybe it’s for the bridesmaids or to go with the dress? One of the women asked who my inner princess was and I said, “Wonder Woman.” Somehow, I don’t think that was the answer they were looking for. 

The final food station was the one I had hit first, the cookie dough. They had four flavors to try in a cup or a cone, and it  was all oat based, whatever that means. (It did feel a lot thicker than the Wonderland Cookie Dough that I’m used to.) We went back for seconds, thirds in my case. 

Around the cookie dough was the Beauty and the Beast section covered in red roses and gold accents, complete with Cogsworth. 

Next to the stage was another cake display, this time modeling Disney’s famous projection technology. They took the magic they use to project pictures onto Cinderella Castle and scaled it down for a wedding cake. It’s gorgeous. 

At some of the tables in the center of the room, they had Disney wedding consultants on hand to meet with couples to discuss their plans. Jay and I didn’t want to waste their time, but it had only taken us about an hour and twenty minutes to get all the way around the room. There were still raffles left, so I certainly wasn’t going anywhere. We took a few more passes at the food booths and found someone to take our picture together in front of the Cinderella Coach.  

Jay told me to go see about the facial while he took pictures, so I headed back to the spa booth only to find out you had to sign up and the list was a mile long. I’d really like to know why I wasn’t told that the first time I came by, or I would have signed up then. So, no facial for Chelsea. 

They announced the final raffle at 5:15 p.m., a two-night hotel stay for two. We hung around another half an hour or so hoping the spa would get to me, but no such luck. 

This was the first time I’d been to the Disney Wedding Showcase. I did read a few reviews of previous years, so it seems like they cut some things for this year, including the two classes they offered in the past. I definitely feel like there wasn’t enough to do for three hours, but I also didn’t meet with one of the planners to see how much time that would eat up or go over to the Open House at the Grand Floridian, although it started at 2 p.m. instead of 3 p.m., like the Showcase. I got a good feel for how expensive a Disney wedding can be, but I never saw a price in writing for anything. 

Well, that’s not entirely true. I never should have seen pricing. They didn’t have printed prices to hand out, but I found what I think is a Cast Member’s cheat sheet that they dropped with the exact pricing of the decor spreads. I’m not going to publish that information online, but feel free to email me at Chelsea@TwentySomethingInOlrando.com or message me on the Twenty Something in Orlando Facebook page and I’ll be happy to answer your questions as best I can. 

Honestly, I didn’t learn a whole lot that I couldn’t have found out on Disney’s wedding website. Seeing the stuff in person was way more fun, however and we got lots of free samples. A photo sticker, a digital photo with the background, chocolate, cake, food, and more. Plus, I’m fairly confident we each drank more than $45 worth of alcohol, at least at Disney pricing. It was definitely a cool way to spend an afternoon. 

Cost: $45 flat per person. 

Duration: The Showcase lasted three hours, but we could have left in two. We did skip the Grand Floridian Open House that would have added more time. 

Value: A lot of fun and pretty informative. I highly recommend it if you are planning a Disney Wedding, but I’m not sure I’ll need to do it again when the day comes. 

Add Ons: They had a $90 ticket option that included a fireworks dessert party. Some friends of ours did it, and it looked really cool. 

[impurelight]

Mac OS High Sierra - ♪ I Love It ♪

I recently installed the High Sierra public beta and I'm glad I did. Let's go back to WWDC 2017. Craig uttered this brief statement that felt like an afterthought, "We even moved the window manager to use Metal." I believe he also said something about how the most difficult animations would be accelerated using Metal or something. But this didn't seem too important to Apple in the grand scheme of things.

When he said this my ears perked up. Could it be? Has Apple finally fixed the stuttering of animations? I have wanted to try High Sierra ever since. And now that I had some time with High Sierra I have to say that this change does indeed fix those issues. 99% of the time anyways.

When I first got my Pro the animations were noticeably choppy. So much so that I kept the resolution at 1280x800 rather than the retina resolution of 2560x1600 just to avoid the choppiness. High Sierra is not perfect. There's definitely a little bit of choppiness going on, especially when moving from a full screen application to the desktop, and I suspect the animations aren't a crispy 60FPS.

But the difference between Sierra and High Sierra are like night and day. I can finally use my Mac at the retina resolution without pulling my hair out in frustration. It actually looks like the demo laptops in the Apple Store.

This makes me a lot more hopeful for the MacBook Adorable. The graphics on that thing should be about the same as my MacBook Pro so I'm a lot less worried about stuttering on that now.

That's the really big thing in High Sierra. This choppiness that was present since I got it has finally been fixed. But there are a few other important changes I'd like to discuss.

First is APFS. I thought this would be a bigger deal than it ended up being. Every time I need to change the file system I've had to format a drive so Apple doing it in place is basically magic.

In fact they did it so well I didn't even notice anything changed. When it restarted after the update it showed me all my Windows from before I restarted, a feature I'm shocked Windows has not copied yet, so I didn't know if anything actually changed. I had to look at my disk properties to see: APFS, oh, it actually worked. Speaking of which the main drive now appears in the Finder side bar. A small change.

I haven't seen any speed improvements yet. My Mac was fast enough already. I've seen APFS actually doing worse compared to HFS+ in benchmarks. I'd suspect that's accurate. From what I hear APFS has to write more and more detailed metadata. But in real world scenarios it may be faster.

Now let's talk about Safari. Safari has had perhaps the most changes out of all the apps I've used. First of all the block autoplaying videos is very nice. I know what you're thinking, "But how often do I encounter autoplaying videos?". And you're right but it also blocks youtube videos that are in the background. Not foreground ones, they work normally.

I open a lot of Youtube videos and they take a bit of time to load so sometimes I do something else and then suddenly the youtube video starts playing in the background. Annoying. In High Sierra it's no more. It's one of those things like picture in picture that I didn't think was such a big deal until I actually started using it.

Of course not all the Safari changes are so awesome. The 'always on' reader that they trumpeted is nothing more than an option to automatically open the reader view when opening a page. Also you can definitely tell Apple changed the title font here. I don't like it, hopefully I'll get used to it though. Also it is now harder to get out of the reader mode. You now have to physically click on the reader icon. This is very annoying as text to speech automatically enters this view.

I hope they change it; I already sent a complaint about it to Apple. I recognize a lot of people don't use Safari but I do because of the text to speech integration and the view all tabs options (that firefox removed for some reason).

The view all tabs is, first of all, much faster. It got the Metal treatment. They also don't stack the tabs anymore and they don't load all thumbnails at once. Probably to help with performance but it looks a bit janky.

There are also a few useful tweaks. This may just be me, but the battery life may have gotten better. Well, I'm reaching for the charger less. It might be because of Metal being less graphically taxing especially while watching YouTube videos or maybe APFS is allowing processes to be more efficient. I heard APFS allows for multiple processes to read a file now which I'd imagine increases efficiency by decreasing the reliance on locks and lends to more bursty tasks meaning more time for the CPU to be idle. But what do I know? It could just be me, though, I'm not using any tools to measure my battery life.

There's also a new Wifi icon. At least I think it's new and I believe status bar icons have been spread out a bit more. Finally there is HEVC and HEIC. HEIC will probably become a big deal but I don't see it being important for a long time.

HEVC is overrated. Sure, the OS supports it. But I never use the built in video player so the only benefit I'll get is files encoded in H.265 will now have thumbnails. Because apparently a lot of video players already support H.265. I'm using IINA, basically a prettier version of VLC, and it supports it. I think Apple just popularized it, they aren't actually doing anything meaningful with it. Just like how Apple popularized Helvetica fonts, well they did for me anyways. So this next section concerns mostly H.265.

The hype for H.265 is real. H.265 video takes up a lot less space compared to H.264 and I have not noticed any performance dip when playing it back at 2x speed. I used to compare video codecs to see which one used the least space. I stopped because the change was never that significant (like 10%) but H.265 might get me into it again as using handbrake the difference in size is like 50%. It's huge.

The only downside to H.265 is that video is too clear. Using handbrake the outputted video appears to be less grainy. The difference is slight but it's there and you'll probably notice it on some level when viewing low res video although to actually see what's going on you'll have to compare individual frames. The H.265 video just doesn't seem as crisp. I believe these are compression artifacts being stripped away. This makes the video look a bit softer which I don't appreciate. Now I know why many games have a graphics setting called 'film grain'.

The weird thing about handbrake is it saves H.265 files using .mp4 or .mkv file extensions. When I save a H.265 file I expect it to be using a dedicated H.265 file extension like .hevc. This is like saving a JPG using .png or a markdown file as .txt or an mp3 file as .wav or a GIF using .jif. Madness. Absolute madness. Well that's video codecs for you. They make no sense.

So the last thing I'd like to talk about are the bugs. There's definitely a lot of them in High Sierra. However when I restarted my Mac, like actually restarted not that automatic restart that happens when you upgrade, things got a lot better. Still a few bugs though.

Update: This only applies to public beta 1.

All in all High Sierra is stellar release. I think one of the Mac OS versions promised to fix a bunch of bugs. But I never noticed any differences. And new OS versions in general, whether it be Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, or even Linux have gotten pretty stale with only the occasional feature appearing every so often. High Sierra feels like a big upgrade. If only because it fixes a problem I've had for so long.

[djmjukebox]

Impressed by the Mixxx, DJ?

by Sagar Mody (DJM)

REVIEW BOTTOM LINE: Mixxx 2.00- A FREE, open source DJ software that is not just for beginners and radio shows anymore, it is good for DJs on a budget and even good enough for many professional DJs.

RATING: 4/5

COMPATIBLE: Windows, Linux, Mac OS

PRICE: FREE

The minute we think DJ today, we think digital and that's right because one way or the other, there is something digital involved in most setups. All the logistics and hardwork required in the days gone by seems alien to most younger DJs and producers today. Powerful DJ and music production software has become the choice of the trade, where most of the hardware is simulated and in recent years it has been perfected furthermore, making it a replacement for carrying bulky gear, vinyls or CDs. Although, the cost of the old ways was very high and moving to digital greatly reduces it, professional software and hardware still costs  a decent amount. The most popular DJ softwares out there demand no less than £80 for being nearly fully functional and usually to be featured further, the licenses can cost upto £200 or more. Then there is the dilemma of buying hardware that comes with a software license but that software may have its limitations for you and vice versa. What if someone told you, there is a fully featured software, you can install and use for FREE without limitations? Unbelievable? Not quite... welcome to Mixxx DJ! It is an open source music software available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux! (no joke!). Mixxx has been around in beta (1.110) for a long while but recently they released 2.00 and boy is it good! Whilst Mixxx 1.110 was just fine for basic mixing, load tracks, beat mix and looping, 2.00 takes it to level par with the big boys.

Compatibility and Cost

The monopoly in DJ software is held by a few, namely the top 3 : Traktor by Native Instruments, Serato DJ and Virtual DJ. At least these are the ones you'll have heard of if you aren't a DJ but the list does not end there. There is great software choice like, DJAY by Agoriddim (admittedly for Mac and tablets only), Rekordbox DJ by Pioneer (recently released with an aim to take over the software market), Mixvibes Cross DJ (brilliant and underrated) and Deckadance DJ.They each are set apart slightly by the performance oriented features and packages they offer.

All the above have their pros and cons and it would be a matter of a whole other article to discuss them. What is of importance is that they all cost money or come included when you buy hardware built for them. Whilst Traktor can be mapped to just about any MIDI controller, Serato DJ can't (you need Serato certified hardware). Virtual DJ and Cross boast the widest 'plug and play' compatibility to most hardware you're likely to come across. What Mixxx has in its bag is, a community which contributes to its progress and also to making more maps available for popular hardware. It isn't quite 'plug and play' but it isn't very difficult to get a controller from the list of those supported (apparently over 85) working in minutes. For something that costs £0, that is really good. What's more? Mixxx supports DVS with timecode with your existing Serato or Traktor DVS soundboxes.

That answers the question of compatibility but surely a FREE software, designed by a community can't come close to the 'paid-for' big boys, can it? I would say, with 2.00 Mixxx has come very close to the big boys. There are still some things that aren't just that bit perfect, for instance effects just don't sound right (to my ears at least) but for most other things you can think of, in my opinion Mixxx is on par or in some cases better!

Features

1. Skins and UI: Let's get this out of the way shall we? Skins is a love or hate thing! Virtual DJ lovers look at being able to customize and skin the DJ software as an essential function whilst those who play Serato or Traktor couldn't care less. However, skinning isn't just for making something look beautiful (the way you think it is, after all beauty is in the eye of the beholder or so they say). Skinning is extremely useful for different use cases, for example somebody using a mixdeck for radio won't need the same items displayed as a DJ would. Mixxx supports xml and css based skinning and comes with 3 very clean and useable skins which render beautifully on medium power hardware as well. Just like anything else in Mixxx, the UI and the resources used for drawing the waveforms is customizable in the preferences.

2. Waveforms: They weren't nearly good in 1.110 but in 2.00 the waveforms are brilliant. You can choose your framerate, RGB, filtered or monotone waves. Depending on the skin you can have them on each deck or you can stack them! They render cleanly, look sharp and scroll intuitively. There is great detail in them too and you can see the differences in the frequencies of the sound you are playing. I can compare them to all three, Traktor, Serato and Virtual DJ and say that I like these alot, the best for me being Traktor so far closely followed by Virtual DJ. Infact for those who have given Cross DJ (Mixvibes) a spin, these will remind you of those. (Why not Serato? Someday I'll write an article about that too- the programmers at Serato simply ignore Windows as a platform which is why the software is mostly ported from Mac OS to Windows. This has left a glaring error in waveform rendering and even in 2017 you have to deal with choppy and laggy waves even on premium hardware. There is plenty of discussion about this on the Serato forum and most folk even have trouble with this on certain Mac Books.)

3. Transport, Loops, Cues and Mixer: Mixxx has everything you have come to expect from a useful DJ software: Loops upto 64 beats, 8 hot cues, quantize, keylock, independent pitch control, slip mode, per channel filters, vinyl view and control and beat grid with full editing possibility. The best thing is, most of the functionality and emulation is customizable in the preferences. For example, you can select your transport behaviour to be like Pioneer hardware or Numark hardware etc. Options are also available for mixer behaviour and Vinyl (pitchbend) behaviour. Mixxx boasts one of the best Vinyl emulation engines to make your controller gigs sound just right. The EQs are great and you can customize just how much of suppression or kill you want, and also exactly where. Let's not forget, if you run short of options, you can contribute to the software yourself and build options (assuming you know your way around coding).

4. Track decks, Sample decks and Effects: Mixxx has upto 8 sample decks available, which can be triggered as normal. You can have upto 4 normal track decks in addition to the samples. The software comes with a handful built-in effects and 4 effect decks which gives you either superficial or more in depth control for each effect. The effects and the way they work, leaves a lot to be desired but this is only the one place I have found Mixxx to fall short.

5. Library functions: This, in my opinion is the clincher. Whilst Virtual DJ has a very hassle free system of directly accessing your PC folders for the library and it used to be my favorite, I have come to like the Traktor library management system. Once the inital pain of adding and analysis is over with, Traktor does it all automatically from then on when you add to the collection. As for search, Traktor is extremely powerful there too! Serato on the other hand has the worst library management system, in that it doesn't have one- if you organise your music in iTunes, Serato uses that but otherwise if you want to organise independantly within Serato, it is a bit of a pain.

Once again, not going into too much detail and coming back to Mixxx- Mixxx is as good as Traktor. In version 2.00 Mixxx can pull your Traktor playlists, iTunes playlists and Rhythmbox (Linux users) playlists as is and they will appear in your browser already. As for adding and making a collection in Mixxx, it is extremely simple- just select watch folders and it will automatically add from there everytime you start up Mixxx. The track analysis engine is fantastic and if you're coming from Traktor, it can use most of the Traktor analysis already. Search is strong- you can search for tracks with a humanly understandable command line. For example, location: 'folder-name' will display all songs in that folder! This works for most of the tags like artist, track, album etc. Mixxx allows full editing of your music tags and will also pull relevant information from the MusicBrainz dastabase if you want it to. Also worth mentioning, that ALL of the functions in Mixxx including browsing (mainly jumping between browse and search) can be achieved using just the keyboard without ever having to touch the mouse. Between your keyboard and your controller, all of Mixxx can be navigated.

In Use

In the mix, Mixxx is intuitive and powerful- coming from Traktor to use this for a test, I've had no learning curve or needed time investment for getting music analysed and onto Mixxx. It took me 10 minutes from activating the Pioneer DDJ-SB2 with Mixxx, getting my music from Traktor and selecting my UI settings to start mixing. As the DDJ-SB2 is one of the supported controllers, all I had to do was select it from the drop down list in preferances and go. It is good to know that there is a mapping software within Mixxx that will allow you to create new maps or customise the current one (like Virtual DJ and Traktor). Once on the roll, I found myself getting carried away mixing without problems and I hardly noticed the change of software (unless when trying to use effects!). It is easy to mix and perform with Mixxx including the use of samples and things like loop roll. The mixes are easily recordable as well, in the format of your choice. The options to select multiple soundcards is easy if you aren't using a controller or hardware but simply trying to use a splitter cable or a secondary USB soundcard for cueing. This will make it super easy for beginner and hobby DJs to start mixing without having to buy or get involved in expensive hardware.

Conclusion

All in all, Mixxx is a pleasant experience and the fact that it is FREE, enforces one of my personal motto's- 'All you need to mix well is basic controls and ears'- add to that a free software with waveforms and perfomance functions and you're a lucky DJ. The team at Mixxx has done a fantastic job with 2.00 and the community of Mixxx as well, in having provided so much compatibility to popular hardware already, including the most popular CDJs for MIDI/HID control. The bottom line on Mixxx- A FREE, open source DJ software that is not just for beginners and radio shows anymore, it is good for DJs on a budget and even good enough for many professional DJs.

[twentysomethinginorlando]

Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase 2018

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Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase 2018

Disclaimer before any of my relatives freak out: I am not currently engaged or planning a wedding, but I like research. 

A few months ago, the Disney Ever After blog announced the 2018 Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Showcase, a miniature expo designed to show off all the magical wedding options Disney has to offer. I read a few reviews of previous years and figured why not? It sounded fun. There were two ticket options- one that included just the Expo for $45, and one that included the Expo and a Happily Ever After dessert party for $90. I considered doing the dessert party, but we wound up deciding it made more sense to do the less expensive one, and buy a second ticket for Jay. 

Somehow, I didn’t think Duffy would need one. 

Before the Expo, they were having an Open House at the Wedding Pavillion at the Grand Floridian Resort. Neither of us were off work in time to make it, since we didn’t want to take the whole day off, but I really wasn’t concerned. I’ve wandered all over the Grand Floridian. If there’s nothing going on, you can literally walk right up to the Pavilion and stare in the glass doors. 

I did manage to get out of work early enough to get to the Contemporary Resort around 2:30 p.m., and Jay was joining me when he got off work at 3:15 p.m. The night before we had put together last minute Disneybounds, and I was super excited. I had my Meg dress and Wonder Woman boots on and he was going to be Hercules. (I would like to state for the record that this was another case of Jay saying no one would get it, and me proving him wrong, as multiple people told us how great we looked.) I got checked in and sat down to wait for the doors to open. The name tag was already falling off my dress; it wouldn’t stick, so I put it on Duffy instead. 

The doors opened about five minutes after three. The Expo was set up in the Fantasia ballroom with vendors up against the walls, and tables spread in the center. It was a really low lighting setup, which, from what I saw online, was different from previous years. I started to wander with no real plan in mind, after dropping off my raffle ticket. I didn’t want to talk to anyone until Jay arrived, so I focused on taking photos and somehow found myself in line for raw cookie dough. Pretty awesome line to accidentally wind up in! 

The room was divided into four themed sections: Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Tangled, and Classic Fairy Tale. Basically, what this meant were there were four decor examples scattered about the room, in addition to the light projections on the walls and the Cinderella Coach. 

I had read online about spa treatments so I wandered over to the Senses booth. They were doing mini facials and make-up as samples of what you could have done for your wedding. I figured I’d save that for last since I didn’t want to mess up the make-up I was already wearing before pictures. 

The well has actual running water!

I wandered around a bit more before heading out to wait for Jay. I didn’t want to miss anything but being by myself just felt awkward, and trying to handle the backpack, camera, and Bear all at once was getting tricky. I had jumped in line for the bar but realized I didn’t have a hand to find my ID with. Thankfully, he wasn’t far away, and arrived about ten minutes later. We checked him in and grabbed his wrist band. I proposed starting with the alcohol and then working our way around the room in a circle, and he agreed. 

There was the big open bar with the wine options, and a smaller table to one side with shot glass samples of mixed drinks. I grabbed the “Cinderella’s Glass Slipper”, which was a blue drink with vodka. Jay got the pink mai-tai since he prefers rum, and then we both jumped in the line for wine. One of the men pouring the drinks explained that all the drinks had ties to Disney. Some were from family wineries with Disney connections, including one owned by Lily’s family, and others were from Disney properties like Skywalker Ranch. My favorite was the Fairy Tale Cuvee Champagne, which is apparently created exclusively for Disney weddings. There were no limits on how much you could have, and I noticed they were filling Jay’s glasses higher than they were filling mine. To be fair, I was carrying a Duffy Bear. I had two glasses and he had three, the first time through the line, and we went back twice. 

Rather than going to the next booth, we crossed the room to start our loop next to the stage at the cake displays. Not intentionally because we wanted cake or anything. They had about seven different pictures of cakes, and four or five on display. I don’t understand how anyone eats something so pretty! We waited our turn for samples. You got to choose what cake base you wanted, and then the icing. I got Marble with Cookies and Cream, while Jay opted for Chocolate with Churro icing.  

I have long said the only things I care about with a wedding are the cake, the dress, and the photos, so I jumped in line to talk to cake artist. He explained that all the cakes are three tiers and they feed about fifty people. 

“That’s great. Now can you make it look like him?” 

I held up Duffy.  

Apparently, they aren’t allowed to do actual Disney characters because they’d never get them 100% right and Disney wants them to always look perfect. I’m very curious about the chocolate Chip and Dale on the table then, but that’s fine. He suggested making the cake look like Duffy’s fur, and I asked if ears could go on it too. The answer was yes! 

The next booth was a bunch of food samplings. They had chicken pot pie, Sheppard’s pie, mac and cheese, and something with fish. I grabbed the chicken pot pie and glared at Jay as he got the mac and cheese. Stupid dairy allergy. (For the record, I acknowledge chicken pot pie is likely not dairy free, but I can do it in small doses. Cheese is about the worst thing on the planet for a Chelsea.) 

The next table had a painter who apparently can be on site for the ceremony or reception, and paints as the day goes on for a memorable keepsake. Sounds awesome, but we kept walking and trying to balance our food to eat it. The next booth was all food as well, but for some reason it was all cauliflower themed. While I understand they were trying to be different… cauliflower? Jay doesn’t eat vegetables in general, but even I won’t touch cauliflower. We moved on. 

Next to the cauliflower food booth was the beautiful Tangled wedding display table, complete with Snuggly Duckling sign and chocolate frying pans. Out of all of the décor sections, Tangled was definitely my favorite. It looked the most like the movie. 

The next table was actually more in the middle of the floor than on the sides like everyone else. They had a frame photo prop like you see in the parks with Photopass, and we stopped to see what the deal was. There were two different kinds of cameras on the table from HP Sprocket. Essentially, they’re modern versions of the Polaroid camera and you can have them out for guests to document the wedding day. They took our picture with the photo frame and it printed out as a sticker.  

Apparently, this was the photo section because the next area was a display of different photo offerings. We skipped that. There’s not really anything Disney can tell me about photo printing other than prices, but there were some beautiful options. 

We couldn’t figure out what the next booth was, so Jay jumped in the long line while I went to find out. It was a virtual photo booth, sort of like a second generation to a green screen. Instead of a traditional photo booth with a background, they had different options you could choose from. For the Expo, they had all four parks represented in about twenty options. Normally your guests would have four photos to choose from, that you picked out ahead of time. They promised me they could get the Jungle Cruise. I actually picked one that wasn’t from any of the parks but seemed the most fitting. 

Now we were back at the doors and moved over to what was probably the first booth most people hit, the Honeymoon planning service. I talked to the girl for a minute. She herself had gotten married about a year ago, and now was getting to help other people. 

The next booth was for Vero Beach, the resort about two hours south of Orlando that everyone forgets about. They also do weddings there, and had their actual wedding planner at the Expo. She explained both the indoor and outdoor venue options, and handed me what was probably the thickest packet of information I got all day. 

We spent a long time talking to Alex at the Disney Cruise Line section. He was super informative and didn’t mind taking the time to answer all my questions. Disney Cruise Line weddings are surprisingly some of the most affordable Disney weddings, with the basic package starting right at $3,000 for up to eight guests. However, they are some of the most limited. Where the sky is the limit of what options you want at a Walt Disney World wedding, the Cruise Line weddings have a set number of options. I was told I could bring all my Duffys though, as my own decorations, so there’s that at least. (His eyes got a little wider when Jay mentioned there are fifty of them.) 

Disney Springs had the next table, most importantly with chocolate samples from the Ganachery as examples of add-ons you could do for your guests. 

The next booth was a display from Themes Come True, which is a service that provides anything printed you could possibly need for your wedding. I should have taken more pictures but the graphic designer in me was too busy geeking out. They had everything from Haunted Mansion Stretch Room invitations to programs that looked like park Times Guides. 

We had made it back to where we started and jumped in line for our second pass at the bar before we headed past the spa booth to another food station. 

This food station was slightly less strange than the cauliflower one, but I’m still surprised by the choice. Given I haven’t actually been to that many weddings, but soup just doesn’t seem like something you were serve, much less in little goblets. Jay got a sampling of one that I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it was frozen with nitrogen. They had four options and it all looked fancy- I’m just not a soup person. 

We had reached another decor section, this time dedicated to Snow White. There was a wishing well with actual running water and a beautiful table of red roses and mirrors. Next to it was the Zales Jewelry table with samples of their Enchanted Jewelry collection. It was all super pretty, but none of it seemed wedding themed, unless maybe it’s for the bridesmaids or to go with the dress? One of the women asked who my inner princess was and I said, “Wonder Woman.” Somehow, I don’t think that was the answer they were looking for. 

The final food station was the one I had hit first, the cookie dough. They had four flavors to try in a cup or a cone, and it  was all oat based, whatever that means. (It did feel a lot thicker than the Wonderland Cookie Dough that I’m used to.) We went back for seconds, thirds in my case. 

Around the cookie dough was the Beauty and the Beast section covered in red roses and gold accents, complete with Cogsworth. 

Next to the stage was another cake display, this time modeling Disney’s famous projection technology. They took the magic they use to project pictures onto Cinderella Castle and scaled it down for a wedding cake. It’s gorgeous. 

At some of the tables in the center of the room, they had Disney wedding consultants on hand to meet with couples to discuss their plans. Jay and I didn’t want to waste their time, but it had only taken us about an hour and twenty minutes to get all the way around the room. There were still raffles left, so I certainly wasn’t going anywhere. We took a few more passes at the food booths and found someone to take our picture together in front of the Cinderella Coach.  

Jay told me to go see about the facial while he took pictures, so I headed back to the spa booth only to find out you had to sign up and the list was a mile long. I’d really like to know why I wasn’t told that the first time I came by, or I would have signed up then. So, no facial for Chelsea. 

They announced the final raffle at 5:15 p.m., a two-night hotel stay for two. We hung around another half an hour or so hoping the spa would get to me, but no such luck. 

This was the first time I’d been to the Disney Wedding Showcase. I did read a few reviews of previous years, so it seems like they cut some things for this year, including the two classes they offered in the past. I definitely feel like there wasn’t enough to do for three hours, but I also didn’t meet with one of the planners to see how much time that would eat up or go over to the Open House at the Grand Floridian, although it started at 2 p.m. instead of 3 p.m., like the Showcase. I got a good feel for how expensive a Disney wedding can be, but I never saw a price in writing for anything. 

Well, that’s not entirely true. I never should have seen pricing. They didn’t have printed prices to hand out, but I found what I think is a Cast Member’s cheat sheet that they dropped with the exact pricing of the decor spreads. I’m not going to publish that information online, but feel free to email me at Chelsea@TwentySomethingInOlrando.com or message me on the Twenty Something in Orlando Facebook page and I’ll be happy to answer your questions as best I can. 

Honestly, I didn’t learn a whole lot that I couldn’t have found out on Disney’s wedding website. Seeing the stuff in person was way more fun, however and we got lots of free samples. A photo sticker, a digital photo with the background, chocolate, cake, food, and more. Plus, I’m fairly confident we each drank more than $45 worth of alcohol, at least at Disney pricing. It was definitely a cool way to spend an afternoon. 

Cost: $45 flat per person. 

Duration: The Showcase lasted three hours, but we could have left in two. We did skip the Grand Floridian Open House that would have added more time. 

Value: A lot of fun and pretty informative. I highly recommend it if you are planning a Disney Wedding, but I’m not sure I’ll need to do it again when the day comes. 

Add Ons: They had a $90 ticket option that included a fireworks dessert party. Some friends of ours did it, and it looked really cool. 

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