This has just come to my inbox from Seaworld – happy to publish it. February 24, 2010 A Message from Jim Atchison President and Chief Executive Officer, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment It is with great sadness that I report that one of our most experienced animal trainers drowned in an incident with one of our killer [...]
The death of killer whale trainer Dawn Brancheau at Orlando’s Seaworld yesterday is a tragic event and my thoughts go out to her family, friends and colleagues. But some of the handwringing and bewilderment surrounding the incident leaves me perplexed. Some years ago, I interviewed Penn Jillette of Las Vegas magic duo Penn & Teller [...]
For this post, I’ve teamed up with travel writing colleague, Jill Starley-Grainger to come up with our pet peeves about luxury hotels. Jill has come up with eight of the offerings, myself with two and the whole post has to be read over our two websites (well, we have to drive traffic you know). Whether [...]
I wasn’t going to post anything more on my Disney travels of last week, but then changed my mind at some point early this morning when I found myself on ebay bidding for a couple of pins to complete a Disney set. If you have no idea what I’m talking it about, it’s Disney Pin [...]
So I finally got to meet the Big Cheese yesterday when we had a character breakfast in our hotel, the Contemporary Resort and Mickey finally turned up. We’d seen most of the other major Disney characters over the week but had failed to spot Mickey… I was beginning to think he must have been in [...]
Travel writers Catherine Quinn, Kieran Meeke and myself have just launched a new editorial website, traverati.com. I won’t go into too much detail here, but check the site out and let us know what you think www.traverati.com The official party line: New Launch: www.traverati.com featuring The 360 Traveller magazine Showcasing the best of travel writing, blogging [...]
Yesterday we got the chance to try out a couple of the non-theme park activities here at Walt Disney World and so we had a morning of massages at the Grand Floridian Resort’s spa followed by a very competitive game of mini golf at Fantasia Gardens before heading for Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. [...]
Why are Pirates called Pirates? Because they arrrrrgh Forget Worldofjames.com, for he is no more… welcome in his place, ooh arrrrrgh me hearties, Matthew Ironbird. For I have been turned into a Pirate ready to pillage by the good folk here at Disney… Despite the steady drizzle that rained on Orlando yesterday, (yes, it does [...]
I’m here at Walt Disney World in Orlando for the park’s annual resort showcase… basically, Disney brings a host of journalists from different publications and shows them what’s on offer here and what’s coming up for the coming year. And I have to say, on the first day yesterday, they pulled out all the stops [...]
Quite a while ago, when I was travelling what seemed almost every weekend, I was in the middle of one of those mad sets of trips travel writers tend to do at some point. My memory is sketchy as to the actual series of events – the jetlag, not too much booze in business class [...]
