Thanksgiving Visit to Socal

Now that my sister is stationed in the San Diego area, the rest of the family has been taking advantage of the chance to go and hang out at her place.


This latest visit took me out of the shop for a full week, but after doing our part to support the traditional nationwide turkey massacre (with supplemental Twinkie frying) we did make a trip to Disney's California Adventure.  It's a much smaller theme park than Disneyland proper (right next door) but we still got to managed to ride a few roller coasters and net ourselves some winning photos like this one:

(that's my niece hiding in terror in the seat next to me)

The unexpected bonus was that they were doing a major promotional push for the upcoming Tron Legacy film.


Among other things, I spent a few minutes snapping pictures of the Lightcycle mockup they had parked outside the theater where they were showing the sneek peek clips (which only make me want to see the film even more).


Given the tricky lighting arrangement, it was a difficult subject to photograph.  Here's a few of the shots I got:











Looking at the lightcycle, it wouldn't be impossible to build one, but it would be seriously uncomfortable to ride.  What's more, there's an outfit down in Florida that's already making seven of them.  I'm starting to think I'd be better off making one in the original style from the old movie instead.

Back to the theme park promotion; after 6pm much of the park was dressed up with TRON-themed lighting and a DJ had set up shop complete with gogo dancers in costume.

Unfortunately, this was the only photo I got of any of them:


The lighting on the costume was achieved by the simple expedient of some retroreflective tape.  So in normal light the costume didn't light up at all, but with the use of a flash, everything came to life.

Neat.

 .