Jason came down to Irvine to visit today. A whole bunch of us went to the new Downtown Disney, next to Disneyland. I really didn\’t want to go to any place that Disney owned, but there wasn\’t anything else to do and Jason is leaving for Utah on Wednesday. At the very least we could freak out the tourists.

Anyway, we got to Downtown Disney around 10:00. Eh, I wasn\’t impressed. Just a lot of pricy stores that didn\’t interest me. Then again, it is Disney, so how much could I expect? There was an ESPN Zone, a Rainforest Cafe, and a House of Blues (or as George Carlin puts it, the \”House of Lame White Motherfuckers\”) that was closed for a \”private party.\” There was the biggest Disney Store I ever saw, and a pretzel store with a line stretching out the door. The coolest thing was the big Lego store, which had a ton of cool Lego sets. That reminds me, one of these days I want to get a Mindstorm set and build some wicked robots.

We decided to hang around the ESPN Zone and play some of their overpriced arcade games. What\’s with that anyway? I remember when arcade games used to cost 25 cents, 50 at the most. Now every game costs $2 and there\’s a timer so you can only play for a minute before you have to fork over another $2 to continue. Never going back there again.

So Downtown Disney\’s nothing special, nothing you haven\’t seen before. It\’s just another way to squeeze those last few dollars from tourists walking back to their cars. Afterwards we went to the Denny\’s near campus and ate and talked for an hour. Jason was leaving in a few days and we won\’t see him again for 2 years, and that was kind of sad. But oh well, these things happen.