Atlanta 2023 Region Trip://Day 1~ Deltas and Dragons

                  Date:3/30/2023-4/2/2023

Destination: Atlanta, Georgia

Goal: Fun Spot Atlanta, Six Flags Over Georgia

Distance: 524 Miles

Means of Travel: Flying

Potential Credits: 4

Last year, we all remember the big awesome France trip with my amazing family, right? Well, I was worried leading up to it that I would have to miss the opening for ArieForce One if I went. Turns out...I had plenty of time because it didn't open for another year. 2023's region trip was actually supposed to be Sweden, I had saved up the money, but then my car got stolen last summer and Geico lowballed me 5 grand on a replacement, so I'm not back at square 1 but certainly back closer to the beginning. You've seen the opening sequence for Up you know how it is. But with a new coaster in Atlanta and the RMC Connoisseurs Facebook group that me and my buddy Ben run was invited as media, I haven't had a proper day at Over Georgia since I was 12, I'll take it as a backup.

Atlanta is an awkward distance in that it's almost too short to fly but too long to drive. Despite I-75 running right from my town all the way straight down to here, you're rolling the dice when you drive on it with traffic jams that can sometimes block off the entire highway and last hours. But flying is expensive, especially when the path of least resistance is Delta which is probably the costliest domestic US airline. But I found some cheapo $188 Frontier flights with a personal item allowed so I hit a major home run to get down here super cheap and I can put the money I saved towards a rental and not ask Ben to repay me for any of it since he came in clutch and did the same for me when my car was stolen! Right?

...right?

Day 0- Jojo vs. Burrito

As usual, this trip started with me getting off work and hightailing it down to Cincinnati to meet my buddy Grant, who I play Dungeons & Dragons with. He lives 30 minutes from CVG and offered to help me out because him and his puppy Jojo are awesome.

Obligatory cute puppy picture. Purely to be the thumbnail on the trip report and get clicks.

So we headed out to dinner at some Mexican place where the cocktails were like $20 so I opted for just a beer and got a seafood and pineapple quesadilla with shrimp and lobster for also $20? Weird pricing at this place but they were in business! And it was good!

After that we hit the liquor store so I could get something to drink (Grant does not drink) and we cracked open Taco vs. Burrito which is a hilarious card game. Then we did Red Dragon Inn which is basically card-based DnD but with just drinking and bar fights, my cleric narrowly beat his rogue. I had this strawberry PB&J stout that tasted more like strawberry peanut butter and coffee, and it was strangely good. Sticky, but good. I don't like sticky. The horny perverted kleptomaniac 3'6" gnome I play in our Dungeons & Dragons game might like sticky but the dude driving him does not.

So with that, we hit the hay since it was an early morning at CVG tomorrow. 

Day 1- Deltas and Dragons

I slept. I didn't sleep well, but I slept. Plan was to be up at 6:45 but Grant is on third shift and I woke up at 6 and couldn't fall back asleep, so I said fuck it and got dressed and had him take me to the airport.

Got through TSA with no issues at all, left everything in my bag, and got to the terminal no biggie. Frontier would be servicing this trip, my first time flying with them, yes they limit bag size but in my experience with Spirit nobody gives a shit as long as you don't take a huge footlocker on the plane or something. For those of you not familiar, there's a metal box a little bigger than a large cereal box your bag has to fit in and anything bigger costs extra, but in the past I've flown Spirit three times and nobody has ever bugged me about it. I packed a full backpack with all the clothes I'd need for a week in Texas in 2018 and flew both ways with no issues. So I took a duffle bag I'd gotten for Christmas, leaving on the "CARRY ON FRIENDLY" tags for this exact purpose, worse comes to worse I pay the $50 on the app if they say it's a no go? I'm a millennial, I can use technology, I won't have to have the gate agent do it for twice that, right? Wrong! Turns out if they say it's a no go you have to pay twice the price to have the gate agent tag it as a carry on, shaking me down $100 with no way to buy it myself on the app once they tell me it's a no go. So yeah, not happy about that at all, but at least I knew to save and check it coming back before they hit me with another highway robbery over luggage. 

Cutting edge aerospace engineering, Frontier! Look at this innovative solution to fix a broken tray table! I was at least thinking there would be an empty seat next to me since they wouldn't have the nerve to stick someone here, but nope! A passenger sits down next to me. Poor girl better have been standby or something, but if it's any consolation those tray tables are useless. The size of paperback books.

Fortunately, the flight was a breeze. I proofread one of my WIP books on the plane and we touched down in Atlanta before I knew it. 

I went to Ben's gate to wait for him...and of course he gets this one. Your flight will have insane turbulence if this gate is involved in it.

So we grab food at the airport and get to our rental car from Sixt, and when brainstorming ideas for what to do this afternoon, Ben had the brilliant idea to go to the Delta museum!

The Delta museum is a major attraction of the Delta Theme Park, also known as Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Right beside the six gates of all Delta, giant glowing Fly Delta Jets sign, flight attendant training facilities, oh and their corporate headquarters. Fortunately it's an airline I like and not Air Canada Island or something. 

Sadly, the hangar was closed. We have something very similar at home in the United States Air Force Museum in that it's a museum not of corridors, halls, and cases but a living hangar that acts as a showroom like those car museums have. They were setting up for an event, rocking out to Styx though so it was probably lit whatever they were doing.

However, we bought the discounted admission for something equally cool that was outside: a real Boeing 747 that flew in Delta's fleet before being retired into a museum exhibit showcasing the legendary commercial liner.

But first...time for a nap the jet lag from Ohio is real!

The thing is set up like it was for flight, the back half had been ripped up to show the inner workings but up front the seats were still there, there was still power to much of the plane.

Stewardess! Where is my mai tai??? Business class sucks I don't want to be down here with the plebs!

The cockpit was...high. As a child I was fascinated by the idea of a plane so large it had to have an upstairs but being up here it's just as impressive as it was as a 5 year-old into planes and trains and things that go.

The back of the plane had been gutted to show things such as the structural skeleton, air lines, cargo hold, and the like as well as holding placards displaying the story of the creation of the 747. Leaving out the back Ben also found the crew quarters up a little hidden-ish stairwell with bunk beds, it was too dark to photograph sadly but the plane had bunk beds aboard it where flight attendants could sleep.

You could walk out the other side, here's my fat ass for scale for just how massive this thing is. It's, as Fun Spot would say, HYUUUUUUGE!!!!

And alongside something HYUUUUUGE, we had something MINI.

Don't talk to me or my son ever again.

Ben needed to call his dad real fast so I geeked out over the landing gear.

Reminded me of the shuttle wheels on display at Kennedy Space Center. You could spin them and everything.

All in all, cool museum experience! Shame we couldn't see the hangar interior but the 747 alone was worth the pit stop leaving the airport. Maybe if I'm back in town again this is something to do. Plus I got some cool Delta socks, a Delta tailfin keychain, and a really cool metal lunchbox with a vintage Delta ad on it.

After Delta we went to our nice, clean, pristine, cozy hotel with friendly staff and a shower at just the right temperature and got my new laptop set up a bit, looking for something to kill the rest of the day since it was only like 4. One of us mentioned Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves and Ben being the brilliant fucker he is found that despite it being the 30th and the movie coming out on the 31st, an AMC nearby was showing it that evening! So we went and grabbed Cookout and got our tickets for the movie!

Ben was tempting me hard to get this popcorn bucket but I didn't have the luggage space. Damn you Frontier. Oh well, I was gonna see it again back at home with my adventure party I play with, I'll get it then.

Okay, this movie was fucking hilarious! Ben got me into Dungeons & Dragons at Con on the Cob 2021 and I've been playing with the same DM since. For those of you that know nothing about it other than it's a nerd game with dice, think like Galavant or Monty Python. Most campaigns go hilariously wrong and the shit hits the fan and nothing gets done and you have this drunk gaggle of misfits that hate each other forced to coexist to save the world. This film gets that perfectly, it's a great party with some very well written characters. Currently in my game alone Gimble the horny gnome (my character) and Torderk the fighter are starting the Church of Bahamut with Gimble's inflatable sex doll as the holy penis prophet and baptisms in Baja Blast. I spent most of this movie laughing my ass off, one particular gag had me in tears, but the end was actually a bit of an emotional gut punch that I didn't expect out of what was primarily a comedy movie. Make more of these!

After this we drove back to our nice, clean, cozy hotel with fluffy beds and no blood stains on the wall for some much needed sleep. ArieForce One needs us tomorrow!

UP NEXT: RMC Connoisseurs has its media debut at Fun Spot Atlanta as Ben and I take on ArieForce One as this brand new RMC shoots for the stars, real life Rollercoaster Tycoon, I wait in line for ArieForce One with the professional group admin angel on one shoulder and the drunk thoosie devil on the other, and where the hell are Ben's keys!?