Archive for the ‘Orlando In General’ Category
Rail Buzz
March 26th, 2010 | 
Author: Highgate Park : More local news and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport as Lakeland-Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer joined the mayors of Tampa and Lakeland here in a regional briefiing on the high speed rail project. Others are being planned in the coming months, according to state transportation officials.
“Everybody’s excited. Everybody realizes that we’re going to be first in the nation in terms of developing true high speed rail that goes 150 to 160 miles an hour,” said Dyer.
Florida Department of Transportation officials reported that construction could begin sometime next February or March with completion still on schedule for 2015.
Dyer called the meeting “an unprecendented opportunity for us to develop relations all along the I-4 corridor” as the cities along the rail line grow into a super region.
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Art Festival
Highgate Park : More local news and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport areas as Downtown Winter Park will be packed with sculptures, paintings and an estimated 300,000 people this weekend as the city hosts its biggest event of the year: the Sidewalk Art Festival. About 225 artists will set up displays in tented galleries in Central Park, and tonight Peter White and other jazz artists will perform before a crowd sipping wine and munching on cheese.
“It’s just a very festive weekend,” says Carole Moreland, an event organizer. “It’s free. It’s very family-oriented.”
More than 1,000 artists applied to participate, but only a fourth of those were accepted. Festival-goers can expect to see everything from peaceful landscapes to bold glass jewelry.
Artists start displaying their work at 9 a.m. today, but for many, the event starts with the jazz concerts. People are allowed to bring alcohol into the park Friday night, but this year the festival is also offering a beer and wine tent for all three days.
The event poster, which many Winter Park residents collect from year to year, was designed digitally for the first time this year. Artist Ken Bowser, who teaches at Full Sail University, created a bright and playful scene of a sidewalk café in the city.
While many of the artists at the festival are experienced and well-known, festival judges also select a handful of “emerging artists” to participate each year. These artists have never displayed their work at an outdoor show and are considered at the beginning of their careers.
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Virgin America
Highgate Park : More local news and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as Virgin America is going to Disney World. The airline announced new daily nonstop flights to Orlando from Los Angeles and San Francisco beginning in August. One-way fares will start at $149 and $199 respectively.
The three-year-old airline also announced plans for its first international destination, with direct flights to Toronto from Los Angeles and San Francisco, pending a decision by the Department of Transportation. Three more destinations are also in the works for 2010.
The new routes come on the heels of Virgin America’s announced plans to expand its fleet of aircraft by as much as one-third by 2011. The airline’s low fares and in-flight amenities like Wi-Fi at no extra charge and power outlets have helped build its brand and strengthen customer loyalty, according to Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for the airline.
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Baby Eagles
Cemetery director Don Price said blustery winds caused the top of the dead pine tree where the eagles nested to topple Saturday afternoon. The nest was home to two adult eagles and two hatchlings that could not yet fly.
A volunteer from the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey rescued the young eagles on Saturday.
“They’re in really good shape — totally perfect,” said Susie Warren, another volunteer at the Maitland facility.
The nest’s destruction caused concern among cemetery officials, who were never informed the birds had been rescued.
Unaware that the young eagles had been taken to the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, Price searched the grounds of the city-owned cemetery Saturday night. A state wildlife official joined the search today, this time only discovering in the nest remains of fish, smaller birds and rodents that the eagles had preyed upon.
They assumed the mother had taken her young elsewhere. Young eagles have fallen before, including during Hurricane Charley and again last year, when an adult bird retrieved a hatchling that had fallen.
The eagles had been popular with birdwatchers for years. The city had left the dead pine in place because of the nest.
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Sneak Peak
Highgate Park : More local news and local events in and around the Highgate Park Davenport as Universal Orlando provided a sneak peek inside the Wizarding World of Harry Potter on Monday. It will be the newest addition to Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park when it opens soon. It’s been a popular series on store shelves, selling more than 400 million books in 200 countries, and the movie series garnered more than $5 billion.
The section of Islands of Adventure will cover 20 acres and includes the Hogsmeade train station, where guests will board a train to Hogwart’s Castle.
Inside the village, visitors will find what officials called a thrilling, state-of-the-art attraction called “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey,” which will use new technology to bring the magic, characters and stories of the young wizard to life in ways never seen before.
Another roller coaster called the “Dragon Challenge” will allow riders to experience the iconic elements of a Triwizard tournament. A family-style coaster will also take guests on the “Flight of the Hippogriff” over Hogwart’s castle.
Plenty of shops and restaurants will also welcome guests at the village.
Universal Orlando officials said they expect the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to open during this spring.
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Disney Giveaway
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as Disney reached its goal of getting 1 million people to sign up for a day of volunteer work in exchange for a free one-day ticket to a Disney park.
Under the “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” program, Disney is giving a free day’s admission to any park at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., or at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., provided the volunteer work has been performed and certified by the HandsOn Network, a clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities.
The program was announced last fall but the rules required that the volunteer work take place this year.
Disney announced Tuesday that the program had reached its cap of 1 million people registering just 10 weeks after volunteers began signing up on Jan. 1.
“By any measure, the ‘Give a Day, Get a Disney Day’ program exceeded our expectations,” Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said in a statement.
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MegaCon Returns
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as MegaCon, which is the biggest comic book (and other stuff) convention within a three-hour drive of Jacksonville, returns to Orlando this weekend.
You never know what kind of deals you will find; some years are definitely better than others. But in any case there are piles of comics, collectibles, anime, toys, gaming, kids dressed like video game characters, and other assorted what-nots. Artists are pretty nice about sketching you something, usually for a fee, though. Same goes for pictures and autographs from the celebrity guests.
Media guests include James Hong (“Kung Fu Panda”), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from the original “Star Trek”), Lea Thompson and Claudia Wells (“Back tothe Future”), Ray Park (Darth Maul from “Phantom Menace”) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian from “Empire Strikes Back”).
Comic book guests include Joe Benitez (“Justice League”), Jim Calafiore (“Aquaman”), Greg Land (“Uncanny X-Men”) and George Perez (lots and lots of books).
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Florida Premiere
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as “Hope for a Thorn,” written and directed by UCF alumna Erin Kitzinger, will have its Florida Premiere at the Gasparilla International Film Festival on March 20. During its world premiere at the LA Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles in October, the film received the Best Feature Director award.
When a troubled grandmother finds herself the guardian of the granddaughter whom she’s never met, she is forced to finally face her past. While each is fighting loss, loneliness, and madness, their only chance for redemption is each other. Shot entirely in the Orlando area during summer 2007, “Thorn” utilized local cast and a combination of student and professional crew to complete the 74-minute film.
“Hope for a Thorn” is one of the first feature films produced through UCF’s new Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema Master of Fine Arts program. The unique graduate program requires its students to finance and produce micro-budget digital feature films. Kitzinger graduated from the program in August 2008.
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Cheap Air Fare
You can fly for only $10 from NYC to Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Orlando, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers, Florida; Buffalo and Rochester, New York; Oakland, California; Burlington, Vermont; and Salt Lake City, Utah. But the catch is you have to book the flight today and you have to travel on Tuesday or Wednesday, March 9 or 10.
This is apparently just the beginning in a series of deals to celebrate JetBlue’s 10th anniversary. NYC-based customers are being told to check out the airline’s Twitter account on Wednesday for some giveaway offers.
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Student Help
Highgate Park : More local news and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as more than 100 University of Central Florida students will be caring for abused animals in Puerto Rico, researching habitats at the National Key Deer Refuge and working with children and their families at homeless shelters during next week’s Spring Break.
College of Business Administration students will travel to Panama to help people create micro-enterprises, with a focus on sustainability and imparting basic business knowledge and skills. This will be the second time a UCF group has traveled to the region to help the indigenous Koskuna tribe, and sponsors include the college, Student Government Association and Princeton Review.
A group of Physical Therapy students will spend its spring break in Kingston, Jamaica, where they will be distributing medical equipment and educating caregivers of children with special needs living in orphanages. UCF students have traveled to Jamaica to help orphans for the past five years, and they are part of an ongoing partnership with the Florida Hospital Outreach program SHARES International.
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Flight Pinup
Highgate Park : More local new and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as flight attendants for Florida-based AirTran Airways have objected to an image of a woman in a swimsuit displayed on the side of a Boeing 737 jet. AirTran, based in Orlando with its largest hub in Atlanta, said the image was put on the side of one of its planes as part of a partnership with Sports Illustrated for its annual swimsuit edition and the picture will soon be removed from the jet as the promotion draws to a close, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday.
The Association of Flight Attendants at AirTran sent a message to its members objecting to the image.
“It is our feeling that this is not only contrary to the family image that this company tries to promote, but also potentially offensive to their female employees, the majority of their flight attendants who will have to work on this aircraft,” the union said. It said the promotion “creates a potential for verbal abuse by male passengers.”
AirTran spokesman Christopher White said the decal is “subdued and classy.”
“We have the highest respect for all of our crew members, male and female,” White said. “We also went to great lengths to ensure that the image that we put on the side of our planes was very tastefully done and very much a family friendly image.”
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Cooking Demo
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport areas as Cat Cora, a Macy’s Culinary Council Chef, will host a cooking demonstration and book signing at 2 p.m. March 20 at Macy’s at The Mall at Millenia in Orlando. She will be featuring recipes from Kouzzina, her newest restaurant, a Mediterranean style eatery located at Walt Disney World’s BoardWalk Resort.
Both on and off-screen, Chef Cat Cora has continued to make a lasting impression on the culinary community. In 2005, Cat made television history on Food Network’s Iron Chef America as the first and only female Iron Chef, and in November 2006 Bon Appétit magazine bestowed her with their Teacher of the Year Award. That month, she was also honored with another great culinary distinction when she was named Executive Chef of the magazine. In December 2008, Cat launched CCQ (Cat Cora’s Que) at Macy’s new Signature Kitchen restaurant in California’s South Coast Plaza location.
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Knoxville Route
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as it has been reported that AirTran Airways will offer daily flights between Knoxville and Orlando starting in May. Since June, the airline had been offering flights from McGhee Tyson to Orlando International Airport each Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, but beginning May 4, the flights will operate daily, according to the Airport Authority, which operates McGhee Tyson and Downtown Island airports.
“The new low-fare flights will increase the number of airline seats available each day to one of the airport’s most visited destinations and will allow our passengers to have options when booking their next trip to Orlando,” Kirk Huddleston, chairman of the Airport Authority’s board of commissioners, said in a prepared statement.
John Kirby, senior director of strategic planning for AirTran Airways, said the Knoxville to Orlando flights have been very popular so the airline is increasing service.
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Fun School
Highgate Park : More local news and local events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as at a Friendship Elementary in Deltona, children sing about multiplication in music class. When kids at Kissimmee’s Boggy Creek Elementary go to gym, they practice counting money during a game of skipping and jumping.
Culinary-arts students at Apopka High School use math for recipes. They also explore the science behind bread making and how heat impacts ingredients.
In Florida’s schools, teaching math and science is no longer the sole responsibility of math and science teachers. Principals are under intense pressure to boost test scores in both subjects, and so everybody on campus is taking on a bigger share of the instructional burden.
“We realize it takes everyone to help our children be successful,” said Judi Winch, the principal of Westside Elementary in Daytona Beach, where youngsters hover over measurements and discuss angles and coordinates in art class and work on patterns and graphing in music.
Administrators say it makes perfect sense: The “fun” classes can help make tough concepts easier to understand. These teachers can also help kids see that math and science have real-life applications, that they’re not just big words and numbers in books.
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Slow Disney
Highgate Park : More local news andlocal events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as US consumers sent tepid signals to The Walt Disney Co. during the holiday quarter, as many of them still required discounts to step into theme parks and reduced spending on food, beverages and merchandise when they got there.
A nascent advertising recovery also had an uneven effect on the company, as ESPN benefited from higher ad revenue, while the ABC broadcast network suffered from fewer viewers and lower advertising rates. The Disney Channel, which doesn’t run commercials, saw fees from cable and satellite operators grow.
“At this point we have limited visibility regarding the economy and its impact on our businesses,” Chief Executive Bob Iger said on a conference call. “Thus we will continue to focus on controlling costs while creating great content and experiences and building our brands.”
Disney is closely tethered to consumer confidence. Its theme parks, stores and movies are a good barometer of how freely people are spending their extra cash.
Disney said it earned $844 million in its fiscal first quarter, which ended Jan. 2, roughly flat compared with a year earlier. Revenue rose 1 percent to $9.74 billion. Although both measures beat analyst forecasts, shares were little changed in after-hours trading.
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Orlando Shakespeare
Helsinger and associate director Thomas Ouellette deliver both the giddiness and the underlying darkness in Shakespeare’s tale of a young woman who goes to great lengths to get a young man who doesn’t deserve her until the end. And it’s that young man, a count named Bertram, who has proved problematic to centuries of All’s Well audiences. Helena, a servant to his mother, loves him madly, but Bertram scorns her. Only if you understand what actor Stafford Clark-Price makes abundantly clear — that the callow Bertram has some growing up to do — can you cheer on Helena’s quest.
At Orlando Shakes, it helps that Helena is played by Marni Penning, who was Beatrice in last season’s Much Ado About Nothing and Portia in The Merchant of Venice and is now also Ophelia in Hamlet. Penning is a wonderfully grounded actress, and if a character she plays wants to win a heartless young man, well, she probably knows what she’s doing.
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New Route
All three daily flights will be operated by wholly owned US Airways Express carrier PSA Airlines, utilizing 70-seat Bombardier CRJ700 regional jets.
Jason Reisinger, director of express planning in US Airways, said: “We’re thrilled to be returning to Orlando Melbourne International Airport. US Airways now offers Melbourne customers easy one-stop connections to hundreds of destinations and, conversely, offers the rest of the nation easy travel to the Sunshine State’s Space Coast.”
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Record Sales
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as if the recent Mecum Auctions of Muscle Cars and More is any indication, the economic recession is in remission. According to the official numbers released by McCullough Public Relations sales increased a whopping 60% over 2008 numbers. The total gross sales (excluding buyer’s premium) for the four-day Kissimmee Auction were $25.6 million and a staggering 71% sell rate.
The top ten sales brought in $120,000 or more when the gavel dropped led by a boat, of all things, at $775,000 for a 1966 Riva Super Aquarama Series II Prototype. Leading the vehicle parade was a 1935 Auburn 851 Boattail Speedster coming in at $376,000.
“We hosted a packed house at our annual Kissimmee Auction, which grew immensely in both bidder registration and sales this year,” said President Dana Mecum. “Mecum continues to bring a wide variety of collectible vehicles – including boats and motorcycles – and vintage memorabilia to enthusiasts worldwide.”
More than 29,000 people flooded the Osceola Heritage Park just across from the Houston Astros spring training site in Kissimmee near Orlando and Walt Disney World. Celebrities such as the Allison Brothers, Bobby and Donnie, and Arnie Bestwick added to the event and if racing is in your blood there was plenty to see.
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Super Bowl Potter
Some of the features of the park include Hogsmeade Station where the Hogwarts train arrives, Zonko’s shop of tricks and jokes, Honeydukes treat shop, the Three Broomstick’s and Hog’s Head pubs, an Owlery, Ollivander’s wand store, Dervish and Banges quidditch store, a roller coaster titled “Dragon Challenge,” and a family ride called “Flight of Hippogriff.”
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Best Troop
Highgate Park : More local news and events from in and around the Highgate Park Davenport area as For the second consecutive year, Boy Scout Troop No. 244 in Lady Lake has been named the state’s best Scout troop by the Florida State American Legion.
“We are proud as we can be,” Scoutmaster Grant Gore said. “The troop absolutely deserved the award; we have got a really good group of kids.”
Selection for best Scout troop is based on competition from the more than 100 troops, said Sheldon Gotesky, charter organizational representative for American Legion Post 347 in Lady Lake, which recently presented the troop with a plaque commemorating the accomplishment.
Troop No. 244 also was recognized for its win by the Lady Lake town commissioners.
Gotesky said troops submit reports highlighting their accomplishments during the year to area Legion posts. Then, the posts forward reports to the Florida State American Legion.
Reports include such information as awards troops receive on camping outings, participation in Legion activities and activities in troops’ communities, such as parades and food drives.
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