harryfat1

Thanks for reading along. I know some readers are just my old friends on CC who have been reading my various reports throughout the years but it’s also important that I help future vacationers on their research on the new area. Hopefully, my walk-through will be useful for folks thinking of going to NYC later this year. If anyone has any questions about what we have done/seen during our trip, don’t hesitate to jump in and ask questions. The trip report is more informative if people ask questions as you may be asking questions that I haven't thought of in my trip report and they might be helpful to others.

Disney planning is a job on its own. The rules are ever-changing. I’m sure they will change the rules 12 months from now. I admire your family’s tolerance for the heat/humidity in Florida in August. I would have melted as soon as we stepped off the plane in Orlando, forget about walking/standing in line during the day. You certainly will be busy the next few weeks with all these vacation plans. Glad your vacation wasn’t last weekend or else you could be stuck at the airport for hours/days as they are still dealing with flight delays as of yesterday. I can never do a live report here on CC. Too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time. Maybe we need to update this old phrase to something more modern as very few people chew gum nowadays – Too dumb to walk and text on the phone at the same time is probably more appropriate for the modern-day world as you probably need to text as you walk to do a live report. I will never get the special message from Laura S. of CC thanking me for doing a live report…

You see the EMpre State Building in the background as the guide took us to see some of the sights of Brooklyn. It was good to see regular New Yorkers walking around and shopping at the farmers market and not just tourists in Manhattan on 5th Avenue. Local flex market under the bridge

DUMBO – no, not the Disney ride Dumbo. DUMBO (all caps) for New Yorker means Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It’s a region at the bottom of the bridge. The tour guide said 20 years ago, nobody was here and then after some people posted few DUMBO pictures, EVERYONE and their cousin wants to come here to take a picture for their social media pages. There were at least 200 people there taking pictures of the DUMBO region

Manhattan Skyline. One World building in the background. On the right-hand side, there's a rooftop area called Time Out Market. That's where we would be having lunch later in the day.

You can see Governor's Island in the middle as well as Cunard's Queen Mary 2 out in the distance as she is ready for another Transatlantic voyage to UK Tour Guide explaining the history of the Bridge. Remember the locks from Curaaco earlier in this report? See more of them here as well.

I believe in the past, both the bicyclists and pedestrians shared the same path and it was chaos with pedestrians trying to take pictures and getting in the way of the fast cyclists riding across. Now the bicyclists have their separate lanes down beneath, the walkway is much safer now to walk on. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge is a very thing to do as you can see there are people everywhere along the walkway.

After meeting up, we started exactly at 9:30. The dude doesn’t mess around to wait for others to join. He’s leaving with or without you… Actual working part of NY City Hall You can join a tour that takes you across the bridge on the bike if you prefer that type of tour instead. Some YouTuber suggests you take the subway to the Brooklyn side and walk toward the Manhattan side as supposedly you have better scenery of the skyscrapers as you walk toward it inside of having to turn back 180 degrees constantly to take pictures of Manhattan. You decide what’s more important. Lots of food/refreshment carts at the beginning/end of the bridge walk as the vendors know people will want refreshments/food before/after the walk.

The starting point of the tour is the NY City Hall area Checking in with the tour guide NYC mayor's office

We left the hotel earlier as today’s walking tour starts at 9:30 and we are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. We took the subway to the NYC city hall to meet up with the tour guide. The dude is from Brooklyn. Strong sense of Brooklyn versus other boroughs. Very typical of what you think a New Yorker would be. Red arrows are the starting points of the hotel and the walking tour. Purple arrow are places we will be seeing

Day 4, June 29 – Brooklyn Bridge/Time Square Typical hotel breakfast. Make your own fresh waffles from the machines to the right

Mark, Thanks for reading. How is your WDW vacation planning coming along? When are you going?

Thanks for reading along. We didn’t decide on going to NYC until February of this year. When I started this trip report back in January to talk about the Odyssey cruise, we had nothing planned for the summer. We knew we would be going on a cruise this December so we wanted a land based vacation to balance out the 2 December cruises. We started by researching to go to Vancouver as we couldn’t see the city post 2022 Alaska cruise. But after looking at the various YouTube videos, the things to see/do in Vancouver wasn’t that exciting for what we wanted. NYC showed up an option during the research and it was one of those cities where you can spend a whole week there and felt like you haven’t seen everything. So the earnest research for NYC started in late February/early March after I completed the earlier portion of this trip report. Originally we were going to be there in August for 7 days but the plans changed to June for 10 days. As for the pictures, all the credits go to the scenery in providing a great backdrop for the photos. All these observation decks are spectacular. Anyone can just walk up and take pictures of the area. The hard part is organizing the pictures and adding in enough background so people understand what they are looking at. It's always scary to post on social media as if you make one mistake, people will be more than happy to point out you are giving out wrong info.

From the Ocuclus, it was an easy ride back to the hotel as we headed back around 9 PM. The NYC subway operates 24/7 so there’s no issue with missing the subway. Many YouTubers will caution tourists from riding late at night, especially as solo travelers. But we saw lots of people on the subway at every stop so we never had any fear for our safety. The biggest safety risk I encountered during the 9-day visit was the bicyclists that delivered food in Manhattan and the tourists renting bicycles and not knowing where they were going in the streets or at Central Park. The food delivery cyclists are the most dangerous as they ignore red lights and go against the traffic on the one-way streets. I was almost run over by one at night as the dude had no lights on for his bicycle and he was coming the wrong way on a one-way street. You never think about looking in the OTHER direction of a one-way street as your biggest concern in theory was a vehicle coming at you but these food delivery guys are super aggressive in trying to earn a buck that they just go nonstop around/against all regular traffic signals just to save a minute or two on the delivery time. More thoughts about NYC traffic later on. Total distance walked today per the phone app = 7.25 miles. I hope everyone is enjoying this supplemental reporting. We are about 1/3 of the way done at this juncture... Leave a comment or two sometimes so I don't feel like I'm writing an online diary. Thought for the night - if you write a trip report and nobody reads it, does it become a diary instead? This concludes day 3 of the trip report.

As promised more pictures of the Oculus. It's all lid up at night time so you get a lot of colors:

Time to go back to the Oculus via the underground connection More steep escalators

After dinner, we took some pictures of the area and then went back to the Oculus to catch the subway back to the hotel. Sunset over the Hudson

Done with One World. Time for dinner. The One World exit drops you off right at the Ocucls as they connect as well as connecting to the mall down the street. You grow in appreciation of how big/expansive the Oculus area is with food and shops around in addition to being a big transit hub.

I think the One World Observatory is a really nice place to visit. Too bad it’s a letdown after the previous day of Summit One's high fun factor. As on its own, One World is a specular area - how often do you go up to the 100th floor of any building to see the sights? You see the Hudson and East River as well as the Statue of Liberty. Maybe going up at 6 PM with the glare of pending sunset didn’t help as too many of our pictures had the afternoon sun glare to them from the glass. It just lacked the fun/excitement of the other observation deck but I still recommend people go as it's historical given its place in the 9/11 attack. As we were leaving, the line grew longer with people coming in at 7:30 PM ahead of the sunset-watching crowd as some people timed their visits to see the sunset.

You can see one of the 9/11 Memorial Pools from above as well as the 9/11 Museum building next to it The Oculus The free Staten Island Ferry runs every 30 minutes between Manhattan and Staten Island. Take this if you don't plan to go on the actual island that houses the Statue of Liberty if you are short on time in NYC.

Another view of King Kong's favorite Playhouse - the Empire State Building. Yup, you guessed it, we will be going there later in the week.

Slightly different perspective than yesterday’s view from Summit One. One World is more south in the Financial District and there are fewer tall (historical name) buildings around it compared to Midtown from yesterday and you can see the Statue of Liberty and more open waters down south. These sceneries are nice on their own but after the big “wow” experience from Summit One yesterday, the One World Obversation is more of a “meh” experience. Maybe we should have come here first and then went to Summit One afterward. It’s like going to a rock concert first and then going and listening to classical music the next day. The experience is just not exciting in comparison. Hudson River and New Jersey on the other side of the river. Little Island - Man-made island. The money to set this up was made by the billionaire, Barry Dillard, founder of Fox Broadcasting. We would go there later on the trip. This is "The Edge" at Hudson Yard.

As always, you can buy tickets in advance (cheaper if you can find 3rd party sellers) or in person. All these observation towers have airport-style security where you take off belts/electronic devices/watches and have your backpack scanned. At 6 PM, there wasn’t much of a line to get in. After security, you go in the elevator that has a video that showed how NYC was built up since the 1600s. You literally see the buildings being erected in front of you in the time-lapse history clip while inside the elevator. Just like the Disney rides, you get a “pre-show” movie before the actual show. 20240628_175641.mp4

Then it was time for the last major event of the day – the One World Trade Center or Freedom Tower as some call it. This was the replacement tower for the twin towers that were destroyed in the 9/11 attack. It’s literally next to the old Twin Towers. It’s the tallest structure in the western hemisphere (which is the Americas and Caribbean). They added a tower antenna to the top to make it 1,776 feet as a symbol of Freedom/Independence post the 9/11 attack.