Leaf Bug

DVDeals 7/25 - 7/31

Clash of the Titans
I haven't purchased on a DVD Tuesday since Terminator Salvation, which was a while ago, but we finally have a good one coming up this week. Clash of the Titans is scheduled to come out. The Blu-ray version is cheapest at Best Buy and Amazon (if you qualify for free shipping) at $24.99. The DVD format is pretty much the same price everywhere... $16.99. This is one of the rare movies that I would buy without having seen it in the theater.

Batman: Under the Red Hood
This looked like an interesting title especially for comic book fans, but I'm going to pass on it because they didn't get Kevin Conroy to voice Batman, which would feel very strange after he voiced the character for every animated release since Batman the Animated Series. Instead, they got Neil Patrick Harris. I love Doogie Howser, but I just don't think he did a good Batman voice (I watched the trailer). If you're interested, Target and Amazon (if you qualify for free shipping) have the Blu-ray for $19.99. The regular DVD is $12.99 at Best Buy and Target. Target has a 2-disc special edition DVD for $15.99. Best Buy throws in a Red Hood statue if you buy the Blu-ray or 2-disc DVD (which they didn't list a price for).

Best Buy Deals
- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Blu-ray) for $19.99
- Stargate Universe Season 1.5 for $24.99
- Terminator Salvation (Blu-ray) for $14.99
- Terminator Salvation for $7.99
- Watchmen Director's Cut (Blu-ray) for $14.99

Centrino SSD (Part 3)

I've been using the Centrino laptop with the SSD drive for almost a month now and the boot times are still consistent. This system, which was one of my slowest booting machines is by far the fastest now. Here are some other factors SSD manufacturers advertise.

Weight
I really didn't think this would make a difference because all laptop hard drives are light. When you hold both in your hands, there's not much of a difference. But once it's installed, you'll feel it. The hard drive in my laptop is located at the front left corner. The SSD weighs almost nothing, so I notice it most when the system is folded up and I carry it on my side like a book.

Battery
SSDs are suppose to make a small, but noticeable difference in battery life because there are no moving parts. In my case, there was no difference. The laptop ran for 4 hours under normal use with both the HDD and SSD. Maybe this makes more a difference with newer systems.

So once again... nothing here really makes the laptop blow away the old configuration with the HDD. It was just a nice experiment because I had to see if for myself. I also have a laptop with a virtually unbreakable drive now, so I'm going to make it my repository for any important files I have.

Cancun TOC

This post is a table of contents of all entries related to Reinhard & Marites' wedding in Cancun. I wrote many of these within the past week, but posted them based on the original dates of occurrence:

- Invitation
- Sanborns Cafe
- Reinhard & Marites
- La Panza es Primero
- Kukulcan Shopping
- Interactive Aquarium
- Bubba Gump (Cancun)
- La Isla
- Tequila (in Beach Palace)
- Wok (in Beach Palace)
- Beach Palace Wyndham Grand Resort
- Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

I'll have to make another trip to Cancun sometime since I wasn't able to go on any of the tours I wanted. But at least my parents got to go. They went to Chichen Itza on July 7 with the Palace Resorts tour. The cost was $100/person, but it was worth it because it included a buffet at the Palace Resorts out there.

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Beach Palace Wyndham Grand Resort

Location: Kukulcan Km 11.5, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Phone: 011 52 998 891 4110
Website: www.wyndham.com
Price: n/a (part of timeshare)
Credit Cards: All major

Rooms: 9
Service: 7
Value: 4
Amenities: 7

Length of Stay: 4 nights

The best hotel room I've ever stayed in has to go to Beach Palace. I expected a typical hotel room, but it was surprisingly spacious, even with 2 full size beds stuffed into it. There was a lot of breathing room between beds and other furniture. The balcony w/ outdoor futon was essentially another bedroom. All furniture and room items were made of high quality material right down to the garbage cans. Only the shower door had a design flaw... there was a large crack that allowed water to get out when the door was closed.

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Most of the services were good. The cleaning staff and restaurant workers were hardworking and polite. The front desk was helpful and efficient for the most part, depending on which guy you talked to. Some were a little spacey. Other services were a little annoying, like the pool entertainment. The guy in charge of that was desperately trying to get guests to participate in his lame activities. While I thought the service was good, I don't think it was better than Greenhills Élan Hotel Modern in its 2007 unfinished state.

With the value, I'm a little biased against all-inclusives. It does work out well when you put prices on all of the individual items separately, but when you compare it to services outside of the resort, the all-inclusive will look like a ripoff. I can never give an all-inclusive a rating higher than 4 (5 being average).

The amenities were OK. The in-room jacuzzi, balcony area and huge pool area brought this rating up. The pool area is so large it never really gets crowded even with all the guests at peak hours. The weak points were the small fitness center, TV and phone. The fitness center is no larger than someone's home setup in the basement. It's just tiny in proportion to everything else in the resort. The TV, although HD does not get an HD signal and is an older 720p model. Channels are limited to basics. The phone is unusable as the hotel charged for all calls despite falsely advertising free calls to the US.

Wok (in Beach Palace)

Location: Kukulcan Km 11.5, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Cuisine: Asian
Hours: SUN-SAT (6am-12am)
Phone: 011 52 998 891 4110
Website: www.wyndham.com
Prices: $40/person

Food: 7
Service: 8
Value: 2
Environment: 10

Frequency: Unique

For dinner, we decided to give the Asian restaurant, Wok a try since we already ate at Tequila twice. I figured that since many kitchen staff members in NYC Chinese restaurants are Mexican, they should know what they're doing with Chinese food!

The food was interesting. Some dishes were off, but other on target. Some were also mixtures of Mexican and Asian, like banana tempura. They gave us 2 appetizer tasting dishes before we even ordered. One had a variety of sushi and the other had items like spring rolls and the banana tempura. The raw sushi was OK, but the rolls weren't as good. The main courses wer great though. Both my Dad and I ordered the mahi mahi dish. Additionally, my dad ordered a shrimp tempura. The plan was to get a full meal and leave a lot of leftovers so we could bring a full meal up to my Mom and Emily. It worked out and they let us take out everything. So there's a loophole with all-inclusive restaurants and their 2-person limit!

For comments on the ratings, please see me review of Tequila.

Tequila (in Beach Palace)

Location: Kukulcan Km 11.5, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Cuisine: Mexican, International, Buffet
Hours: SUN-SAT (6am-12am)
Phone: 011 52 998 891 4110
Website: www.wyndham.com
Prices: $40/person

Food: 7
Service: 8
Value: 2
Environment: 10

Frequency: Unique

Tequila was our choice for lunch and breakfast during our all-inclusive day. It was the only one that had Mexican food and a good enough variety. The food was just OK overall. You can't go wrong with breakfast, but the bread items weren't that good here. For some reason, all the bread we had in Mexico was always crumbly. For lunch, there was a good variety of international items, but I would've liked to see more Mexican... after all, we're in Mexico!

Service at this place, like most parts of the resort were good. Our waiter was polite, cleared the table when we finished a round, but didn't ask for drink refills. The environment was as clean as it could get. Everything was always shiny. Acoustics were good despite it being a large space. The view of the pool & beach is hard to beat. I couldn't give them a high rating for value though. If you do the math, each meal is worth $30-40. In my book, the breakfast should be priced at $15 and the lunch $25 max.

La Isla

One of the things the Palace Resorts people threw in as part of the timeshare sale was a one-day all inclusive pass to the hotel restaurants. Only two of us could use it, so it ended up being me and my Dad because we could eat the most out of the group. Though I wanted my parents to spend time with each other, my Mom didn't want to throw money away. So my Dad and I ate a late breakfast buffet. Then we went out with Emily & Mom to the mall area we discovered yesterday. They settled on Taco Grill for lunch. It was a nice taco stand that had reasonable combo prices... 2-3 tacos and a drink for about 80 pesos.

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We did caught in the rain after lunch and took shelter under an archway near Lacoste. We figured we could wait it out because all the rainfall we experienced in the past couple of days only lasted a few minutes. This storm was here to stay though. We finally made a run for a cab. Sure enough, it rained for the rest of the day.

Bubba Gump (Cancun)

Location: Kukulcan L. 16-A Y 16-B, Plaza Flamingo, Km. 11, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Cuisine: Mexican
Hours: SUN-SAT (10am-10pm)
Phone: 011 52 998 885 3115
Website: www.bubbagump.com
Prices: $22/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 10
Value: 7
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique

We capped off an eventful day with dinner at Bubba Gump. Though it's an American chain, none of us have ever been to one before and we figured the seafood in Cancun is an instant winner.

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The food was great... we were happy with all 4 of our dishes. Mom had the Captain’s Fish & Chips. Dad had Shrimper’s Net Catch. Emily ordered Dumb Luck Coconut Shrimp and I had Shrimp New Orleans. We had a good variety of their specialties at our table. This is one of those restaurants where you could randomly pick something off the menu and be happy with it.

The service was top-notch. It was unbelievable how fast the staff came when we needed them. While there was one main waitress/waiter for each table, any one of them could respond if another table needed them for something... a very efficient system. The environment was modeled after scenery from the movie, Forrest Gump, so it was nice and fancy and brought a New Orleans/Alabama look to Mexico.

Interactive Aquarium

The Interactive Aquarium was located in an outdoor mall called La Isla. It's one bus stop or a short walk from Beach Palace. I was hoping they would have some axolotls in captivity, but they just had the usual species you would see at any aquarium around the world.

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It costs about $10 (230 pesos for 2 people... the more tickets, the lower the price) to get in, which isn't bad for the size of the aquarium. The sharks and dolphins were the most interesting as usual. The ray petting pool was the only interactive item for the regular aquarium admission. Like many other places in Cancun, they also offered swimming with dolphins at an additional cost. That would've been nice to do, but I didn't have my swimming trunks with me.

Kukulcan Shopping

After lunch, Emily and I headed out to the flea market and mall we passed by on the way to the wedding. My parents headed in the other direction to a timeshare meeting at Cancun Palace.

During the long walk over, we witnessed a truck drive into the middle island, destroying the weakly cemented curbside. That was the second accident of the day on the same street (earlier in the day, there was a rear-end crash in front of our hotel)... not good statistics at all!

We finally made it to the flea market after making a pit stop at Senor Frog's (a Mexican themes bar/grill chain). We probably spent a total of 5 minutes at the annoying flea market before heading across the street to the mall. The flea market was just full of pushy me chants trying to sell their junk. At the mall, we were able to browse without someone talking to us every second. The mall was similar to a typical American one... even with some of the usual stores... same prices as the US as well. So there was nothing really exciting. We stopped at Coldstone Creamery for ice cream and then took the bus to the Interactive Aquarium.

La Panza es Primero

Location: Kukulcan L. 16-A Y 16-B, Plaza Flamingo, Km. 11, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Cuisine: Mexican
Hours: SUN-SAT (10am-10pm)
Prices: $17/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 10
Service: 9
Value: 8
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique

For lunch, we went back to Flamingo Plaza to try out that first restaurant we passed up. The menu had similar dishes to Sanborns Cafe, but slightly more expensive. It turned out that this was the best meal we've had so far... including the great food at the wedding. All portions were huge (some big enough for 2 people), which justified the prices. I really wanted to try the fish enchiladas, but they didn't have that item at the time, so I settled for the safe bet... beef enchiladas.

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The decor in the restaurant resembled Cascabel Taqueria with its luchador theme. The interior was dark like a sports bar and the furniture was much like what one would find at a taqueria. It was clean and had a nice atmosphere. The staff was very friendly and welcoming. Our host, Miguel was energetic and happy to explain all of the dishes.

I gave the food a rare 10 because this is clearly the best Mexican food I've ever had. I tried a little bit of my Mom's (something resembling chicken curry) and my Dad's (a beef stew) and everything was just great. The meat was tender in all dishes and the sauces were full of flavor. The corn and wheat tortillas were freshly baked. I'll have to try to come back to this one if possible so I can give the fish enchiladas another try.

Note: "la panza es primero" means "the stomach is first."

Reinhard & Marites

Wedding by the Sea

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Reception on the Beach

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Sanborns Cafe

Location: Kukulcan L. 16-A Y 16-B, Plaza Flamingo, Km. 11, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, Quintana Roo 77500, Mexico
Cuisine: Mexican
Hours: SUN-SAT (10am-10pm)
Prices: $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 6
Service: 7
Value: 7
Environment: 7

Frequency: Uncommon

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By the time we got to the hotel in Cancun, it was about 6pm already. We settled into our room and checked at the front desk to see what the prices were like in the hotel's 3 restaurants. They were all $40 a meal per person! It's pretty much a ripoff unless you bought the all-inclusive package. So we headed out to the street to see if there was anything around. Fortunately, Beach Palace is across the street from a shopping center called Flamingo Plaza. We walked through the entire length to get an overview of the place. The larger restaurants were all chains we have in the US... Bubba Gump, Outback Steakhouse and Margaritaville. There were 2 Mexican places... Sanborns and La Panza es Primero. We decided to go for Sanborns because it was a brighter, larger space and had lower prices.

Overall, it was a good first dinner in Mexico. The food was OK, but I wasn't blown away by it. I've had better in NY (see Cascabel Taqueria). Service was laid back, but good. I was a little nervous that the restaurant was empty when we went, but it filled up little by little.