Sunday, April 10, 2016

DISNEY WORLD VS UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

Florida is home to two of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States, those being Universal Studios and Walt Disney World. Both parks offer a great experience regardless of the time of year and magical memories. Deciding between the two parks could be one of the hardest choices on picking a vacation destination, so I’m going to compare and contrast each park to ultimately decide which park the best tourist destination for Americans.
                                
 Walt Disney World is a globally recognized theme park, attracting millions of tourists each and every year. Disney World is made up of four theme parks and two water parks. The theme parks include Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. Each of these parks inside of Disney have something different about each to make them one of a kind. Epcot is made up of countries from across the world and you can experience each country, with food or even rides for some. You can “travel” to Germany, China, the U.S, and much more. Animal Kingdom is a park revolved around animals, there are animals you can see and touch and rides that are based off of them. Hollywood Studios is a taste of Hollywood in Florida. There are cool attractions and entertainment that make you truly feel like you’re in the heart of Hollywood. Lastly, there’s Magic Kingdom, which is the main park of the four. Magic Kingdom is Disney, where you can see all the Disney characters walking around and go on rides based off of Disney movies and everything that makes Disney what it is. It is the home to Cinderella’s Castle, where every night you can experience a beautiful show with fireworks and fabulous entertainment. To be able to experience one park in a day, it will cost you about $105.00, and if you choose a “parkhopper pass” which allows you to experience all the parks, it will cost about $175.00.  All of the parks excluding Magic Kingdom close around 6-9 PM, while Magic Kingdom closes at midnight.
                   
Universal studios in Orlando consists of two parks, one named Universal Studios and the other named Islands of Adventure. Prices for one day to go into both parks are approximately $150.00, while going to one park is approximately $100.00. Though it seems that Disney is the clear winner when it comes to pricing, it’s what’s in each park which really is the deciding factor. Universal Studios seems to have more adult-friendly attractions, with rollercoasters and entertainment, while Disney’s attractions and entertainment revolve around Disney animated characters. Universal also recently brought Harry Potter World to its park, which has been a huge attraction for people of all ages. Comparing lines from experience, Disney lines seem to be much longer than Universal lines due to the volume of tourists, so if you’re someone who cannot stand in line for hours at a time, Universal seems to be for you.

For me personally, if I had to pick a park to go to I would choose Universal Studios. I believe that Universal offers a more fun experience for teenagers and adults, while Disney is focused around families with young children. Absolutely Disney is a great theme park which I think everyone should try and go to once in their life, but I truly believe that Universal offers a better experience for all adults and kids to have a great time. 
           

TWITTER VS INSTAGRAM

Two of the most popular social media applications for both high school and college students are Instagram and Twitter. It seems as though everyone who has a Twitter has an Instagram, but the question I propose is which would people go to if you only had to pick one? Both Twitter and Instagram have similar concepts, but completely different layout setups.
                                    
Twitter has been around for just over ten years. To define it, people like to use the term “micro-blogging”. After you create a profile, the first option you have is to follow people. You can follow celebrities, friends, literally anyone who you choose to. After you follow however many people you want, you can work on your layout. Though it’s not much, you can change the background of your profile to whatever picture or color you want and then change the color of the font of all of your posts and “bio”.  In your bio, you can type in a little about me of yourself, though it has to be relatively short (about one sentence). Also in your bio, you can tag your location and put your birthday (on your birthday, balloons will cover your profile and be floating around). Now for the main part of Twitter, that involves “tweeting”. When you tweet, you have 160 characters to say whatever you want, and you can also upload a picture to it. People can see your tweets on their timelines, and retweet it (where the tweet appears on their profile as well), or favorite it (where the tweet goes into their favorites section). People seem to really enjoy twitter because you can post what’s on your mind and see what is also in your friend’s minds, and even celebrities.
                                        
Instagram is quite different from Twitter. Though Instagram is 4 years younger than Twitter, its following has grown very impressively. After creating an account on Instagram, you also have the option to follow whomever you want. After you follow people, you can edit your profile, just like Twitter. The difference between the profile editing for Instagram is you cannot change the backgrounds or anything on your profile, only add a biography. Your biography can be a lot longer than the one Twitter offers, but still can’t be excessively long. Instagram revolves around pictures. You cannot post a status or tweet at all, each and every post must be a picture you uploaded, and you can add a caption to it. The limit for captions are a lot longer than tweets allow themselves to be, so you can say pretty much whatever you want about a picture you post. On your timeline, you get to see everyone who you follow’s pictures, and you can choose to “like” them, or comment something on them. A lot of people seem to like Instagram because you can see the lives in basically a photo album of all of your friends and celebrities.
                                         


After comparing and contrasting both Instagram and Twitter, I have to say if I had to choose one it would be Twitter. Twitter offers photo sharing and just regular tweeting, which personally I prefer rather than just looking at pictures on my feeds. Both Twitter and Instagram have been around for a few years now, going strong, and it will be really interesting to see what the next huge social media application will be.


BLOGGING VS FACEBOOK

Two of the biggest components of the internet world these days revolve around Facebook and blogging. Facebook is the biggest social media platform to date and has held strong for quite a while now. On the other hand, blogging is another popular type of internet socializing, and with blogging there are a bunch of different blogging sites you can use such as Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, and much more.
               
  The most major different between blogging and Facebook would have to be who the audience consists of. On Facebook, you can post pictures, statuses, and videos to share with a certain group of people you consider your friends. This is more private and allows you to have a certain type of platform of yourself to share with those who you know.
                Meanwhile, blogging is quite different from that. On a blog, you have a much extended type of audience, some with people you do not even know. With blogging you can post things to captivate your audience and get more viewers coming to your blog and following you, while on Facebook you truly only post for yourself and use it for communication. Of course you can communicate with other people on blogs, leaving comments and what not, but Facebook is truly made for that type of communication, which is why it’s considered the top of social media.
                As Facebook is mainly for the use of yourself and friends, blogging usually is for some type of business or networking. With blogging, you can post your ideas, experiences, and everything that’s made you into what you want your blog to become. The more posts you blog can attract more and more viewers on your site, and with more viewers, that is always super beneficial in a business standpoint. The main way people use business on Facebook is posting advertisements and possible discounts (usually if the company is in a retail/food business).


                Blogging happens to be the platform for ideas and possibilities, relaying everything that’s in your mind onto a blog that defines who you are as a person and what exactly you want all of the viewers to know about you and what message or plan you are trying to relay across your blog. Facebook and blogging will always be two of the biggest components of the internet world for quite some time, and I think it’s definitely important that everyone tries each of them out to see how successful you can be in both stances.