In which Seanan is a bad blogger, and does not get a biscuit.

You're moving to Washington?

:-D

Hmm. The Midwich Cuckoos was good, but I loved The Chrysalids (Wyndham and *post-apocalyptic* telepaths. Set in Canada, no less!). My sister, who pretty much never reads SF/F also loves The Chrysalids.

Wait, you're a pin trader? How did I not know this about you? I was just in Disney World for nine days (May 12-20, stayed at Wilderness Lodge; did our trips overlap?), and I came home with 24 new pins, 21 of which were acquired in trades and 19 of which were cast-member only. Do you collect any specific types or themes?

yay! more pin traders!

Not on PinPics yet, but I'll likely be joining soon.

Also, have you ever been to Niagara Falls? On the Canadian side they have a wonderful street called Clifton Hill, which is full of crazy sideshow games and attractions, including a Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, a Guinness Book of World Records Museum, and no less than four year-round haunted houses and three wax museums. I'm pretty sure it was built specifically with you in mind.

If you moved to Maine, you'd be within driving distance of MASSFILC meetings!

We should get together and pin trade sometime soon...

Somewhat large and blurry, since it was taken by my phone of my kindle fire's screen, but I thought this might be relevant to your interests:
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jhyanmar/522386/2465/original.jpg

Lil Kingdom. It's one of those free-and-pay games like farmville, though it's fairly simplified; it's on the Droid/Kindle Fire, not sure about iPhone/Pad. In short, you are the Helper to a Princess who has a castle and not a lot of land. You can, however, grow down as far as you like. Most of the game is building, supplying, and stocking various shops and such, ranging from Food like Witches' Brew (Immortality Poison, Sepsi, and Mountain Newt), to Kingdom like Royal Coffers (Hidden Fees, Wagon Loan, and Medieval Mortgage), to Entertainment like Dim Crystal (Ancient Legends, Mystic Power, and Reunification), Crafting like Fair Leather Friends (Hide Cloak, Cloak of Hiding, and Boots of Walking), to Service, where I recently got the utterly psychotic "Gnome Day Spa" with swimming lessons-- gnomes being rotated through acid-- stretching exercises microracks and "Accupuncture" in quotes with a little stabbing.

You also have to manage your various citizens-- or inmates, one of their thoughtbubbles is "I bet I can get indentured servant of the month!"-- who have skills in various of the above categories, including Ideal Jobs. Three cits are necessary to fully use a shop, and each dwelling, like Pretty Princess Apts up there, holds five cits.

There's tons of other stuff-- the Princess gives Quests that can reward silver, credits, or collectibles; complete a collection for the first time and you get a super-room of some type, like the Double Rainbow Room (entertainment) from the Leprechaun collection, which gives the most money per sale, and then either silver or credits for subsequent rewards.

Credits are the for-pay part of it; mostly, you can replace them with time-- they shorten things-- except for getting Special Rooms, like sadly stereotypical Fairies who have souped-up Service Skills, adorable Ogres who have super Food skills, Dragons which instantly restock your rooms and Unicorns which instantly convert your stock to silver, and buying more Dragons & Unicorns.

However, unlike most games of this type, getting credits is REALLY easy. Each floor you buy (for ever-increasing Silver and time costs), you get 1 credit. You get 3 credits every time you put someone in their ideal job, and you keep them even if you move that person out later. You have the ability to tap on and read the thoughtbubbles of various walkers (with things from "Who's got two thumbs and loves their job? Right here!" to "Oh no! It will be the full moon soon! What will I do?" and the Unicorns have the craziest, starting with Last Unicorn quotes and getting weirder from there), and that usually gets you silver, but you can get credits some times. The Princess's quests sometimes award credits. Completely stocking a room usually gets you bonus silver, but sometimes also bonus credits. Taking visitors down to floors gets you bonus silver if they don't move into a dwelling-- but sometimes it's credits.

As well, there isn't a lot of "Oops, you spent credits!" Before, since we don't want to pay money for any of these games, my wife and I dropped Fantasy Town, because it was so easy to fatfinger and spend gems. Here, it's hard to do so since most opportunities are in specific windows, and it asks for confirmation before you spend any credits. It's much appreciated.

There are also credits for doing things like sitting through trailers and so forth, but sadly most of those would sign you up for mailing lists or something, so we haven't used them much.

I'm not surprised you and I overlap on Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror; I also collect in-park references (things like the Fastpass logo and the monorail car) and the more supernatural villains (like Maleficent and Chernobog). I love Sitch but I largely cede those to my wife. Alas, I haven't seen the Megara you're looking for. Is that a cast member pin?