Theme Park Adventure spends a great deal of time out and about at various theme parks and attractions throughout Southern California.  Between Los Angeles and Orange Counties, we do a heck of a lot of time "on the job", exploring, experiencing and documenting parks and attractions for our readers/followers on Twitter.  If you haven't yet subscribed to the official TPA Twitter, it is: TPAMagazine.

Since the numbers of followers we have on Twitter grows each day, we have focused a great amount of attention on tweeting constant information, thoughts and images to the Theme Park Adventure community - and the response has been overwhelming.  With hundreds of followers, we feel that there is no limit to how many people will get to know about TPA via Twitter and there is no doubt in our mind that as more people learn about us, our community will grow by leaps and bounds.

In the meantime, as an added bonus to our long-time fans and readers as well as those new friends just finding us via Twitter, we thought it would be exciting to offer a special "perk" - a fun contest of sorts - that will encourage people to not only say hello when they see us out and about, but to attend our on-going reader get-togethers.

The answer is The TPA Card Contest.

Whenever we're out visiting a park - or anywhere in general - we usually tweet about it.  When we're visiting a theme park such as Disneyland or Universal Studios Hollywood, we definitely tweet non-stop as to what we're doing, etc.  And often, readers do come up to us and say hello - which is always awesome!

Now, we've made a game/contest out of it - as a way to reward those who are enthusiastic about being a part of our community.  Whenever someone spots us, he or she simply needs to approach and say hello - and we'll give him/her a TPA business card.  Come October, whoever turns in the most cards to us at a gathering to be held at the beginning of the month will receive a really cool reward (and yeah - you can guess that it will be something having to do with Halloween)!

That said, there are a few rules (some of them obvious) that you need to know to play:

• Theme Park Adventure staff members and their family members are not eligible to participate.

• In order to score a TPA card, you must see us first - and by "us", we mean Rick West and/or Johanna Atilano.  If we see you before you see us - you're poopie out of luck.  Sorry - them's the rules.  So keep a weather eye open, mates!

• You can only collect one TPA card per day.  Sorry, we're not into the whole stalker thing.  That's creepy.  Don't do that.

• TPA cards CAN and WILL be automatically awarded to each person attending a hosted TPA gathering - so even if you never find us at a theme park, you can still be in the running if you attend get-togethers regularly.  Like we have to twist any of your arms to eat pizza and drink beer anyway.  Please.  The TPA card is just an added bonus now!

• If you lose your stash of TPA cards - we cannot and will not replace them.  Sorry.  If we can keep track of thousands of our own at a time, you can keep track of a small stack.

• Employees on duty ARE eligible to play!  If we visit Disneyland and you're a Cast Member and you spot us first and say hello - you will get a card!  We guess that's the new perk of being a Disney CM, now that the company is screwing you out of your own sign-in time, eh?  The same goes for Universal employees, Knott's employees, etc.  If we're at your park and you spot us while on the clock - your shift just got that much better!  W00t!

• Spotting Rick's characters running around Undercity, Ironforge or Shatt doesn't count.  If you know what we're referencing, you're a geek too, but still, you need to bump into us in this world.

• Spotting TPA staffers other than Rick or Johanna will not net you a TPA card - BUT - if they happen to be with us or know where we are, you will get instantly hooked up with a TPA card.  It's kinda like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but in this case, it's like one degree... and we're not Kevin Bacon.  But other than that, it's just like that.  Yeah.

• If you go with us or specifically meet up with us - you guessed it... no card.  If you're part of our posse at a theme park... you're already big winners.  Heh... yeah.

• When it comes time to tally who has the most TPA Cards at the beginning of October, if there is a tie, there will be a super-sophisticated method of breaking the tie when the moment comes.  We... just haven't thought about it yet, really.

We (TPA head honchos) reserve the right to alter this contest at any time (Pray I don't alter it any further... *heavy inhale* *heavy exhale*).  That's legal talk and we wouldn't feel complete without adding that. 

If you're out of state and feel this is unfair for TPA fans that aren't local to SoCal, consider this: the October reward will have to do with a local event, so you wouldn't be here to do it anyway.  So, yeah.

And that's that!  The contest is specifically designed for our Twitter followers, so again - if you haven't added us yet, you need to get to it!  Again, we're TPAMagazine.

The rules at that point are pretty loose - you can communicate with us via tweets to ask us specifically where we are, etc.  We try our best to respond to everyone - it makes walking through theme park crowds much more challenging with our noses stuck to our iPhone!  We like that.

Good luck to you all - may the best tweeter win!

That sounds nasty.

In the event that you don't know what we look like... here's our mug shot...

Granted, we may look a bit different in person with shades on, contacts in, etc.  However, this is what you have to go by for now.

If you want to know what the rest of our degenerate clan looks like, see the About TPA page - and remember, if you accost one of them in public, they have a direct pipeline as to where we are and can likely hook you up with our exact whereabouts!