Last night on Shark Tank, America met Nicole Jones of Chicago. "I've been in love for a very long time," she purred. "In love with shoes!"

Thus was introduced Pillars of Slippers, a retail store with a service that throws shoe parties at ladies' homes. When her pink SUV arrives, the pink carpet unfurls, the champagne cork pops, and the fondue melts. "I throw the ladies into a shoe frenzy," exclaimed Jones, and everyone hopefully racks up big bills buying footwear.

Last night on another roller-coaster episode of Shark Tank, we met Michele Kapustka and Melisa Moroko, sisters behind SendABall, a Web-based company that sends inflated balls through the mail -- address it, stamp it, and send it, no box required -- instead of greeting cards. Between them, they have seven kids, and the families collaborate out of a garage.

In their taped introduction, they confessed they were doing so well, they couldn't keep up anymore. "We are slammed with orders. We need the Sharks and we need them now," said one of them. (Which one? We needed more time to distinguish them.) A problem like that -- too much guaranteed income -- is the sweet smell of chum to such finely tuned noses as our Sharks'.



They wanted $86,000 for 20% of their biz, and right away, they explained what they would do with the cash: They wanted to buy their own manufacture equipment so they wouldn't have to pay to outsource anymore. One of the sisters (the one whose name starts with M) said they would put their new equipment in "our little place in Chicago."

It's the hottest new theme park opening in a decade: Universal Orlando Resort's Islands of Adventure park is putting the finishing touches on its feverishly anticipated The Wizarding World of Harry Potter section. This Sunday, Feb. 7, the world gets a sneak peek at the new 20-acre attraction when a top secret commercial airs during the Saints-Colts Super Bowl battle. Among the surprises: Daniel Radcliffe himself appears as Harry Potter to promote the opening, which was designed with the full cooperation and approval of series author J.K. Rowling. Guess what, Potterheads? WalletPop.com has an exclusive first online look at the entire spot.

Friday night on ABC's Shark Tank, we were introduced to a product that could, as infomercial godfather Kevin Harrington put it, make "$100 million on TV." It was LipStix ReMix, an ingenious lipstick recycler.

Although the pitch ended in a fantastic six-figure deal, its inventor made a simple negotiating mistake that could end up costing her an untold fortune. Jason Cochran found out what it was in WalletPop's exclusive AfterShark interview. (Make sure you stay tuned for the end of the interview, when Quillin offers an exclusive two-for-one deal exclusively for WalletPop readers.)

People often complain that Disney's too expensive, and they have a point. But now and then, the company comes through for money-savers, as it did when it created the Value category of hotel room at its Florida resort. Now, perhaps spurred by the necessity of the recession, the company has just announced a cheaper version of its luxury-priced Adventures by Disney escorted tours.

They're called the Gateway Collection, and they're made less expensive because they strip out some of the activities that fill the itineraries of the more expensive versions, plus replace the top-line hotels with quite decent mid-line ones. There are currently three scaled-down tours on sale, and naturally, they're of the most popular destinations: Costa Rica, Italy, and a London/Paris combination.

Lots of people use YouTube and other video sharing sites to upload videos taken on their vacations. But when it comes to footage of your last trip to Disneyland, a park run by corporate masters who are famously vigilant in protecting their intellectual rights with lawsuits, you may want to keep those videos to yourself.

As it turns out, corporate lawyers for theme parks have every right to come down on you like a ton of bricks for posting videos of their client's lucrative creations, including banjo-playing bears or live versions of Beauty and the Beast. Indeed, you could theoretically get sued for posting a video of your daughter's first ride on Peter Pan's Flight and sharing it with everyone you know.

Last night on Shark Tank, Nate Berkopec, a 19-year-old New York University student originally from Minnesota, dared to take his six-month-old environmentally conscious clothing line, The Factionist, into the Tank.

"It's really easy to do your market research if you are the market," he proclaimed of his clothing's message and ethical manufacturing methods, and duly confident, he requested $30,000 for a 20% stake of his business. "It's not just an apparel brand," he enthused. "It's a movement."

But right after that, he ran his ship into the shoals that have scuppered many a vessel before his.

Check out my interview with Berkopec, and also make sure to check in with the big winners from last night's show, Erin Whalen and Tim Stansbury of Grease Monkey Wipes, who also granted us a behind-the-scenes follow-up video interview as part of our AfterShark series.

Miss last night's Shark Tank? Then you missed witnessing some everyday people make money fast by daring to take their dreams in front of a panel of multi-millionaires.

Decked out in banana yellow bike shirts, close friends Erin Whalen and Tim Stansbury appealed for $40,000 for 40% of their Grease Monkey Wipes. It sounded like a product you thought existed before: a disposable cleaning sheet that can tackle grease and other stains that baby wipes can't handle. During a very effective and simple demonstration, the aroma of the key ingredient, orange citrus oil, filled the Shark Tank, but that couldn't keep the whiff of greed away for long.

Here's our follow-up interview with the branding whizzes, who snagged $40,000 for what was essentially a new kind of Wet-Nap:

Port-au-Prince's airport terminal is shattered, electricity is off, and all services decimated, but there's still one way to get into Haiti: by sea. Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas is scheduled to call on the north coast three times next week, the first such visit since the quake. The port is undamaged, and the line would have returned on Friday, except it's waiting for the green light from the local government to resume its regular stops. (Update: USA Today reports the Independence of the Seas will visit Haiti as planned on Friday, and it's bringing relief supplies to be distributed by Food for the Poor.)

One of the most clever recent tactics of the cruise lines has been the creation of "private" islands and beaches scattered throughout the Caribbean. Disney Cruise Line's is in the Bahamas. Royal Caribbean, and its sister line Celebrity, have one in Haiti. It's not near the tattered capital, but on the north coast, far from the turmoil, protected by fences and cordoned off from the rest of the country by a curtain of mountains.

Ships dock on the scenic peninsula -- which Royal Caribbean has registered under the name Labadee -- in the morning at around 8 a.m., spend the day at the beach, and leave before dinner. Passengers, who are not given the papers that allow them to leave the grounds of the resort, have no contact with the surrounding country except within the tightly controlled zone around the ship. There, they make memories zip lining, para-sailing, and enjoying a newly-built aqua park.

This hermetically sealed, fantasy version of the Caribbean is secreted in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This dichotomy has long irked some travelers as inauthentic and decadent, and the criticisms intensified by the on-board descriptions of the port, which often omitted its location in Haiti (the web-based itineraries are clear about it). But this week, this arrangement marks the only happy arrival of foreigners outside of aid workers and emergency services. Haiti needs it.

Hey, is the recession over or something? Must be, because the airlines have suddenly decided to go crazy, raising our baggage fees again. Continental started it, hiking its domestic rates a jaw-dropping $10, from $15 to $25 for the first bag. The second bag now costs $35, up from $25.