....orlando adventure!
.....it's a long one ...you might want to grab a coffee (mornings) or glass of wine (evenings) and then start reading... feel free to stop at any point for sandwiches
Saturday 16h October
Durham to Manchester to Orlando
Every journey starts with
one step….. and the first step occurred at about 4.30 on Saturday morning when
myself, Christine, Jonathan, and Luke embarked upon our great Florida
adventure. The excitement was palpable but soon wears off as you contemplate a
2 and a half hour drive, a transfer to the airport, a 9 hour flight and then a
50 mile car journey to the resort! This all gave me plenty of opportunity to
consider how someone who doesn’t do heat very well, doesn’t like rollercoasters
and doesn’t particularly like (this aspect) of America (not to mention a
distaste of Disney’s personification of animals) came to on such a trip…..
but…. Here I am!
I love a good journey.
There’s something about a train station or a bus station or, indeed, an
airport. Where are all of these people going? What are they off to do? Where
have they been? I love people watching and asking these questions. I won’t bore
you with the details of the flight save to say, the food was fine, the
entertainment was ok (a rather disappointing Kung Fu Panda 2), and the on
screen games were a lot of fun …and then it was over and we disembarking and
walking out into the heat of Florida. It’s a great feeling when that warmth
hits you. It must be wonderful to live in a country where your choice of what
to wear doesn’t have to centre a round the weather forecast.
We selected our Dodge
Avenger from the line of hire cars and Christine took up the drivers seat - no
bloody way I was driving! Wrong side of the road, going through stop-lights
when turning right if you want to etc. etc. …no no no! Leave that to a proper
driver I thought! I was designated map reader…..
We arrived relatively
unscathed at our accommodation. En-route we negotiated toll booths where we
secured our passage with strange little coins that had very small writing on
them, informing me what they were, that I was still unable to see, even with my
glasses on! After depositing and unpacking our luggage we had to head out
again, in the dark, to find food! After much disagreement ;-) about whether we’d
turned right here or left there, and several rather effective u-turns we found
ourselves at Chilli’s – a Mexican chain of food emporiums!
When our waitress for the
evening arrived, Deborah, she took one look at our faces and said she’d make
sure we ended up happy…. I’m guessing we looked miserable as sin – well to be
fair we’d been up about 20 hours at this point and just wanted to sleep. We ate
our fill of rather good Mexican related food and headed back to the Villa and
climbed into bed exhausted but happy to be in Orlando
Sunday 17th October
Downtown Disney
As with many things the
adventure has to begin with the practicalities. We had to register our presence
in the villa at the holiday rental place and we had to do some shopping (the
only downside we can see so far of the villa, rather than hotel, approach).
First though at 5 in the morning, when we were all awake (!), Luke wanted to
get into the pool! So , if he’s going in we’re all going in! It was flippin’
freezing but I soldiered on in some vain hope that it would help sort out my
jet lag. Among things I hate jet lag ranks high up there. I don’t do such
changes very well. Contrary to popular belief I’m quite a delicate flower ;-).
My last foreign trip was to Las Vegas for Tony’s 50th and I was there,
holidayed and heading back before I made any in roads into sorting myself out.
Having read up on dealing with this I knew to keep my fluid intake up, keep my
alcohol intake down and generally get some gentle exercise… well, I’ve been In
the pool!
Off we went to Villa HQ to
register our presence in the Villa and give them our credit card details in
case Luke, sorry I mean any of us, break anything! We found the place with no
problem and ventured in. With the practicalities taken care of the tour rep asked
us what we were up to. “Off to Walmart!” we said. And before we could say
anything he’d whipped out his map and was marking on all the possible Walmart
shops. Now, I’m not being ungrateful but he was marking the locations on the
light yellow map with a slightly darker yellow highlighter… we couldn’t see
what he was marking and what they were meant to be after he’d marked a couple.
He was being really helpful though and marked all of the theme parks and a
couple of recommended restaurants but the bewildering array of, hard to spot,
yellow splodges, was becoming increasingly confusing. Now… as he finished and
we were saying our farewells to leave I wanted to take this map, no… I really
did! I’m a big fan of Freud, as you may know, and Freud explores our subconscious
thoughts a lot in his works and he would tell us (if he were still with us)
that we supress our subconscious thoughts but every so often one of these
thoughts might well pop out, giving rise to the phrase ‘a Freudian slip’. So, I
really did mean to say, “I must take this really useful map”, but fuelled by
the bewildering array of dots I substituted a crucial word…. “Thank you for all
your help… and… I really must take this really USELESS map!!” When we got
outside Jonathan howled!!
Walmart was not a
particularly good experience… more grocery shopping advice later…
We ended our day with a trip
to Downtown Disney. I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t what I found. I
expected something… well… less theme parky… it felt just like a theme park but
without the rides and just the restaurants. But we did use our Disney passes
for the first time to get into Disney Quest… a technological extravaganza! We
played old and new arcade games. Christine and I played real life size pinball
with you actually controlling your ball and we embarked on a couple of
simulator experiences, the final one being a Pirate ship quest. Now whether it
was dehydration, jet lag, the 3D effect playing havoc with my eyes, or what I
don’t know but I seriously thought I was going to hurl! And I mean really hurl!
I left the simulator and headed for the restroom where I spent a few minutes
with my head over the bowl before the feeling subsided! This, I felt, did not
bode well for the theme park rides!
Monday 19th October
Animal Kingdom
The guide book said that in
order to catch all of the animals you should get to Animal Kingdom early and
head straight for the Kilimanjaro Safari. So that’s what we did heading past
the rather spectacular Tree of Life and then joining the very short queue to
embark upon the tour through fords and rickety bridges with some rather
spectacular views of the animals. Most noteworthy were the giraffe’s, the baby
elephants, and the cheetah’s running after the antelope that scurried past.
Despite being in a theme park it was evident that natural instinct prevails.
Thankfully there was no way they could get to the frolicking antelope! After
this trek we got to see the completely heroic silverback gorilla’s sitting
there just watching us watching them with the free mined among us thinking
“they are so human like… there is evolution before us” and with the
silverback’s sat there thinking “they are so silverback like… there is
evolution before us”. This part of such parks always saddens me. It is
wonderful to see these beautiful animals up close but is it right? Should they
not be in the wild? The Disney blurb makes a lot out of the conservation angle
in the park and that a lot of the animals have been rescued… still… somewhat
sad.
After the animal bit came
the animal related thrill rides! Now bearing in mind I’d nearly hurled
yesterday in a 3D adventure I wasn’t sure how today was going to pan out! We
started with Kali River Rapids a wild water adventure ending in a complete
drowning which was a lot of fun. We went off to experience Expedition: Everest
which was closed due to “technical difficulties”…. Well you can imagine what
was going through my head, can you not!! We had lunch instead! Excellent! Off
to DinoLand USA which saw us ride Dinosaur!. Now this probably wasn’t the
scariest rollercoaster in terms of drops and turns but the psychological aspect
of it was awesome. Mostly in the dark, dinosaurs loomed up at you as we hurtled
towards the meteor that was going to hit the earth wiping these creatures out.
It was spectacularly terrifying! Then, back to Expedition: Everest; now open…
but what had been the technical difficulty… worried, I queued! We queued for an
hour for this one I think due to it being closed for most of the afternoon. All
of the other rides and experiences had been ‘walk straight on’ or ‘minimal
wait’. Relatively speaking, compared to peak months, the parks felt quite
empty. You could tell by how little of the car park was being used when we
parked up. This is the way to do it I reckon and even the temperature of the
day was just nice.
Expedition: Everest was
great! Drops and twists, forwards and backwards in the dark and then being
confronted by the Yeti itself before hurtling to a conclusion ….and not a
moment of feeling sick!
Tired and worn out we headed
for food and stumbled upon the Golden Corral which was not golden at all…
hugely disappointing all you can eat buffet type thing…. We concluded we would
do more research for next time and try some places we’d been recommended.
Tuesday 18th October
Magic Kingdom
This is where the magic is!
Honestly, filled up a couple of times! This is the time where us parents
blessed (?) with boys wish they had girls. Seeing the little girls dressed up
in there princess gear walking up Main Street USA was adorable. I could have
walked up and down here all day ducking in and out of the shops and never got
anywhere near the park. I did suggest dressing Jonathan in a princess frock but
he wasn’t keen!
Seriously though, these
Americans are big and I mean Bee Eye Gee BIG!! I was looking about at all of
these people on the little scooters looking as though they were about to topple
off thinking, goodness there are an awful lot of disabled people in America,
and then it dawned on me that they weren’t disabled at all (they kept getting
out of their chairs to get on rides and purchase another burger or several)
they were just fat and weren’t able to waddle around the park all day. Now I
know Christine and I aren’t excellent slimmers of the year but we were told that
when we were here we would feel positively slim. And we do! Now not all
Americans are big obviously but in percentage terms if we think we’ve got an
obesity problem in the UK we’re failing miserably compared to the Americans.
And these are young people and whole families! It’s not good. Mind you the
parks do seem to cater for disables people very well which is good to see. Much
better I would suggest than we do, or would even contemplate doing, in England.
Mind you they still use the term handicapped! But then again when you think
about it’s only a word. Handicapped or disabled, is anyone better than the
other really. Both indicate a lacking of something rather when judged against
“normal” (whatever that is?). Anyway, and just for the record, I may have put
on a few holiday pounds so may not want to discuss this paragraph for a few
weeks.
As for The Magic Kingdom
well it was indeed Magic! You know you try not to get sucked in by Mickey. You
try to be English and not American. But, when someone waves at you with a
Mickey Mouse hand on you can’t help but wave back! Splash Mountain was a blast
and then came Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Now for me, in terms of
rollercoasters, this is the one that says Disney. If others are to go by, it’s
not the biggest, it’s not the scariest buts it’s the one I most wanted to ride
‘cos I’d seen it on all the pictures.
Then there was Space
Mountain! My back and neck may never be the same. Rollercoaster in the dark
with some dramatic bone shattering turns and drops. The Haunted Mansion was a
scary treat. You can’t deny it but whatever Disney do they do it well and
there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in the stuff that’s not a thrill ride.
Monsters Inc (and one or two others among the parks) were a technical treat as
the animated characters were talking in real time – very clever!
Wednesday 19th October
Blizzard Beach
Time for some chill out
time! So we were off to Blizzard Beach, one of Disney’s two water parks. Now
what can I say! Never mind the rides! I was confronted, on our arrival, with
wet voluptuous ladies in bikinis, hanging out all over the place! I thought I’d
died and gone to heaven! I didn’t know where to look…. But I quickly figured it
out! None of us managed Summit Plummit but the boys did manage the (only
slightly) smaller splash dash. But we did manage the two rider slalom style
one, the family in a ring one and the fast straight bumpy short one… the proper
names escape me! Despite being mostly overcast we all caught the sun and had a
splendid day!
On the way back we needed
some more shopping and decided to not find a Walmart, after being unimpressed
when we did our initial shop, but to try Publix which was just about a mile
from our Villa. When we walked in we were delighted! You know how I feel about
supermarkets. I’m a Sainsburys guy! Why? Well I explain it to Luke like this.
In Sainsburys the avocado’s are cheap and the packs of undefined meat pies or
cheap. In Asda and Morrisons the avocados are expensive if on sale at all and
the packs of ten undisclosed meat pies are under a pound. Now I have no
scientific evidence or research to prove this but you get what I mean. The pop,
and pies, and processed sh*t is cheap and the fresh and healthy stuff is
expensive. You don’t believe me? Well, you check it out. I’m far too busy
writing opinionated twaddle ;-) The point to this is Publix feels like
Sainsburys Walmart feels like Asda (as you’d expect I guess). We had a lovely
shop and headed home with groceries we were happy with. Sad, I know, but
sometimes it’s the simple things in life!
Thursday 20th October
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Well, it was time for a day
off which meant a late start to the day and we headed off for a late
breakfast/early lunch. Christine ordered an omelette and Jonathan and Luke
ordered a cooked breakfast. It appeared to have escaped their attention that we
were in ihop… the International House of Pancakes! Pancakes! Not Omelette’s or
Breakfast’s but PANCAKES…. I went for… pancakes. I wanted to take them to the
Waffle House but realised this experience may too be wasted on them! This
appears to be another peculiarity with America. They lay claim to things being
global when in fact they are clearly only American… now I don’t know this for
certain but I reckon that there are only “international” houses of pancakes in
America.. tell me if I’m wrong. The best example of this though is clearly the
Worlds Series! I can’t recollect if this is American Football or Baseball but I
am one hundred per cent sure that it only involves teams from America!
Ripley’s Believe it or Not
was poor… well Ok it was alright but I wouldn’t rush back and certainly not for
the $80 or so it cost to get us in for the hour or so it took us to look
around…. Watch the show on TV for free!
Friday 21st October
Hollywood Studios
Probably my least favourite
of the Disney parks but with the two best rides so far. The Aerosmith Rock ‘n’
Rollercoaster was a blast. From a standing start the lights went green with you
in your Cadillac and off you want and, for me, for the first time, upside down!
Mint! ….and all in the dark. I do like a coaster in the dark!
But the best of all has to
be Tower of Terror that had me in hysterics. I’m not sure whether I was finding
the whole thing funny or absolutely bloody terrifying….. but I rode it and
loved it!
For Luke the highlight of
the day was the “Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show”. Exceptional
driving skills and huge stunts in cars and on bikes was a great moment.
Saturday 22nd October
Epcot
Epcot is probably my
favourite of the Disney theme parks. It’s a very “grown up” park but its
message sits a little uncomfortably against the live fast, live big, use it all
up America that we were experiencing outside of the park and that we know from
their record on recycling and climate change. The ride narrated by the fabulous
Ellen Degeneres talks about where our fuel comes from and how we must change
the sources of our fuel. The footage hasn’t changed since Christine and I
visited over 10 years ago. There is a clip of a rock concert to raise the issue
and it is from the eighties! I’m not sure America has changed or embraced
anything in the film.
We rode Test Track which was
a blast, and went forward in time in the big golf ball like globe in Spaceship
Earth and had lots of fun with Nemo and friends and with a live interactive
show with Crush… by far the coolest carton character ever….dude! We hung around with the throng until late in
the evening to watch the fabulous fireworks. The park was as full as any park
had been probably due to the Epcot International Food and Wine festival that
was going on.
….oh ..tell you what though
….you’ll never guess who we saw play a live set in Epcot? Howard Jones! THE
Howard Jones from back in the Eighties. He hadn’t changed a bit (this was not a
good thing). It was a lovely little treat that had me singing along to his 5
song set…. Got his money canny!
Sunday 23rd October
Orlando Retail Outlet
The whole of Orlando (at
least this tourist bit we were ensconced in) feels like a retail park. The
architecture (of which there isn’t any of note) makes every street and every
turn and every shop look the same as the last. It feels like being on the Team
Valley on a hot sunny day but where the Team Valley is miles and miles long and
mile and miles wide. The shops tacky outside hide the designer fashions that
lie within and all at knock down prices when compared to those we pay in
Britain. A Quicksilver t-shirt for $20. A similar one at home would be around
£30 (that would be about $45).
Monday 24th October
Universal Studios
The first thing you have to
say, which seems a bit obvious is… it isn’t Disney! From pulling into your
parking spot, to fighting with the people on escalator walkways, to the
cleanliness of the restrooms, to the amount of stalls not open for business, to
the poor queuing for rides…. It’s not Disney.
The rides felt tired and
jaded. Twister was as ineffective as it had been 10 years ago and Terminator 3D
felt poor – despite a revamp that improved it a little. The Jaws ride was good
if only because of our boat “guide” who played the theatrics very well. The
Shrek 4D show was ok. Well once you’ve had water squirted in your face a number
of times you can see it coming.
The Simpson’s ride was very
funny with the prize for best line of any show or simulator going to Homer when
upside down on the cartoon rollercoaster exclaimed… “no! my boobies are
flapping about in my face” (or something like that…. Which lead to great jokes
between me luke and jonathan about some of the rides being presented in 4
double D. The ride was a visual extravaganza spoilt, possibly, by being too
much of a visual onslaught. You really couldn’t take it all in.
Unlike Revenge of the Mummy,
an indoor rollercoaster experience, which was very clever with use of images
and fire and animatronics. Very scary and very good.
Despite Chistine and Luke
finishing the day on Rip Ride Rocket – Jonathan and I were going nowhere near
it (!!) - we left not being as impressed as we had been on previous days and
wondering what Islands of Adventure held for us on Wednesday.
Tuesday 25th October
Typhoon Lagoon
Christine and I decided we
wanted a relaxing day so sent the boys off to explore the water rides while we
wallowed in the sun. We punctuated our day with a wander and a plodge and a
family raft ride. We headed over to the salt water lagoon to snorkel with the
fish and sharks! I kid you not, little sharks, swimming about with us. Safe
ones mind…. Well it’s Disney it’s not going to be a great white! We had that in
the Jaws ride at Universal the day before!
Wednesday 26th October
Universal’s Islands of Adventure
I’d have to think long and
hard about whether this was the best park or not. So much better than
‘Studios’, but better than Disney? I don’t know. But it’s a close call. And
anyway…. Is it Islands of Adventure, or Island of Adventures!?! Both work for
me. The rides were great! Well… the ones I went on…..
Given that I’d gotten to
today very effectively, seeing as how I really don’t like rides (or didn’t
think I liked rides!), I was still tiring of putting myself through the
rollercoasters. But, I had to do Harry Potter! If I did nothing else I had to
do Harry Potter. We headed to his Wizarding World first and thanks to no queues
I found myself on duelling dragons without having time to think! And before I
knew where I was at I was upside down! Well… I say I was upside down… I didn’t
really know as my eyes were tightly shut. After a minute or so I opened one eye
to check I was still on the ride and, bugger, I was. So I shut it again and
waited for someone to tell me to get off!. Off we went onto the simulator ride
and this (apart from making me feel a little sick) was absolutely wonderful!
Very clever and very well done. The effects were exceptional. The best
simulator ride by far.
Now, once I’d done this (and
after watching the family go back onto Duelling Dragons for a second round) my
mojo faded and I knew I was going to struggle to do anything else. I’d given it
my best shot but the Hulk wasn’t going to happen. Christine rode that one
herself! The rest of us were done in but watched her with awe and admiration!
‘Islands’ has by far the
best two water rides you are going to get. Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls was a
lovely little twee ride that got you a little wet until the final awesome fall
that had you disappearing back under ground after an awesome plummet and then
over another little hump which made you feel like you’d actually taken off! The
other, Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges, was simply an exercise for the
ride creators in seeing how wet they could actually get you while still making it
fun…. And wet and fun it was! The Jurassic Park ride, another water adventure,
was good and scary with a decent final plunge but nowhere near as good as the
other two.
Thursday 27th October
The Florida Mall
I woke up and put the news
on like I do most days to find wall to wall coverage of what was presented as
some cataclysmic disaster of huge proportions. Had there been a hurricane.
There had been many road traffic accidents, the morning was commute was going
to be a nightmare, extreme caution needed to be shown while driving…. Why could
this be! What disaster had befallen Orlando?? …..it had rained overnight! Yes,
seriously, it had rained overnight! That was it. Nothing more! How will they
react when their misuse of our planet (‘cos it’s all America’s fault of course)
plunges us into an ice age and they have to deal with snow! I will never be
disparaging about people proceeding with caution when driving in the snow again
after this ridiculous reaction!
Off to the Florida Mall to
pick up our final bargains…. We indulged ourselves in Quicksilver, Skullcandy,
G-Shock, and more. We left arms full of lots of bags…very happy.
Friday 28th October
Epcot (revisited)
We decided that we hadn’t
really done the ‘countries’ part of Epcot justice earlier in the week and
hadn’t managed to ride Soarin’ so we headed back for Epcot day 2. We arrived
early to find that all the fast passes had gone for Soarin’ and the wait time
was already up to 90 minutes. This one will have to wait until the next time we
visit. We headed off around the world at Epcot. It was all an enjoyable
experience… well… except the American bit that subjected us to a “god bless
America” style “here we are, aren’t we wonderful, and shouldn’t the world be
grateful for us” experience. We were given the history (history! For goodness
sake it’s only a few hundred years – if you set aside the native American’s who
had been there a lot longer – but this show ignored that) of America glossing
nicely over the subjugation of the indigenous population and the slave trade
and the segregation of black people in the south right up into the 60’s…. but
hey why would we want to spoil all these middle class American’s days by
reminding them of the dark side of their country. I wonder if the impoverished
people of the US living in poverty would agree that American’s had achieved
very much. In the conclusion of the piece Jefferson (I think) turns to Mark
Twain and asks “what would the founding father’s think of the America we have
created”, I so wanted the next line to be “well, they all look a bit fat don’t
they!” Alas not, we were treated to some schmaltzy female singer thing about
how flippin’ great America was and how they flippin’ ruled the world. We left
quietly and went and had a burger!
I’m not even going to
mention the English bit! It appears we are still locked in the 60’s!
Saturday 29th October
The Journey Home
As with most things in my
life, when it comes to reflecting on things, food is never far away from my
thoughts. We had eaten well (!!) while in Florida with some significant
highlights. Bahama Breeze was wonderful which saw Jonathan try a steak cooked
medium rather than ‘cremated’ for the first time. By Florida terms this was not
a cheap place to eat but at $80 for some wonderful food for 4 of us and drinks,
and starters, it was still very very reasonably priced. At the other end of the
scale, about $40 for as much as we could eat was Sweet Tomatoes which was
wonderful. Massive salad bar where you could pile your plate high and as much
pasta, soup, and breads as you could care to eat! Wonderfully refreshing and
clearly full of locals… always a good sign. I have to mention Chilli’s! I think
we ate here 4 times in total. Great, well priced, Mexican food. Excellent
service! Couldn’t fault it. You can’t go to America and not have a McDonalds.
We only had one mine and had to laugh at our British mentality. Well, you can
refill your drinks as much as you like, so, after Jonathan and Luke were having
their ninth refill and wondered why they were feeling sick, we had to call a
halt. The McDonalds food tasted, well, like McDonalds.
Sunday 30th October
We caught up with the sun
around 7 a.m., after an arduous (but relatively short due to a 100 mile an hour
tail wind) flight, half way between Manchester and Durham. The blue sky was a
different blue, I’m sure. The wet roads looked wonderful and the autumn colours
made me feel happy to be home. The adventure came to an end as we climbed into
bed for a few hours sleep before trying to readjust again and get ourselves
ready for work tomorrow.
I’m sure I’ve missed lots
out….. I can always fill in the gaps later.
America, fat and bloated,
full of it’s own self importance, really knows how to show a British family a
good time. The people we came into contact with were all helpful and
considerate. The experiences we had were all excellent. We could learn a lot from
how America does some things; about their customer service and attention to
detail. So why this dichotomy? Why my love/hate relationship with America. I
still have it, despite my great experience. For me it’s the fact that they
preach to the world yet don’t look in the mirror and identify their own contradictions.
As we drove back to the airport I was presented with the forecourt of a quaint
white painted church where they were indulging in Haloween celebrations…. You
see my problem?
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