Sun, friends and rollercoasters - my Florida report.
I've only just recovered from the nearly 2 days of no sleep and I'm raring to share my holiday memories with you all. The camera took ages to upload the pictures and some of them are very blurry so apologies beforehand.
Day 1. We stayed the night before the flight in a nearby hotel so my dad wouldn't have to drive through to Glasgow in the middle of the night. We sat in together watching Top Gear and Billy Connolly and eating crisps. We didn't get much sleep though and the entire day was one of the longest of my life. I was banned from looking in WH Smiths at the airport in case I 'accidentally' bought another book (ended up taking 3 books - Hamlet, Moab Is My Washpot and Gormenghast), there was nowhere to sit for the 3 hours and we were delayed by an hour. When we eventually got onto the plane I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to sleep. I didn't sleep. It was the longest flight of my lie - 9 1/2 hours! For some reason our flightplan went past Greenland! Luckily I had my books to get me through it all, as well as Sweet Revenge on my iPod. My mum hates flying and looked panicked for the entire flight. She was grumpy too from smoking withdrawels. When we did eventually land, the cigarette was practically lit from the moment the door opened. Another couple of hours later we were at the motel. There's no subtle way to put it - it was disgusting. The pool was filthy, you didn't even want to go near the bathmat and there was a toenail on the steps! That toenail remained there for our entire holiday, that must be a record. Luckil we didn't spend much time in the room so we didn't complain much. They don't tell you in the brochure that Florida is the lightning capital on USA! There was a thunderstorm every afternoon which was a little distruptive. We didn't do anything that day, just had a meal then slept for about 12 hours.
Mum and I looking cheerful and photogenic as ever.
We started our holiday the next day with a visit to my favourite theme park in Orlando, Universal Studios. It's a fab place, a lot more fun and tongue-in-cheek than Disneyland (which they make fun of a lot). One of the displays/rides is Disaster! It features a computer image of Christopher Walken playing a disaster movie director who is casting the audience in his film. My family showed up and I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein with my fuzzy hair and weird face. It was hilarious! My highlight of the day was The Simpsons Ride! As a Matt Groening fangirl I was dying to go on this. It's a virtual simulator that takes you through Krustyland as the Simpsons try to escape the muderous clutches of Sideshow Bob. All the original cast are back to do their voices and it's very funny. While you're waiting to get on (we waited 45 minutes), you get to see some classic moments from the show and I had seen every one of them. They were intertwined with the family waiting in their own queue to get onto Krustyland's rollercoaster. My favourite quote was:
Homer - Wow, we're the first people to ride this thing. We're just like that space guy and that moon thing.
Lisa - Neil Armstrong?
Homer - No, Chewbacca!
Me and Daz outside the Kwik-E-Mart.
Next, it was time to go to SeaWorld. We'd visited all these places the last time we went but you don't go to Orlando to relax and chill out. I love animals, as do my family. SeaWorld is a bit of a coin flip for me. Part of me is sickened by the use of animals in their hoop jumping shows, used to promote major flag waving (the Shamu show is sickeningly cheesy) for touristy purposes. Then the little child in me goes "Ooh look at the big whale!"
The guy on Shamu was really hot. He kept running past us in his nice wetsuit too.
Taking belly scratching to a whole new level.
There are so many gorgeous animals in the park, I'm glad they looked happy and their habitats were clean and large enough for them. My dad had a good laugh at the flamingos when they went out on their daily walk. He calls them "The slappers of the bird world." They headed straight towards us, cue my mum panicking.
Some jellyfish. They lit up in the darkness, this picture doesn't do them justice.
These guys rocked. We paid some money to feed them. They immediately knew we had fish for them and jumped up towards us. The alpha male automatically started calling out, a sound sort of like a honking car. They all caught their food too, making up for my wimpy throwing.
I think our main problem of our holiday is that 2 weeks is nowhere near enough time to see everything, so you try to squeeze in as much as possible in the little time you have. It's completely exhausting. Our next park was Islands of Adventure. My sister and I are rollercoaster junkies. I get a massive thrill when I'm on them. Islands of Aventure was the perfect place to let out it all.
My sister, mum and me next to the Hulk coaster, in Marvel Island. Check out my dead sexy Muse T-shirt.
The queues are always so long, usually 60 minutes at the busiest time, and when where isn't any shaded areas, you can't be bothered. Luckily we had unlimited tickets so we came here a couple of times when it was quieter. My favourite rollercoasters there were Hulk (0-40 in 2 seconds, Brilliant!) and Duelling Dragons (2 intertwining coasters, we went on both.) So much effort went into the building of the parks, it shows on every corner. We also saw the building going on for the Harry Potter theme park! I wish I could go when it opens in 2010.
Marvel Island. I'm a bit more of a DC girl myself, mainly because of Sandman, but this was a great place. Who doesn't take joy in the sight of a grown man in a muscled Captain America outfit?
The Popeye bage ride. I'm in the centre top, my mum and sister are to the left. We got soaked to the skin on this ride and came off looking like drowned rats. My dad cruelly laughed.
The next place was Epcot. We'd visited The Magic Kingdom and Hollywood studios last time (my mum got more excited than me and my sis when she saw Cinderella's Castle) so bypassed them for Epcot. We didn't really like it, there wasn't much to do and the majority of stuff was orienteered for young families. We did like the UK area though, it's interesting to see the stereotypes being put on display for commerical purposes. Plus we got fish and chips! It's a beautiful area but not very exciting.
We decided to take a break from the parks and did some shopping. The outlet malls are brilliant, full of some great clothes and shoes. I much prefer shoe shopping to clothes shopping and bought 2 pairs of Converses for about $100. I also bought a bottle of perfume, some Dead Sea skin care treatment for my psoriasis, a pair of Levi jeans, a dress, a cute stripy shirt, a graphic novel (Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and a CD (Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme by Puccini). A good haul, methinks.
Another thing we did was go to the cinema. We saw The Dark Knight and Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D. The latter wasn't very good despite the pretty cool graphics and best efforts of Brendan Fraser's hair transplant, but The Dark Knight was everything I was hoping it would be and so much more, so my review in a previous post. Go and see it, that's an order!
We took a 2 hour bus ride to Busch Gardens and lo and behold, the clouds just let it rip. We got caught in a storm, complete with bibilical style floods, thunder and lightning striking the ground. The drainage was terrible so the rain was able to gather in puddles knee deep.
We ended up taking cover in a fake mudhut next to the hyena reserve for about 20 minutes. How wild and primitive does that sound!? It didn't rain for the whole day luckily, so we got to ride the awesome rollercoasters and see the nature reserves.
There's a fabulous lop-sided building on International Drive that contains the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum which we visited on a particularly sweaty day. It was a rip off according to my parents but I enjoyed it. Who doesn't get pleasure from seeing weird and wonderful things? We did get caught out at one point though, you had to look in a mirror and see if you could roll your tongue. It didn't dawn on me until after I'd gurned like a loon that it might have been a 2 way mirror. It was. How embarassing.
Daryl next to a piece of The Berlin Wall.
My highlight of the holiday was meeting my friend Mhairi and her family. Mhairi is a member of a board which I help moderate, called BooksAndChat. She lives in Kissimmee and asked if we'd like to have a day together at Downtown Disney and I jumped at the chance. She's a completely lovely lady, so friendly and down to earth and her husband and kids were great too. One of her daughters has a lot in common with my sister - they're both massive Nightmare Before Christmas fans - so my sis wants to keep in contact with her. My parents got on well with them too, they were doing a lot of comparing and contrasting of home lives and me and Mhairi talked about books of course! We ate ice cream and just chatted, I didn't realise how long we'd talked for.They were so nice too us, and really generous! Mhairi's husband works in Disneyland and they gave us free tickets for one day! I couldn't believe it, I was shocked and surprised. They truly rock and I'm going to send her some flowers when I get the chance.
Daryl, me, Mhairi, her eldest daughter and mum.
When we parted ways, we had a browse around the shops. There was a fantastic memorabilia shop that sold signed posters and guitars that fascinated me and my dad. I think he was seriously considering paying $3000 for a Green Day guitar! My sights were set on the Gladiator poster ($800) and a signed first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird ($3000). Daryl nearly died when she saw a signed Corpse Bride poster. Sadly our funds didn't stretch that far. But I couldn't resist browsing the massive Virgin Megastores. It's about 10 times bigger than my house! I bought the Watchmen comic there and got all misty eyed with excitement at the selection of books and CDs. Sadly I don't have a multi region DVD player.
This also got me excited. I am a mega fan of the film Blues Brothers. Sadly we couldn't go to any of the concerts there. Idina Menzel was performing, much to my sister's joy.
We used our Disney ticket gifts to go to Animal Kingdom. Expedition Everest was my favourite rollercoaster of the holiday! It ws a genuinely scary one, you went backwards at breakneck speed through the pitch black tunnels, you had no idea where you were going. My mum hates the things so didn't go on it. Luckily in Disneyland you can fastpass a ride, meaning you are given a time to come back and skip the queues. It's a lot easier than queuing in the scalding heat. The British are good at queuing apparently. We went on the Safari too but the pictures didn't turn out very well.
See what animals you can spot in the tree carvings.
The Lion King show, it single handedly resurrected my love of the movie. I also knew the words to all the songs, nice to know that some things never leave your brain.
Our park ticket meant you could go to more than one park in a day, so we caught a bus to Hollywood Studios.
It was cooler and a more manageable heat so we were less cranky. The heat drives me insane. I sweated profusely on my face so my usually terrible skin was terrible and damp. Not a nice look for anyone. If you like films, you'd like Hollywood studios. It's a lot less saccarine than other parts of Disney World and has the Aerosmith Rollercoaster! I didn't go on it this time but it is a fabulous ride. As is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
The 13 flight drop is so much fun, you rise up from your seat when you fall down and the atmosphere is very fun, it's like your part of an old 50s episode of the show (the remake sucked). Here are a few of the movie related things we saw, see if you can guess the films.
It doesn't seem like much when i put it up on this post but my holiday really was amazing and jam packed. Say whatever jokes you want about America but the people were nice, the atmoshpere was fun and deliciously tacky and you were never bored. But it was good to get home after it all, you need a holiday to recover from the holiday! The Romantic Times convention is there next year and I'm hoping university course allows me to visit it with the rest of BooksAndChat.
Day 1. We stayed the night before the flight in a nearby hotel so my dad wouldn't have to drive through to Glasgow in the middle of the night. We sat in together watching Top Gear and Billy Connolly and eating crisps. We didn't get much sleep though and the entire day was one of the longest of my life. I was banned from looking in WH Smiths at the airport in case I 'accidentally' bought another book (ended up taking 3 books - Hamlet, Moab Is My Washpot and Gormenghast), there was nowhere to sit for the 3 hours and we were delayed by an hour. When we eventually got onto the plane I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to sleep. I didn't sleep. It was the longest flight of my lie - 9 1/2 hours! For some reason our flightplan went past Greenland! Luckily I had my books to get me through it all, as well as Sweet Revenge on my iPod. My mum hates flying and looked panicked for the entire flight. She was grumpy too from smoking withdrawels. When we did eventually land, the cigarette was practically lit from the moment the door opened. Another couple of hours later we were at the motel. There's no subtle way to put it - it was disgusting. The pool was filthy, you didn't even want to go near the bathmat and there was a toenail on the steps! That toenail remained there for our entire holiday, that must be a record. Luckil we didn't spend much time in the room so we didn't complain much. They don't tell you in the brochure that Florida is the lightning capital on USA! There was a thunderstorm every afternoon which was a little distruptive. We didn't do anything that day, just had a meal then slept for about 12 hours.
Mum and I looking cheerful and photogenic as ever.
We started our holiday the next day with a visit to my favourite theme park in Orlando, Universal Studios. It's a fab place, a lot more fun and tongue-in-cheek than Disneyland (which they make fun of a lot). One of the displays/rides is Disaster! It features a computer image of Christopher Walken playing a disaster movie director who is casting the audience in his film. My family showed up and I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein with my fuzzy hair and weird face. It was hilarious! My highlight of the day was The Simpsons Ride! As a Matt Groening fangirl I was dying to go on this. It's a virtual simulator that takes you through Krustyland as the Simpsons try to escape the muderous clutches of Sideshow Bob. All the original cast are back to do their voices and it's very funny. While you're waiting to get on (we waited 45 minutes), you get to see some classic moments from the show and I had seen every one of them. They were intertwined with the family waiting in their own queue to get onto Krustyland's rollercoaster. My favourite quote was:
Homer - Wow, we're the first people to ride this thing. We're just like that space guy and that moon thing.
Lisa - Neil Armstrong?
Homer - No, Chewbacca!
Me and Daz outside the Kwik-E-Mart.
Next, it was time to go to SeaWorld. We'd visited all these places the last time we went but you don't go to Orlando to relax and chill out. I love animals, as do my family. SeaWorld is a bit of a coin flip for me. Part of me is sickened by the use of animals in their hoop jumping shows, used to promote major flag waving (the Shamu show is sickeningly cheesy) for touristy purposes. Then the little child in me goes "Ooh look at the big whale!"
The guy on Shamu was really hot. He kept running past us in his nice wetsuit too.
Taking belly scratching to a whole new level.
There are so many gorgeous animals in the park, I'm glad they looked happy and their habitats were clean and large enough for them. My dad had a good laugh at the flamingos when they went out on their daily walk. He calls them "The slappers of the bird world." They headed straight towards us, cue my mum panicking.
Some jellyfish. They lit up in the darkness, this picture doesn't do them justice.
These guys rocked. We paid some money to feed them. They immediately knew we had fish for them and jumped up towards us. The alpha male automatically started calling out, a sound sort of like a honking car. They all caught their food too, making up for my wimpy throwing.
I think our main problem of our holiday is that 2 weeks is nowhere near enough time to see everything, so you try to squeeze in as much as possible in the little time you have. It's completely exhausting. Our next park was Islands of Adventure. My sister and I are rollercoaster junkies. I get a massive thrill when I'm on them. Islands of Aventure was the perfect place to let out it all.
My sister, mum and me next to the Hulk coaster, in Marvel Island. Check out my dead sexy Muse T-shirt.
The queues are always so long, usually 60 minutes at the busiest time, and when where isn't any shaded areas, you can't be bothered. Luckily we had unlimited tickets so we came here a couple of times when it was quieter. My favourite rollercoasters there were Hulk (0-40 in 2 seconds, Brilliant!) and Duelling Dragons (2 intertwining coasters, we went on both.) So much effort went into the building of the parks, it shows on every corner. We also saw the building going on for the Harry Potter theme park! I wish I could go when it opens in 2010.
Marvel Island. I'm a bit more of a DC girl myself, mainly because of Sandman, but this was a great place. Who doesn't take joy in the sight of a grown man in a muscled Captain America outfit?
The Popeye bage ride. I'm in the centre top, my mum and sister are to the left. We got soaked to the skin on this ride and came off looking like drowned rats. My dad cruelly laughed.
The next place was Epcot. We'd visited The Magic Kingdom and Hollywood studios last time (my mum got more excited than me and my sis when she saw Cinderella's Castle) so bypassed them for Epcot. We didn't really like it, there wasn't much to do and the majority of stuff was orienteered for young families. We did like the UK area though, it's interesting to see the stereotypes being put on display for commerical purposes. Plus we got fish and chips! It's a beautiful area but not very exciting.
We decided to take a break from the parks and did some shopping. The outlet malls are brilliant, full of some great clothes and shoes. I much prefer shoe shopping to clothes shopping and bought 2 pairs of Converses for about $100. I also bought a bottle of perfume, some Dead Sea skin care treatment for my psoriasis, a pair of Levi jeans, a dress, a cute stripy shirt, a graphic novel (Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and a CD (Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme by Puccini). A good haul, methinks.
Another thing we did was go to the cinema. We saw The Dark Knight and Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D. The latter wasn't very good despite the pretty cool graphics and best efforts of Brendan Fraser's hair transplant, but The Dark Knight was everything I was hoping it would be and so much more, so my review in a previous post. Go and see it, that's an order!
We took a 2 hour bus ride to Busch Gardens and lo and behold, the clouds just let it rip. We got caught in a storm, complete with bibilical style floods, thunder and lightning striking the ground. The drainage was terrible so the rain was able to gather in puddles knee deep.
We ended up taking cover in a fake mudhut next to the hyena reserve for about 20 minutes. How wild and primitive does that sound!? It didn't rain for the whole day luckily, so we got to ride the awesome rollercoasters and see the nature reserves.
There's a fabulous lop-sided building on International Drive that contains the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum which we visited on a particularly sweaty day. It was a rip off according to my parents but I enjoyed it. Who doesn't get pleasure from seeing weird and wonderful things? We did get caught out at one point though, you had to look in a mirror and see if you could roll your tongue. It didn't dawn on me until after I'd gurned like a loon that it might have been a 2 way mirror. It was. How embarassing.
Daryl next to a piece of The Berlin Wall.
My highlight of the holiday was meeting my friend Mhairi and her family. Mhairi is a member of a board which I help moderate, called BooksAndChat. She lives in Kissimmee and asked if we'd like to have a day together at Downtown Disney and I jumped at the chance. She's a completely lovely lady, so friendly and down to earth and her husband and kids were great too. One of her daughters has a lot in common with my sister - they're both massive Nightmare Before Christmas fans - so my sis wants to keep in contact with her. My parents got on well with them too, they were doing a lot of comparing and contrasting of home lives and me and Mhairi talked about books of course! We ate ice cream and just chatted, I didn't realise how long we'd talked for.They were so nice too us, and really generous! Mhairi's husband works in Disneyland and they gave us free tickets for one day! I couldn't believe it, I was shocked and surprised. They truly rock and I'm going to send her some flowers when I get the chance.
Daryl, me, Mhairi, her eldest daughter and mum.
When we parted ways, we had a browse around the shops. There was a fantastic memorabilia shop that sold signed posters and guitars that fascinated me and my dad. I think he was seriously considering paying $3000 for a Green Day guitar! My sights were set on the Gladiator poster ($800) and a signed first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird ($3000). Daryl nearly died when she saw a signed Corpse Bride poster. Sadly our funds didn't stretch that far. But I couldn't resist browsing the massive Virgin Megastores. It's about 10 times bigger than my house! I bought the Watchmen comic there and got all misty eyed with excitement at the selection of books and CDs. Sadly I don't have a multi region DVD player.
This also got me excited. I am a mega fan of the film Blues Brothers. Sadly we couldn't go to any of the concerts there. Idina Menzel was performing, much to my sister's joy.
We used our Disney ticket gifts to go to Animal Kingdom. Expedition Everest was my favourite rollercoaster of the holiday! It ws a genuinely scary one, you went backwards at breakneck speed through the pitch black tunnels, you had no idea where you were going. My mum hates the things so didn't go on it. Luckily in Disneyland you can fastpass a ride, meaning you are given a time to come back and skip the queues. It's a lot easier than queuing in the scalding heat. The British are good at queuing apparently. We went on the Safari too but the pictures didn't turn out very well.
See what animals you can spot in the tree carvings.
The Lion King show, it single handedly resurrected my love of the movie. I also knew the words to all the songs, nice to know that some things never leave your brain.
Our park ticket meant you could go to more than one park in a day, so we caught a bus to Hollywood Studios.
It was cooler and a more manageable heat so we were less cranky. The heat drives me insane. I sweated profusely on my face so my usually terrible skin was terrible and damp. Not a nice look for anyone. If you like films, you'd like Hollywood studios. It's a lot less saccarine than other parts of Disney World and has the Aerosmith Rollercoaster! I didn't go on it this time but it is a fabulous ride. As is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
The 13 flight drop is so much fun, you rise up from your seat when you fall down and the atmosphere is very fun, it's like your part of an old 50s episode of the show (the remake sucked). Here are a few of the movie related things we saw, see if you can guess the films.
It doesn't seem like much when i put it up on this post but my holiday really was amazing and jam packed. Say whatever jokes you want about America but the people were nice, the atmoshpere was fun and deliciously tacky and you were never bored. But it was good to get home after it all, you need a holiday to recover from the holiday! The Romantic Times convention is there next year and I'm hoping university course allows me to visit it with the rest of BooksAndChat.