florida trip - day five

Today's park: Magic Kingdom

Finally made it to Disney World!  We took the shuttle from the hotel this morning.  It actually came today.  The shuttle took us to the monorail depot, and the monorail then took us to the park entrance.

We got there about 20 minutes before the park opened.  So we got to experience the magical "Welcome Parade" and opening of the park.  Kind of cool.  Julia was excited because Peter Pan was on the train.  Her one goal for this trip was to meet Peter and get his autograph.  So, after the parade and once they opened the park we chased after him, but he was having none of it.  He was booking it to wherever he was going and got away from us!

 The castle is much bigger in Florida

 Of course, one of the first things we did was get a Dole Whip!  I freaking love these things!!  

 Riding the teacups

 The cinnamon roll Julia got for lunch that was the size of her face.

 Prince Eric's castle - The Little Mermaid ride

 I love the fries at Disney!

It was a rainy/muggy day today.  It rained a couple different times (sometimes pretty hard) and got really muggy and gross later in the afternoon.  Because I had kept an eye on the weather forecast before leaving for our trip we were prepared.  We had bought travel umbrellas and had them with us.  However.  Mine turned out to be broken!  I opened it up with the first downpour and found this out.  It wouldn't click up into place, so I had to walk around with a floppy umbrella.  At least we were laughing about it...

We tried to do Pirates of the Caribbean early, but it was broken, so we had to go back and do it later in the afternoon.  They have basically all the same rides as there are in CA, except Indiana Jones.  Which is a bummer because that ride is awesome!  We decided to experience the Enchanted Tiki Room because neither of us had ever done that one in CA.  It was...interesting...a bunch of animatronic birds singing and putting on a little show.  I though it was dumb, but Julia liked it.  So...to each his (or her) own.  One thing I thought was cool was "The Hall of Presidents"  It was a show about America and the freedoms we have and celebrating different presidents we've had and their achievements.    

My friend, Lauren, joined us after she got off work.  We did Space Mountain with her (which is totally different than the one at Disneyland).  Then she made us go to "The Carosel of Progress."  Oh my heck.  Lamest thing ever!  You sit in these chairs that surround a circular stage.  The chairs move around the stage and there are different animatronic people who talk about the progress of technology through the years.  I mean, it was kind of cool, but mostly kind of lame.  LOL.  Plus, the song REALLY gets stuck in your head.  Worse than Small World.  

"There's a big, bright beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day..."

After that, Lauren got some dinner, and then we watched the two night shows they do at the the castle.  So cool!

We left after the fireworks show (even though the park stayed open till 1am) and Lauren drove us back to our hotel.  Such a great day!  I love Disney.  It really is one of my happy places (behind my house and the temple).  I don't care that I'm over 30 and some people think I'm weird for liking it so much.  I do!

Things that were different about Disney World that I really liked:

-They had wifi throughout the park
-There were fun, interactive, computer games to play while waiting in line for Space Mountain
-All the lines are either shaded, or inside the buildings so you're not completely melting or being burned to death in the sun

Steps walked: 24000 est (I forgot to look at it before my little pedometer reset at midnight)

florida trip - day four

Today's Park: Islands of Adventure

Today was SO much better than yesterday!  This Universal park is 100x better than Universal Studios.

 Where we parked..so I could remember!

I was bummed because the Jurassic Park ride was closed to maintenance.  That was the one ride that I knew was at Universal and which I really wanted to go on, but I couldn't.  *Sad face*  Oh well.  We were at least able to walk through the Jurassic Park area which was really cool.

Then: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!  SO COOL!!!

They have a street built to look like the town of Hogsmeade from the books and movies, and they have Hogwarts Castle built.  The ride inside the castle is INSANE, but SO FUN!  We did that one twice because they had a single rider line that was really fast.

Then we got butterbeer!  Oh my goodness, it's my new favorite thing!  I'm going to try to replicate it once we get home...

Hagrid's house 

We spent a lot of time in Hogsmeade but it was CROWDED!  There were so many people there.  We went into the candy store but literally couldn't even turn around without bumping into twelve other people.  Julia was going to buy some of the "fudge flies" and "peppermint toads" but decided not to because the line was so freaking long.  The best ride of the day was the Dragon Challenge.  We rode it three times.  It's a crazy double roller coaster (two different tracks going at the same time) that makes you really feel like your riding on a dragon.  The only weird part was because of the g-forces it made my feet feel weird...like all the blood was being pulled out of them on the loops and twists and then forced back into them.  It was kind of crazy.  Not really sure that was a good thing...

We had lunch at Mythos.  Before we left I had looked up what vegan food options each park had.  This restaurant had a vegan pad thai that they offered, so we decided to sit down and try it out.  No joke, it took AN HOUR from the time we sat down and ordered our food to when they finally brought it out and put it on our table.  It was RIDICULOUS!  I was getting fed up.  Luckily the food tasted good, but even so, it was an unnecessarily long wait.

The craziest thing that happened:  Julia was molested by Woody Woodpecker!

We were coming out of a gift shop and Woody (person in a Woody costume) was coming in.  She moved to step out of his way, but he put his arms out instead.  So, she laughed and gave him a hug.  And he hugged her for a LONG time.  She laughed and pulled back then Woody kissed her (pressed his beak against her cheek) and hugged her again!  Finally the bird let her go and we left.  We were both laughing but it was more than slightly uncomfortable!

We left the park before it closed because it was kind of small and we'd done everything we wanted to do.  We got back to the hotel and Julia crashed.

She took a nap for a while, while I worked on one of the cross-stitch Santa kits I had brought to do on the plane and listened to an audio book on my iPod.  That evening Jaws was on TV, so we watched it for a while, then went to bed.

Steps walked: 17456

florida trip - day three

Today's park: Universal Studios

Our hotel offered a free shuttle to both Universal and the Disney parks.  Even though we had a rental car, we decided to take the shuttle this morning.  However, the shuttle for Universal never came (or if it did, we missed it).  We waited until 20 minutes after it was supposed to be there, then finally gave up and took our car instead.

We didn't take a lot of pictures at this park because, frankly, it was really boring.  I was pretty disappointed in it actually.  There was one roller coaster (which made my head feel like it was going to explode and felt like we had been internally decapitated).  It was intense.  There was a Mummy ride which was kind of similar to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. and a 3D Transformers ride that was pretty awesome!  Other than those three, the other rides were really stupid.  And not really "rides."  Basically you sat down in a chair that jiggled and watched a 3D screen that spit water at you at different times.

Lame.

We ate lunch at the quick service restaurant in the Simpsons land, and it was pretty much the grossest food either of us have either eaten.  I had a veggie sandwich on a soggy bun with brown guacamole, and Julia got a burger that had obviously been sitting under a heat lamp for 12 hours with some nacho cheese sauce smothered on top.

*Yack*

We ended up leaving early, hoping Tuesday would be better.

The Things that Julia fell in love with and wanted to buy but couldn't justify the price

On the way back to the hotel from the park we stopped at to big gift shops that were close to the hotel because I was on the hunt for a small glass bottle that said "Florida" on it to put the sand I had stolen yesterday at the beach in as a souvenir.  I finally found one!  Then we decided to go to the Chili's by the hotel for dinner.  Mmmm!  Chips and salsa!!

Steps walked: 15197

florida trip - day two

Sunday morning we got up, got dressed, and, armed with my trusty maps once again, attempted to find our way through town to the nearest ward building.  

Creepy midget door right next to our hotel room...

As we were driving there was a dead possum in the road.  We passed it and I said, "Possum."  Julia freaked out.  

"That was a possum!?  We don't have those in Arizona!"

We had a bit of difficulty trying to figure out how to get to the church building once we got there because my maps were telling me to go into a gated community.  Uh....yeah...not really an option.  So, we had to find another little access road to get there.  Finally we did, and had a nice Sacrament Meeting.  Except for the brother who sat down to "chat" with us and proceeded to tell us this lengthy story all about his brother and sister-in-law who were visiting their kids in Arizona and were still there because his brother had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  I said, "I'm so sorry!  I hope he's okay."  The guy looked at me and said, "No.  He's not."  

I....k....not really sure how to respond to that, or where to go from here, so...yeah...

After Sacrament Meeting we left and drove across the street to walk around the temple.  It was so pretty!  So much green with the grass and all the trees!

 

After staying at the temple for a while, we drove back to our hotel room, ate some lunch, and changed to go to the beach.  Before coming on this trip I had contacted a couple friends I have that live in Orlando (Lauren Taylor and Kristen Miedema) and we had set up that we were going to meet up and go to the beach Sunday afternoon/evening.  We made plans on when and were to meet, and went to New Smyrna Beach.  It was so pretty!  I love the ocean, and now I can say I've touched the Atlantic Ocean.

Me, Lauren, and Kristen

Sunday night, when we got back to our room, we ate some dinner and watched Once Upon A Time, then went to bed in preparation for our week long amusement park marathon to start in the morning!