Part 8 - Orlando (Disney World)

After finishing our morning at Universal Studios, we checked into our Disney World hotel.  Once this was sorted, it was then over to Epcot - the first of many parks we would visit over the next few days.  Epcot has two parts to it - Future World and World Showcase and World Showcase has sections themed for different countries.  One of the things Wade had been wanting to do here was the Epcot Bar Crawl (ie. drink your way around the world)!  Our first stop was Mexico, where Wade got his first beer and I got a frozen margarita!  I didn't know it at the time, but this was actually my first and last drink on the drinking tour (not sure if it was the volume of alcohol in the drink, the fact that it was stinking hot or just that I am really weak)!  While I was still struggling with the margarita, Wade moved onto Norway and another beer.  When we got to Germany we decided some food (ie. a pretzel) and another beer for Wade was in order.  It was here that we made friends with Dave the duck (pretty sure he was using us because we were feeding him pretzel, but I'm ok with that)!  Next stop was Japan and another beer for Wade and a bottle of water for me (very sad I know)!  The final stop for the drinking tour was the UK where Wade managed another beer and me....nothing!

Part of our package at Disney World was a dining package where we got a snack, a quick service meal and a table service meal each per day.  We took the opportunity to try a bunch of the different themed restaurants for dinner each night.  Our first at Epcot was the Coral Reef Restaurant, where you ate surrounded by a very large aquarium.  We got lucky with a table right at the aquarium, where we saw lots of fish, stingray, sharks and a sea turtle while we ate.

We had a sleep in the next morning, and then drove over to Disney Springs (which used to be known as the Downtown Disney area) where they have lots of shops and restaurants.  It has changed alot since the last time we were there so we took some time to wander around and have some lunch.  That afternoon we headed over to the Hollywood Studios park, where we hit some of our favourite rides - Toy Story Midway Mania, Rock 'n Rollercoaster and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.  Our dinner that night was at a restaurant themed as an old drive in theatre, called Sci-Fi Dine-in Theatre Restaurant, which was a fun experience.  We finished dinner just in time to catch the night time show, which was a Star Wars themed show.

The next day we hit Animal Kingdom.  I love this park because of all the animals, but it also has a great rollercoaster, Expedition Everest.  We did the animal safari ride twice, and both times saw different things.  After we had finished at the park, we went back to our hotel for a swim and a break.  That night our dinner was at one of the other resorts, Disney's Beach Club Resort, where we went to the Cape May Cafe - a New England themed buffet.  The resort here was really nice (we kind of wished we were staying there) and the buffet was pretty good too!

The next day we had no plans to go to any parks in the morning, so decided to have a sleep in and then take a drive out to Daytona Beach, which was about an hour and a half a way.  We didn't really have any expectations about what it would be like, which was lucky because the main part of Daytona Beach was pretty awful!  We had to laugh when we saw the sign stating it was the most famous beach in the world!  As we drove further away from the main section, it got a bit nicer, and we pulled in at one section and took a walk on the beach and put our feet in the water.  One interesting thing about the beach here is that you could drive on it (we didn't) and park your car in the spot you wanted to hang out for the day!

After we arrived back in Orlando from Daytona Beach, it was off to Animal Kingdom again for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, and also to do the animal safari at night (which is a fairly new thing here).  As different animals are active at different times of the day it meant that we saw different things again, than we had on the day time safari.  We also rode the Expedition Everest rollercoaster again in the dark, which I think was even better than riding it during the day.

One of the things we hadn't yet done at Epcot was the Frozen ride (which we mostly wanted to do because we know how much Milly loves Frozen)!  Unfortunately, there aren't many rides at Epcot, and because this is a relatively new ride and such a popular movie, everytime we tried to go the wait time was over an hour and there was no way we were lining up for that long!  So Sunday morning, we checked the wait times and saw it was only 30 minutes - which we could handle - so quickly got our stuff together and headed over to Epcot.  By the time we got there though, the wait time was 70 minutes.... so we gave it a miss and grabbed some lunch instead!!  Sunday afternoon, we went across to Magic Kingdom and in between thunderstorms, we went on all the rides that we wanted to!

Sunday night our dinner reservation was at a restaurant at Disney Springs - Bongo's Cuban Cafe.  This was a very lively restaurant with lots of music and dancing happening.  While all our night time meal experiences were good at Disney, this was definitely the best (both our main meal and desserts were amazing)!  And after a bit of post dinner shopping, we called it quits and headed back to the hotel.

It was time to check out of our Disney hotel on Monday morning, but our flight to Las Vegas wasn't until late afternoon.  So after checking out we made our way back to Hollywood Studios to go on our favourite rides one last time.

Here are some pictures from our time at Disney World!

Epcot (drink your way around the world!)

Our new friend - Dave the Duck!

Me drinking the hard stuff!

Dinner at the Coral Reef Restaurant

Wandering around Disney Springs

Hollywood Studios (and our favourite ride)

Star Wars stuff!

I definitely got my duck fix at Disney World!

Dinner at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre

Star Wars night show at Hollywood Studios

Animal Kingdom

Disney's Beach Club Resort (where we had our dinner at Cape May's buffet)

Daytona Beach (apparently the most famous beach in the world........)

More ducks!

Magic Kingdom

Wade gets great pleasure in trying to make me vomit on this ride!

Finishing off our time at Disney with a duck photo!

Part 7 - Orlando (Universal Studios)

It was up nice and early on Tuesday morning to get a cab out to the airport for our flight to Orlando.  We had booked this flight on points and we were flying first class!  What was great about this was we got to access the lounge before our flight and for the first time on the internal flights on this trip we didn't have to battle with everyone else to get overhead space to store our carry on bags!

We arrived in Orlando just after lunch and went and picked up our hire car.  This time Wade had ordered a Camaro, but seeing as he had already drive that in the early part of the trip, he got the V8 Mustang instead.

For the first part of our Orlando visit, we were going to Universal Studios, and staying at one of the on-site hotels.  A few of the perks of staying on site is that you get transport to and from the parks (via boat) and you get unlimited express passes onto most rides (ie. you line up in a separate line to everyone else and usually wait no more than 5-10 minutes to get on a ride).

There are two parks here and our plan for our first afternoon/night was to go to the main Universal Theme park.  We got through all the rides that we wanted to go on pretty quickly and then spent a bit of time wandering around the new Harry Potter section (Harry Mac - you would have loved this).   It was very hot and humid here in Orlando, so after we had finished here, we headed back to our hotel to have a swim in the pool.  However when we got to the pool, there was no one swimming!  It turns out there were thunderstorms in the area so they had closed the pool temporarily!  Wade took the opportunity to grab a drink at the pool bar and we waited it out until we were allowed to get in the pool.  We then caught the boat back down to the CityWalk area, where we grabbed dinner at the NBC Sports Grill & Brew.  By the time we had finished there, the parks were both closing, so after checking out some of the shops at the CityWalk section, we caught the boat back to our hotel.

The next day we hit the other park - Islands of Adventure.  Again, we got through all the rides we wanted to pretty quickly, and just as Wade was about to get on the Hulk rollercoaster for a second time, we heard that the ride was closed as there were thunderstorms in the area (multiple daytime storms quickly became a theme for our time in Orlando - although we were really lucky with our timing of everything and it didn't really impact us that much)!  Given that we were basically done with everything we wanted to do, we took the opportunity to go and grab an early lunch in the CityWalk area, and luckily got there just as the storm hit.  After lunch we waited it out as long as possible and then decided to head back to our hotel.  We went to jump on one of the boats - and then realised they weren't operating because of the storm!  So walking back was the only option.  After getting pretty wet, we made it to one of the sections where there was a bridge that we could stand under just as the worst of the storm hit - so we ended up having to sit there for a while until it had mostly passed!  When it appeared to have eased up we made a run for it back to the hotel!  That bought our time at Universal to an end, so we picked up our bags, changed out of our wet clothes and then headed over to Disney World, where we were staying for the next 5 nights.

Here are some pictures from our time at Universal (I'll post Disney World separately):

Universal Studios

Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley

The Simpsons area

Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Hogsmeade

Islands of Adventure

Some of the many ducks that would be seen over the next week!

Riding out the storm under the bridge!