I mentioned in an earlier post the situation that brought about my hubby and I booking our first ever trip; now comes the telling of that trip. Pull up a comfy chair....
We flew out from Newcastle Airport on Saturday 25th September 2005, it was an early start, 3am, as is usually the case with long-haul flights. The flight was uneventful with Shrek 2 as the only film and uninspiring food. Unfortunately hubby hadn't drank enough water on the flight and when we landed he had a bad migraine... This meant that I had to drive the hire car first, eek! So I was now driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. The car itself was lovely a white Dodge Neon that proved itself to be a great car. We had also been concerned that a weather front had been moving in and the airport was actually closed behind us - Hurricane Jeanne welcomed us to Florida... The silver lining was that the roads were practically empty and that all of the toll booths were closed. We found our way to the hotel, the Days Inn Lakeside, which was basic but clean and comfortable; we were in room 2212, which is my birthday lol. After hubby had a sleep we decided to go out and find some dinner and also provisions for the next day as we had been informed that in all likelihood there would be nowhere open the next day when Jeanne hit with full force. Dinner was an okay affair at Wendy's and we ended up in a convenience store across the road as everywhere was starting to close their doors. There weren't many choices with a) not having anything to cook on and b) people emptying the shelves, so we came away with a bottle of Pepsi Edge, a large bag of crisps, a bag of cookies and 2 almond snickers - nutritious stuff! As we were to be virtually quarantined the next day we had a quick drive down I-Drive to Wet & Wild before returning back to our room.
Next day, as expected, Jeanne had hit, force 3 and heading our way. We had the TV on the WESH2 weather channel most of the time and took the time to re-plan out itinerary as the parks would be closed the next day for clean up. Because of our diet that day we ended up with headaches, although being cooped up didn't help either. Around 6pm the winds were starting to die down so we ventured out to go down to reception to report a couple of minor maintenance issues and were told that the hotel cafeteria was now open, only they were now out of food! Huh? Couldn't they have rang the rooms and informed us? So we trudged back to the room for a dinner of crisps, cookies and Pepsi and watched The Matrix and Demolition Man before turning in.
Monday morning, we woke and got ready for a day of shopping. Hungry, we drove to the Ponderosa on I-Drive (near Wet & Wild) and had a great breakfast with the best scrambles eggs I've ever had the pleasure of eating. The fruit was so juicy and sweet so we filled up our tummies before heading to Belz. What a bargain I got in the Reebok outlet store - we had a 15% off voucher plus they were offering either buy 1 pair get a 2nd pair 1/2 price or buy 2 get 1 free, so I ended up with 3 pairs for the great price of $54 which, at the time, was £30!! Hubby got himself some Nike trainers, from the Nike store of course, for $50, so he was happy too. Done with Belz, we jumped in the car and drove to the Florida Mall. On the way we spotted a big Walmart so we'll pop in later as hubby wants an mp3 player. Florida Mall is nice, posher than Belz. We had a wander around, I bought some nail care stuff from a stall, ate giant pretzels and then left for Walmart. Hubby didn't find the mp3 player he was after so said he'd think about another one he'd seen, we left and headed for Orlando Premium Outlets. I really liked the feel of this place, it must have had some effect because we actually bought stuff here; hubby got a jumper and cords from Banana Republic whilst I bought a Pookie (Garfield's bear) from Country Clutter and a belt from Levi Dockers. We had a few chats with some very friendly Americans before returning to the hotel to freshen up before dinner. With hindsight, the place we chose for dinner, Sizzler, was not the best choice, the place wasn't so clean, the server was more interested in talking to friends, the food took forever to come and to be honest, they shouldn't have bothered bringing it out, it was barely edible.
After a good night's sleep, we awoke rather excited, today was our first day in a park!! Woohoo!! We had another big breakfast at the Ponderosa before driving up to Seaworld; once in we grabbed a map and headed for the ray pool to make a plan of action in the shade. The rays were so cool, gliding under the surface of the water to be stroked, sticking their fins out; they were so friendly we could have stayed there all day. We walked to Dolphin Cove were the 'touch a dolphin' experience was about to begin, this was amazing, the dolphins used their echo-location to find your hands which you simply laid flat just under the water; hubby and I briefly got to touch a dolphin which was fantastic. Then we watched the manatees eat cabbages before riding Journey to Atlantis which was great fun. Next up we rode Kraken, a cool coaster that actually made my knees turn to jelly! We had a little time to kill before the Shamu show so we wandered over to Pacific Point Preserve to laugh at the very vocal seals. 10 minutes later we made our way to the Shamu Stadium to watch the Shamu Adventure show; we made sure not to be in the splash zone. The show was more than amazing, the interaction between orca and trainer was touching and the beasts themselves, well, they were huge! Nicely entertained and rested we visited the shark enclosure which was okay, followed by the penguin encounter where the birds looked bored. We noticed that Clyde & Seymour was starting shortly so we made our way there to be thoroughly entertained by the pre-show mime. Peckish we started to think about eating but were sidetracked by The Groove Chefs who were brilliant and hubby's favourite part of the day. We ate pizza from Voyagers before checking out Wild Arctic. Deciding to stay for the Shamu Rocks America show we wandered round revisiting some of the things we had enjoyed before going back to the Shamu stadium to claim our seats. The show was good but we preferred the daytime one. Seaworld done, we headed for home, freshened up and headed to Wendy's for food before turning in.
