MGM Studio

Today was spent at MGM studio.

We didn't arrive there until gone 11am, but although the main area seemed pretty busy, the attractions and rides were not as busy as they could have been - certainly less busy than Magic Kingdom.

First went to see the 'Lights Camera Action' stunt show. Lots of car stunts, fire, motorcycles etc.













Most dangerous was the fire stunt.

We followed that by the Indiana Jones show.
Using Fastpass and 'single rider' I got a couple of goes on Rock'N'Roll Rollercoaster - 0 to 60 in 3 seconds!

Temperature was very hot again today. No rain forecast for the next few days. It was very tiring to walk around all day so we stopped as often as we could.

On the backlot tour, I volunteered for the "Harbour Attack" show. This involved me and some other guys dressing up in waterproof (huh!) oils to act out some parts of an action scene. This time I got to be the mechanic (last time I got chosen, I was a deckhand) and this meant I had to act that the engine of our 'boat' had stopped, then call the captain and then get hit by 800 gallons of water from a nearby dump tank.
Needless to say, the oils were not as waterproof as they could have been!

Evening was taken up by waiting for the Fantasmic show. 90 minutes waiting for a 25 minute show!!! Still, we got a reasonable seat. We weren't the first in there by any means.

Clearwater Day 2

This morning we were up before sunrise and out to have a stroll along the beach area. It was pretty deserted of course, just the odd jogger.









Sunrise was at 7.01 this morning.













We had to check out by 11am, but the Sea Captain allowed us to keep our car in their lot - a great help as parking seemed to fill up really early in the day. Especially since the road works had removed one of the main car-parks to be used for the plant machinery.

So we took advantage of this and went over to the edge of the Motel area where you are right up against the marina. There we sat and watched the boats go by for a couple of hours. It was getting very hot by now - into the upper 80s. I tried to keep protected under one of the palms there, but I still think I caught the sun a little too much in one go.







By early afternoon it was time to move on. However, not before we did one more trip on the Sea Screamer. This time we went prepared - only the basic of items were taken with us and all in a plastic bag for protection. We were fully expecting to get sea spray over us again.
As for the dolphins, well this time we only had one run down the coast (we did 4 or 5 yesterday) but in many ways it was more spectacular today as we picked up a pod of 5 dolphins who followed us for a long time.
We did get very wet too. Within a hour of getting off the boat, we could wipe off salt from our arms and clothes!

Finally, it was time to head home. A laborious 2 hour drive home in the hot temperatures added to the sun burn somewhat! It was a relief to get back into the cool of the air-conditioned hotel room!

Clearwater Day 1

I'm writing this blog entry off-line as I'm not net connected at the moment.

I'm sitting by the side of the Clearwater marina, it's 08:05 and the sun is streaming over the waterway. It's actually quite hard to see what I'm typing the sun is so strong.
The first of the Pelicans has just flown past trying to catch up with one of the early morning deep-sea fishing boats that has just left. Linda is sitting next to me, shades on, reading her book on a lounger.

Clearwater is odd in some ways. It's idyllic right here where I am, but 50 yards closer to the beach and it's a complete building site - and is due to stay that way until 2009 from the plans we've seen. There's a live web-cam here that shows where we are. Photo 3 is just to the right of where we're sitting!

We spent the early part of yesterday travelling from Orlando to Clearwater. TomTom proved a godsend as we hit the Clearwater area. We were diverted at least twice due to closed roads. but TomTom kept us heading in the right direction.

We're staying at a small motel right on the edge of the main marina in Clearwater. The room is a reasonable size and quite well equipped. No internet though.

Once in the room we changed into swim wear and headed to the Marina to catch the 'Sea Screamer'. This is one of, if not the, largest speedboats in the world at the moment. It must be able to carry 50 people I guess. Their main trick is to go out into the Gulf Of Mexico and spot a pod of dolphins. They then get everyone to the back of the boat and churn up the water, producing a massive wake. The dolphins seem attracted to this churn and as we speed along, they dive and jump along right behind the boat, in and out of our wake.

As luck would have it, we sat right at the back of the boat and had an excellent view of the proceedings. I was a bit worried about the camera, as we did get sea spray all over us at one point (we had been warned and I did have the camera under my shirt, but we still got sprayed a few times. Fortunately, this spray stopped when we were doing the churn runs.
Got some pretty good pictures, mainly of wash, but some were from the dolphines as they played behind us.
Only down side to sitting at the back was we were partially deaf as we left the boat - the rumble of the two engines (I forget how many horsepower, but it was a lot!) was pretty loud wherever you were in the boat and we were sitting right on top of them!

Once back at the marina we went for a walk down to the pier and beach area for a hour.

Finally, at 18:00, we returned to the marina to visit our second boat. This was the "Kai Lani". She is a catamaran sail boat. Once we left the marina, the captain switched off the motors ans put up the sails. We then sailed around the Gulf Of Mexico for an hour until we'd watched the sun set. Once again, it was a glorious sun set here (as it had been in 2005). Got some nice pictures once again. There were only 12 of us on the boat, including 2 crew, so it wasn't busy at all. All in all it was a very relaxing way to spend a couple of hours. Best of all, nobody was sea sick!

We returned to the marina and found somewhere to eat before bed.

I've just noticed there's a low, but free WI-FI connection around here somewhere. I'm going to post this now and add some pictures later when I have a better connection.

Universal Studios

Today was spent at Universal Studios.
We did the usual rides, Terminator 3d, ET, MIB, Jaws, Earthquake, Twister, Beetlejuice (had to laugh when they kept referring to him as B.J.) and Shrek 4d.

Also, by the magic of 'single rider' I managed 3 runs of 'The Mummy' (in 25 minutes) before we headed out of the park.




We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe next door then popped into the cinema on City Walk.

They are doing almost 100% coverage of the new Spiderman 3 film on May 3rd. I think 15 of the 16 screens will be showing S3 at midnight, or very soon after.
Anyway, being an old fuddy duddy who most likely will be asleep by midnight ;) I've booked us to go see it on the 4th @ 19:15.
The cashier has also told me that the version of the film we're booked in to see is what she referred to as the 'UP' version. To quote her : 'The picture quality is so much better, it's like 3D only it isn't'.
I'm guessing it's a digital High Def. version of the film.

Should be interesting, whatever it is as I paid $2 over the normal ticket price!

Magic Kingdom

We spend a good few hours at MK, even though we arrived at around 5pm.

The place was quite busy of course. Wait times were in the region of 30-40 minutes for most things.

Linda went on the Thunder Mountain ride. She hated it! It wasn't so much the speed or the twists, more the rises and drops that freaked her out!


Saw the castle fireworks @ 10pm followed by the late Spectral Magic parade @ 11pm.

However, returning home was delayed thanks to roadworks on I4 :(

Wilderness Lodge

First off, however, we stopped off at the Wilderness Lodge resort. It's where we're going in December for a few days.

The place was quite busy as we looked around - hopefully it's less hectic once we return. It looks a nice place though. Impressive lobby area.

Boggy Creek

Boggy Creek is a small place just south of Kissimmee. We went down there as they do an airboat service out onto the mash lands. It certainly wasn't the Everglades, but we did get to see some wildlife, including an alligator with newly hatched young. We needed ear-protectors though as the engine and fan make a lot of noise!



The boggy creek area was a very quiet (apart from the airboats) area on the edge of what I can only describe as an enormous boggy pond - it couldn't have been more than 8 inches deep in most areas.

After the ride, we drove back into Orlando, stopping off at the Florida Mall for a hour or two.

Back to the hotel to dump off our stuff then we headed for Disney to visit the Magic Kingdom.

Typhoon Lagoon

As temperatures rise slowly towards the 90s we decided to take a day out of the normal park visiting to visit Typhoon Lagoon, one of Disney's two water parks.

A peaceful day was spent floating along the lazy river or splashing about in the tidal pool.



Ahh, bliss.

Just popped back to the hotel to do our first lot of clothes washing :(

Now that's finished, it's off for something to eat.

Backstage Tour

We had our Disney "Behind The Scenes" tour. This took us to the places that visitors don't usually get to see. This included the set building area, costume design and production, Christmas storage area, underground utility corridors as well as other areas.
I particularly liked the peek underneath the animatronics show that is the American Adventure.


No cameras were allowed during most of this tour.

Lunch was included as well as chilled water during the day.

One handy thing was the supply of radio ear pieces that allowed us all to hear the group leader even when she was 20 feet away - handy as she didn't have the loudest voice! This worked very well until pretty much everyone's battery had died!

The tour started in Epcot, moved through MGM studio and ended at Magic Kingdom where we stopped to watch the parade. Only there did I manage to get any photos.



Once the seven hour tour was complete, we stayed in Epcot, where we were dropped off, and visited a couple of attractions.
We also managed to find our 2005 Leave A Legacy photo that is supposed to be at Epcot for 20-odd years.



Finally, at 9pm, there was the daily firework display so we stayed for that.

We had arrived very early this morning, so our car was parked near the entrance, which was a big benefit as we were both getting tired by now (so much so that we ended up leaving some of our shopping at Walgreens! We'll need to go and retrieve it this morning).

Animal Kingdom

We visited Disney's Animal Kingdom today. A very hot day but, touch wood, we survived without getting too burnt.
I got to ride Expedition Everest. In fact, thanks to the 'single rider' queue I managed to do it four times in around a hour. Not bad considering it was advertising 20-30 minute wait times on standby. It was a great ride too.



There was a guy who I saw a couple of times also queuing in the single rider line. He'd been on EE 15 times already. In fact he was telling people of 'hidden Mickeys' on the ride that he'd found. I also noticed he had a couple of Mickey tattoo. That's taking something a little too far I think! No wonder he was in the single rider line...

We again traversed the Kalili River Rapids and once again I took the full brunt of the slide down the biggest slope. In fact both Linda and I had rather wet tops by the time we'd finished. I got most of it down on video (I put the camera in a plastic bag with a hold for the lens) so that should be fun to watch later.

We also watched a new show 'Finding Nemo - the musical' which was actually quite good. The biggest problem was the queuing outside as it was mostly standing in the full sun. Not good at 3pm! Still we got really good seats, right alongside the stage's runway out to the sound pit. As I said, it was a good show too.

Quick meal before going back to the hotel. We were both flagging by then so we stayed in for the rest of the evening. That gave me a chance to watch the latest episode of Heroes live!

Trying out my new camera flash.

My Sony GN36 arrived from Amazon today.
I'm liking it already!!!

Fun with the dolphins.

Linda has fun with C.J. a 14 year old dolphin during her swim session.

Feeding time for this bird in the Discovery Cove aviary. This particular one only ate maggots. yum!

Water's back on.

Came back from an excellent meal at Marconi Grill to find the water back on. It was a bit brown to start off with but soon righted itself.

Keep those legs crossed!

We've been suffering from a slightly leaky bath tap in our room, so this morning we asked reception to get someone to have a look at it whilst we were out.

By the time we returned, there was no leak. Great! we though... until we noticed that the sink tap and indeed to toilet were both empty of water too.

It turns out there's been a hotel-wide water failure. It's been off for a while it seems. Latest estimates are for a further 45 minutes before it comes back on...

We're off for something to eat - and to find a working loo !!!

Zeke

I'm doing my best Zeke (or is it Cletus?) impression as I steer an airboat along a creek in Kissimmee today.

We'd decided to go for a drive around Kissimmee to see what was there (not a great deal really) and we came across this air-boat rental place. Quite cheap and the creek / river was quite a peaceful place to go along, shame the airboat was so noisy!



It took about an hour to complete the 1.something miles to the turn around point and back.



These guys started just after us and probably finished a good 10 minutes before we got back. In fact, as we returned to the jetty, the people running the tours packed away and literally followed us out of the exit.



Who thinks they were waiting for us to leave!!

Early morning stroll

Went for a quick walk around the hotel this morning.
Dawn was just starting but it was still pleasant out there temperature-wise.



Picked up my polariser for my camera as well, as there was a note on my door saying I had a package waiting for me as we left this morning.

Detour!

Well, not exactly a detour, more correcting a mistake.

We decided to go up to the Belz Factory Area this afternoon as we drove home from Sea World.
I've got my TomTom Sat. Nav. with us and, so far it had been a big help. However, the POI (point of interest) I used to get to the Belz park turned out to be set against the edge of the I4 expressway. I could indeed see the shops, however, as we were travelling at 65MPH and I happened to be on the I4 at the time 'I had reached my destination' there was no way to actually get into the shopping area. There was no slip-way exit on I4 at that point.
Some berk had loaded up an incorrect location on TomTom for the Belz shops. :(

Anyhow, we had a long (read 25 mile !!!) drive to try to get us back to where we needed to be. Damn those long long stretches of motorway with now exits on them!

At one time we were going through a very leafy suburb of Orlando, Windermere. You can see here just how far out of our way we went to get to a place which was at the top of International Drive! One main issue was that at one point, I got onto a road that TomTom had no knowledge about (it was another 60MPH road) so every few seconds I was getting told to 'turn around when possible' not very easy on a motorway!
Needless to say, I've changed the POI to the correct location!

Found that there is a Starbucks on the hotel complex. It stays open until 10pm. That'll be helpful of an evening when we can't be bothered to make any coffee in the room (not that it tastes too good either!)

Topless !

In an attempt to not waste too much petrol on the car's air conditioner, we decided to go topless and put the roof down!



Once down it was reasonably cooling. However, with the sun very strong, it's lucky we didn't sunburn at all.

Sea World

Spend the majority of the day at Sea World. Very hot weather, clear skies. Not yet burnt though (thankfully).
Lots of dolphin feeding, walking, Killer Whale watching, walking, gift show browsing and, did I mention, walking. Linda's step counter measured over 17,000 by the end of the day!

Linda and I also had a go on the Escape From Atlantis !! Neither of us got wet. I then went again on my own and sat in the front seat.


Needless to say I didn't get off scott free this time...


Still the weather ensured I didn't stay wet for very long.

Linda bought some fish to feed the dolphins with. She gave most of it to the dolphins, all except one which was whipped from her fingers by a speedy heron laying in wait nearby (in fact there were loads of them about).

We left around 14:30 just as it was getting really hot.

GIT !

The previous occupant of the room left the alarm clock set for 04:15. Git.

Having gone to bed so late, to try to get onto US time asap, I was not amused!!

Still, gave us time to prepare for today.

Forecast is warm / slightly cloudy. Interestingly no rain though - we are in a prolonged dry spell at the moment and there's nothing anticipated for quite a while. Apparently it's been going on for a while now and is even on the news. Can't complain! ;)

Photo album

Now set up here.

It's public for the moment :)

Worth the wait!

This is what we ended up with though - it's a Ford Mustang convertible. Very low to the ground, especially after our Dodge SUV last time around. It was a real struggle to get the cases in. One had to go on the back seat with another bag whilst the boot was almost completely filled with the second suitcase!

OK, so it did take us 5 minutes to spot the button to take back the roof, but once we had it down, it was an enjoyable ride!
Looking forward to driving it more soon.

Waiting for the car

Just as we arrived at the car rental place, two other people had just ordered convertibles, so we had to wait quite a while for new ones to be made available (i.e. cleaned!).
Note, Linda wasn't always this happy looking, especially when the wait grew longer and longer...

Linda's been shopping already!

Waiting in the Swissair Lounge for our call.

We didn't manage to get the luggage down to two cases :(
Very early pickup by the Gatwick Flyer. 04:40!!

M25 busy, yet again.

Virgin Check-in queues at Gatwick were very long as usual (I guess about 200 people lined up to check-in). However, we were through in under 5 minutes thanks to the on-line check-in and DIY boarding passes. Definitely a time saver as all that happened was they looked at the passports, weighed the bags then stuck the labels on them. But best of all we had to queue at a separate 'bag-drop only' queue and there were only 4 people in front of us. :)

Waiting now in the Servisair lounge. Linda is nowhere to be seen, she's toddled off to the duty free already! :( :(