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.