Return Of The Kingdom

As temperatures continued in the high 80's again today, we decided to go back to Magic Kingdom to finish some of the stuff we'd wanted to do.

As we arrived, the crowds were heavy already. OK, it was just after 10am, but hey - gotta have that breakfast!

Previously, we'd done the left side of the park, so today we started off in Tomorrowland and walked around anti-clockwise.

Queue lengths were actually quite short. I'd picked up a fastpath (well, two in fact) for Space Mountain, but TBH, they weren't really needed. The Pooh Bear (!) ride was longer in fact.

Speaking of Pooh Bear, he was out and about today doing the photo thing. Linda needed to say hello of course.










Spurred on by here attempts at Soarin' and Thunder Mountain, Linda then decided to brave... The carousel!

She barely survives!!

Those horses can be vicious at times :)






We also revisited (again) the Pirates Of the Carribean ride. It's been updated slightly to include the Johnny Depp character Jack Sparrow. He pops up in a couple of places!









We left MK around 13:30, popped into Downtown Disney for a short spend(!) then drove back to the hotel.

On the way past Sea World, this building site is announcing the arrival (next year sadly) of a water park called Aquatica. It looks interesting for another time...










In the evening, we went down to TGI Fridays.

Linda tried her first margarita. A little too fruity to go with the meal apparently. But it did look very cool!

Blizzard Beach

After Epcot, we headed to Blizzard beach, another Disney water park.

We've not been to this one before.

In many ways it was similar to Typhoon Lagoon with a Lazy River, tube and mat rides and tall drops.

We stayed there until the park closed! It was very relaxing and enjoyable.

Segway Tour

This morning (early) we arrived at Epcot for a tour around the world showcase area. We were to be shown around on Segway personal transport machines.
These took a bit of getting used to. In fact, we had a hour of training indoors before being allowed to leave the safety of the training area.

Here you can see Linda trying out a slope on her Segway. She admits, she was terrified before she started training. However, patient training from the two guides, gave all if us the confidence to manoeuvre this machine about with reasonable adeptness.








Here is a shot taken by one of the guides. This picture was taken outside the American sector, looking back across to Spaceship Earth.

By this time we were both happily using the Segway.








The tour lasted 2 hours in total. A hour for training, a hour in the park.

We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! A shame it wasn't longer.

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!