Orlando trip: Highlights + Lowlights etc

[towerofterrorjunkie]

Hi,
Just returned from a fantastic two week trip to Florida. Here are my categorised highlights and lowlights + a few other observations. Before that though, I do want to say that the Brit's Guide to Orlando book proved absolutely invaluable.

Also, I thoroughly recommend going to Florida this time of the year (Oct/Nov) if you can. We followed the busy day guide in the book, judiciously used the fast passes, arrived early each day and rarely had to wait more than 10 minutes for a ride, most times managing to do the main rides within the first hour of opening.

Ok here goes:

Best Park: A toughie, but I think it jointly goes to Busch Gardens and Disney Animal Kingdom for the all round mixture of rides and wildlife. IoA was also absolutely awesome.

Worst Park: Epcot - disappointed with Epcot. Fairly poor rides, and the 12 country pavillions was just an excuse to sell stuff (the two 360 movies excepted which were great, especially the China one).

Best Ride: Tower Of Terror & Spiderman. Tower of Terror is well named, and Spiderman is a technological marvel, no pun intended. The book was spot on here.

Besk rollercoaster: The Kraken (at SeaWorld)

Best Waterride: The tidal wave at Busch Gardens

Best Nighttime show: Wishes at Magic Kingdom

Best park show: Shamu at Seaworld. Simply awesome. Runner up goes to Indy at MGM, which was very entertaining.

Worst park show: Tarzan Rocks at Animal Kingdom. More like Tarzan Sucks bigtime.

Most hyped rollercoaster: The Hulk - it was okay, and the start was exhilllirating but I thought the rest was pretty average. Most amusing was the net suspended below the rollercoaster with all manner of sunglasses, bracelets etc.

Most disappointing ride: Dr Doom's Fearfall. The book was badly wrong here, there was no moment of terror only much yawning. Contrast with Tower Of Terror which on the face of it is a similar ride, but somehow 10 million times better

Best place 'other than the main places': Gatorland, excellent shows and you get really close up to the crocs and 'gators. Fantastic stuff. The train ride is now $2 though, not $1 as mentioned in the book, a correction for the next edition!

Worst show: Arabian Nights. This show sucked massively. No story, poor food and totally cringeworthy ending that had me running for the exit.

Best show: Wonderworks magic show. Really funny comedy duo and some great tricks, loved it.

Best Food: Golden Corral, an Oasis in the desert of burgers and hotdogs.

 

[danny1649]

Sharing your experience

 

[Ted and Holly]

Cool report!

I do have one thing to comment on. The ONE time I ate at Golden Corral, I had breakfast. I left feeling nauseous and I felt sick for two days. Every time I see the sign (which is a lot), I feel sick.

Perhaps I hit it on a bad day.

Glad you have a good time. Looks like you hit all the good spots.

Where did you stay?

Ted