steve_rob
Mine? Mine? Mine? Mine?
- Joined
- May 23, 2002
- Messages
- 1,461
# Day 3 - 5th October (Quicker than anticipated) #
Islands of Adventure - this was without doubt my favourite park on our previous trip, but this time I was left a little disappointed. Because of Halloween Horror Nights being on, half the park's attractions seemed to be closed during the day so they could set up for the "scare zones". They were using Popeye's queuing area, the Jurassic Park Discovery Centre, the area where Sinbad normally is and possibly some others I can't remember. All of which meant we got the park done incredibly quickly.
The ticket machines at the gate were down so guests were having their ticket numbers written down as they went in, and people were therefore only trickling into the parks in ones and twos instead of the usual rush. That meant those in first (i.e. us!) got to ride Hulk front-row twice without a queue. Hurrah! Easily the best coaster in the world for me. No arguments.
And then of course Spiderman which is also a superb ride. Then, although no Popeye's Bilge-Rat Barges, it's still time to don the rain gear for Dudley Do-Right's (in the superb FREE locker system that mysteriously only Universal do, despite being the cleverest and fairest thing out there) and JP River Adventure as a soaking is normally in order on at least one of them. But at least I'd didn't lose my hat like last time!
Lunch was at Burger Digs for a surprisingly decent burger (plus fixins bar) overlooking the rest of the park from the terrace there before heading to Duelling Dragons and the first ride of the day where there was actually a queue. Now this annoyed me - okay so the park was not busy, so I can excuse them only running one train at a time, but if you're going to do that, then at least fill it. This is one big difference between Disney and Universal/SeaWorld/Busch I noticed throughout the holiday. If only two or three people get on a 'seats four in a row' ride at Disney, the staff there will ALWAYS attempt to fill those extra seats in order to reduce the wait time for everyone else. But the other parks are happy to let a 32 seat ride go out with an average of 26 people on it (yes, I was that bored, I counted!)
Anyway, rant over. By the way, I think Ice is the better ride of the two, but Fire gives the best view of the flypasts and near-miss crossovers. By now the park was really getting sweltering hot (even though the sun was in and out all day) so we were relieved to be able to do Posidens Fury just for the shade and air-con. And that was pretty much it (only did Cat in the Hat at Suess Landing) - we were ready to leave the park barring any last minute re-rides by 2pm. While we could have hopped to Universal Studios with our Flex Tickets, we wanted to leave that for another day and do the CityWalk shops instead and grab an early dinner at Hard Rock.
# Day 4 - 6th October (Rest day? What rest day?) #
Well this was MEANT to be a rest day, but we ended up charging up and down I-Drive doing early shopping instead, mainly because we were fairly well rested after two early finishes to the parks we'd done so far.
Interesting to note that shops are starting to close at the Belz due to the increased competiton from the Premium Outlets at the other end. How long before the Belz does a Mercado and is a shell of it's former self I wonder?
Mall of Millenia is incredibly pretty, but despite having the worlds greatest shopper for a fiancee, the credit card stayed in her handbag as she thought it was all a bit too posh for her - "too many designer places with no plus sizes". The Florida Mall is still her No.1.
We then finished the day with a nice relaxing round of miniature golf. Or we would have done, but we're a bit competitive round here and having been on the end of an utter thrashing / unlucky loss (depends on who you ask) last time, we decided to hold a tournament to decide once and for all who the best really was. You may think us sad, but this is serious stuff to us. We even have a trophy! So, the Steve Honeyball cup (named after our favourite golfer - which is a bit of an in-joke between us) started in earnest at Disney's Winter Summerland which neither of us had played before. It was a well themed course, but a tad easy for us; as long as you hit it roughly towards the hole, most times it will roll in thanks to some very generous slopes. But if you've got kids, it would probably be an ideal course to start them on.
Unfortunately for me, it looked like someone had been getting in some secret practice as on the Snow Course, I was constantly having to come back from behind and eventually scraped a tie, while on the Sand Course, there was only ever going to be one winner as I fluffed a series of easy putts to give Erika a two hole win on the 18th. She obviously took every opportunity to gloat on the way back to the hotel with her 1 1/2 pts vs 1/2 pt lead (and only needing 2 1/2 pts to retain the cup as defending champion), but I knew it wasn't all over until the fat lady sang (and other such cliches, Brian).
Islands of Adventure - this was without doubt my favourite park on our previous trip, but this time I was left a little disappointed. Because of Halloween Horror Nights being on, half the park's attractions seemed to be closed during the day so they could set up for the "scare zones". They were using Popeye's queuing area, the Jurassic Park Discovery Centre, the area where Sinbad normally is and possibly some others I can't remember. All of which meant we got the park done incredibly quickly.
The ticket machines at the gate were down so guests were having their ticket numbers written down as they went in, and people were therefore only trickling into the parks in ones and twos instead of the usual rush. That meant those in first (i.e. us!) got to ride Hulk front-row twice without a queue. Hurrah! Easily the best coaster in the world for me. No arguments.
And then of course Spiderman which is also a superb ride. Then, although no Popeye's Bilge-Rat Barges, it's still time to don the rain gear for Dudley Do-Right's (in the superb FREE locker system that mysteriously only Universal do, despite being the cleverest and fairest thing out there) and JP River Adventure as a soaking is normally in order on at least one of them. But at least I'd didn't lose my hat like last time!
Lunch was at Burger Digs for a surprisingly decent burger (plus fixins bar) overlooking the rest of the park from the terrace there before heading to Duelling Dragons and the first ride of the day where there was actually a queue. Now this annoyed me - okay so the park was not busy, so I can excuse them only running one train at a time, but if you're going to do that, then at least fill it. This is one big difference between Disney and Universal/SeaWorld/Busch I noticed throughout the holiday. If only two or three people get on a 'seats four in a row' ride at Disney, the staff there will ALWAYS attempt to fill those extra seats in order to reduce the wait time for everyone else. But the other parks are happy to let a 32 seat ride go out with an average of 26 people on it (yes, I was that bored, I counted!)
Anyway, rant over. By the way, I think Ice is the better ride of the two, but Fire gives the best view of the flypasts and near-miss crossovers. By now the park was really getting sweltering hot (even though the sun was in and out all day) so we were relieved to be able to do Posidens Fury just for the shade and air-con. And that was pretty much it (only did Cat in the Hat at Suess Landing) - we were ready to leave the park barring any last minute re-rides by 2pm. While we could have hopped to Universal Studios with our Flex Tickets, we wanted to leave that for another day and do the CityWalk shops instead and grab an early dinner at Hard Rock.
# Day 4 - 6th October (Rest day? What rest day?) #
Well this was MEANT to be a rest day, but we ended up charging up and down I-Drive doing early shopping instead, mainly because we were fairly well rested after two early finishes to the parks we'd done so far.
Interesting to note that shops are starting to close at the Belz due to the increased competiton from the Premium Outlets at the other end. How long before the Belz does a Mercado and is a shell of it's former self I wonder?
Mall of Millenia is incredibly pretty, but despite having the worlds greatest shopper for a fiancee, the credit card stayed in her handbag as she thought it was all a bit too posh for her - "too many designer places with no plus sizes". The Florida Mall is still her No.1.
We then finished the day with a nice relaxing round of miniature golf. Or we would have done, but we're a bit competitive round here and having been on the end of an utter thrashing / unlucky loss (depends on who you ask) last time, we decided to hold a tournament to decide once and for all who the best really was. You may think us sad, but this is serious stuff to us. We even have a trophy! So, the Steve Honeyball cup (named after our favourite golfer - which is a bit of an in-joke between us) started in earnest at Disney's Winter Summerland which neither of us had played before. It was a well themed course, but a tad easy for us; as long as you hit it roughly towards the hole, most times it will roll in thanks to some very generous slopes. But if you've got kids, it would probably be an ideal course to start them on.
Unfortunately for me, it looked like someone had been getting in some secret practice as on the Snow Course, I was constantly having to come back from behind and eventually scraped a tie, while on the Sand Course, there was only ever going to be one winner as I fluffed a series of easy putts to give Erika a two hole win on the 18th. She obviously took every opportunity to gloat on the way back to the hotel with her 1 1/2 pts vs 1/2 pt lead (and only needing 2 1/2 pts to retain the cup as defending champion), but I knew it wasn't all over until the fat lady sang (and other such cliches, Brian).
!
