4) Life Is A Breeze
I was eating a cinnamon bun in Dennys when it crossed my mind how similar some food names are to holiday destinations. The island of Cinnamon sounds nice. Blancmange could easily be a seaside town in the South of France. How about a long weekend in Paprika or Tikkamasala. Or a two centre holiday in Sausage and Beans. Well maybe not the last one.
Key west at Seaworld
Life is a breeze
There's a dolphin swimmin'up to me
These are the words of a song on the Sea World radio station a few years ago. I couldn't find the radio station this time but I did find Sea World at the very first attempt. They let us in early but stopped us at a rope until bang on 9.00.
Sea World does a lot of things really well, but one thing it doesn't do well is characters. Disney characters have tradition and everyone has seen them in the movies and the TV shows. But a cuddly shark. What's that all about. Come on. And Shamu. Once you've seen the real killer whales the character costume looks so small. I suppose a 30 foot tall costume could be dangerous in a crowd. And only those people with the really fancy cameras would be able to get a decent shot of Cuddly Shamu and the family. Plus... oh never mind. Maybe Sea World should do away with the merchandising opportunities, oops, sorry, characters.
We rode Atlantis but Connor made me go on again because a square millimetre of one of my sleeves was still dry. Once again no queue and we had the whole car to ourselves. I didn't remember this ride from'97 my last visit, nor would I remember Kraken. Maybe someone knows if they were open then?
We went to the first dolpin show, then straight off to get seated for Clyde and Seamore before the mime started. That guy is really funny.I caught the show again later in the week mainly just to see the mime. We went straight to Shamu afterwards so we'd done the three biggest shows before lunch. You have to dash between them but it makes the rest of the day easier. After Shamu we went for sandwiches in the deli. Turkey and Beef. The meats had been cut with a knife rather than a bacon slicer and the beef was cooked perfectly for me if a little rare for the kids. The deli also serves my favourite kind of beer - the free kind. After slowly walking through the shark and penguins exhibits the two boys and I headed for Kraken. The attendant wouldn't let Connor ride, he was about an inch too short. Daniel and I went on twice. Great coaster. We still haven't come across any queues/lines yet. Even although it was still only early we had been in the park five and a half hours and it was particularly hot that day so Rachel the youngest was getting a bit fractious. We got in the car and headed for the digs.
We called into Walmart for a few supplies on the way back. If ever I go to Orlando on a tight budget I would consider staying in Walmart. No. Really. Think about it. It's open 24/7. Food and drink are obviously plentiful, there's even a MacDonalds in there. There are nice clean restrooms for ones daily ablutions. If you fancy a movie just wander down to the TV/electrical section, and best of all in the camping section there's a display of tents already erected for sleeping. Anyhow Barbara pushed off with the trolley and left me to get some cooked meats. I asked the nice lady on the Deli counter for some ham. Angie, the nice lady, asked me what type of ham. Tip # 37: DON'T EVER say 'what types have you got' in answer to any question from anyone connected to the food industry. I stopped her after about 20 types and asked her which type she would buy. Well it turned out that her recommendation was the one cooked in a Wyoming Stone Oven over coconut shell charcoal on a Friday and matured for four days under beaver pelts soaked in juniper berry butter. Sounded good to me, I asked for a pound. To save time, I asked her for a pound of the type of turkey she would buy. After that I asked her over to the villa for a sandwich, after all we had all her favourite foods. I caught up with Babs in the fruit section. At home we normally buy lots of fresh fruit on Fridays so it's nice and soft when the binmen/garbage collectors come the following Thursday. At the villa the girls headed for the pool but as us males are made of sterner stuff we climbed back inside the Kia and headed off to Universal studios.
The first time I was in Orlando Universal was under constuction and City Walk and IoA had not been dreamt up. I was impressed. Universal Studios-_'Ride The Movies'. Maybe you can ride the movies but you have to walk to the gate. It's a long way, but they do have those moving pavements/sidewalks. Even so it's a minimum 10 minutes car to gate. We went through the turnstile at the main gate and had to sign our names as well as we had Flex Tickets. Long may the 4 or 5 park flex ticket continue, but I'm afraid they could cancel it as it seems to me to be wide open to abuse. Theoretically a pair of tickets could be used by a couple the first week and passed to another couple to use the second week. All that you would need to do is to make an easy-to-copy, illegible signature when the ticket is first activated. It would be a real shame if it did get cancelled because it's great value. The 4-park ones cost us $165 each thats only 12 bucks a day, less for under tens. We always feel when doing a 'Disney Day' on a hopper you really have to have a long day in the park because a quarter or a fifth of your ticket is being cancelled. For example I would not go to Epcot for dinner and illuminations thus using a chunk of my ticket unless the rest of that day had been spent in a Disney park but we would use our flex tickets for half a day or less in a Universal/Busch park. Does that make sense to anyone else? Anyway...
As we passed T2 Daniel noticed that the wait was only 4 minutes so in we went.There was hardly anyone waiting in the holding area before the pre show. This area started to fill behind us and we were let into the pre-show area which I remembered as being another minimum 10 minutes. I asked Daniel about the wait time he saw posted. He confirmed it was 4 minutes. "Yep four dash oh oh" he said. It had ofcourse stated next show 4 o'clock so we ended up waiting almost half an hour. Still, the park wasn't that crowded and we had plenty of time to go on BTTF twice and MIB 4 times. The boys were well impressed with T2 and thought the actor was really Arnie. I was impressed with MIB and laughed at the two alien agents having a coffee break in the staff room in the holding area. When we came off it for the last time a couple of agents were rounding up suspected alien/bugs and Connor got 'arrested' On our way out of the park we went to try to ride the Yogi Bear/Dick Dastardly simulator at The Hanna-Barbera show but we were a bit late.
When we got back to Montego Bay we were instructed to get ready for dinner as the girls were starving. We did as we were told and went to the Ponderosa. Another buffet place. It was ok not great.Cheap though. The boys by now had the hang of buffets, not so the woman ahead of me in the queue for desserts. She piled cake after cake on the plate and then smothered it all with ice cream. Once again we had an early night. This type of holiday is very tiring. We felt as though we would need a holiday to recover. Maybe a week in Asparagus Mornay.
To be continued...
I was eating a cinnamon bun in Dennys when it crossed my mind how similar some food names are to holiday destinations. The island of Cinnamon sounds nice. Blancmange could easily be a seaside town in the South of France. How about a long weekend in Paprika or Tikkamasala. Or a two centre holiday in Sausage and Beans. Well maybe not the last one.
Key west at Seaworld
Life is a breeze
There's a dolphin swimmin'up to me
These are the words of a song on the Sea World radio station a few years ago. I couldn't find the radio station this time but I did find Sea World at the very first attempt. They let us in early but stopped us at a rope until bang on 9.00.
Sea World does a lot of things really well, but one thing it doesn't do well is characters. Disney characters have tradition and everyone has seen them in the movies and the TV shows. But a cuddly shark. What's that all about. Come on. And Shamu. Once you've seen the real killer whales the character costume looks so small. I suppose a 30 foot tall costume could be dangerous in a crowd. And only those people with the really fancy cameras would be able to get a decent shot of Cuddly Shamu and the family. Plus... oh never mind. Maybe Sea World should do away with the merchandising opportunities, oops, sorry, characters.
We rode Atlantis but Connor made me go on again because a square millimetre of one of my sleeves was still dry. Once again no queue and we had the whole car to ourselves. I didn't remember this ride from'97 my last visit, nor would I remember Kraken. Maybe someone knows if they were open then?
We went to the first dolpin show, then straight off to get seated for Clyde and Seamore before the mime started. That guy is really funny.I caught the show again later in the week mainly just to see the mime. We went straight to Shamu afterwards so we'd done the three biggest shows before lunch. You have to dash between them but it makes the rest of the day easier. After Shamu we went for sandwiches in the deli. Turkey and Beef. The meats had been cut with a knife rather than a bacon slicer and the beef was cooked perfectly for me if a little rare for the kids. The deli also serves my favourite kind of beer - the free kind. After slowly walking through the shark and penguins exhibits the two boys and I headed for Kraken. The attendant wouldn't let Connor ride, he was about an inch too short. Daniel and I went on twice. Great coaster. We still haven't come across any queues/lines yet. Even although it was still only early we had been in the park five and a half hours and it was particularly hot that day so Rachel the youngest was getting a bit fractious. We got in the car and headed for the digs.
We called into Walmart for a few supplies on the way back. If ever I go to Orlando on a tight budget I would consider staying in Walmart. No. Really. Think about it. It's open 24/7. Food and drink are obviously plentiful, there's even a MacDonalds in there. There are nice clean restrooms for ones daily ablutions. If you fancy a movie just wander down to the TV/electrical section, and best of all in the camping section there's a display of tents already erected for sleeping. Anyhow Barbara pushed off with the trolley and left me to get some cooked meats. I asked the nice lady on the Deli counter for some ham. Angie, the nice lady, asked me what type of ham. Tip # 37: DON'T EVER say 'what types have you got' in answer to any question from anyone connected to the food industry. I stopped her after about 20 types and asked her which type she would buy. Well it turned out that her recommendation was the one cooked in a Wyoming Stone Oven over coconut shell charcoal on a Friday and matured for four days under beaver pelts soaked in juniper berry butter. Sounded good to me, I asked for a pound. To save time, I asked her for a pound of the type of turkey she would buy. After that I asked her over to the villa for a sandwich, after all we had all her favourite foods. I caught up with Babs in the fruit section. At home we normally buy lots of fresh fruit on Fridays so it's nice and soft when the binmen/garbage collectors come the following Thursday. At the villa the girls headed for the pool but as us males are made of sterner stuff we climbed back inside the Kia and headed off to Universal studios.
The first time I was in Orlando Universal was under constuction and City Walk and IoA had not been dreamt up. I was impressed. Universal Studios-_'Ride The Movies'. Maybe you can ride the movies but you have to walk to the gate. It's a long way, but they do have those moving pavements/sidewalks. Even so it's a minimum 10 minutes car to gate. We went through the turnstile at the main gate and had to sign our names as well as we had Flex Tickets. Long may the 4 or 5 park flex ticket continue, but I'm afraid they could cancel it as it seems to me to be wide open to abuse. Theoretically a pair of tickets could be used by a couple the first week and passed to another couple to use the second week. All that you would need to do is to make an easy-to-copy, illegible signature when the ticket is first activated. It would be a real shame if it did get cancelled because it's great value. The 4-park ones cost us $165 each thats only 12 bucks a day, less for under tens. We always feel when doing a 'Disney Day' on a hopper you really have to have a long day in the park because a quarter or a fifth of your ticket is being cancelled. For example I would not go to Epcot for dinner and illuminations thus using a chunk of my ticket unless the rest of that day had been spent in a Disney park but we would use our flex tickets for half a day or less in a Universal/Busch park. Does that make sense to anyone else? Anyway...
As we passed T2 Daniel noticed that the wait was only 4 minutes so in we went.There was hardly anyone waiting in the holding area before the pre show. This area started to fill behind us and we were let into the pre-show area which I remembered as being another minimum 10 minutes. I asked Daniel about the wait time he saw posted. He confirmed it was 4 minutes. "Yep four dash oh oh" he said. It had ofcourse stated next show 4 o'clock so we ended up waiting almost half an hour. Still, the park wasn't that crowded and we had plenty of time to go on BTTF twice and MIB 4 times. The boys were well impressed with T2 and thought the actor was really Arnie. I was impressed with MIB and laughed at the two alien agents having a coffee break in the staff room in the holding area. When we came off it for the last time a couple of agents were rounding up suspected alien/bugs and Connor got 'arrested' On our way out of the park we went to try to ride the Yogi Bear/Dick Dastardly simulator at The Hanna-Barbera show but we were a bit late.
When we got back to Montego Bay we were instructed to get ready for dinner as the girls were starving. We did as we were told and went to the Ponderosa. Another buffet place. It was ok not great.Cheap though. The boys by now had the hang of buffets, not so the woman ahead of me in the queue for desserts. She piled cake after cake on the plate and then smothered it all with ice cream. Once again we had an early night. This type of holiday is very tiring. We felt as though we would need a holiday to recover. Maybe a week in Asparagus Mornay.
To be continued...
Is that sad, or what
