Ok, not quite Tinkertown, but close. If reading Tinkertown didn’t make you excited… then you’re not from Kenora 🙂
I was sent to Orlando for 3 days of work. Since that only covered Mon-Wed… and Thursday is Canada Day… that meant I could squeeze in a few days vacation in sunny Florida and only burn a single vacation day before coming back!
First thing’s first: if I’m paying for this… it’s gonna be cheap: I’ll stay in a cardboard box to save a few bucks (as long as it has WiFi 🙂 ). Goodbye nice hotel paid for by work… hello $40/night motel! Surprisingly it’s clean, has a full kitchenette, and the staff have been super friendly (and it has a convenience store on the first floor… and is next door to a KFC, wooo!)
With 3 days to play with, I decided on one day of rides, one of getting wet, and one in the dirt (if I can find a dirtbike/ATV place).
Day 1
Turns out my hotel is only about a 15min drive from Islands of Adventure:
The had opened a new Harry Potter ride a short while ago, which apparently had a 4-hour lineup the first couple days. Today it was still 70+ minutes… so I skipped it. Too many people: I would have liked to try something new… but when I can read one of the books while waiting my turn, that’s a bit much.
Lots of other rides to go on: saw the Sinbad show…
…and got soaked on a couple of rides. This one was the worst: between splashing through waves and the water jets aimed at you I stepped off completely drenched…
…which worked out well, since at about 4:15pm the heavens opened up, and because I was already wet I could still walk between rides while other guests ducked for cover.
But then it _really_ started to rain, with some thunder and lightning, and all the coasters had to shut down. But I don’t think Universal made any less money, since they charged $8 for a plastic poncho!
I took in a couple indoor events (3D Spider-Man was cool), but after trying to wait out the rain for an hour I had to go…
…because I got one of the last tickets to the Blue Man Group! Great show! But it was raining hard when I had to walk over there (parts of the park didn’t have good drainage: the sidewalks had 3″ of water on them). And it was still raining lightly when I left. That turned out alright in the end… since I could still re-enter the park with my day pass, and between 8pm and 9pm I managed to knock off the coasters with the long lines I had skipped earlier. The Incredible Hulk coaster had a 45min wait all day, but I rode it twice in 20 minutes!
Then I explored City Walk a bit on the way back to the car: lots of restaurants and clubs open after you’re done with Universal.
Day 2
Lots of water parks to choose from: I decided on Blizzard Beach. But first I needed some watersocks and breakfast. Where to go? There’s a Walmart on the way, with McDonalds inside 🙂
It was only about a 25-minute drive from the hotel, I was there in no time! (lots of cops w/radar on those roads!)
Not too many pictures from today, since I couldn’t really do waterslides or the wave pool with a digital camera in my shorts. But I did grab the camera while having lunch: their big thing is a chairlift to get up to the largest slides.
There was a bit of a drizzle in the morning which kept people away so I got to try the most popular slides several times before lines really started to form. It was a bit couldy all day, but plenty warm, and I was out of there by around 2:30: totally waterlogged. (probably because their lazy river takes 20-30 minutes to make a loop and I went around a few times 🙂 )
Tomorrow I’m trying to see if there’s room for me on an ATV tour in a park North of Orlando. I’m crossing my fingers!