{"id":664,"date":"2010-07-02T18:03:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-03T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=664"},"modified":"2022-10-06T08:35:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T12:35:15","slug":"tinkertown-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/tinkertown-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinkertown !!!1!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, not quite Tinkertown<\/a>, but close. If reading Tinkertown didn’t make you excited… then you’re not from Kenora \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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 \ud83d\ude42 ). 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!)<\/p>\n

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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).<\/p>\n

Day 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turns out my hotel is only about a 15min drive from Islands of Adventure<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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Lots of other rides to go on: saw the Sinbad show…<\/p>\n

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…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…<\/p>\n

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…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.<\/p>\n

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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!<\/p>\n

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I took in a couple indoor events (3D Spider-Man<\/a> was cool), but after trying to wait out the rain for an hour I had to go…<\/p>\n

…because I got one of the last tickets to the Blue Man Group<\/a>! 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<\/a> had a 45min wait all day, but I rode it twice in 20 minutes!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Day 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lots of water parks to choose from: I decided on Blizzard Beach<\/a>. But first I needed some watersocks and breakfast. Where to go? There’s a Walmart on the way, with McDonalds inside \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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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!)<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t \t\n \"1_140_florida_800\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t \t\n \"1_160_florida_800\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

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 \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I’m trying to see if there’s room for me on an ATV tour<\/a> in a park North of Orlando. I’m crossing my fingers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, not quite Tinkertown, but close. If reading Tinkertown didn’t make you excited… then you’re not from Kenora \ud83d\ude42 I was sent to Orlando for 3 days of work. Since that only covered Mon-Wed… and Thursday is Canada Day… that Continue reading Tinkertown !!!1!<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-aI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2979,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/2979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}