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Florida 2014: Day 26, Homecoming. COMPLETED

Jordanovichy

Credit Whore 2016
I wasn't going to write this until I got home but I'm writing a diary thing anyway to help me with this when I get home so I might as well start now. (Plus I need LOG points ;) )

Back in February 2013 ATTACKHAMMER's dad asked if I wanted to go on their biannual holiday to Florida and experience Walt Disney World and the surrounding parks. Naturally I said yes. The following 518 days consisted of me spamming my Twitter and Facebook accounts with countdowns to Thursday 17th July 2014. Yes, I annoyed people, especially those CFers lucky enough to be my friend/follower but it was worth it. So here it goes...

Thursday 17th July: Day 0, The Journey

I have never been out of Europe before, let alone gone on a 9 hour flight before so in a way this was quite a big deal for me but I was so looking forward to it. As my dad is a taxi driver he arranged for an eight seater taxi to take me and the Maycocks down to Gatwick so at 4:30am the taxi arrived at mine, we then went off to pick the Maycocks up. It was very early so there was no traffic, once at Gatwick we sailed through check in, bag drop and security meaning we had quite a bit of time to kill before our 11:15 flight. We went to Frankie and Bennies and had a full english

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I also took a pre-flight selfie

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We then went for a look round the duty frees and chilled out. We went for a wander to find our Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747

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I believe our plane was a couple behind this but they're all much of a muchness

We boarded on time but there was a little faff as someone had to be taken off the plane as s/he was taken ill. Not long after take off we were treated to food. I had chilli con carne. It was so tasty.

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I had Dan's salad as it's healthy and he don't like that **** :lol:

The inflight entertainment was so fab. You could play head to head against other fliers on the plane, I played chess with Dan but we drew

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There was also Who Wants to be a Millionaire, my personal best was $64,000. The questions were generally impossible. Whilst on the plane I read about the second Malaysian Airline to crash which was interesting to read whilst on a plane

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Getting there!

The air hostess bought round fab FABs. They were so fab. Have a selfie:

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Dinner was served, a weird cheese and tomato sandwich with 'plane crisps'. The sandwich was pretty mank as the picture shows

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As we got to the Floridian coast I saw the VAB at Kennedy Space Centre

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As we started to descend through the Floridian afternoon storms some turbulence happened, which at one point caused the plane to lurch forward and several people (including myself) screamed. That was not fun. Not long after we had landed.

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ORLANDO

There was some rain as we were landing but meh. As I'm not a relation to the Maycock's I had to go through American immigration as a separate party, this was a bit of a faff as I've never had to go through immigration alone in an EU country let alone the notoriously strict American Immigration. Mr. Stephen (Dan's dad, this is what I shall be calling him from now on) was next to me but as he had 4 people to sort out he took longer.

We grabbed our bags and made it through the terminal. Mr. Stephen and Angela (Dan's mum) went off to sort out the hire care, a GMC Yukon. It was so huge. As we stepped out of the nice cool air conditioned airport the heat hits you like a brick wall, it isn't a great experience. I took a rather sweaty selfie once we were in the car and ready to find our villa.

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Over the next hour or so we got to our villa and unpacked. We went to Chillies for tea

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I had a pretty impressive four burger meal, when in Rome!

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I couldn't manage it sadly. We went to Publixs, the American version of Tesco before finally getting back to the villa and hitting the sack. It was gone 11:30pm in America by the time we got to bed, which was 4:30 in the UK meaning we'd been up for around 25 hours, not great fun.

I know this first part hasn't been the most exciting but when I get the chance day one will be up and we went to Seaworld Orlando, home to Manta, one of my most anticipated coasters of the trip. Thanks for reading.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

I was waiting for this to pop up good already but will it beat Ian and Gavin trip reports.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Haha no way, they've had too much practice. If my report is half as good as their's I'll be happy (cue brown nosing).
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

I love the travel part of reports! I always have this weird yet great feeling every time I find myself in Orlando. Can't wait for the next part!
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

I had just typed up the whole of day one but then CF logged me out as I tried to submit and lost the whole **** thing so you'll have to wait longer.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Publix is pretty much a strictly Florida thing. Tesco would be more equivalent to something like Target here in the US. A lot of grocers are localized to one state or region in the country. In Florida, there's Publix, in Illinois, there's Jewel, etc.

Looking forward to the actual park part of your report. Judging by the shifting in your top ten I'm assuming you enjoyed yourself.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Jordan, are you coming to Siesta Key at all? If so give me a holler.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Jordanovichy said:
I had just typed up the whole of day one but then CF logged me out as I tried to submit and lost the whole **** thing so you'll have to wait longer.
Ahh that happens to me sometimes. Kinda funny to see it happen to someone else for once. :--D

This looks like it'll be a fun report though. I love how your Top Ten has gone a bit all over the place over the past few days with all the constant changes. :)
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Haha, I've been waiting for this to appear. Us old misers forget the excitement of the first time you do a big trip/long haul flight and it's nice to recapture that (I'm suddenly remembering the first time Rach went on a plane with CF, lol). Glad you had fun, and looking forward to the park trip reports.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

I've not had them - so what is so special about 'plane crisps'?
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

BBH said:
Publix is pretty much a strictly Florida thing. Tesco would be more equivalent to something like Target here in the US. A lot of grocers are localized to one state or region in the country. In Florida, there's Publix, in Illinois, there's Jewel, etc.

Looking forward to the actual park part of your report. Judging by the shifting in your top ten I'm assuming you enjoyed yourself.

http://store.publix.com/publix/

Not just Florida.. but mostly. :p

And stop breaking **** and post the next day!! :D
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Looking forward to reading your day 1! (and ofc the rest of the trip)! Sorry to hear about your Day 1 technical difficulties on the forum but highlight all your report and copy just in case it messes up before submitting dude!!!

Hope you had a FAB time!
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Right, let's try this again...

Friday 18th July: Day One, Seaworld Orlando
As I was still on English time I woke up at 5:30 despite the incredibly long day yesterday. Everyone else woke early too, I tried to get back to sleep when the peace and tranquility outside was disturbed when the car alarm sounded at some arse hour of the morning. The satnav holder had fallen off the windscreen and had set off the overly sensitive alarm, plus my bedroom is at the front of the villa :(

As we were up early we went for an early morning swim as the sun rose which was quite nice but enough of that crap, there was a theme park to visit! Seaworld Orlando!

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The Seaworld company are currently celebrating their 50th year anniversary

Once inside we headed straight over to the new-last-year Antarctica, Empire of the Penguin.

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The new area has been themed really well and looks really nice. Being in such heat in those icy conditions was interesting :p Have a few photos

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The next bit contains spoilers so be aware:

You start off with a small side story about a new-born penguin called Puk but a storm is coming in Antarctica. The ride is the story of how he survives the harsh Antarctic winter. You have to choose whether you want your car to be 'mild' or 'wild', we chose wild of course, how this affects the ride experience I don't know but I assume there's less bouncing around. You enter a two row carriage...

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This glides, spins and wobbles through the cool air. The lighting in here really adds to the effect.

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I had to get a selfie with Dan

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There's various short films to watch as Puk grows and survives the winter. At the end of the ride you enter a penguin enclosure which is **** freezing, well its at 0C (32F), quite a contrast to the 34C (93F) outside. There's fake snow everywhere and it is so cool...literally, huehuehue. You can see the penguins swim and glide through the water, it was great.

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I just had to get a selfie with a penguin or two...

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Once done we headed over to Journey to Atlantis, my first water coaster!

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The queuing area is themed to all things fisherman with boats and netting and buoys.

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It was walk on, which, given the heat, I found quite surprising. You get in a boat...

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[i]Whether ours was green or not I couldn't tell you[/i]

And travel around several rooms with various things happening, I won't say partly because I don't want to spoil the surprises but mainly because I can't remember and I can't be arsed to find a POV. You begin climbing and go down a drop which is very steep. I remember getting quite wet. You then climb again before a smaller drop which leads straight into a curve which the boat bumped into hard, ugh pain </3. We dropped again a little later on and to my surprise it was on actual coaster track, I found this quite cool even if it was a little rough.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I think it could be a little smoother but it is a genuine great ride.

As it was next door we went to Kraken next, my first B&M floor less coaster.

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At this moment I wasn't feeling particularly well. I'd recently been ill and still getting over it so felt a little bloated so I didn't want my harness on too tight and the constant banging on my stomach was really painful which meant I didn't have as good-a ride on Kraken as I was perhaps hoping for/expecting. The ride was basically walk on but we waited a little while for front. I gooned out slightly.

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The first drop though is INCREDIBLE. Like, seriously amazing. It was the best single experience of the day, the force it pulls, gahhh. Then comes inversion after inversion after inversion. I'd love to give you a slightly more detailed review of this ride but like I said, I really wasn't feeling well and was focussing more on not throwing up than I was on the ride. I don't remember it to be particularly forceful but it was smooth and comfortable, I'm going to ride this again later in the trip so I promise to post more detailed thoughts then.

We then headed over to the Shamu Stadium for the Shamu Show!

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On the way we bought a hotdog and drink, my first authentic American hotdog and not some **** sausage you get in Britain that's stored in some preservative, this was the real McCoy.

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The show was really good, seeing those huge killer whales interact with the performers and audience was amazing, they also made great use of the television screens at the back like focussing on people getting soaked which was funny. I must be honest though, I was expecting more. I don't know what, I suppose it was better when the performers could get in the water with them but times change. Now for the sake of Darren and his **** bank I shall post some photos of the Shamu show.

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Once done we headed over to Shamu Express

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Nothing to say really, was quite smooth, +1. The train was pretty fab though.

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We then headed to the Sea Lion and Otter Stadium

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On the way I had my first experience with Dipping Dots. They are so amazing. They're like balls of ice cream which melt instantly when they hit the warmth of your mouth, and they taste sooooo good!

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Whilst waiting for the Sea Lion and Otter Stadium to open I began to notice how beautiful and picturesque the park is.

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I could also get some decent shots of Kraken

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So how was the show then? It was AMAZING. So clever, so funny, so witty. I loved it, how they can get those animals to do those things I'm not quite sure. The otter stole a map, the sea lion would clap and turn and run and jump, it was so funny.

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The set looked pretty cool too

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After perhaps some faff came Manta, the last cred of the day and, given my love affair with Air, my most anticipated

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It was down when we arrived (great) but this did mean the queue had emptied somewhat so when it did re-open there was very little queue.

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We waited for front because why wouldn't you? The first drop is spectacular and the pretzel loop is SOOO **** forceful and intense it's unreal. The whole ride, working in the immense heat with the spectacular landscape. It is so much more forceful than Air which meant it overtook it as my new number one. The whole ride offers surprise after surprise and I genuinely found it so fantastic. I had to buy a goon hat with Manta, here's me modelling it.

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We headed over to Sky Tower next

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Most of the queue was out in the hot sun which was just a pain but I got a chance to photograph some of the cool fountains in the big central lake

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So the Sky Tower is a 300ft Observation Tower which offers great views of Seaworld and Orlando in general. I was annoyed with the awful black film over the windows. it obscured the view and made my photos awful. Proof:

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That's supposed to be Manta

We then walked through some shark tanks and I got some pictures of fish.

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I do like this sort of thing and it was a nice thing to do in the cool air conditioning. The last thing we rode was a pretty decent helicopter simulator called Wild Arctic. The simulator was good but it was rough and the storyline was rather predictable with you falling in to crevices and fuel running out etc...the sort of stuff you'd expect.

By now we were hot and bothered so decided to head off to Downtown Disney to get our Magicbands sorted out, plus we had a reservation at Planet Hollywood.

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On the way out of Seaworld I saw a genuine tumbleweed, it was so cool!

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We soon got the magic bands sorted out, I'll explain more about them later and went for a little shop round the stores there. By now the heat was almost too much to bear so we went to Planet Hollywood to see if they'd let us in early

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Thankfully they did and we went to the top floor, sic-fi themed!

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Grabbed a selfie with Dan

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I went slightly healthier than I realised I could go and had fajitas, they were so tasty

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And that's pretty much it for day one at Seaworld. After tea we went back to the villa and watched TV and ate crisps. #HighLife. On day 2 we went to Busch Gardens so I hope to get that report up soon. Thank you for reading :)
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Great pics so far. It sounds like you are going to SW again. If you are and want some American company feel free to PM. I have met a few CFers at SW this year.
 
Florida 2014: Day 0, The Journey

Also enjoying the report.

Loved the part where you felt sick and bloated but stopped for a hot dog :)

Sea World is a lovely park to look at in certain areas. That new are looks fantastic the floor looks brilliant.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 1, Seaworld Orlando

Enjoying your report, love seeing people at new parks and initial reactions.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 1, Seaworld Orlando

I haven't been to Sea World in ages. Glad it still looks great! Planet Hollywood was a grease food central the last time I went. The food is amazing there though! Keep 'em coming.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 1, Seaworld Orlando

The fajitas at Planet Hollywood are so good! <3

Great report and some fantastic pictures. Going to Florida for the first time is so exciting, this report is making me feel nostalgic.
 
Re: Florida 2014: Day 1, Seaworld Orlando

Seaworld looks beautiful. I wish I could teleport.
 
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