Florida: day 6

Giant creepy crawly.

Got up real late this morning. Ha, mum and dad had to get up early to go on their nature walk. Lazed around all morning doing pretty much nothing until about 1:30pm when we went to Joe’s Crab Shack. The food was great and the waiter was really funny. After we went to downtown Disney, where we looked around the shops. Here’s what happened on the nature walk . . .

Twins Shirley and Sheila escorted us for a couple of hours potter around the swamps next to the resort. Saw some huge spiders, an owl, alligator, lots of birds, plus the tracks of assorted mammals. Our party consisted of 8 Brits and 5 Yanks. An early start (07:15 rendezvous at the other side of the resort) but worth it. Mildly nibbled by some critters, but think that we both saw a bobcat – certainly a large cat like mammal – running across the road. The alligator was rather shy for us, but it looks like the construction workers building a new resort take turns to feed it, so it may not be around much longer (they ship them out when they reach 4ft long, and shoot the ones that get too used to human company). It’s a felony to feed them, whatever that means . . .

Florida: day 5

Snorkelling lessons.

Lazy morning. Jess’ first snorkelling lesson. Hottest day so far – car thermometer said 102 when we got in after lunch.

Afternoon and evening we returned to Universal – stayed for the fireworks at 9:50 and Jess slept on the way home.

Early start tomorrow for two of us – off on the wildlife guided tour thing of the Orange Lake Resort. Hope to see our first alligator. Expect Jess to still be asleep when we get back!

Florida: day 4

Celebration, Florida.

Back to see Dr Bryon Moore for more bone cracking this morning, then to Celebration – the town that Disney built in 1994. It’s designed to be the archetypal American town and I’d have to say that it is a damn sight more like a town than anything we’ve seen in Florida so far. Everywhere just seems to be an endless strip of hotels, gift shops, all-you-can-eat buffets, grilles, and malls. Nowhere round here seems to have a town centre (except Celebration). Celebration, rather like The Truman Show, seems like a too perfect place to live. There were loads of cars parked but no people around (except for a few die hard Buccaneers fans – the team were staying at the Celebration Hotel). There’s a nice lake in the middle of town (the village pond?) Here we saw loads of small lizards, a snowy egret and some snapping turtles to add to the wildlife tally.

Later, Jess and Ian swam – no thunderstorm warnings today (yesterday’s was huge, so perhaps the sky dried up). Ian still a bit creaky.

Stunned by the level of waste everywhere. No recycling facilities that we can see. Huge portions at restaurants means loads binned, and/or husky figures (The Gap’s nice way of describing the larger frame), driving everywhere. Basically, they’ve taken a near-tropical area and turned it entirely into something unreal. Hey, mustn’t complain too much – we need the AC too!

Florida: day 3

Not where Ian did his back in.

An eventful day to say the least. Ian managed to cripple himself getting out of bed. Agony and an inability to do anything (what’s new 😀) – standing, sitting, lying down, all eaqually painful. So, emergency chiropractor to the rescue! After six phone calls (all the chiropractors were “on vacation”) we found one 45 minutes away in a place we do not know and that is not on our map . . . However, we made it just in time for the appointment to a rather dingy looking clinic in Winter Park.

Over to himself for a blow by blow (literally) account of what happened next . . .

Arm crunching, neck popping, electric shocking. Seems to have done the trick. Jimmy Neutron is getting the blame for all this pain (see earlier post), but I’m not suing  (unless I can’t claim this on the insurance). Back for more manipulation tomorrow.

Talking of bone crunching, we decided to eat at Angel’s all you can eat lobster and crab feast. You were only allowed to one lobster per visit to the buffet bar – this was to give the lard asses who ate their weight in crustaceans a little exercise. The food was ok but the experience was rather obscene- the wastage would have fed a small nation. Oh well – been there done that!

Florida: day 2

It just had to be done.

Similar start to yesterday, with the lovely job of turning down the offer of a free buffet breakfast AND $30 cash AND a book of vouchers worth $1400 AND a chance to win a free trip to Hawaii for a week. All this in return for a hour (ho ho) of our time for a timeshare sales presentation. Patty O’Neil was so disappointed that we weren’t interested.

Off to Universal Studios . . . Dramamine at the ready. Over to our youngest writer (12) . . .

Had a great time at Universal Studios. We went on Shrek 4D. It was great because you really felt like you were there and it made you imagine that the water and air were totally different things. This was mum’s favourite. The horror make-up show which showed you all sorts of special effects. The Terminator 3D was realy good. There was 3D film as well as acting. This was one of dad’s favourites. Earthquake was interesting znd slightly scary. At first they told you facts about special effects with weather then you got into a train and experienced what it would be like to be in an earthquake. Jaws was cool. You get into a boat and a big plastic shark banged into the boat a lot. Our boat was full of screaming people. Beetlejuice was a show with singing monsters. Mum and dad thought this was crap but I thought it was ok. Twister was very good.  You saw and felt what a tornado was like. Jimmy Nutron’s Nicktoons Blast was one of those rides where you get thrown about in your seats. This was dad’s other favourite. ET was strange. You sat in seats which travelled around the building with models of characters from the film. All in all we had a great day. My favourite rides were Earthquake and Twister.

Florida: 1st morning

Orange Lake resort

Up at 8ish. Breakfast of coffee, bagel and cream cheese outside on our bedroom patio very few people around. Within 5 minutes we were visited by a butterfly the size of a large bat, dragonflies, assorted birds and some insects we’d never seen before. Note to self – buy a wildlife book and go on the resort’s wildlife tour (a 7:30 start!) Supermarket shopping next. Lunch at 3 at The Black Angus. Two of us head for the pool (guess which two?) only to be ordered out after 5 minutes – “storm-a-comin”.