Florida 2010
Oct. 12th, 2010 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wednesday_whimsyFinally, my holiday post. If the photos are of Animal Kingdom, the Halloween fancy dress party, Harry Potter's Wizarding World or a beautiful cake, they were taken by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ditchwitchbitch. More photos to come whenever my sister gets round to posting them somewhere.
My sister and I were delayed on the train going down to London, so instead of getting to the hotel at 8pm and sleeping until 4am, we got to the hotel at midnight. It was not the easiest thing to get after 4 hours to catch a plane.
We arrived in Orlando that afternoon and collected our car. It was a white Chrysler PT Cruiser which we called Tori.
We made it to Ormond Beach (just north of Daytona) and checked into our hotel. My sister had asked for the room to be upgraded as part of my birthday present, so we had a room with a balcony, directly overlooking the beach. It was a lovely hotel and so quiet since it wasn't peak season. We spent the next day out by the pool, walking on the beach and shopping at a gorgeous deli we found.
On Monday we drove down to Daytona Beach, which was pretty much deserted and everything seemed to be closed. We did go to a cool mini-golf course though, which my sister won by shameless cheating.
Tuesday we drove back down to Orlando and checked into a hotel that amounted to a building site. We had to move rooms one day because of the bugs. All in all, not a good experience. Of course we spent most of that week out of the hotel anyway, so it didn't matter too much.
We went to Downtown Disney for lunch and I introduced my sister to the Rainforest Cafe, followed by some amazing sundaes. Then we went to Epcot and I managed to get myself a Happy Birthday badge. Everyone has to wish you happy birthday when they see you wearing it. It's awesome! We stayed for the fireworks that night, which were beautiful.
On Wednesday we went to Universal Studios, which is nothing like I remembered. It's mostly simulator rides which made us feel ill, though I did enjoy the Jaws ride and the Disaster Movie ride. I was, unfortunately roped into taking part in the "movie" and played the part of "Screaming Woman". My sister found this hilarious. I found it embarrassing, but it was actually a fun experience. After that we went to Islands of Adventure to do a couple of real rides. The Hulk was good and we got ourselves soaked on the river rapids.
Thursday we went to Hollywood Studios and I got to ride The Tower of Terror again. Steph and I had a conversation about how we never scream on rides and I explained that TOT was the only ride that had ever made me scream. She was convinced she wouldn't until the ride actually started. :D We ate at the Boardwalk and walked back to the park for the fireworks show.
Stephanie had been giving me these little butterfly cards every day, telling me what we'd be doing since she planned the whole thing. Friday's card said I'd be getting a surprise sooner than I thought. Thirty minutes later,ditchwitchbitch turned up at the door, giving me the best birthday present I could hope for. ♥
We all went to Animal Kingdom, which I had never been to before. The safari was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the Lion King show was one of the best that we saw.
That night we went to the Old Town and played laser tag in a bouncy house. I'd never played that before, so I was excited to win. Kerry and I went on the go karts too, again something I'd never done before. We had such a fun time.
Saturday was a little strange. Tori got a puncture as we were driving to the Magic Kingdom and we had to wait for someone to come out and change the tire. Once we got inside though, we had a great time and managed to do all the rides before we had to go back to the hotel and change for the Disney Halloween party that night.
My sister was a witch and I had decided to go as Juliet from Psych. Kerry wouldn't tell me who she was going as until she came out of the bathroom dressed as Lassiter. ♥ This is why I love her as much as I do. She's the best. We had a fantastic night. My sister and I did our first ever trick-or-treating, there were fireworks and pineapple floats, someone recognised Kerry and when we got back to the car at midnight, I turned 30.
My 30th birthday was the best birthday I have ever had. True we started it by going to Orlando Airport to change the car for one with four actual tires, but we managed to get everything changed over pretty quickly and got the exact same car. This time we named her Chrissie.
We drove back to Islands of Adventure so we could go to the one place I'd wanted to go all week... all year in fact. Harry's Wizarding World is truly amazing. Everything is so beautifully constructed. It felt like stepping into the actual Hogsmede/Hogwarts, though admittedly it was a lot hotter than Scotland. Every shop was perfect, inside and out.
We had lunch at The Three Broomsticks. My sister and I shared the Shepherds Pie and Fish & Chips between us, and Kerry got the chicken with a huge ear of corn. I had Butterbeer, Kerry had a frozen Butterbeer and Steph had Pumpkin Juice. We all tried each others and I think we all liked our choice best. I was just excited to be eating there.
After that we did the big Harry Potter ride, which was my favourite of the whole trip. The whole experience, from stepping into the castle and seeing the hour glasses with the house points in, to getting my soul sucked out by the Dementors was incredible. I bought myself several presents, mostly Slytherin related and including Draco's wand, and talked with another Slytherin girl about Cedric Diggory's ascension from Hufflepuff to vampire, only managed to make him less cool. Then we went back to the Hog's Head for some dessert and ale.
Kerry bought me a tarot card reading for a birthday present, which was interesting, as I've never done anything like that before. It was pretty cool as an experience, even though the first few things she said were way off the mark. Then we went on the Jurassic Park ride and Spiderman before heading back to the hotel to change for dinner.
Dinner was at an amazing little restaurant, that hires professional singers and trains them to be waiters. This means that every so often, one of the waiters gets up to sing and you can request songs you want to hear (as long as they're from a musical). That in itself was wonderful to me, but after dinner instead of dessert, all the waiters arrived at our table to sing me a happy birthday song and they were carrying the most amazing cake, which Kerry ordered for me. The filmstrip across the top featured cells of all my favourite fandoms, and Shawn Spencer (with a pineapple) was standing on top. It was such a perfect moment that I burst into tears, a moment my sister gleefully captured on camera.
It was truly the best birthday of my life and I will never be able to repay Kerry and Stephanie for everything they did to make it special for me. I will try as hard as I can though.
Sadly, Kerry had to leave early the next morning to go home and Steph and I set out for one last treat before we drove down to Tampa.
My sister's birthday present to me was swimming with dolphins and snorkling with tropical fish at Discovery Cove. Sadly I have no photos of this, but it's an experience I will never forget. I can't even describe how cool it was. The dolphin we swam with was beautiful and so smart. We got to feed him and were taught how to "converse" with him.
That evening we drove down to Tampa and checked into our final hotel. After such a busy week we basically spent four days lying around doing nothing. I swam a lot and spent some time in the gym. Stephanie was pleased that she didn't have to drive for a while. It was a quiet resort with a private beach, so we had everything to ourselves most of the time. We bought a week's worth of food from Walmart so we didn't have to go back out since there wasn't much of anything to do for miles. I did manage to get my beautiful Taco Bell before we left though.
We spent most of Saturday sitting around the tiny airport at Sanford waiting for our flight and arrived back to freezing cold England at 5am on Sunday morning. It's always a shame to come home from a wonderful holiday and this was one of the best I've ever had.
ditchwitchbitch. More photos to come whenever my sister gets round to posting them somewhere.My sister and I were delayed on the train going down to London, so instead of getting to the hotel at 8pm and sleeping until 4am, we got to the hotel at midnight. It was not the easiest thing to get after 4 hours to catch a plane.
We arrived in Orlando that afternoon and collected our car. It was a white Chrysler PT Cruiser which we called Tori.
We made it to Ormond Beach (just north of Daytona) and checked into our hotel. My sister had asked for the room to be upgraded as part of my birthday present, so we had a room with a balcony, directly overlooking the beach. It was a lovely hotel and so quiet since it wasn't peak season. We spent the next day out by the pool, walking on the beach and shopping at a gorgeous deli we found.
On Monday we drove down to Daytona Beach, which was pretty much deserted and everything seemed to be closed. We did go to a cool mini-golf course though, which my sister won by shameless cheating.
Tuesday we drove back down to Orlando and checked into a hotel that amounted to a building site. We had to move rooms one day because of the bugs. All in all, not a good experience. Of course we spent most of that week out of the hotel anyway, so it didn't matter too much.
We went to Downtown Disney for lunch and I introduced my sister to the Rainforest Cafe, followed by some amazing sundaes. Then we went to Epcot and I managed to get myself a Happy Birthday badge. Everyone has to wish you happy birthday when they see you wearing it. It's awesome! We stayed for the fireworks that night, which were beautiful.
On Wednesday we went to Universal Studios, which is nothing like I remembered. It's mostly simulator rides which made us feel ill, though I did enjoy the Jaws ride and the Disaster Movie ride. I was, unfortunately roped into taking part in the "movie" and played the part of "Screaming Woman". My sister found this hilarious. I found it embarrassing, but it was actually a fun experience. After that we went to Islands of Adventure to do a couple of real rides. The Hulk was good and we got ourselves soaked on the river rapids.
Thursday we went to Hollywood Studios and I got to ride The Tower of Terror again. Steph and I had a conversation about how we never scream on rides and I explained that TOT was the only ride that had ever made me scream. She was convinced she wouldn't until the ride actually started. :D We ate at the Boardwalk and walked back to the park for the fireworks show.
Stephanie had been giving me these little butterfly cards every day, telling me what we'd be doing since she planned the whole thing. Friday's card said I'd be getting a surprise sooner than I thought. Thirty minutes later,
ditchwitchbitch turned up at the door, giving me the best birthday present I could hope for. ♥
We all went to Animal Kingdom, which I had never been to before. The safari was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the Lion King show was one of the best that we saw.
That night we went to the Old Town and played laser tag in a bouncy house. I'd never played that before, so I was excited to win. Kerry and I went on the go karts too, again something I'd never done before. We had such a fun time.
Saturday was a little strange. Tori got a puncture as we were driving to the Magic Kingdom and we had to wait for someone to come out and change the tire. Once we got inside though, we had a great time and managed to do all the rides before we had to go back to the hotel and change for the Disney Halloween party that night.
My sister was a witch and I had decided to go as Juliet from Psych. Kerry wouldn't tell me who she was going as until she came out of the bathroom dressed as Lassiter. ♥ This is why I love her as much as I do. She's the best. We had a fantastic night. My sister and I did our first ever trick-or-treating, there were fireworks and pineapple floats, someone recognised Kerry and when we got back to the car at midnight, I turned 30.
My 30th birthday was the best birthday I have ever had. True we started it by going to Orlando Airport to change the car for one with four actual tires, but we managed to get everything changed over pretty quickly and got the exact same car. This time we named her Chrissie.
We drove back to Islands of Adventure so we could go to the one place I'd wanted to go all week... all year in fact. Harry's Wizarding World is truly amazing. Everything is so beautifully constructed. It felt like stepping into the actual Hogsmede/Hogwarts, though admittedly it was a lot hotter than Scotland. Every shop was perfect, inside and out.
We had lunch at The Three Broomsticks. My sister and I shared the Shepherds Pie and Fish & Chips between us, and Kerry got the chicken with a huge ear of corn. I had Butterbeer, Kerry had a frozen Butterbeer and Steph had Pumpkin Juice. We all tried each others and I think we all liked our choice best. I was just excited to be eating there.
After that we did the big Harry Potter ride, which was my favourite of the whole trip. The whole experience, from stepping into the castle and seeing the hour glasses with the house points in, to getting my soul sucked out by the Dementors was incredible. I bought myself several presents, mostly Slytherin related and including Draco's wand, and talked with another Slytherin girl about Cedric Diggory's ascension from Hufflepuff to vampire, only managed to make him less cool. Then we went back to the Hog's Head for some dessert and ale.
Kerry bought me a tarot card reading for a birthday present, which was interesting, as I've never done anything like that before. It was pretty cool as an experience, even though the first few things she said were way off the mark. Then we went on the Jurassic Park ride and Spiderman before heading back to the hotel to change for dinner.
Dinner was at an amazing little restaurant, that hires professional singers and trains them to be waiters. This means that every so often, one of the waiters gets up to sing and you can request songs you want to hear (as long as they're from a musical). That in itself was wonderful to me, but after dinner instead of dessert, all the waiters arrived at our table to sing me a happy birthday song and they were carrying the most amazing cake, which Kerry ordered for me. The filmstrip across the top featured cells of all my favourite fandoms, and Shawn Spencer (with a pineapple) was standing on top. It was such a perfect moment that I burst into tears, a moment my sister gleefully captured on camera.
It was truly the best birthday of my life and I will never be able to repay Kerry and Stephanie for everything they did to make it special for me. I will try as hard as I can though.
Sadly, Kerry had to leave early the next morning to go home and Steph and I set out for one last treat before we drove down to Tampa.
My sister's birthday present to me was swimming with dolphins and snorkling with tropical fish at Discovery Cove. Sadly I have no photos of this, but it's an experience I will never forget. I can't even describe how cool it was. The dolphin we swam with was beautiful and so smart. We got to feed him and were taught how to "converse" with him.
That evening we drove down to Tampa and checked into our final hotel. After such a busy week we basically spent four days lying around doing nothing. I swam a lot and spent some time in the gym. Stephanie was pleased that she didn't have to drive for a while. It was a quiet resort with a private beach, so we had everything to ourselves most of the time. We bought a week's worth of food from Walmart so we didn't have to go back out since there wasn't much of anything to do for miles. I did manage to get my beautiful Taco Bell before we left though.
We spent most of Saturday sitting around the tiny airport at Sanford waiting for our flight and arrived back to freezing cold England at 5am on Sunday morning. It's always a shame to come home from a wonderful holiday and this was one of the best I've ever had.