Photo TR - 2 Week Orlando Marathon

[window]

Ok so let me start off by saying this was my first trip back to the Orlando since July 24th 1999.

 

I'd been very 'lucky' as a kid and had been to Orlando 9 times between 1989 and 1999. The first time being the week after my 6th birthday. This time it was just me and my girlfriend (her first trip to Orlando).

 

I was very excited to see what had changed since my last visit (and also pretty damn nervous about driving on the wrong side of the road ).

 

One more thing before we start. I've got to say that my respect for the 'regulars' on TPR that post proper in depth TR's has gone up 100%. The patience and skill that goes into taking picture after picture of literally everything in each park is mind blowing. I tried it, but after just a couple of days gave up as I definitely do not have the patience

 

Enough babbling, here we go.

 

Day Zero: Travelling, etc!

Don't mind if I try one of those strange American beers on the balcony before I comatose after a very long day! (As a side note, notice what a svelte, slim figure I have on the first day! That was all set to change over the coming 14 days!).

First job was to get some supplies in for the next 2 weeks. I love the size of American fridges!!!!! God I'd missed the 'weird' American food we don't get back home! Butterfingers, Reeces Pieces, Mr. Pibb, Rootbeer and here Fruit Loops modelled by my girlfriend!

So roughly 10ish hours later we've checked in at the Sheraton Vistana on the 535, which is literally 8 mins from Disney and we find this cool swan thing on the bed (cool if towel swans are your thing...).

Here's my ugly mug about to board the Virgin Atlantic 'Jersey Girl', non stop Manchester to Orlando!

It's been far too long time since I boarded a flight to there, no not Karachi you moron! Orlando!

[window]

Day One: Seaworld

 

So I thought that Seaworld would be a good way to start the holiday and acclimatise to hours in a theme park as there is plenty of sitting down at shows to be done.

 

I'm not 100% sure of the last time that I visited, but I think it was 1997. I do know for a fact that Journey to Atlantis was being built at the time, so if someone knows when that opened it would be great.

 

The first thing we found strange was that they took our finger and thumb prints before we entered the park. I'm not sure if it was because it was fathers day and people were doing stuff at home, or because of the 'slow down' in the economy, but the park seemed pretty dead. We waited 10 minutes for Journey to Atlantis and walked onto to Kraken.

To finish off this part of the TR we have a picture of me looking totally respectable...... So to some it up had an awesome day at Seaworld! I didn't get any pics of the Sea Lion and Otter show - Clyde and Seamore or Odyssea at the Nautilus Theatre which was something else!!!!!! My pics of the Penguin Encounter were also too dark as the lights were turned down to replicate and the arctic winter. The only real downer was me being violated by the Kraken and the weather turning awful in the afternoon! I was so bad that I was in bed for 19:15 that night and slept till 07:30 the next morning. Oh well I guess we can try and catch the night time Shamu show later in the trip. Cheers for reading

After the 'encounter' we went to the Busch hospitality stand for some free 'headache in a plastic cup'! Here Kelly stands next to her sign

............but I very disappointed that they have removed the large seating room before the tunnel. Is that where the new Sharks Grill restaurant is? All in all I much preferred Terrors of the Deep over the Shark Encounter!

Going through the plexi glass shark tunnel is still ace.....

One of the incredibly good looking Barracuda.....

Lion fish in the Shark Encounter??? What gives???

As it started to throw it down we headed for cover in the Shark Encounter.

For a kiddie coaster this thing rocked!

Check out the shameless excitement on my face!

Here we are about to get our whore on, on the 3rd new credit of the day! The Shamu Express!

This is what my head still felt like after the abuse of the Kraken!

This is possibly the best one I got. You can see people in their wetsuits and a beluga whale popping its head out of the water, waiting to be fed.

We checked out Wild Arctic next. The simulator was as meh as I remember it! I tried to take a few pictures of the beluga whale interaction programme that was going on after, but it was too dark and none of them really came out.

Arrrr bless!

The show was awesome as always!

If that whale changed its mind that guy would be toast!

We were just in time for the Believe. We managed to get a seat in the soak zone (eventhough we didn't get wet) with minutes to spare.

Again more digging etc.

Looks like the ground work for the Manta is well underway.

Right next to restaurant was this fence that I just had to peep through.

Now for some proper food! We ate at Smoky Creek and got all this for about $22 which I didn't think was bad.

Lunch is served boys!

Lunch Seaworld style!

This dude was showing off to the crowd the whole time we were there!

The seal lions had resorted to literally hanging over the edge of enclosure to get the fish before the birds got their grubby beaks on them!

Feeding the seals and seals lions was next on the agenda. Notice again how the birds are waiting to snap up the fish.

I really would have loved to have ridden it a few more times as there was literally no wait for it, but I couldn't face another 'round' with it! This is me just having come off it, before I collapsed to the ground!

Next we walked straight onto the Kraken. I had intended on taking more pictures of it, but it was so rough and pounded my brains out, that it left me in fit state to take any pictures. Here it is snapped from across the water.

The postcard / PC desktop backgound picture everyone takes after Atlantis!

I was more than happy to get soaked again after riding due to the blistering temperature!

We both thought it was fairly cool and were more than happy with the very short wait! Neither of us knew about the track part at the end of the ride which was a nice suprise.

Next up was my first 'AquaTrax'!

No wonder they're getting wiped out! This is me in the completely empty manatee theatre!

That thing is huge, but doesn't do a lot (the manatee, not my other half)!

The manatee exhibit was next on the path. What I want to know is, what is weird ape/little boy thing above my head??? WEIRD!!!

Next we checked out the awesome dolphin under water viewing area! We even managed to see 2 dolphins 'doing it'!

These birds were all around the feeding areas, snapping up the fish as people threw them into the enclosures!

Next we headed over to feed the dolphins, but they had just finished their 10:15 feeding slot!

........feeding the sting rays! I always used to pull my hand away just as they came over! Not anymore now that I'm a big buff adult! (Yeah right)

Then came something that always terrified me as a kid........

First up we checked out the giant turtles.

I loved the cool 'new' entrance over water to the park.

Almost at our first park! We finally got here after I managed to get us lost (I was postive I knew a better route than our directions......)

What the hell is that in the distance? I'm sure there were no credits the last time I was here!

[Groteslurf]

Nice TR and pics.

 

This is a thread I'll keep an eye on for updates.

 

My first and only time in Orlando was in 2004 but we have a revisit scheduled in 2010 (when Manta, Harry Potter, etc. will have opened) together with my oldest daughter who will be tall and old enough to do all the rides.

 

My daughters actually love those Fruit Loops. I brought a box in my suitecase back in 2004 and it was an instant success. Recently I found a small shop around here where they are only selling imported Usa food and I drive there every couple of weeks to get a Fruit Loops stash (and of course a lot of other American stuff).

Looking forward to the updates.

[sam06pr]

Kraken...ROUGH???? WHAT????

Kraken is one of the smoothest coasters I have been on...that just seem impossible for you to say...I am very shocked...

 

anyways glad you had fun

[mike541x]

Man I hope to visit Seaworld some day.

 

Nice TR.

[krazekiddd]

Cool TR! I always love reading TR's from Orlando. I don't think I'll be back there until October.

 

I look forward to reading the rest!

[dino]

No Butterfingers, Reeces Pieces, Mr. Pibb or Fruit Loops...?! You poor thing. Other than that, cool TR

[ihani]

Great TR, the sea lions are cute! I had no idea Kraken was rough... It's a B&M.

[kraken613]

Yeah! Kraken rough? Its is one of the smoothest. Best B&M floorless! I haven't heard anyone call it rough! Even recently!

 

I dont believe you that Kraken was rough!

[window]

Yeah! Kraken rough? Its is one of the smoothest. Best B&M floorless! I haven't heard anyone call it rough! Even recently!

 

I dont believe you that Kraken was rough!

 

I never asked you to believe me. I'm only telling you how it was when we rode.

 

The fact is that there was no queue what so ever for all of the rows apart from front and back, but I chose not to ride again as my head was that bad from the pounding it gave me.

 

If it had been smooth I would have ridden again and again and again, but didn't.

[eggzter]

hey nice tr.

i was at Seaworld on that same day with my wife and 2 kids.

was a brilliant day out.

Kraken was walk on pretty much all day except around 9pm when it had broken down ;(

its funny to see but i have almost the same set of photos as you do.

 

one thing i would recommend is the Shamu rocks evening buffet at the cove restaurant (i think that what it was called)

good value, great food and free Bud.

 

i look forward to more of your reports, i guess they may contain similar photos to what i have.

[window]

hey nice tr.

i was at Seaworld on that same day with my wife and 2 kids.

was a brilliant day out.

Kraken was walk on pretty much all day except around 9pm when it had broken down ;(

its funny to see but i have almost the same set of photos as you do.

 

one thing i would recommend is the Shamu rocks evening buffet at the cove restaurant (i think that what it was called)

good value, great food and free Bud.

 

i look forward to more of your reports, i guess they may contain similar photos to what i have.

 

It's funny that you should mention it breaking down.

 

While we watched the mid afternoon Clyde and Seamore show (the Kraken is directly in front of this if you didn't know) they sent about 5 empty trains around the Kraken as if they were testing it for some problem?

 

Will be interesting to see if we have the same pics. Should be putting my next ones up on Thursday if the weather is bad

[kraken613]

Sorry didn't mean to be rude like I don't believe you it was more of a cant believe it but just typed it down! lol

 

No hard feelings.

[mattnz]

Ah it's good a TR of Sea World - don't recall seeing too many on here. Nice photos!

[Lenaapple1974]

Glad to see you had a decent day at Sea World! I wont be going back until next year, so it is awesome to see the TR! I will be watching for the rest of your report!

[jamesdillaman]

Nice photos.

 

I'll agree, on certain days I've found the floorless coasters to be headbangers, and even the inverted coasters. When Dominator was at GL, I could never ride it twice.

 

And for the record, Superman: Krypton Coaster is better than Kraken

 

-James Dillaman

[window]

Day Two: Universal Orlando

 

From some research I'd done before the holiday, I was led to believe that Monday's were Universals quietest day, due to 'vacationing' Americans visiting the Disney parks early in the week.

 

Since I'd last visited there had been plenty of changes, Jimmy Newtron, Shrek 4D, The Mummy, Disaster, Fear Factor, MIB and last but not least The Simpsons I was pumped up for my day at Universal, especially since it had been a park that my parents hadn't been that keen on, so we'd never really spent too much time here (they much preferred Disney).

 

We got there around 9:15ish and headed straight for The Simpsons to hopefully avoid the queues later in the day. It paid off as we waited no longer than 9 minutes before we were ushered inside to the first 'pre show' area. The theme of short wait times continued for the majority of the day, the longest wait being 30mins for Disaster.

 

Enjoy...

It looks like it's going to be a huge place when it's done. Right, this time I really am done. Hope you've enjoyed it so far?

Not a great deal has changed here, except for this restaurant thats being built.

Actually I'm fibbing. As we finished up reasonably early in Universal, we checked out Disney Village (or Downtown Disney as it's now called).

And that's it. Another day another themepark. Cheers for reading.

ET says this way to awesomeness! After ET we headed back over to Jaws for our ride courtesy of Captain Jake.

I love the bikes you ride on ET, and the queue and scenery are pretty awesome for an ageing ride.

With my ET Intergalactic Passport in hand I was ready to fly!

I think this going to be my new Facebook picture!

By the time we'd finished getting wet ET was fixed.

We weren't sure if we'd both allowed to ride, but there was no problem. My righthand side got soaked, so put your cameras in your left pocket!

We stumbled across this little gem next in the Fievel play area.

Here we are getting our whore on!

This ride was ok, but I think Shamu was better. Maybe it's because Shamu had the shorter queue? Who knows?

It would have been rude to not get the other credit of the day

We tried to check out ET next, but it was broken down, so we messed about in the kiddie area for a bit.

T3-2D was next. I remember being amazed by this. It's still very impressive how it all comes together. Definetly worth watching if there is a show about to start. Is it true that this is (or was) the most expensive ride ever, due to Arnie doing all of the filming for it?

.........but as I couldn't really remember the film I wasn't sure what was going on.

We ran from Twister to Shrek 4D and got soaked in the process. The pre-show for Shrek was very funny......

Film theming in the queue.

We did Twitster next. The effects inside this are quite cool. We got wet as we were on the front row. The spooky thing about it was that it was blisteringly hot when we went in without a cloud in the sky, but there was a Florida torrential downpour when we came out!!!

Am I right in thinking that there used to be a Ghostbuster show around here?

WOW!!! I absolutely loved the Mummy! So much so that we went on again straight away. I thought it might be similar to MIB, but without the guns? I had no idea it was going to be as good as it was. Is it different to one in Hollywood, as Jahan slated that a couple of weeks ago, yet I thought this was amazing! 2 thumbs up!

I had no idea what the Mummy was. The Univeral holiday planning DVD that I'd been sent billed it as a 'psychological thrill ride!', but that meant nothing to me! When I got on, I had no idea I was about to be amazed!

King Kong's replacement was next. I'd never really been a fan of Kong as it didn't really seem to do much and always had a huge queue.

The new Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop called us in for a quick pit stop after. The Strawberry Cheesecake comes highly reconmended by my other half.

When we came out of the restaurant the Beetlejuice Graveyard Revue was just about to start so we thought we'd check it out. I'd seen it before, but it's still a fun way to pass 20 minutes.

Robb Alvey eat your heart out!

We stopped for some lunch next at Richter's Burger Co. It was your standard fast food fare and cost about $25 with drinks. There was an all you can eat meal deal for $20 each, but we didn't go for that.

The show is fun, but not something that I would rush to do again. Another side note, I've some old pictures somewhere of when my nan was one of the 'Extras' in the Earthquake show from years ago. The final part of the ride hasn't changed at all, there is still the same subway train, truck, water disaster there always was. All my pics were too dark or blurred though.

The show itself hasn't really changed that much, apart from it having Christopher Walken as the head of Disaster Studios.

More random theming.

If you're using a toilet like this then you're doing it WRONG!!!!!!!

We did Disaster next. The queue has got some seriously random theming.

After 15 minutes they closed the ride and told us to come back later in the day and say "Captain Jake has sent us". We did this and they sent us to the front of the queue, and we got the best seats by far! As a side note I'd love to have a wander around the Island! Anyone done it?

We actually got into the boat at the dock, but then the rail on the righthand side would not fasten when they closed it down. We had to get off and wait at the end of the dock while they sent all of the boats round with no one on them. You can see them backed up at the unloading dock here.........

What is it with signs with my girlfriends name on?

We then headed over to Amity to ride Jaws.

Same. Next we rode MIB which I thought was nice addition to the park. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of it. I couldn't understand why you needed to put your bags in a locker for this one though? The HULK yes, MIB why???

More Simpsons theming (sp).

Here I am outside the Kwik-E-Mart. They don't sell Squishee's here.... but don't worry, you can buy them from a cart across the street.

I thought the ride was better than Back to the Future. I didn't take any pictures on the ride and aren't going to talk about what happens as I don't want to spoil it for anyone. The only problem I had, was that I got a bad neck from looking up at the giant screen. Maybe that's because I sat in the back? Who knows? All that I know is that it's awesome and that you should go and ride it NOW!

The pre-show area is very well themed also.

The building looks fantastic from the outside, not a hint of Back to the Future left.

The first stop of the day was the Simpsons ride.

The theming (sp) at Universal is top notch. Pretty woman anyone?

The walk from the car park to the Universal entrance is pretty cool.

Yes we know you're here!!!! See you in 5!

So here we are arriving at Universal. Luckily my Kraken violation had warn off by now and I was ready for it!

[geekgrrl]

Great TR so far! I love extensive Orlando reports. Can't wait for the next installment.

[BeemerBoy]

One more thing before we start. I've got to say that my respect for the 'regulars' on TPR that post proper in depth TR's has gone up 100%. The patience and skill that goes into taking picture after picture of literally everything in each park is mind blowing. I tried it, but after just a couple of days gave up as I definitely do not have the patience

 

Actually, I find the picture taking part to be the easiest and most enjoyable part of the process.

 

Even though I'm still trying to sort out in my mind how Kraken could give a beating, you've put together a great report thus far!

[kraken613]

Yeah I love taking pictures too! I took 150 in one day at Dollywood once!

 

^

Im with you I cant figure it out either!

[mcjaco]

Even though I'm still trying to sort out in my mind how Kraken could give a beating, you've put together a great report thus far!

 

Me too. My ride wasn't rough. It was forceless. I'm relegating that to being in a middle row though.

[window]

Even though I'm still trying to sort out in my mind how Kraken could give a beating, you've put together a great report thus far!

 

And that's before we get to the few monorail snaps I took

[window]

Day Three: Aquatica

 

This is only a small update and I must apologise for the quality of the pictures. I didn't fancy taking a digital camera to any of the waterparks, so made do with throw away single use ones.

 

As this was my first trip to Aquatica, I had really high hopes for it, but after being there for a few hours we'd done it all and couldn't be bothered to ride anything again. I'm not sure what it is, but the park does not compare to either of Disney's offerings in the area. The whole park seems very exposed and seriously lacks in shade. I hope this is something that Seaworld addresses in the future.

Bye bye Aquatica. I get the feeling it could be so much better. We made sure we got 2 more drinks with our wrist bands before we left. If you look very closely you can actually see a persons head on the plunge watched the dolphin being fed. And yes my gf is very very sunburnt, hence the T-Shirt, towel, sunglasses conbination

As we left the park the Commerson Dolphins were being fed. They are very cute and look cool when they swim upside down. Note again the queue in the background.

A new view of the park from the Dolphin Plunge queue. You better get used to it, because you'll be here for a while. Notice the queue on the bridge at the bottom right of the pic.

Last (and least unfortunately) we did the dolphin plunge. This had huge queues all day, but we thought we'd better ride as this is the parks 'signature' ride. It's a very basic water slide that goes a little bit through the dolphin enclosure. I saw nothing when I went through, but manage to take a picture of my finger...

We did the 2nd family raft next. This is much shorter and faster. It basically just goes straight down some dips, but has an equally wacky name, HooRoo Run anyone?

We blew off some steam in the other wave pool next. It seemed to have much larger waves. The life guards weren't too impressed with me getting this close to the wall

Next we did the lazy river / space bowl style rides. This is a complete joke and needs to be sorted ASAP! As you can see from the pic, the lazy river travels from the bottom up to the left and round. The people queueing down the right hand side against the wall, are fighting against the current to get out and ride Tassie's Twisters. Also half way up the pic on the right is where one of the aquariums is, so people were bunching up there to view the fish. This area was constantly jammed! Rubbish IMO!

Same.

We rode the 2 different slides on Whanau Way (whats with the names of these slides?) next.

We decided a bob about in one of the two wave pools would help lunch go down... I'm not sure what the deal with these 2 pools is, wasn't it hyped as 2 interactive pools? In reality they're completely separate.

Next we bought the all you can eat passes at the Banana Beach Cookout, but didn't really take advantage of it apart from the drinks. Here's my band and healthy lunch. Just what you want in between riding water slides....

Parrots + sunshine = squinting.

Here's me pleased with myself after just caining my gf on the Taumata Racer.

This is one of two buckets that fill with water and then tip over. They seemed to draw large crowds all day.

Next we had to have a mess about in the kids ares, Walkabout Waters. Just out of the picture I almost blinded so poor kid who just sprayed me..... Ooops!

We queued for the Walhalla Wave first. This is the longer of the 2 'family' tube rides. Thing is the tubes are quite small and can only fit 3 in at the most.

[krazekiddd]

Eh, the park doesn't impress me that much. I'm hoping the shade factor will change with the greenage growing in.

 

I've also noticed that Wet N Wild has almost looked dead the three times I've been up this year with Aquatica being at capacity. I wonder how long that will last.

[dino]

Cool update. The park though seems pretty ho-hum. It's still new though, so hopefully with time it will get better.