Monday, October 11, 2010

Orlando Day 5

Since Kathy had to be in her meetings all day long we ended up just kicking back and enjoying our day off. We even slept in until 10:00. It was totally awesome and felt so good. We ended up going to the outlet mall and I found an awesome deal on shirts from Eddie Bauer. I was able to buy a bunch of new work shirts for 3.80 a piece. I love outlet malls. Kathy had a four hour break and so we picked her up and headed to Disney Downtown. We looked through all the shops and then went to eat at a buffet for dinner because this buffet had crab legs. Kathy loves crab legs. We took her back to her meeting and we went back to the condo to hang out in the swimming pool and hot tubs. It was so nice to just relax after going from sun up to sun down. We did get to watch some football games this day also. Here's the few pics we took from Downtown Disney.


 
The princess' dresses made out of the princess dolls. Sorry the pics weren't so great because of the reflection off the windows.

 
The two above and the two below are all made out of Lego's. Pretty cool to see.


 
Mr. Potato Head - Didn't know he was still popular!
 
Buzz Light Year. We know he is still really popular. :-)

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Orlando Trip Day 4 - Animal Kingdom

I was really excited to go see this park. I had no idea what it was going to be like. 
 
Of course I had to get a picture of us going into the part.  It was a mad dash.
 We stopped to look at this tree for only a few seconds. It's called the Tree of Life and then came back to it after we finished doing just as the tour guide told us to do.  The tour guide sent us to Expedition Everest first. We actually ended up riding it three times. We really liked it and the lines were so short.

 One of the pictures after the ride.  We weren't about to pay for our ride pics so we just took pictures of them.  They aren't very good but you get the idea.
 This is us in Dinoland.  They had a couple rides but they were more kid rides so after the Primevil Whirl we headed to the next attraction.
 I took a couple of these but Scott was like well did you get the whole dinosaur.  I tried but this is the best I could get. 
Dinosaur was one of my favorite rides also.  It's like the Indian Jones ride at Disneyland.  You can see the little girl in the picture being held by her dad.  She was so scared because it was so loud in this ride.  Went on that ride several times also.
 
 These next two are just some of the scenery in Animal Kingdom.  So gorgeous and it was a cool day.
The lake in the middle of this park.
Our next attraction was the Maharajah Jungle Trek.  It was like a ride through the jungle.  Awesome how close we were to the animals.  Plus it had like a zoo to it as you had to walk through all these animal cages to get to the start of the attraction.
 
 The baby giraffe.
 
I can't remember what this is but I do remember his horns are hollow.  So they are huge but not as heavy as you would imagine.
The elephants with their baby.  It was so cute.  I had lots and lots more pictures of animals but aren't going to put them in this.  We actually hooked up with Kathy and Wade on this ride and then headed to lunch with them.  We always eat meals with them in the parks.
 
Scott and I headed to the Kali River Rapids.  This was the ride we stood in line the longest on.  It was so long.  We tried this water ride which we probably shouldn't have. I ended up coming off the ride drenched like a wet rat. I even went into the bathroom to try and wring out some of the water. That's how wet I was. Needless to say it was a little bit miserable being wet for the last four hours we were at the park but we didn't let that deter us from getting in everything. 
We ended up seeing the Lion King Show.  The costume and set was so cool.  Totally loved this show and was so happy we were able to see it.
 
These are the monkeys in the show.  They were amazing what they could do on the trampoline, the high bar, and acrobatic swing.
After the Lion King Show came the parade.  We actually were close enough to the parade to see it.  This was the 1st one in all the parks we actually got to see.
Amazing Camel.
 
 Goofy on his expedition vehicle.
 The elephant float.
Minnie Mouse is here too.
 Another amazing animal float.
 Mickey as the end of the parade.
There were a few rides in this park along with lots of animals.  This was my favorite park of all Disney Parks.  We were able to do everything that we wanted to in this park.  It was just an awesome day.

Orlando Trip Day 3 - Hollywood Studio's

So our third day took us to Hollywood Studio's. Hollywood Studios was not my favorite theme park. It was fun to say yes we went to all four Disney Parks. Hollywood's rides were mostly shows. We saw a special effect show. We also saw an action film being made and they showed us their tricks in making those kinds of movies. Saw several stage shows also like High School Musical and Beauty and the Beast. Here are the pictures.

Entrance into the Park
We went to the Tower of Terror first. We did that ride again as soon as we were done. It was so much fun. I say it is the best ride of everything we went on the whole week we were down there.
 No lines in the morning for this ride.  Of course by the afternoon when we wanted to do it again there was a line.
 
I was laughing I just loved this ride so much.

 I had to get pictures of most of the topiary in each park.  Fantasia Mickey.

 
Rockin Roller Coaster Ride.  This one was ruthless but more just lots of jolting around the track so I didn't like it very much.  We also had to wait in line for about an hour and that wasn't cool.

 Beauty and the Beast Show
 This was a scene they had set up called Harbor Attack.  The following pictures plays the scene of a submarine getting attacked at Pearl Harbor.  They used members of our group to go get wet in this.
 The air attacks from the guns hitting the water.
 Water coming through the side of the submarine but not really.
 We took the backlot tour.  This had different scenes to see and also had props from the shows that Disney has made.  We got to see all the oversized items from Disney Movies that wouldn't fit in the warehouse.

 The train explodes and then.......
The water comes crashing down to save us all.
 Navigator ship
 Herbie the Love Bug
 We saw the High School Musical on this stage. It was alright.
 This was one of the street performers.  He used lots of little kids and it was so fun.

Orlando Day 2 - EPCOT

Day 2 in Orlando takes us to Epcot Center. We were late getting out of the condo but stopped at Dunkin Donuts to eat breakfast. The lady was able to tell us where the Wal-Mart was. It ended up not being that hard to find.
We got into Epcot and we did the unofficial guide to Walt Disney world Tour for adults with no kids. So we followed this tour guide.
It sent us to Soarin first. I still don't like that ride. Scott was really funny on it. We then went to the Mission Space. They have two ride on that it's intense and not intense. Scott wanted to do intense and since I had no idea what it was I went with him. Dumb Dumb Dumb move on my part. It's a mission to Mars and you are actually an astronaut. It rockets you off the earth and then sling shots you around the moon and then onto Mars. I didn't think this ride was ever going to end. They say if you start to get disoriented don't look anywhere but straight at the screen. So that's what I did. Afterward I just sat on their bench and tried to get myself back. It was over for me for the rest of the day. I was motion sick. I was so mad at myself. Needless to say I drank lots of sprite this day trying to settle my stomach. I didn't like Epcot because of all the simulation rides. I prefer actual rides. We walked around the countries and stayed at the park until about 8:30. We were able to get every ride in. We actually sent Scott and Kathy back to Mission Space to do that ride again. They both enjoyed it. We decided not to stay for the firework show because we needed to get to Wal-Mart to get supplies. We found the Wal-Mart and got breakfast foods, some motion sickness medicine, and lots of gallons of water. We got back to the condo and was able to go down and soak our feet and bodies for about 1/2 an hour. Here are the pictures we got at Epcot:
China

 Trying on the sombrero's in Mexico.

 Norway

 Canada

 France

Japan

Of course all the topiary are cool to see.  Beauty and the Beast.

 Chip and Mrs. Potts

 And we sat and watched this belly dancer sing and dance for awhile just to rest.  She was really good though at belly dancing.  It was interesting.