Just keep spinning and ditching the kids (8/11/13)

[°o°-Hannah-°o°]

This morning I make it to 5.45 with everyone else rising around 6.30. We breakfast at home before heading down to Islands of Adventure. Despite the queues to enter the park being quite reasonable and heading straight through to HP, at 9.15 the queue is already an hour long and the hippogrif is 20 mins! Ok never mind we'll grab a butter beer and come back before closing on another day.

We carry on through Jurassic park looking at the dinosaurs and riding the Pteradon flyers before heading to Spiderman. I must point out that the only things in the entire park that are walk on or 5 mins wait are the HP things. My morning then comes crashing down as we ride Storm force accellatron... Dh spins us so ridiculously that I feel violently ill. We have to give hulk a miss dh can't fit in the seat, he's 6'6" and very broad, it's disappointing as he rode it before they changed the harnesses, warren will have to wait to red when our friends arrive as I just cannot ride things like this. We wander round to dr Suess. Here a make a huge mistake, I ride cat in the hat, I feel ok before we ride, well I still feel nauseous but it's just cat in the hat right. WRONG! And the spinning maximises my sick feeling 10 fold. We grab churros and exit the park. Universal disappoints me, not because of my sickness but because there's so little to do. Yes we'll come back to do HP and the hulk and will do universal again so we can so despicable me, men in black and transformers again but after this trip I'm not sure we'll be back for a while. We leave the park just after 11!
Dh decides we should go and visit his friends villa in Davenport - he thinks. As we set off it turns out he only has the zip code and house number, no community or street name and he expects us to find it! Not impressed we pull in to a McDonald's to use the wifi and get the actual address. We eventually find it and it's huge, no really it's like a bloody mansion and absolutely beautiful. It's empty for a few days and Shane says we can stay here if we fancy it!

Well the day goes a bit mad from here, we set out for Walmart to get some cheap swim stuff and ice cream and off we go. The sat nav tells us the nearest is 8 miles, but when we get to that 8 miles it says turn right and tells us 7.8 miles... I hope you're following this, as we followed it being in a strange place and all. So we followed it for an hour and it literally drove us up and down the same roads for an hour, we past the same things up and down taking a different turn to make a big square to where we'd come from! We'd given up on Walmart at this point and change it to take us back to Sunset Lakes but it carried on up and down. I'm beside myself at this point, tears are rolling down my face as a howl with uncontrollable laughter and can see Rich's face slowly changing, he's gonna lose it!

After more than an hour of circling what should have been 13 miles we eventually make it home and having promised the boys a toy and some ice cream we stop at the marketplace grocery store at the entrance to the villas. They have a great choice of cheap pool toys so we buy yet another and Niall spends some more birthday money (in advance) and we head back for swimming and some reading.

Tonight we're headed for home aka animal kingdom villas, I just love wandering Jambo house and dh and I have a reservation for Boma while the kids go to simba's to play. We love sitting in the rocking chairs hand in hand watching the animals, aww how romantic - yeah, like grandma and grandpa except we're 30 and 31.
We check the boys in to Simba's and they disappear before we've even signed them in. Finally someone gets Niall's name right, we've encountered some very odd attempts over the years - it seems one direction are good for something! We're a little early for our reservation so we collect a pager and take a wander through zawedi, the store. I just love this shop and always spend a 'reasonable' amount here. Our pagers rings out and it's time for dinner.
It's rather busy here tonight but people have formed an orderly queue for the carving station, I'm not heading here first so dare to start in the middle. We have a couple of plates eat but forget about pics until a text from our 'UDF's' drops in asking what we're eating.

This is babottie, chicken drumstick, sweetcorn and spinach pudding, mealie bread, mac n cheese and salad with balsamic dressing.

Then the puds...

Zebra dome, strawberry and mint pannacote, cassava cake, a brownie, pumpkin cheesecake and fruit cobbler with vanilla sauce - the pannacote is so sharp that the tiny amount I taste with is enough, the brownie is a great flavour but is a little more solid than I'd expect. I discover I do not like pumpkin so that's not the fault of the dessert. The cassava cake is like a firm sponge and sticky, I can't pin pint the flavour but it's very nice and dh gets more of them. I struggle to decide what the fruit in the cobbler is but I don't like it, it looks to be peach but is firmer and has a very odd flavour to it. The zebra domes, I cannot decide what it is that I've had before that these taste like, I'd put off trying them after hearing they were coffee flavoured - if they are then it's very mild, they're like some sort of truffle type thing I've had before in flavour but a creamier filling, on a sponge base and covered with a white and dark chocolate ganache and they are beautiful so I go back for more, of just these. And finish with a plate of melon 'to cleanse the palate'! We've had a water and a diet coke with our meals and the total is about $76 before tip.

The boys are so happy this evening, we must use kids clubs more often - we must make them mad every day. Niall skips and dances his way back to the car and warren though exhausted actually appears to like us! Bonus, ditch the kids and then they'll love us

[Jools]

Urgh I know what you mean about Cat in the Hat. Sometimes it makes me feel really sick yet I have also been OK on it. Apart from feeling so sick and getting lost your day it seems like a pretty good day

[paulrae]

Good guys, think we will miss universal next trip as well, not impressed on our last trip

[°o°-Hannah-°o°]

Originally Posted by paulrae

Good guys, think we will miss universal next trip as well, not impressed on our last trip

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It just seems so much money to pay out for a couple of rides and not a lot else - surely a theme park should keep you there all day

[Redrach1903]

Phew, glad the boys have perked up!

Sounds like a lovely evening you guys had together