It's Been A Long Time Coming: Day 10 and 11

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I'm lumping both of these together (not because I'm lazy) because I didn't take any pictures on Day 11 and I don't want to have to huff with you all when I realise you only look at these for the pics so if I put them both together I'll never know!

Day 10

Off to IOA today and really nervous about it! It's the first park we've been to that I know will be all about the coasters and I didn't want to let Ryan down by chickening out on anything! Down to the lobby for the infamous shuttle to Universal, same crazy driver who nabbed some unsuspecting newbies to chat with on the way there (oh how we laughed...and oh how they cried!) Got to the park today in record time and we were at the gates to IOA at 8:35. Had to stand in line to wait for the park to open and had the unfortunate experience of having to listen to the guy behind us for 25 mins "oh my gawd...it's so hot today, I just can't stand this heat"...5 mins later " I mean it's just so hot, I'm so sweaty already" Lovely I swear I thought Ryan was gonna turn round and strangle him! Might I add that today was one of the coolest so far and it was still before 9am, I'm glad we didn't run into him in the afternoon!

Safely admitted to the park and we ran straight for the Hulk, I had to make a quick toilet break which hampered our progress slightly (cue much tutting and frowning from Ryan...who would have thought it...me keeping him back ) Standby time was 15 mins which turned out to be 0 minutes, complete walk on. We found with the non-disney parks that arriving early in the morning was great, Disney was still fairly busy in the morning whereas IOA and US were empty! Really loved the Hulk, a close second after RNRC! We bought the ride dvd and photo which were 20% off before 11am, bargain! We then started the trek to Duelling Dragons and I have to admit that after the Hulk I wasn't too concerned about riding these. Again they were a walk on, in fact the coasters were going round 1/4 full. Fire first and I had to sit on my flip flops which raised me higher in my seat and I didn't feel my restraints were pulled down far enough, Ryan said I was deathly silent the whole ride, I think I was just clinging on for dear life! Near the end of the ride my thigh started stinging really badly and when we got off it was obvious I had been stung by something, my leg started swelling up, a big bruise was apperaing and I was nearly crying with the pain. We contemplated going straight to first aid but after looking at the map we realised it was quite far away so decided I wasn't likely to die in the next 5 mins so we rode Ice first Again, this was a walk on and I enjoyed it a bit better than Fire. We made the trek to first aid and the lady told me a wasp must have flown up my shorts, she reassured me that I was having only a localised reaction, gave me some ice and told me I'd be fine. Now, she then said she would send someone out to check for wasps nests under duelling dragons in case more people got stung and the next day was the news that a ride engineer was fighting for his life after being struck by one of the DD coasters I really hope he wasn't checking for wasps nests and hope he recovered ok!

For the rest of the day I got to walk around with one leg of my shorts rolled up and a bag of ice strapped onto my leg attractive! We headed for the Jurassic Park River Adventure next which we both really enjoyed and then grabbed some breakfast (churros of course!) and took some pics:

Ryan is never going to make an actor:

This was our view from where we sat to eat, no one even passed us, that's how quiet it was today!

We had a quick look in the JP Discovery Centre:

and I got very excited at the prospect of Harry Potter Land:


Next up was Poseidon's Fury, I didnt really know what to expect from this but we both thought it was very well done.


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As we were close by we went to Seuss Landing. This is one of those places I thought I would hate but ended up loving! We rode the High In The Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride which Ryan surprisingly enjoyed:


The new Rip Ride Rockit looks immense!

The lines for the other rides in Seuss Landing were ridiculously long...an hour to ride one fish two fish? Needless to say we gave them a miss and we made our way to Toon Lagoon via Marvel Superhero Island:






The park had really filled up by now and the wait for Ripsaw Falls was an hour. We considered buying one of the express passes but decided against it as it was only one ride and a wait wouldn't kill us! We emerged absolutely soaked! This was our favourite log flumey type ride, well worth the long wait! Straight over to Popeye for yet another soaking, wait time for this was only 15 mins. I don't think Ryan expected to get quite so wet on this we would have been drier if we had just swam around for a while! Again we really enjoyed this one and thought it was much better than Kali in AK. Cleverly we had packed a change of clothes but we saw some poor, unsuspecting and decidedly soggy people buying clothes from the strategically placed shops beside Popeye! After a quick costume change a la Mariah Carey I was ready to go and we wandered through Juassic Park again, this time having a good look around and taking some pics:

We also took our time having a look around Seuss Landing and we bought some great fudge and cookies from the sweet shop. Ryan bought his little brother a Dr Seuss book (which provided us with some good reading that evening!) and a Thing 1 and Thing 2 bottle for his little brother/ sister to be!

You can't see it here but I'm gearing up to eat all our sugary treats, potentially why I look so happy!


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After this (with me slightly jittery from the sugar) we headed for Dr Doom, this was the only ride I really wasn't fussed on doing so Ryan went on alone, he said it was a walk on for single riders so I only had to wait about 10 mins.

He's up there somewhere:

He said he enjoyed it but it wasn't the same going on a ride by yourself. Now, my only disappointment of the day was that we didn't get on Spiderman, I had heard that it was brilliant but by the time we got to it the wait time was 2 hours, couldn't be bothered with that so we went to the 4:30 show of Sinbad. We had a 20 min wait before the show started which we filled listening to the 3 american girls behind us. Their conversation went something like this "oh my god, like can you believe that, like, jason doesn't fancy her, like she's so totally awesome" Girl 2: "I know, like, totally" Girl 3 "Who is Jason?" Girl 1: "You know, he's, like, totally hot, his sister is Tammy and she goes out with, like, Brad... He's soooooo totally hot." Girl 2 "Is anyone else, like, really hot today, I'm so totally tired" Anyway you get the picture, me and Ryan were nearly bent double with laughter they were like something from Clueless...Like totally! Anyhoo...on with the show, thought this was ok, liked the water parts and took some more photos:


Suspiciously we ended up with quite a few photos of her, Ryan may have taken a shine to her methinks:



By the time the show ended it was 5pm and we were starving so we made the executive decision to call it a day and head to Hard Rock Cafe. Had a really nice meal here, service was really good. We had the nachos to start and I had a BBQ burger, Ryan had fajitas and we had no room for dessert...again!






We got the 7:05pm shuttle back, at which point we discovered all shuttles drivers to universal were a sandwich short of a picnic. Another driver stopped to ask if people were going to Enclave Suites, some people in our line were, so they went to get on, only to be told by another person who worked there that that bus didn't go to Enclave. The moral of this story...Universal shuttle bus drivers are not to be trusted! We got our bus safely and bade farewell to our driver as this was the last time we'd have the pleasure of his company...thankfully! We spent the evening in the hotel pool before heading to bed. We both really enjoyed today, Ryan said IOA was his favourite park, all I'll concede to is that it's my favourite non-Disney park!

Tomorrow: Typhoon Lagoon and Boardwalk (allegedly! )

Day 11

Up and ready today to go to TL, got the bus to Epcot and another bus to POFQ, has to wait quite a while for a bus to TL to arrive and when it did it was packed! Are the resort buses always like this? Arrived at TL around 9:30 and grabbed a couple of sunloungers before hitting the slides. We set off to try and find Crush n Gusher but failed miserably and ended up on Gangplank Falls instead, ease ourselves in gently then! We then managed to find Crush n Gusher and rode 2 of the different slides, we loved these, it's really good that you get to go on together as well. Just as we got off this huge grey clouds rolled in and there was a huge downpour. Unfortunately, the rain continued for the rest of the day, we were still able to get on all the slides but it was kind of cold and miserable in the rain. That's why we have no pics of today, didn't want to get the camera all wet! We rode all the slides and spent a lot of time in the wave pool (which we thought was brilliant) and had a snorkel in shark reef. Ryan was a big pansy at the snorkelling and made me promise beforehand that I wouldn't swim away from him! Needless to say I did and he was less than impressed. Also, that water is FREEZING! Maybe it would have been ok on a nicer day but today was cold and wet and not a nice experience! By about 3 we were well and truely done and we decided to call it a day. We loved TL but the rain ruined it a bit today!

So...off we went to get changed etc. and we had planned to head to the Boardwalk for dinner and to go to Jellyrolls tonight. I knew that Ryan takes aaaaaaages getting ready so I took my time showering, washing my hair etc. etc. I finished at 3:30 and went straight over to the shop to chck Ryan wasn't there...nope, so striaght back to the entrance to the men's changing rooms and I waited, and waited...and waited. By 4 I was getting really annoyed, wondering why he was taking so long. By 4:30 I started to get worried thinking something had happened to him so I asked a guy to go in and ask for him, he came back out and said there was definitely no one called Ryan in there! So I made a dash through the rain to the shop and there was Ryan standing, I could have killed him! He had been standing over there where I could never have seen him since 3:30, we must have just missed each other! He never even thought to poke his head out of the shop and look directly over at the entrance to the changing rooms! :angry: Needless to say the air was blue and some cross words were exchanged! We decided to just go back to Epcot and wait for the 6:15pm bus back to the hotel as we were both grumpy and wet! We were saved a long wait by another couple who were also waiting for the bus back to the Crowne Plaza so we shared a taxi back with them.

Back in the hotel I had a nice hot shower, calmed down and decided I would forgive Ryan his stupidity because obviously it was all his fault! We decided we would go to Pointe Orlando for some dinner. Now, I remember this being really nice last time I was here and had wanted to go back but it has really gone downhill, it's so delapidated looking now and there's hardly anything there! I offered to let Ryan go to Hooters for dinner as he had said he wanted to do this but when we got there he decided he didn't really want to, I think he got a wee bit embarrassed, bless! So I said he could choose where we ate tonight as I had nothing planned. We went to the Redrock Grill (I think that's what it's called.) This was the only meal we had the whole holiday that we didn't enjoy! Even Ryan admitted that he'd leave the choosing to me in future! The meals were both essentially just reheated microwave meals, not nice and fresh like the rest of the food we got in Florida. I hardly ate any of my meal so decided I'd try some dessert, yuk yuk yuk! I was meant to be chocolate brownie with ice cream but it was just a frozen dessert that they hadn't defrosted properly! Ryan ate the ice cream but the brownie was disgusting! Really disappointed with this so we consoled ourselves with some retail therapy in Hollister. Ryan bought me a top to say sorry for earlier and we got a taxi back. A word about the taxi: it had a full on sofa in the back and tasselly curtains, the whole nine yards, it was like some sort of pimp wagon, only in america would you find such a vehicle! Headed to bed after a bit of a disappointing day and sad because tomorrow is our last full day in Florida

Tomorrow: last theme park day (you'll have to read it to find out what we did!)

[Guest]

hrc nachos !

ur man plucks his eyebrows doesnt he

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Originally Posted by mu11en

hrc nachos !

ur man plucks his eyebrows doesnt he

See more...

LOL um...not that I'm aware but I can't wait to tell him someone thinks he does!...Maybe he does it in secret

[summersun]

a great report, shame about rain and meal

[voddygirl]

We love IOA and always end up going to the HRC great day ..pity about your weather at TL..bless wee Ryan getting embarassed about Hooters

[Guest]

Another great report with lovely photos.

[orlandosgr8]

Two lovely days, but a shame about your meal at Red Rock.

[GaynorB]

shame about your meal