Day 13 - Aquatica, Seaworld and Hard Rock Cafe
On our last trip in 2016 we loved Aquatica, but weren’t too keen on the food - it really was standard theme park food which you could get in the UK, which is not what I associate with the Orlando parks as there are usually so many excellent options. For this reason, this time we planned to get a late breakfast somewhere close to Aquatica on I Drive before heading in so that we wouldn’t have to buy any food.
In the end - we just fancied a good old McDonalds’ breakfast! But I have to say, we were so impressed with the McDonalds’ at the end of I Drive close to Seaworld, the iHop and Red Lobster. We ordered at the counter and a lovely lady brought our food to us at our table! The OH ordered a steak (yes, steak!), egg and cheese biscuit, whilst I had a sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle. The OH’s was so good that we both (I had to have some!) devoured it before we could get a photograph..! So I only have a photograph of my McGriddle which was also excellent; it tasted a bit like an English breakfast in between two American pancakes!
I also got an orange juice which I only took a photo of at the end, but this tasted so fresh and I loved the cup it came in which made it super easy to take with us as we walked to Aquatica:
We did enjoy Aquatica but not as much as we did in 2016. If I’m honest I think it’s because Volcano Bay blew us away and was so convenient with us having the private Cabana Bay entrance. We instantly compared Aquatica’s crazy river which we LOVED in 2016 to the one at VB and the Aquatica version wasn’t as good as we remembered 😞 This was a shame as it was a highlight of our 2016 trip and something we couldn’t wait to experience again, but I think this just shows how well VB has been done as there is definitely nothing wrong with Aquatica, it’s just not quite ‘there’ for us anymore. Saying that though, we will go back in 2019 as we want to give it another chance and to experience Ray Rush, the new attraction.
We then hopped over the road to Seaworld for the afternoon and had a few more rides on Manta and Mako. We also fed the stringrays which is one of my favourite things to do 😃 Before leaving, we got ourselves some Dippin’ Dots - I had cookie dough (pictured) which has always been my favourite flavour and the OH had ‘birthday cake’ flavour which was nice too (not pictured).
We then headed back to Cabana Bay and got ready to go to CityWalk and the Hard Rock Cafe where we had made a reservation. I instantly ordered a frozen strawberry daiquiri in a souvenir cup which although wasn’t on the menu, the server had no problem with taking my order of. She was very accommodating.
For our meal, we decided to just share some starters and sides. We’ve eaten at a few Hard Rock Cafe’s around the world and we always tend to do this as the portions are huge and it means we get to try more things! One thing we always order though is the Margherita Flatbread:
We then went for the nachos, which we do usually have too, some truffle fries and, you guessed it, a mac n cheese!
This was all really good and I’m glad we finally decided to cave in and get one of the souvenir glasses to take home with us!
We did try to go to Toothsome’s after this to get another chocolate shot but they had closed the shop off for the night by the time we were finished.