May 2018 - 3 weeks, one wedding and a villa, Day 9 - I-Drive 360 & Hollywood Studios

[Goosey-Lucy]

Saturday 12/05/18

Warning: Bit of a heavy photo day

Today we were off to I-Drive, so we were up at 8am, consumed cereal and coffee (may have been two bowls of cereal for me as I’d discovered nutter butter cereal) and we were parked up at the car park near the eye by 10am.
We didn’t realise that nothing was open until about 10:30 and it was a bit drizzly weather wise so we had a little stroll around trying to stay undercover and then noticed Walgreens was open so we popped in there. They had ½ off everything, so we managed to get 2 drinks for $2, cha-ching !

Luckily it was about 10:30 so we could queue up for the eye and as we were first ones there we managed to get a pod to ourselves. I don’t know if they always try to accommodate it so you have your own pod rather than sharing with strangers or if it just depends on how busy it is.

The pods were massive and there was tablets in there that explained what things were and how far away from the eye they were. We noticed on the way up there was another multi-story car park on the other side of the eye and right on the top level there was two cars parked up and it appeared that they were doing some kind of photo shoot!

I think the amount of time it took to get round was just right, I didn’t feel rushed and that I hadn’t had a proper look, but I sort of felt ready to get off.
After the eye we decided to head to Madame Tussauds. The guy that welcomed you in literally couldn’t get over that we were English. He told us that he had a friend who lives in England and he went to visit him the once, when we asked him whereabouts his friend lived he had no idea and couldn’t remember we were like “uhhhhhh “
Slowly made our way round as you do, there wasn’t many people there with it still being morning, so it was quite nice that we could get a good look at the wax figures without feeling that we were being shoved out the way.

When we made our way into the last party room, as I called it, we both nearly had a heart attack when we saw Will Smith sat on the bench! He looked so real, we both said we thought it was a real person who was going to stand up at any second!

After Madame Tussauds it was time for the aquarium. We were both really impressed by the aquarium, I think it was by far the biggest and best we’d been too. Doesn’t take much to beat Birmingham’s though . It was lovely to hear their projects and what funding was going towards rescuing and preserving sea-life.

When we finally came out of the 360 building it had properly started raining so we quickly dashed into Walgreens to buy an umbrella. Bet their sales went up that day in umbrellas!
With our lovely red, white and blue umbrella in hand (Chris wanted an American looking one) we walked up I-Drive in the direction of McDonalds. We didn’t really intend on stopping at McDonalds, but the rain was really coming down, so we dived in, what a shame!
I had a double quarter pounder meal and Chris had the chicken tender pico burger meal.
When we were in McDonalds Chris checked the forecast on his phone and it looked like it was going to start clearing up pretty much straight away. We didn’t really know what we wanted to do in the afternoon, but we had plans to meet Chris’s parents at HS to watch Fantasmic that evening, so we sort of wanted to be in that direction.
Finally we decided to go for a game of mini golf at Fantasia Gardens as we absolutely love mini golf and hadn’t done it yet this holiday. Walking back to the car I realised like a plonker I hadn’t put the magic bands in the rucksack, so annoyingly for Chris the chauffeur we had to go to Fantasia gardens via the villa to pick them up.
Didn’t take long though and we were picking out our balls before we knew it, ooh
Again, Fantasia wasn’t too busy either, there was a few families but I think the drizzle had scared everyone away! Chris beat me at golf, no surprise really, he’s one of those annoying people who is literally amazing at everything
I don’t have any times written down in my notes, but it must have been getting on in the afternoon as we just decided to stay in the region of Swan and Dolphin/HS for the evening. We had a walk round to Boardwalk and seeing as though we had lunch a little earlier than normal we were feeling a bit peckish and as we were approaching the bakery we decided that it would only be sensible to pop in. We got a Oreo cupcake each which were massive and so tasty

As we were heading in that direction we decided to go into Yacht & Beach resort, we’d only ever seen pictures of the hotels and we were at that point in the holiday where you start saying “ooh next year, maybe we should do xyz” so it was definitely worth popping in for a look around .
What a beautiful resort, the theming was amazing, and it was just decorated so perfect, the corridors also had that perfect Disney smell as well.
On our way round, we came across the arcade and as we are suckers for an arcade we had to go in. We put $10 on one of the little arcade cards and took it in turns to go on a ride each. When we got around to the pinball machines on Chris’s last go this little American kid came up to us and was watching Chris and he got so into it and excited every time Chris did something the kid was telling him to, we still chuckle about it now
After Y&B we then made the walk down to HS, it was a bit of a way, but it wasn’t terrible. The only ride that didn’t have a ridiculous wait on it was Star Tours, so we had a go on that to kill a bit of time and it’s always a fun thing to go on.
Whilst we were waiting for Rhoda and Dan to get to the park we sat by the Frozen show bit and had a quick drink, but luckily we didn’t have to wait too long.
We had a FP for ToT, so managed to persuade Rhoda and Dan to go on that again (they weren’t fans) and after another walk around seeing what the queue situation was like we found that Star Tours only had a 25 minute wait so we were all happy to wait.
I don’t know what happened to me in the queue but for some reason I started feeling really sick and dizzy and I was petrified of puking on the road due to it being a simulator . I mentioned it to Rhoda who asked when I last ate, and I realised that we’d had McDonalds not long after 12 and our cupcakes about 3pm, so maybe I was having a blood sugar moment. Chris gave me his bottle of water and Rhoda fished some sweets out of her bag, she’s like Mary Poppins I swear, and I soon felt better and was happy to go on the ride.
With that drama over it was finally time for Fantasmic, we’d managed to get a FP for it which I was very glad of when we were walking up to the arena as there were absolutely tonnes of people in the non FP bit and nearly all the seating had gone!
The usual Mexican wave went round and you had the usual grumps not participating. It didn’t take long for the show to start and it was as wonderful as I remembered, Rhoda was particularly wowed by it.

After Fantasmic we made our way back out and walked down to Fantasia gardens to the car, we’d agreed to drop Chris’s parents off at their hotel as although they did have transport to the Clarion Inn, it wasn’t fantastic and the buses weren’t very regular.
Traffic was pretty insane even at 10:30pm so it took us quite a while to drop them off, we stopped at the Burger King drive through on the way home and we were in bed watching The Office before we knew it!

Tomorrow – Kennedy Space Centre

[Palm trees]

Another busy day. I like the sound of the Orlando eye but worry that I'd get scared when we got high!

[Goosey-Lucy]

Originally Posted by Palm trees

Another busy day. I like the sound of the Orlando eye but worry that I'd get scared when we got high!

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Chris was a bit worried as he doesn’t like heights but he said he felt okay once up there because the pods were quite big and stable

[mick]

Another good day

Joan