Tag: theme parks

Orlando has most of the world’s biggest theme parks, including Disney World and Universal Studios, obviously, but if you want to ride the biggest coasters and thrill rides then you have to drive to Busch Gardens in Tampa .

Unfortunately Jen wasn’t feeling great on Friday and we’d already got our tickets to Busch Gardens so she decided to sit this one out and stay in the villa (lounging by the pool and drinking wine I might add!).

Again, the park was pretty empty because of the time of year so Robin, Esp and I managed to spend the whole day getting on and off the biggest rides with virtually no wait. ‘Sheikra’ is a lot like Oblivion at Alton Towers but has TWO very large vertical drops. ‘Kumba’ has lots of tight upside down loops and ‘Montu’ is just massive. You can see for miles from the top and it lasts a couple of minutes with plenty of inverted loops and spirals.

The best ride of the day, though (and the best coaster I’ve ever ridden) is their new ride ‘Cheetah Hunt’. It’s very long (nearly a mile), very smooth and launches you from “zero to cheetah”, which is zero toaround 60mph in under two seconds. It’s not the first ride to use magnets to accelerate you very quickly from a standing start, but it does it three times over the course of the track. At one point you’re coasting along a straight track towards a very large incline and you haven’t got the speed to get up to the top, until something kicks the train forwards at an incredible speed and you sail over the top, losing your stomach in the process. Next to the Tower of Terror it has to be the best ride in Florida!

Busch Gardens is also a zoo/safari park so you get to see lots of cool animals as you walk about.

It was our last day in Orlando where we’ve all had a great time. Robin and Esp have now flown back to England so I hope they enjoyed Orlando as much as we did. We continued our drive on to Crystal River ready for Saturday’s trip to see the Manatees.

 

 

After an exhausting day at Disney we decided to take it a little easier today and went to Typhoon Lagoon , the waterpark Jon and I loved last time we were here. They have the worlds first water rollercoaster (you sit in 2-person rubber rings and it goes up as well as down – See Robin’s video above) and fortunately, Esp & Robin were quite happy to keep going round and round – we were the last people to go on it before the park shut and I think that was around our seventh go!

There is also a lazy river, wave pool, high speed chutes… basically everything needed to allow us all to regress back to being about 10 years old.

This evening we grew up a bit and went to Fulton’s Crabhouse in Downtown Disney (you can’t avoid Disney in Orlando and Fulton’s is a really nice seafood restaurant) I’d never had oysters before and it turns out I love them, this could get expensive!

Tomorrow we’re going to Tampa and Busch Gardens and a lot of large ‘coasters…

 

 

As we only have 6 days to fit in as many parks as possible, Wednesday was “Disney Day” and we decided to ‘hop’ between 3 parks; Hollywood Studios was first, followed by Epcot Center and finishing in Magic Kingdom for the firework display.

In my opinion, Hollywood Studios has the best ride in Orlando, the Tower of Terror! Fortunately Jon already agrees and after one ride, so did Esp and Robin (although it was the first ride we went on and Robin ‘may’ have been regretting that last drink the night before!) With that and the Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster plus an Indianna Jones stunt show and Star Tours, a Star Wars themed 3D ride, it was lucky the park was empty as we got to try all the rides we wanted to, then back to the Tower of Terror (twice more, yep, big kids!)

We then took a boat ride over to Epcot to have a look round and go on Soarin’, a gentle flight simulation that glides you over lots of American scenery – it sounds a little tame, but it’s quite impressive, not least for the ride structure, with hundreds of people all in rows and hanging from mechanical arms, facing a giant screen several stories high. Follow this with TestTrack (where you take the part of crash test dummies in around a high speed test track) and Spaceship Earth and a wander around a few of the ‘countries’, and we were running out of time, so had to move on

Our final (and by this time, quite exhausted) leg of the Disney-fest was to Magic Kingdom. You can’t do Disney without seeing a parade (well, that’s my excuse for barging small children out of the way to get to the front) and we managed to arrive just minutes before one started which was pretty good timing. The main reason to go to Magic Kingdom last was for the fireworks, but we managed to fit in Pirates of the Carribean and the Haunted Mansion whilst we were waiting, the fireworks in Disney are always fantastic, this year “Wishes” was narrated by Jimminy Cricket and featured a zip-lining Tinkerbell… well why not!

And sleep… next park is in less than 12 hours!

 

We’ve only got six days in Orlando, which means we’re having to cram in as much stuff as we can in as few a days as possible, which means I haven’t had time to update the blog. We’re taking lots of photos tough and I’ll add lots more over the next few days.

On Monday we did two theme parks in one day, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, which is easier than it sounds because (A) The’re right next two each other and you only have to buy one ticket and (B) we’ve been there before so we know which are the best rides to go on if you haven’t got much time. Also at this time of year there are no queues to get on the rides so we managed to do all the big coasters in IOA and all of the best rides at Universal without any problems.

We also got to visit the new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter”.

I haven’t read any of the books or seen any of the Harry Potter films so I had no idea what most of it was about, but it was still pretty cool to see how they had recreated all the locations and characters from the book. It’s not easy to do two theme parks in one day but when there’s no queues and you already know what the best rides are then you can just run round all day riding all the best ones! We did the same at Disney World yesterday but I’ll post all about that in a couple of days