Day -1: York departure day
Taxi to York station, caught the train to Manchester Piccadilly, and then another from then onto Bolton, both 185s. Picked up by someone related to Paul (I lose track of who’s who amid everything else that went on on the holiday), spent the evening over there mostly taking it turns playing Heroes of Newerth, as ever. Sat outside in the sunshine eating chicken, and I discovered I’d forgotten how to make orange squash, as I made mine about 3 times too strong. No matter, the dog helped herself to the first glass anyway… Tried to keep the night relatively early as we were up at 5:10 the following morning.
Day 0: Departure day
Being taken straight after Paul’s mum was back from work, we left around 5:45 getting to the airport around 6:15, so we had a little over an hour to kill in the departure lounge before Nick and Clare arrived. On clearing security we had to wait a considerable time for Nick to get his cash passport from the Thomas Cook desk, which turned out to be less of an issue when we would later realise how delayed the flight was. At the time we only knew it was delayed by an hour and that we’d be on a smaller plane, raising my concerns as I realised the next size down would neither be adequate for a 10 hour journey, nor have the capacity to carry everyone that had booked a ticket for that day’s flight. After a ham & cheese Panini breakfast we made our way over to gate 3 where my suspicions were confirmed as the plane sitting beside the gate was G-BYAY, a 757 that could carry 235 people in a 3-3 layout, in stark contrast to the scheduled 767 that could seat 283 in a 2-4-2 layout. Fortunately, for the outbound flight we had booked seats in rows A & B, not G & H like the return flight. The surplus 48 people were travelling on tomorrow’s flight, it turned out. The situation was made all the more amusing by the Virgin 747 sat next to ours at the airport, utterly dwarfing it. As it turned out, this wasn’t the flight to Orlando international, which was an A330 we saw travel past while we sat in the gate, as it was not delayed, very similar to what we flew on last time to Florida.
Eventually, we were seated in the cramped 757 and took off at shortly after 1pm, 2 ½ hours after scheduled. After the 6h45 flight to Bangor, Maine, I found myself surprisingly less uncomfortable than expected, although having been up for 15 hours, quite tired. The diversion actually allowed us to close-up some pretty spectacular New England scenery. Bangor also seemed as much an airport as an air-force base, with only one small commuter jet on stand, but at least five USAF C-17s. The descent to Bangor was quite rapid, causing the first concern I had of the holiday with Nick’s travel-sickness. Fortunately the landing for the second leg at Sanford was a lot smoother. We were on the tarmac at Bangor for about 40 minutes. During the second 3h10 section, it was bizarre to have been awake (during daylight) for more than an entire day and it still be daylight outside, not really a feeling that can be described. Upon arrival at Sanford, immigration was actually a lot less of an issue than I had been expecting. With the exception of having to queue around 15 minutes for the privilege, the security process was quite straightforward, and the exuberant friendliness of staff we’d become accustomed to in florida began in earnest, I seemed to get the cheeriest officer. Nonetheless, the process wasn’t the least bit intimidating, other than perhaps having fingerprints taken (electronically at least). Stepping out into the evening heat around 28ºC and being greeted with the familiar summer holiday vegetation smell, the organisation of car hire was pretty straightforward, though me and Paul sat at the side while Nick and Clare organised it. ‘Take any car you like from the intermediate row’ was the instruction. After having chosen from the row (which essentially consisted of three identical cars) and spending 10 minutes trying to open the boot on it, one of the alamo people came over, at which point we discovered the battery was disconnected on it. Seemingly he knew about as much as we did about that… While Clare understandably spent a fair while familiarising herself with the car, most of the delay was us not realising the mirrors were folded slightly inwards (somewhat embarrassing) and trying to configure the satnav to avoid toll roads. It’s fair to say Clare was pretty competent driving in the US, and by the time we arrived at the villa after about an hour and a quarter, I had no real concerns at all. By the time we left the airport it was just getting dark, so our entrance to Orlando on the I-4 was meeting the skyline at night, with a distant lightning storm in the background, but dry weather. A stark contrast to the rainy welcome we had back in 2001! We spent a couple of hours exploring the villa before we went to bed, which was surprisingly large, with an enormous set of kitchen and laundry appliances, four considerable bedrooms, a large comfortable lounge, and of course the games room and pool. They had even left two cans of Mountain Dew in the fridge. You can probably guess who was first to crack open one of those. Compared to the Days Inn approach, this was completely superior, and didn’t really seem any further to the theme parks with the exception of getting to Universal and SeaWorld in the busy traffic. Our first experience of American food, ordering in a pizza, was pretty underwhelming, but it can’t have helped that we’d been up for essentially a full 24 hours before going to bed.
Day 1: Animal Kingdom
First day at a theme park was when the excitement finally began to sink in for me, having been under the pressures of work right up until the departure, and it still took a day or two for me to really realise I was actually there. Thinking back to the last visit to Florida I couldn’t really remember much about Animal Kingdom other than the dinosaur ride, It’s tough to be a bug, and some of the animal exhibits. Home to the new (ish) Expedition Everest rollercoaster me and dad had watched a documentary of only a few months prior, I was looking forward to trying it. After spending the first few hours soaking up the atmosphere and exploring the various animal exhibits (and being far more enthusiastic with the camera than I was after the first day) we sat through ‘Flights of Wonder’ a bird show, which I don’t remember from our previous visit. In the charismatic style that theme park shows are always presented, we were all suitably impressed. After this, we had a fastpass slot for the Kilimanjaro Safari, essentially a scripted safari tour through a much more open area of the park home to larger animals, rhinos, giraffes and so on. While far from as close-up as the tour we would later get at Busch Gardens, I had forgotten quite how enjoyable such rides are. After wandering over to dinoland to ride DINOSAUR (one of the attractions I do remember, and surprisingly, this time I found it better than I remember), we then headed off in search of food, eventually settling on an asian themed restaurant, where I was first introduced to Kobe beef. Not exactly cheap, but certainly as steaks go, very nice (in my opinion). Sadly Primeval Whirl, the smaller rollercoaster at Animal Kingdom wasn’t operating on the day of our visit, however, as a standard design ‘Spinning Wild Mouse’ coaster, I had effectively already ridden the same type of ride in the UK, and wasn’t hugely disappointed, as Everest was open. After having fastpassed it the first time, with the regular queue only 30 minutes, we queued up with everyone else to ride it a second time. Sadly, due to structural issues the yeti that was detailed at great length in the documentary is only static at this point, so you hardly notice it. Still, as rides go, I was very impressed. After much debate (and it having been closed earlier in the day), three of us elected to ride the river rapids last. I had previously tried explaining you don’t always get completely soaked on rapids rides. I had unfortunately forgotten that, unlike any other rapids ride, the one at Animal Kingdom has a large drop on it. We were about as wet as it’s possible to be. Fortunately, with the heat, even as it got dark, we had dried off somewhat before getting back in the car. Since it was practically on the villa’s doorstep, we visited walmart that night to buy food we could use as dinner, as well as lunch for the following day at Kennedy, given we were unsure of the catering arrangements. I’m not sure if it was this day, but the colossal 56 ounce pizza paul had bought (as dinner, breakfast and lunch) was so large it touched the back of the oven, despite it being twice the size of any oven I’ve ever seen in an English kitchen. The sound of both the smoke alarm and the pool door alarm going off at the same time (to avoid children going outside by themselves the door is alarmed unless you push a button high on the wall outside of kids’ reach, and if the door is still open 10 seconds later, an alarm sounds) was quite hilarious. I seem to recall all this went on while Nick was trying to sleep. The rest of us were outside dipping our feet in the water. We hadn’t had a day where we’d got back early enough to have a proper swim at that point.
Day 2: Kennedy Space Center
With Orlando traffic on the I-4 being pretty abysmal during easter season, it took about 2h30 to get to Kennedy. Having spent the first few hours on exploring the static exhibits and lunching in the rocket garden (where I took the few photos of the day), we did the standard tour (not the up close version we did in 2001. However, the tour options were different, and since we had launch tickets we could actually enter today for free as well), spending some time on the viewing gantry observing the shuttle on the pad, as well as two rockets on the other distant pads, and getting a close up view of the shuttle transport vehicle. The Saturn V hangar is just as impressive as I remember. We spent a fairly long time in the gift shop with Paul spending most of his money on mission badges. I resisted the temptation to buy an STS-134 t-shirt at this point in case we didn’t get to see the launch. The last couple of hours of the day were spent queuing for and then riding the shuttle launch experience simulator (quite fun actually, certainly a viable ride at any theme park), and watching the 45 minute Hubble 3D IMAX film, which was, to sound quite enthusiastic, amazing. Worlds apart from the 3D films seen in theme parks, in IMAX high definition with some amazing images taken from the space telescope, it was just as much a fascinating documentary above anything else, well worth seeing. The journey back home was somewhat shorter due to lack of traffic, but since KSC was open until 8, we weren’t back until shortly before 10pm. Quite contrary to how I remember previous florida holidays, we honestly didn’t find ourselves eating very much at all. It just seemed too hot to have much of an appetite.
Day 3: Universal 2-park marathon
Although the planned revisit never occurred due to considerations of Nick’s feet from the fortnight of long walking days, the plan was to get as much of both Universals done in one day since we had the opportunity. This did result in quite an astronomical ticket price (around $200 with entry to both parks, and express queue passes for same) but it was definitely worth it. This was one of the best days of the trip. Although due to pretty abysmal traffic we entered the park around 11:15 (we had set off around 9:30), that still allowed us around 12 hours to spend at Universal. My game plan was to spend the first few hours in Islands of Adventure, head over to Universal Studios late afternoon/early evening, do everything there, watch the show at closing time, then had back over to Islands for the final hour, to allow doing rides in both parks at night. While time has a habit of slipping away, the plan worked out to a reasonable degree of success. We covered all of The Incredible Hulk coaster (just as spectacular as I remember it, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning for about 10 minutes afterwards), Dr. Doom’s fearfall (think Playstation/Ice Blast at Blackpool), Storm force accelatron (essentially a teacup-style ride. I don’t remember those rides being quite that cramped, 4 adults in one was downright ridiculous, if hilarious) and the amazing adventures of Spiderman, within the first couple of hours. I remain as impressed by the Spiderman ride today as I was when we first rode it last time in Florida. The original aim was to cover all three water rides in quick succession with the express queue passes, to save having to get wet and dry off multiple times. However, after a longer than expected wait for Dudley Do Right’s Ripsaw Falls, most of which was spent with me having sun cream stuck in one of my eyes, and after discovering that Clare wouldn’t be able to ride any water rides for today and the next three days, we decided to pass on the third ride, Jurassic Park River Adventure. A shame really, as I highly enjoyed that last time, but something I just considered an opportunity to make up for next time I came back 
The original intention had been to proceed to the Harry Potter zone. However, with the area having only been open less than a year, a timeslot system was in effect to keep it from becoming too crowded and the ride queues too long. Rather than wait half an hour for entrance, we decided to make the switch to Universal Studios at this point, around 3:30pm or so. Collecting a park map to plan this half of the day, we took on Revenge of the Mummy (amazing indoor coaster, topping Spiderman for best ride of the trip for a few of us) and then shortly before moving on, it was churro time, having not had one yet! Before dinner we then took on Disaster! (The new manifestation of earthquake, with a show-type pre-amble with Christopher Walken. Somewhat reminiscent of the shows at MGM, this featured taking people out of the audience and filming ‘shoots’ with them, which would later be shown along with footage of the subway train scene that forms the ride as a complete film trailer, actually really funny, I was impressed with the conversion they’d made), Twister (exactly as I remember it with the static special effects display of the twister hitting at night), and lastly Jaws (hasn’t changed a bit. Special effects look a bit dated now, but still an enjoyable ride nonetheless) before dining at Lombard’s Seafood restaurant. Nice food again, although we weren’t particularly impressed with the waiter. We then took on Men in Black: Alien Attack (thankfully we didn’t queue forever this time!), the Simpsons Ride (which resides in what used to be the Back to the Future building. Superb effort, and became the new favourite ride of the trip for all of us. Apart from being a really good simulator [you can still see the other cars next to you, as per the back to the future ride] it was also really funny and well written. Unfortunately, our queue time in the express line was so short we didn’t get to see the first introductory video with a Simpsons animated Emmett Brown) and the ET ride (hasn’t changed either to my knowledge, but has stood the test of time very well, doesn’t seem anywhere near as dated as Jaws). By this point, we were rapidly running out of time to ride Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit before the Universal 360 show began (since HRRR is sufficiently new it does not yet accept quick queue passes), so we queued up for it, bypassing the two 4D cinemas (Terminator 2 and Shrek). While HRRR may not be the most intense rollercoaster, it’s certainly a very good one, and having your choice (to a certain extent) of music playing while you ride it, at night, with everything lit up, is amazing. I was genuinely surprised by what a difference it made. Even after doing all the others I think some of us consider rip ride Rockit to be their favourite coaster. We came off the ride at 9:41pm, 4 minutes before the show was due to start. Handily, all the rides at universal (where required) have lockers nearby, which are free to use for an hour or two (depending on queue length), and are fingerprint operated. Rather than being a firework display, Universal 360 uses domes on the lagoon to summarise a history of Universal’s films over the decades, with music, lasers and the odd occasional firework to accent it. While not as pyrotechnically impressive as Disney’s offerings, it was still an interesting show well worth viewing. Now that Universal Studios was closed we headed through Citywalk (an amazing place to wander through at night, full of lively activity at the bars/cinemas) back over to Islands of Adventure to ride Harry Potter and the forbidden journey, a ride which, though I was somewhat sceptical, had enormous amounts of critical acclaim. Due to the queue length (another new attraction, forbidden journey does not yet accept express queue passes either) we weren’t able to ride Dragon Challenge or the Hulk at night in addition, so my re-riding Duelling Dragons in its Harry Potter format will have to wait until another visit to Florida. However, to my surprise, we unanimously voted Forbidden Journey the best ride of the trip, and it probably held that position to the end. It is essentially a more modern and convincing implementation of the Spiderman ride, although minus the 3D technology. The speeds with which the ride moves in certain sections are quite considerable, and although it’s impossible to give a feeling for what the ride is like either with a video (primarily because of how dark it is) or in text, suffice to say it was an incredible end to the day.
Sadly, with the two park approach used, at least starting as late in the day as we did, we weren’t able to visit shows like Beetlejuice or the Blues Brothers, and had to miss out on the 3D cinema experiences. However, given the amount we covered in one day, this is certainly a very viable approach and made for a very long, but absolutely enjoyable day. We left Islands at around 11:20 and thus didn’t get back to the villa until shortly after midnight. Another relatively busy day to follow, however, as Seaworld was next on the agenda.