I’m currently in Florida, on the second leg of a two-week family vacation. We arranged this quite some time ago, and decided that we’d drive across as it would work out cheaper than flying. Obviously I hadn’t counted for the rampant rise in gas prices, or the fact that the Explorer only gets around 17 miles to the gallon when I made this decision. But even so it was still cheaper to make the 2,000 mile round trip by car, especially as there were seven of us (the in-laws are also over). Plus, my loathing of air travel would see me hitchiking rather than flying… Although flying would have taken us significantly less than the 21 hours it took us to drive, thanks to a couple of major accidents, and hitting Houston during rush-hour on a Friday, and taking a couple of food breaks at Cracker Barrel and Waffle House. The former was up to its usual standard (although apparently the Southwestern Scramble is a Texas thing, as they hadn’t heard of it in Louisiana), but I would have needed a mullet, a couple of teeth missing and be wearing a wifebeater to have felt truly comfortable in Waffle House. I don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes, but with Waffle House, it’s all true!
Obviously, with children aged 3, 7 and 9, the main draw of Florida was the theme parks. The daddy of them all is of course Disney, but this is by no means the best. The rides are OK, but not great, and they all seem a little old. Their main ride is Space Mountain, but it seems to offer a vision of space as seen from the sixties. And I’m sure It’s A Small World hasn’t changed since the park was opened. Still, the kids seemed to enjoy it. Even Finn traded his Skatenik image for a Mousketeer one during the parade, becoming more animated (!) than I’ve seen him in years, shouting “Look! It’s Mickey!” and waving frantically during the Big Parade, although I’m sure he’d deny it now. We spent a couple of leisurely days in the Magic Kingdom, followed by another day at Disney’s Animal World (or whatever it’s called), which offered a couple more rides and some animals to gawk at.
 They say you can’t put a price on a child’s laughter, but apparently you can. According to Walt Disney, It’s around $80. This may not sound like a lot for a full day of entertainment, but when you have a family of five and are looking to spend three days there, it soon adds up.
Better, was Universal Studios, where we spent a further two days (they have two theme parks adjacent to each other, but you have to pay for entrance separately, which is a scam, as you could probably do them both in a single day, if you tried). The rides here are significantly better (bigger, faster, higher, scarier, etc.) than Disney, and Universal have done a very good job of tying the rides into their movie themes. The Mummy ride was outstanding, mainly due to it catapulting you up the first incline, instead of hauling you up. The Hulk ride was also well worth the queuing time – but as we had ‘Express’ tickets that let you just about jump to the start of the queue (an extra $30 per ticket, but well worth the money as average ‘standard’ wait times were an hour), that was only about three minutes.
The highlight of the two days (and, in fact, voted the Ride of the Vacation by the whole family (except the Mother-In-Law who had her eyes closed all the way round) was the Simpsons ride. Universal advertise the hell out of this, with billboards all along the road to the park, and full in-your-face advertising throughout the park, but for my money it more than lived up to the billing – mainly because it was so unexpected. (Spoiler Alert: skip to the next para if you’ll be visiting yourself any time soon). The Simpsons ride is not a rollercoaster in the true sense of the word. Instead, you’re sat in a car that moves on hydraulics (like those Space Shuttle simulators you get), whilst they show a cartoon of the ride on a huge screen that fills your entire vision. The effect is brilliant, and you really feel that you’re in the cartoon. The whole ride ties together very well, with the videos you see while you’re waiting, and the safety video, extending into the ride itself. Very, very cool. So cool we did it twice, in fact.
Anyway, after five days of amusement parks, plus a visit to the Space Center at Cape Canaveral (which really didn’t have anything for young kids) it was time to leave Orlando and head to the beach for a week of recovery. We rented a house outside Tampa, not far from the beach, and set out on our first day for some serious relaxing. It’s mid-summer and very hot (though not as hot or humid as home in Houston, I noted with some relief), so we slathered everyone in Factor 50 lotion and spent a couple of hours on glistening golden sand, and in blue-ish (albeit not clear) sea (with dolphins larking about a couple of hundred yards away). It would have been perfect, had we not all ended up sunburned. I don’t know what brand of sun-lotion we used, but we may as well have sprayed ourselves with Pam for all the good it did! So we’re now spending a couple of days dodging the sun like Albinos, waiting to slough our crispy-red skin, before we can head out during daytime again. Hence me having the time to sit inside and do this.
We have a couple more days to go, one of which we’ll spend at Busch Gardens on some more rides, and then it will be a relaxing 21-hour drive back to Texas, where we’ll see what Hurricane Dolly has left of our house!
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