Notes from a Plane

Right, sitting on the plane from Orlando to Dallas, and totally unable to get to my rucksack and get a proper blogging device, of which I have many, you understand, because of all the big arse-bags people have put up in the overhead locker. Mine is squeezed in the back behind someone else's bag. Sigh. Still, we are actually lucky on this particular flight, because we have some amazing legroom, being in the first row of cattle class just behind First Class. Had to capitalise that, because they're so posh in there, they get a meal with a glass of wine, and actual metal flatware! This has been a bit of a thing for me, because since arriving in the US, we've succeeded in eating with metal cutlery just twice. Once at the Rainforest Cafe, and the second time at the Hard Rock Cafe after an exhausting day in Universal Studios.

Flatware concerns aside, the real drawback of sitting here is that we DON'T get a meal, and their food does smell pretty good.

Another thing to mention is that the TSA guys at Orlando are quite the nicest US TSA people I've encountered. Not only were they polite, they were actually helpful, which, after my experience at Chicago on the way into the country, was a very pleasant change.

Apparently there is wifi on the flight, but apart from finding the name of the access point, I've been unsuccessful in connecting. I know it's going to cost me money, but how cool would it be to be blogging at 32000 feet? Yeah - very cool! I'll let you know how that works out for me!

Hmmm. While I can buy 15 minutes for $1.95, it seems a whole load of hassle, because I have to create an account. I'll wait until we get to ground level, and I'll mail it from there. Sorry about the lack of cool!

Well, given that we're not going to be landing for another 40 minutes, I might as well tell you about some of the more exciting bits of the holiday.

Epcot - I don't know why, but I LOVE Epcot! For me it was the best Disney park. I don't know if I enjoyed the World Pavillions or the rides more. Despite my "Top Ten Orlando" book telling me that the Spaceship Earth ride was rather dated, I think, maybe, they they are rather dated! I gather the ride's been updated recently, and it was a spectacular, continuous loop telling a story of communication. Not only that, it was narrated by the deliciously dulcet-voiced Dame Judy Dench! It wasn't a rollercoaster by any means, but it was a beautifully set story, illustrated with delightful vignettes, as we spiralled up inside the iconic Epcot golf-ball. That was much more satisfying than expected.

My favourite ride, overall, was the "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" ride at Universal's Islands of Adventure! To get to the ride, you queue through the castle, the rooms in which are faithfully recreated from the castle in the movies.

Oh, before I continue, allow me to share with you that our Pilot just thanked us "for flying American Airlines as we fly across the greatest country on God's green earth!" I'll stop chuckling soon!

Back to the Harry Potter ride. As you wind through the castle, the strands of a story are woven, including moving paintings, Harry, Ron and Hermione appearing from beneath the cloak of invisibility and various other devices. And then you're strapped into a sort of church pew on a simulator for the ride, which includes both projections and animatronics, and is completely awesome! Oh, I forgot to mention that you have to wear 3-d glasses.

It uses the same technology as the Spiderman ride, which, I gather, took a long time and a LOT of money to develop. Still, I suppose having spent so much to develop it, you might as well get some mileage out of it.

Coming into land now. More later!

Seaworld and Animal Kingdom

We had to write off our first full day in Florida, as neither myself or the girls slept at all well that night, and thus in the morning were completely unable to function beyond a trip to the outlet mall - and even that was a bit of a bust, because we'd managed barely two hours before we all had to go home and rest.

In order to try to help with the time adjustment, we rudely chivvied the girls up after scant 1 hour of sleep, and forced them to have fun with us in Downtown Disney, where I experienced my first Rainforest Cafe. I'm sorry to say I was slightly less than overwhelmed, leaving me, probably, just about whelmed. They messed up our order, and left our main course sitting, drying out, while they worked out what else we wanted, so by the time the dish arrived, the ribs and steak were dry and tough.

And so on to our first actual theme park: Seaworld.
You can probably imagine the sort of park I was expecting, can't you? Loads of tanks of fish swimming around, with little helpful labels telling us a fair bit about the fish, and incidentally, some rides thrown in to keep the kids amused. Well, the latter was certainly true, although I disliked Manta because the position you're in for the ride is rather uncomfortable, leaving you craning your neck to see where you're going all the way through. I'm rather pleased it wasn't just me who didn't like it, as Lottie deemed it "Meh", while Lizzy and Ian felt pretty much the same as I did. So we raced over to Krakken, another water-themed ride. Which was EXCELLENT! This was a very exciting ride, a bit like Colossus back in Thorpe Park, but without the neck jerking as you go round. And since we'd deposited our goodies in a locker for the duration of the ride (for which we had to pay two shiny, American quarters), we thought we might as well leave them there while we queued for the Atlantis ride, which is a log flume. And a very good one, if I may say!

And those are the rides at Seaworld. Back to the education part.

Having covered the education part, let's get on to the shows. These were good, but rather over-produced, and a bit cheesy, although I really enjoyed Shamu and Shamu Rocks (yes, we stayed for the evening show). We went to see the Sealion and Otter show, where neither of the sealions were in the mood for performing, although the show was funny. Actually, I'm not sure the unwillingness to perform didn't actually enhance the show somewhat!

OK - that was mean. There IS a small educational element going on in the park, but it's VERY much overshadowed by a creeping commercialism which is rather frustrating. This conversation, between a woman and a park worker did actually happen, leaving me wishing there was actually MORE educational content in the park.The park worker was showing a Hawaiian Goose...

Womain: Why are they in danger of being extinct? Is it because of the volcano?
Park Worker: No, it's because of humans.
Woman: What? Are they eating them?
Park Worker (with no small exasperation): It's the pollution!

The promised (still on the internet, you understand) Penguin Encounter didn't happen, although a whole area of park was given up to a "coming soon" development called Antarctica. Which is nice - if you happen to be coming back in July :(

Seaworld was OK. Not brilliant, although Krakken was a great ride. The park was let down by the number of missed opportunities for education.


Day 2 - Disney's Animal Kingdom!

Staying on Disney property does have its moments. One of which is access to the bus system to take you from your hotel to each park. You can get a bus pretty much every 20 minutes, and during your ride you're fed information about the park you're about to visit. And so it was that I found out about their latest ride at Animal Kingdom, Expedition Everest!

I know all the blurb is going to go on about an "exciting, runaway train ride through the peaks of the Himalayas", but actually they'd be pretty much correct! It starts off pretty sedately, and since you're not completely strapped in, you know there are no loop the loops, so assumptions are made about how fast you're going to be going. The ride is brilliant, as you start out up a small incline, and round a fairly low-level spiral, before heading up a much higher incline, through the temple of the Yeti! Expecting a fairly standard ride as you whoosh downwards, it's a surprise to find that your rail tracks have been bent out of shape, and there are some very large claw marks in the "snow" by the side of the track... The train, having paused for long enough for you to make out these things, starts rolling backwards, quicker and quicker, until it goes inside the mountain, where, again, you pause...

A silhouette of a yeti tearing up the tracks is shown, accompanied by some jolting in the train (and roaring, before you plunge downwards, out of the mountain (and have your picture taken, screaming like a girl), and finish the ride partly in the dark of the mountain, partly in the blazing sunlight.

After that, the Kali River Rapids seems quite tame by comparison. Which it is, if you're one of the lucky ones who end up mildly damp at the end of the ride.

We took a walk through the Maharajah's temple, a beautifully "ruined" temple housing tigers, fruit bats and other Asian wildlife. The temple ruins were beautifully done, and looked really realistic.

A little lunch in the Yak and Yeti restaurant sustained us for the next part of the adventure, into Africa.

The next ride wasn't a white knuckle affair, but a savannah safari, in a large jeep. This was really interesting, as there were many creatures roaming, including giraffes, elephants and a small herd of wildebeest. We even saw the top of a lion's head!

Over to Dinoland, where we discovered two very fun rides, although neither of them was in any way white-knuckle. The first, with a wait time of barely 10 minutes, was called Dinosaur, a ride telling how a (slightly) mad scientist wants to send us back in time (in a time travelling jeep) to the Cretaceous period and bring back an Iguanadon. The ride is part on a moving platform, but it does travel round a cunningly set up circuit, stopping to identify dinosaurs en route, all the while spinning the yarn of the mad scientist trying to make sure we get out before the meteor which destroyed 90% of life on earth hits. This ride is REALLY fun, with enough sudden dinosaurs to make you jump, and rather good story thrown in, too!

At this point we discovered one of the silliest rides in Disney, the Primeval Whirl, reminding me of nothing so much as a VERY old fashioned roller-coaster I remember doing at a park in Sydney. And I only mention it because it's also one of the most fun rides we did!

I'll move onto Magic Kingdom and Epcot as soon as I can...

The Adventure Begins

It was a pleasure to fly out of Heathrow Terminal 5 for the start of our holiday.

We arrived in VERY good time, due to my mate Paul worrying that there’d be loads of traffic, but actually, about 20 minutes after we left the house, we arrived at Heathrow and started trying to check in. To my annoyance, 2 minutes after leaving the house, the strap of my my chosen (read “large”) handbag snapped like a tightrope wire, leaving me with a largely useless bag. However, airports are nothing if not opportunities to spend money, and so I was able to find a very nice replacement scant minutes after we’d checked in our bags.

And so we decided we’d get through security as quickly as possible, and pressing on, collecting our clear, plastic pouches into which we could slip the toothpaste, handcream and other liquids we’d insisted we couldn’t do without. Our trepidation grew as we were funnelled into the main security area. Expecting every moment to be stopped and shot (I know, we’re still in London at this point), we carefully placed everything into little trays, and watching our belongings disappear into the bowels of the scanning machine, stepped towards the metal detector...

And that was it. Lottie suffered a quick pat down, which had to be done in front of me, we didn’t have to remove our shoes, and our stuff was returned without question or investigation. In addition to which the security people were, to a person, helpful and informative, which was a completely different story from those in the US. But I race ahead where baby steps are needed.

After security, we stopped for breakfast, and spying a Wagamama, decided to have breakfast there – apparently that’s the only branch of the chain which serves breakfast.

The flight was not quite 8 hours long, and I had a massive dilemma. I SO wanted to watch some of the movies available on board, but I found myself unable to sleep through movies I hadn’t watched before, and I wanted to sleep so that I wouldn’t feel too jet-lagged on arrival in the US. I suspect I couldn’t sleep through previously unwatched movies because I didn’t actually want to miss anything, a suspicion confirmed when I managed to sleep quite successfully through much of “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows!”

And so we arrived in Chicago. And this is where security really kicked in. I do wonder just who they think they’re actually deterring. There’s the immigration paper you have to fill in on arrival, asking such questions as, “Do you have any seeds you are importing into the United States of America?” and many others. The sort of questions to which you have to answer “No”, or risk not being able to come into the country. Except that you’d have to be some kind of simpleton to answer “Yes” to any of the questions, because it’s very clear that such an answer would result in expulsion from the country. Do they really believe that anyone actually doing these things will answer Yes? I’m pretty convinced that most terrorists are substantially cleverer than that. Really, correct me if I’m wrong!

I was, initially, delighted by the security officer dealing with our line, as he was SUCH a spectacular stereotype. He was a slightly portly gentleman of a certain age, with what has to be, no question, THE best brush cut hair do I’ve ever seen!! Unfortunately this delight soured as people were delayed beyond what seemed reasonable, and people who’s English was somewhat less than perfect were treated to hand gestures – which may not have been a problem had the people in question been looking at our security guard at the time. The turnaround time of two hours had seemed rather generous, until one realised that we had to go through this, pick up the bags, recheck them and make it across the airport to another terminal to board our onward flight. We ended up running, gasping, onto the next flight.

This flight wasn’t anything like as nice as the trip over from the UK, but the stewards were just as lovely, and were able to provide me with a fair facsimile of a cup of tea for the flight!

We were delighted to arrive at Orlando airport and before we’d managed to find baggage claim, were collected ourselves!

The adventure continues as soon as I can...