The rest of the Florida trip

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The second part of the trip seemed to fly by faster than the first part. Normal I guess. We revisited each of the parks except for Hollywood Studios. Epcot was our favorite so we went there for short days a few times. In the second week we also went out to Cape Canaveral to the Kennedy Space Center for a day. That was a great trip. We all enjoyed it even more than we expected and could have spent an extra day there to see everything. For this blog entry I was going to mostly do my writing right with each photo, but when I previewed the blog about half way through doing it this way I find that it doesn't easily show all that text with the photos so I am cutting it out and putting it in the blog. When I started the blog the photo upload wasn't working so this particular blog has been a bit of a pain and slow in coming to fruition. Need to get it done so I can move on to the next event....

On the day we went to Disney Quest, the giant 5 story video arecade, we finished early (all the flashing lights, loud sounds and virual movement had made Claude and I both a bit naseous!). We all went over to the Disney Beach Club (one of the resorts) to their Ice Cream Parlour for a late afternoon treat. Karen had read about the "Kitchen Sink" ice cream dessert and we decided we had to try it. It had 2 scoops each of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry ice cream plus 1 scoop of mint and 1 coffee. Then it has bananas, chocolate bars, brownies and sponge cake for fixings and then topped with chocolate sauce, a whole can of whipped cream, cookies and cherries. Wow! It comes served in a bowl that looks like the kitchen sink. You can see in the photo that the boys were pretty excited when that arrived! They do it up as a real production, as you can see them preparing it and when it is ready they turn on a flashing red light and then announce to the whole place what is in it and carry it around the restaurant before they bring it to your table. (it is a tiny little ice cream place). It was really good and there was enough there for each of us to have at least two bolws worth, so at $25 it was a good deal for 10 people. The amazing thing is, is that in the menu it is listed as a serving for 4! We went at about 4 pm so were hungry (and didn't end up needing much dinner that night) and even with that it was pretty tough to come close to finishing it. The guy told us most groups don't have enough people to finish it.

We decided to do a character breakfast at Animal Kingdom. We were glad we did as the setting was great. the buffet area was set up to look like an outdoor African market. The even had some african type dishes. the breakfast was a disappointment compared to the character breakfasts at Disneyland because there were way less characters at them. At ours here just Mickey, Daisy and Goofy came around. You get your photo taken with donald as you come in but he doesn't come around. At the one we were at in disneyland there were many characters roaming around all the time. We were glad we had picked a breakfast with such a neat setting or it wouldn't have been worth the price. Although we had done it the first day at Animal Kingdom, the safari ride so good we did it a second time. You did feel like you were in the savanah with the animals. some of them were really close to the jeep. they also add a Disney adventure of chasing Poachers and the boys weren't really sure if that part was real or pretend. M was very concerned about the safety of baby elephant from the poackers. Animal Kingdom also had one of our favorite animals - the crazy Okapii. The Okapii is a strange animal that looks like a compination of horse and zebra. It is actually the closest relative to the giraffe. Anyways, P and Bumpa have had ongoing fun with the Okapii since our first visit to the San Diego zoo together. They debate weather is should be called a Zorse or a Horbra. I think Zorse has finally won out. I don't think P even remembers its real name anymore!

The Kennedy Space Center is at Cape Canaveral about 1 1/2 hrs from Kissimee. It was well worth the trip. We spent the whole day and didn't get to see everything we wanted to. We all learned alot. One of the highlights of the day at the space center was we got to go to a talk with a real astronaut, Bob Springer. He told about his experiences and you could ask questions too. Afterwards he posed with us for pictures. We were very fortunate on our visit, as they had just moved the Shuttle Discovery on to its launch pad the week before we were there. It is being readied for its final mission on Feb 24th. (as I am writing this blog after the fact, we did get to watch the launch live on TV from home).
Even from the viewing platform you are a long way away from the shuttle. Within 400m you would be killed from the heat at launch. Within 800m I think it was the sound waves that would kill you. Amazing. On the bus trip (which also took us out to the launch viewing area), we drove past the VAB. This building was built to be able to assemble a complete Saturn V rocket with Apollo spaceship on top. They are twice the height of the space shuttle. To get some perspective on the building size, our guide told us that each star on the building flag was 6 feet tall! It is one of the largest buildings in the world. After that the bus trip went out to the Saturn V / Apollo building. Inside they have a complete life size model of the rocket with Apollo module attached suspended lengthwise above you. It seems to go on for ever and you can see by the photo of us compared to the engine thrusters how big the thing really is. In that building the also had a great video and re-enactment presenation about the first Apollo mission to land on the moon, and many other facts about the missions.

Pool time! One of the highlights for the boys has been having a pool right in the back yard. They have gone in it everyday. M especially loves it and usually we needed to go in the pool in the morning before he would agree to go to Disneyworld! Even on very cold mornings or downpouring rain, they were out there in it. The neighbours walking by would often look in in amazement. The pool was screened in so even in the rain it just came in like a fine mist and it sheltered the wind too. The pool was much warmer than our rental house in California had been. the pool itself was almost like bathwater and the hot tub even better (once we figured out how to start it!).

Disneyworld has some major expansions planned for their Fantasyland area at Magic Kingdom. As a result they have decided to remove Mickey's Toontown and revamp it as part of Fantasyland. The boys were very sad about this as the Goffy Barnstormer rollercoaster was one of P's favorites. It is the same rollercoaster as the Gadget coaster at Toontown in disneyland except with different decor around it. Our last day at Disney was the last day for Toontown too, so we made sure to visit one more time and have one more rollercoaster visit. The place was very busy, I guess with people doing the same nostalgia thing as us. We took a lot of photos and said farewell.

Interestingly, one of P's favorite non speed rides was the Living with the Land boat cruise at Epcot. It is basically a boat ride through their experimental greenhouses where they are growing all sorts of weird and wonderful things and everyday things in novel ways. He loved the giant pumpkins that the vines were growing up on a trellis and the pumpkins were suspended in nets. They grew beautifully round evenly colored with no ground rot compared to regular ones.

Throughout our time in the parks we were searching for Hidden Mickeys. There was a book in our house about them. Aparantly when the Imagineers created Epcot, there wasn't supposed to be mickey stuff there. They disagreed so secretly worked mickey images into everyday things that aren't instantly obvious unless you are looking for them. The mickeys have now spread to being in all the parks. The plates in the photo from the Moroccan shop is one example we found. Even M had fun spotting them and E was very good at it.

One of the highlights for Marc was getting to do a geocache with Bumpa on the last day. the other boys have done them before but he has been too young to understand what it is. [For those of you not in the know, geocaching is like doing a scavenger hunt with your GPS. People stash a little cache somewhere and then register it's coordinates on the Geocaching site. You look it up and then use your GPS to go find it.] Bumpa had done one earlier in the day with the cousins, and they had found a giant cockroache when they reached into the underbrush to find the cache. P wasn't about to put his hands in there so he used M's light saber to try to find it, but M had no fears and he headed right in to the bushes to get it. We bugged them about sending the little guy in to do the dirty stuff! M was so excited that you got to pick out a toy from the cache (and you leave one too). He slept with his little truck that night and still talkes about going geocaching.

It was with sad hearts that we said farewell to Disneyworld and a great vacation. We will return!

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