Walt Disney World 3rd - 12th May

We arrived at our hotel, Disney’s Yacht Club, which was brilliant! We got ourselves checked in and into our rooms pretty quickly: they must have thought we were staying for at least a month with all the bags we had! (15 of them!). Our room was awesome, good AC, t.v. (with a cartoon only channel!), bathroom, hot water and a patio. Mum and dad’s room had a small glitch in that it was right opposite the laundry room and thus had a very noisy fan blowing cold air at there door constantly but they did receive visits from both wild ducks and rabbits, so you cant have it all! (we did offer to swap with them but they politely declined our offer and we didn’t push it!)

The hotel was situated right on the boardwalk which surrounds a lake and waterway system where you can grab a boat to Epcot or MGM Studios. At one end of the hotel there was a large pool with slide (which was a little bumpy!) and rather oddly, a beach that faced onto the lake. On the opposite side of the boardwalk to the hotel there is an area of shops, restaurants and clubs, which is where we spent our first night. We had a good meal sitting outside one of the restaurants then had a few goes on some of the fairground type games that they had there and Dan and dad won me a couple of cuddly toys.

The next morning I made sure we were all up bright and early for breakfast before catching the Disney bus to the Magic Kingdom. We spent all day in the Magic Kingdom, which was brilliant. We went on all the rides: Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Tea Cups, the Barnstormer and Goofy’s Wiseacre Farm, the Haunted House etc etc. Dan and dad went on Splash Mountain and Space Mountain. My favourites were definitely Big Thunder Mountain and Stitch’s Great Escape, which was a good laugh. I think Dan’s favourite was Space Mountain.

That evening we caught the bus down to Disney Downtown where we got a bite to eat at Bongos, a Cuban restaurant. I thought that the food here was really good but there was a large dance floor in the centre of the restaurant and the music was pretty noisy so it was hard to chat.

Over the next week we spent most days in one or other of the Disney Parks. The second day we spent at MGM Studios where Dan and dad went on the Tower of Terror - Dan's least favourite ride! We also went on the Star Wars ride, the Great Movie ride, watched the Muppets in 3D, watched the parade etc etc

The following day we headed to Blizzard Beach, one of Disney's waterparks, to give our legs a break. Blizzard Beach was awesome. It’s designed to look like a ski resort and even has chairlifts to take you up the 'slopes' to some of the bigger slides. I was a little nervous but thoroughly enjoyed myself. Dad, Dan and I rushed around going on most of the slides while mum relaxed in the sun with a book and a pina colada. The rides were wicked, I didn't go on any of the really high or steep ones, both Dan and dad did, although neiher of them were brave enough to attempt the largest, fastest one - 120ft tall and 55mph fast! THe worst one I did was the double dipper and that was plenty bad enough. It felt like I was dropping vertically and I almost broke my arms trying to slow myself down! Oh well, you live and learn! We had hoped to visit Typhoon Lagoon too but heard that it wasn't as good as Blizzard Beach so gave it a miss in the end.

That evening we headed into the park for their late opening hours, until 12am (although we'd been told it was 2am) and also to watch the parade (which wasn't actually on) and fireworks (which we were too late for!) so instead we went on Big THunder Mountain a good 5 times and I even managed to persuade Dan to go on the Dumbo ride with me (extremely tame compared to anything else he'd been on!).

The next day we headed to Epcot where they've created a number of different countries (UK, France, Germany, Canada, Mexico etc) and a future/science land. We went on a few of the rides here and had a walk around all the different countries before catching the boat to MGM Studios where we grabbed dinner at the SCi-Fi Diner (you sit in cars inside watching a huge movie screen as if you're at a drive-in movie theatre) and then watched the really wicked show, Fantasmic. It was really well done, they projected scenes from some Disney movies onto a wall of water and had lights and flames and disney characters so it was really good even though we did get a little wet when the wind blew in our direction!

The next day we decided to take a day out from Disney and headed over to the Kennedy Space Centre. It took us about an hour and a half to get there and we arrived late morning. We headed out on a tour to the launching platforms after lunch which were cool and we saw loads of wildlife along the way, including a Bald Eagle, Glossy Ibis', Alligators, Rossette Spoonbills and I even saw a manatee!!! I was super pleased although Dan then had to go and spot two armadillos which I didn't see but never mind. The tour was really informative and the day was really enjoyable.

The following day we headed to Animal Kingdom. Dan and I hadn't been sure if we wanted to visit this park as we were afraid that it might spoil our excitment for Africa but it was more like a zoo than a safari. It was still really good though and we saw quite a lot of animals really well which we haven't seen in the wild yet. Dan and dad went on the new ride Expedition Everest which they both enjoyed but were scared by (Dad said that it was his scariest ride) as it goes up really high over a huge drop, zooms you around in the dark taking you backwards as well. I ventured onto a water ride which wasn't too scary at all although we all got pretty wet! We also watched a bird show which was excellent. They only got the birds to do natural tricks and promoted a message of conservation too.

Our last couple of days at Disney were spent taking it a bit easier. We played a couple of games of tennis, checked out the pool and slide, did some of the rides that we'd missed or wanted to do again (dad and Dan had been eager to do the Rockin' Roller Coaster but it had had long queues everytime they'd tried to get on) and spent the evening watching the parades and fireworks. Thursday night we went to the Magic Kingdom where we watched the SpectroMagic (light) parade which was really good, although it was really crowded and I only really got to see what was going on by climbing onto the railings! Then we watched the fireworks, which were some of the best we've ever seen. They even had a person (who looked rather like a man) dressed as Tinker Bell come out of the castle on a wire, which was cool.

Friday we played a few rounds of golf at the Fantasia mini golf course. We played the crazy golf first which was relatively easy, although I didn't do so well! then played the actual mini golf which was harder but really good fun. The balls were going all over the place and we all (except dad) spent most of our time in the rough! Unfortunately we only got to do 12 of the 18 holes as we wanted to get to Downtown Disney for a bit of shopping and dinner before heading over to Epcot for the fireworks. The fireworks at Epcot weren't quite as good as the previous nights but they were still wicked and it was an enjoyable evening.

Most evernings we headed to Downtown Disney. We ate in an Italian place most nights as the food was exceptionally good and then ended up at the House of Blues which did very good pina coladas. Once we were done there then it was back to the hotel bar and then bed.

We left Disney on the Saturday 12th morning and headed back to Miami. It was a very quiet 4 hour drive as mum and I especially were quite sad. Mum and dad dropped us off at our hotel, Lowes Hotel, which was really nice and we had a great room with a balcony, flatscreen tv and hot water where we dumped our things before grabbing some lunch. Unfortunately it was a very rushed good bye as mum and I were both in tears and flooding the place out (the other Burger King goers were looking at us very strangely!) and it was a very sad day or two for me in Miami.

Miami didn't seem to be that nice a place and I didn't really fancy going out so we spent the day we had there in our room watching tv. Both nights we ordered takeaway (first a Dominos and then a Chinese) and got ourselves ready for heading back out on the road.

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