Orlando

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One of our shortest train journeys (a mere 6 hours!), marked the end of our time with Amtrak. Whilst the 30-day pass has been very good to us, carrying us from L.A. all the way to Florida, I think both of us will be happy if we never set foot inside an Amtrak train again! Especially if it's an overnight train and we have coach class tickets!

We got to our hotel on the first day and I was pleasantly surprised, Cat had spent the previous evening reading me less than flattering online reviews of the place! But it turned out to be just fine, the room was big, clean and had cable so we could watch the start of the Olympics! The U.S. coverage is shocking though, it's unbelievably biased towards U.S. athletes with seemingly very little interest for or knowledge about the event itself or any of the other athletes. Not like the good old BBC! The hotel provided a free breakfast of sorts; you had the choice of pink muffins or very sweet danish pastries, as well as juice and coffee, and whilst beggars can't be choosers, after 3 or 4 days it got a bit tiring! Our favourite chore once again awaited us once we had settled in to our room, we couldn't have dirty clothes on to meet Mickey now could we!

The following morning the free shuttle picked us up bright and early at 8.30am. We headed straight to Disney and the first of four parks - Epcot. It focused on showcasing different countries from around the world including the UK, France and Japan. The UK for example had a traditional English Pub, the 'Rose and Crown' and sold fish and chips, France had a replica Eiffel Tower and a bistro (sadly it missed a Frenchman in a striped shirt with a red beret and onions round his neck!) and Japan had some temples and drummers! The rides in this park were good, but were too few and far between! The main draw of the park is the different countries and whilst this may appeal to Americans who have never left the country, it wasn't really a big hit with us! The best part of the day had to be meeting Donald Duck!! Due to the timing of the free shuttle bus schedules, we didn't get back until nearly 8pm, and after a full day in the sun wandering the park we hit the hay pretty early!

The next park we went to was the Magic Kingdom, and it was great, by far the best of the four Disney parks. We got to the park via an old steam boat which was fun, and as soon as we were inside we headed for the best ride 'Space Mountain'. As we were there really early there was hardly any wait time, so we were in and out really quickly. However the best ride of the day had to be the Buzz Lightyear Adventure, which we went on three times! It was an interactive game that allowed you to shoot aliens with a laser and the winner was the one with the highest score. Cat lost 2-1, but she has since informed me that it wasn't fair as her gun "didn't work properly" during the deciding game (which is true, my score was approx a third of what it had been the two times before that - Alex just doesn't like admitting that i was better at a shooting game!). Magic Kingdom was a lot bigger than Epcot, with many more rides and a lot more going on. We saw one of the many parades involving all of the characters and several hundred dancers, it was pretty good, and must take a lot of organising and practice. The sheer scale of Disney is crazy, the number of people working and visiting was huge and we were not there during peak season. The queueing systems at the main rides were less than half full and the wait sometimes 90 minutes, it must not be much fun waiting to get on a big ride during peak season! We also met Mickey and Minnie, and we only had to wait 45 minutes! We were pretty much the only people waiting without any children in our party, but it was definitely worth it, what's the point in going to Disneyland if you don't meet Mickey Mouse?!

Animal Kingdom was the next park, it featured an African style safari with lots of free roaming animals, including giraffe and lions. The animals seemed happy in their environments, apart from the baby giraffe who was a bit camera shy! We also rode a very good roller coaster which had a Mt. Everest/Yeti theme! The river rapid ride lead to us getting absolutely soaked, it took most of the day for us to dry out, even with the temperature well into the nineties! There was also a bird show and a very good musical version of Finding Nemo. We met Eeyore as well which was great!

After three days of solid Disney we decided a break was needed so we had a lie in, before heading to some of the many shopping outlets in Orlando. The prices were really good, brands like Levi, Guess, DKNY were all less than half the price that they are in the UK. If Orlando had been our last destination before flying home, we could have easily filled two suitcases with new clothes! But we had to settle for a couple of pairs of jeans! The last Disney park we visited was Hollywood Studios, which had some good rides and some interesting shows; including an Indiana Jones stunt show and a 'backlot' tour where we saw some of the areas were films and tv series are still filmed today.

We also attended a timeshare presentation, where we exchanged an hour and a half of saying no thank you to their 'wonderful offers' for $70 free dollars, wahoo! The company must have been making a lot of money as they sold at least ten shares in the time were there and the prices they were quoting us were in excess of $20,000!! We finished our week with a bit more shopping and last but not least a bit more washing!

Instead of getting a taxi to the airport we got on a bus, which, although it took nearly two hours and meant we had to get up at 5.30am, only cost $3.50 for both of us! A considerable saving on the $40 it would have cost us to get a taxi. From the airport we fly up to Boston, and by the sound of it lots of rain and maybe even jeans weather!!!

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