Orlando continued

The drive from the airport to the hotel was slow. There was terrible traffic. It was raining quite heavily and people were up to their usual nutty antics! There was a car lying on its side on an embankment. Thankfully everyone was out of the car and looked to be okay, but you have to wonder how they managed to get into that position! The hotel was lovely - the public areas were very swish, the rooms less luxe than you would hope for the price, but still very nice indeed!

We met up with John, June and the kids who had just flown in from the UK. They actually only arrived about 10 minutes after us, so our timing couldn't have been more perfect! We all dumped our stuff in the rooms and headed off to CVS to buy sun lotion (at this point, given the rain, we were showing extreme optimism!). It took us 20 minutes to go about 1/2 mile! It was still raining, and traffic was still terrible!! We baulked at CeCe's pizza (Lyle's choice) and decided to go to Bahama Breeze for dinner...as did half of Orlando! There was a 50 minute wait for a table, so we decided that we were far too starving to wait and headed off to Bennigans for Margarita's (me), Miller Lite (Stephen) and a couple of appetisers. When we got back June and the kids were in bed, so we dragged John down to the bar for a beer. Stephen was wearing his Hawaiian shirt and he blended right in - there were at least another 10 in our immediate vicinity!

The alarm went off at 6:15 the next morning. I peeled an eye open and promptly shut it again! We dozed for another 1/2 hour before either of us felt able to wake up enough to get up. John and June were at their welcome meeting, and the line for Starbucks was huge, so we headed over to downtown Disney for coffee and a delicious breakfast BLT. We wandered round the shops and soaked up the magic of the "happiest place on earth" - or at least, its retail arm!

We went to the Islands of Adventure at Universal in the afternoon. Uncle Stephen reinforced his "cool" status by going on all the big rides with John and the kids. June and I are definitely non-riders, so we would wait with the bags for them all to come off - in the sweltering heat. It was baking hot, and there was no shade to be found. We were sweating buckets! Once they had done all the huge roller coasters we headed over to Universal Studios for a wander around there. We did the Jaws ride, but the wait in the heat for that nearly finished us off. We were pretty tired by this point, so we headed back to the hotel to get changed and head out for dinner.

Dinner was to be our treat, so we were looking for somewhere like TGI Friday. We couldn't find one, and as it was beginning to thunder and lightning we decided to pick from the half dozen restaurants in this one area. How we ended up in Hooters I do not know!! But we did! The girls enjoyed the food, the boys enjoyed the "decor" - everyone was happy! Well, I was slightly grumpy at the choice (there are better places!), but it turned out to be a popular choice, so what they hey!

The alarm went off at 6:15 again, but this time we had no choice but to get up. We were meeting at 7:30am to drive down to Busch Gardens in Tampa in time for it opening. The kids were a bit grumpy and bickering on the way down there and we nearly had a full scale war when Lyle gave Stephen Jen's phone!! We had already had the obligatory Starbucks and muffin before we left, but the others had a tailgate picnic of Dunkin Donuts before we headed into the park.

There are LOTS of big rides at Busch Gardens, and really small queues! We practically had the place to ourselves. They rode all of the roller coasters twice! There were even shady places, with benches, for June and I to plant ourselves whilst we were waiting. Heaven!

We watched people getting soaked on the river rapids ride for a while. You can take control of a water blaster for a measly 25c a shot. Lyle had the last water blaster and had huge fun with it! People would get towards the end of the run saying "Well, we got away with that, we're not too wet" and then Lyle would strike! They would catch the final shot full across the entire boat, soaking everyone!

All the kids were desperate to get photos of them on the rides. We found a great spot to capture them on Kumba. They come off a loop and down a section of track under a bridge. Stephen was texting me to let me know what car they were on. June was telling me when they were coming off the loop and I was there with the camera shooting 6 frames a second whilst they shot past. What a great team effort! I was shooting through a mesh just to make life more difficult and Stephen was disappointed with the results. Apparently I wasn't using the right camera setting. Hello! Its a new camera which I haven't used, with a 400 page manual which I haven't read and they were closing at a speed of 60mph, which gave me about 2 seconds to get the shot!! I have to thank John and Lyle for pointing out to Stephen that I did a good job to capture anything at all and you can make them out quite clearly - its only when you zoom 600% that it looks fuzzy!

Stephen and I broke off for a while and did some old fogey stuff. We took the train through the Serengeti past their collection of animals - zebras, rhinos and the like. Then we walked down through Timbuktu where Stephen tried to win me a giant cuddly tiger by lassoing a bottle neck with a plastic hoop. We went through a large plastic bucket and failed miserably! Happily you got a prize with the purchase of each bucket an mine was a lion. He turned out to be a friend of Hector McSnecktor's from their days at College. His name is Rory McSnory.

We got caught in a HUGE thunderstorm near to the hotel on the way back. The kind of storm where people pull onto the side of the road because they can't see a thing. We inched our way onwards, but it was like someone had turned a fire hose onto the windshield and there was lightning going off all around us (it was very near!).

We spent Sunday morning by the pool, and Stephen was doing his very best to wind the kids up and get them into trouble! Lyle had gone with Stephen to Starbucks and had asked for a mint white chocolate mocha to wind up Stephen, who then turned the tables by actually ordering it, which sent Lyle into a complete panic as he really didn't want it. When Stephen told this tale to John and June he omitted to tell them that he cancelled the order, but DID tell them that it had cost him $6.... June was not happy!! He did eventually fess up and went off to play in the pool with the kids. About 10 minutes later Leanne and Lyle came over to ask me for $5 so Stephen could hire a pool float to lie on. Of course, Stephen had to bound up a few minutes later to do the whole "What? You gave them money? I don't want a lilo" thing which had June horrified. I think the kids were lucky not to be sent to their room! I was forced to give him a good telling off! He got his comeuppance a few minutes later when he was allowed to use the pool float for a whole 30 seconds before he was turfed off by Jen and Leanne!!