April 21st

April 21st, 2007 Adventures

Today, we had to get up really early to go and listen to the timeshare spiel. We went to the Orange Lake Resort for about 7:50am. We met our representative who was very nice of course! We were offered muffins and donuts and fruit as well as coffee, tea or juice.

Kevin did most of the talking while I hung in the background. We had to watch a video, hear the spiel, get the tour etc. etc. It was an awesome timeshare program, all for the low, low price of $29,000 USD! If we had bought it today during the tour, we would have saved $2000. They were quite offended when Kevin said that he never buys anything on the spur of the moment. I can testify to this…shopping for our new bed almost drove me nuts, especially, since we ended up back at the first store, buying the first bed we tried! Anyway, the salesperson didn’t get anywhere with us, so his manager came over, who was more pushy and he really turned us off. We then had to do a survey about the whole process, so we complained about the manager! We were there about 1.5 hours altogether. We then got our tickets for the three theme parks and hit the road for Cypress Gardens, which is about 45 minutes away from Orlando. I’m not sure if it was worth saving $300+ dollars, but Kevin seemed to think so!

We had an uneventful drive to Cypress, but enjoyed seeing the orange trees growing along the road at various orchards. They looked good enough to eat!

We got to Cypress about 11am and the security guard at the gate said I couldn’t bring my bag in and I was getting ready to yell at him and then he said, it was because it was a Disney World bag and laughed ..Whew..I thought I’d have to trek back out to the car in the parking lot (Okay, Kevin would have to)!

At every park we’ve been to so far, they have security guards at the front gate who checks your bags for knives, guns, etc. etc. I usually leave my home when I visit theme parks!

We visited the Nature’s Way section, which had various animals on display and of course, this was our favourite part again.

Brooke was asked to play a game called Gunk’d. Where there were two teams who had to play water games. Brooke was on the red team with three other kids and they won all three games against the blue team and at the end they got to whip water balloons at the losers. It was funny to watch!

They had a kidzapalooza program going on and it included various activities for the kids. They were given an activity sheet and whenever they finished an activity, they got a stamp and when they got all their stamps from each area, we had to turn it in at guest services and they got a small cup of ice cream. The kids enjoyed it…They got to make a necklace out of sand (similar to the sand art kits), a foam visor, chalk drawing, hand art, wall art and colouring a magnet. It was a great idea for the little ones. I think Brooke was a bit too old for the activities, but she wanted the free ice cream!

We also went to an bird aviary, which was cool as well. There were parrots, a cockatoo and a few birds we didn’t know the name of, but the cockatoo was named Sadie and was very friendly, talking to us. The other parrot named Cheecko, kept saying his name and asked “how are you?” Keturah thought it was just awesome!

For lunch Kevin wanted to go to Backwater Bill’s BBQ. The girls and I had the chicken with sides of corn on the cob and Keturah had baked beans. We were also given garlic toast and a pickle…Kevin had a pork sandwich with the same side dishes. It was all very good!

We then hit the rides and they went on a couple of roller coasters..Kevin included. Keturah liked the ride “kite flyers”. They also went on the dizzy dragons, galaxy spin, fun slide, seafari swings, etc. They wanted to keep going, as there were quite a few rides and the best part of it was that it wasn’t very busy, so there were few lineups. But, we wanted to catch the water ski show, so we left to watch that. It was awesome and it was the main thing I remembered from being here 20 years ago!

We then hit the gardens, which were just beautiful, I think I took about 100 pictures of just plants, flowers and trees. I tried to include the kids and Kevin in as many as I could, but they were getting tired of it too! It was funny to see signs warning about the alligators, saying not to feed them or go near them.

(Un)fortunately, we only saw birds and fish on our trek through the gardens. The fish we saw were tilapia (my favourite to eat), or we think they were. We asked someone and he said they were anyway! They were building nests in the water and probably getting ready to lay eggs or whatever it is they do! We also saw a small gar pike.

We saw quite a few birds as well. We saw some cardinals. They are so rare in Canada, and today was the third time we’ve seen some this week! The male cardinal that I saw was eating crumbs off the table and then he was trying to eat garbage out of the garbage can.

We then went to the topiary gardens and saw beautiful trees trimmed (groomed?) to look like animals such as a duck, goose, cardinal, ladybug, rabbit, snail, peacock and caterpillar..we took lots of pictures here too! I wish I could post them, but we are still out of space I guess!

Kevin and Brooke went on the Sunshine Sky Adventure which took them up 150 feet and then slowly moved around 360 degrees. Kevin videotaped it for Keturah and I…we went to the gift shop, but it wasn’t as interesting as the Disney ones were!

We then decided to head home as it was getting kind of cold, probably down to 69 or so!!! Today it was only about 76 degrees, which was kind of nice for me, because I enjoy it a bit cooler, but Kevin of course, was complaining…it was also spitting a bit in the afternoon, but I didn’t mind too much!

I got sunburned on my shoulder/neck and today it was itchy and has a heat rash on it..Looks worse than it feels! Hopefully it will clear up soon. I may have to buy some solarcaine or something for it.

We drove back to Orlando around 6pm. We are all starting to sound like the natives around here…we’ve been practicing our southern accent. Y’all understand? Keturah and Brooke were hilarious coming home in the car…must have been the sugar!

We stopped down the road from our hotel at the Cracker Barrel again and had some dinner. I had a house salad…all their salads had meat and sliced eggs in them..I could live with the meat if I had to, but not the sliced boiled eggs..gross! I had a house salad that only had bacon, plus all the other veggies that should be there! I have to admit it was pretty good with the bacon in it, probably due to the blue cheese dressing! I also had vegetable soup which was pretty good too! Kevin had a turkey salad and Keturah just had a side dish of hashbrown casserole and Brooke had a kids meal with a grilled cheese.

We got back to the hotel about 8:30 and we got ready and the girls went swimming! I had my sweater on watching them! Kevin got in the hot tub with them and I soaked my legs/feet as well..it felt really good as my feet were very sore today again!

We noticed that they have an exercise room here and there was actually someone using it as well. Can you imagine, exercising on your holiday? I can’t imagine exercising anytime, because I don’t like it, but wouldn’t think of doing it while on vacation in Florida, where there is so much to do! Maybe they needed a break from their family?

We’ve been doing so much walking, I figure that is good enough for now…I’ll hit the treadmill again when I get home!

Well, it’s 10:20pm and tomorrow is going to be another busy day with us going to Sea World I think.

Good night!!