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Orlando Florida- Oct 4th - 18th

W

Wortho

TS Member
After a lot of frantic saving I finally will be going on my dream holiday with the wife to Orlando, Will do a trip report when I get back with loads of photos but before we go, does anyone have suggestions of what the best thing are to do there and what to avoid on the trip.

Many Thank,

Wortho :)
 
I have lots of info. I have been twice.

Couple of questions to start with.

Have you already got your tickets? If so what parks are you planning on visiting? Where about are you staying, will you have a car or be using buses?

I will try and do one of my normal mega posts when I get a bit more time
 
My biggest tip is to have a few rest days dotted around. By the end, we were completely sick of rollercoasters and theme parks, and we were wishing we had taken a break. Two weeks is more than enough time to get every major park done.

Are you renting a car? Where are you staying? Depending on how you answer, I might be able to help out a bit more :)
 
Our package is the coco hotel and water park with 2 weeks tickets to Disney and universal. We planning to get the ultimate sea world parks tickets which includes sea world, Busch gardens, aquatica and discovery cove. We chose not to take the rent car because insurance was over £300 for 2 weeks so we'll be using the busses. Might use my military ID to maybe get a cheap deal for a day or so while I'm there.
 
I am not 100% sure on that hotel is that one on Idrive or is that a Disney hotel?

If you are looking at getting the Discovery cove ultimate ticket, to include Seaworld, Aquatica and Busch just do a search for the dates of your holiday and you might find that there will be a much cheaper day so it will save you some $$$$.
As far as I am aware you can use the other parks part of the ticket before your visit to Discovery Cove. I think you just need to head to a guest services to get it exchanged for a ticket. But it might have changed since I last did it.

Some info on public transport in Orlando:

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g34 ... Drive.html

This is a great guide to using the buses in Orlando. This first time we visited Orlando we did not have a car so we used a mix of the Lynx buses and the I-trolley. The Itrolley is ok, it tends to be crowded and there is hardly any air con on them. The Lynx buses have great air con and are less busy. Also as you can see from the article Lynx buses go a lot further afeild than the itrolley.

I know you said you have already got some tickets. Discovery Cove, Seaworld, Aquatica, Busch gardens.
This is the website I have bought tickets from. They are very good and deliverd my tickets very quick.

http://www.attraction-tickets-direct.co ... lorida.htm

But it was over a year ago I last got some off them.

If you are staying in a hotel make sure you have a good look round the lobby as most of them have discount vouchers for different stuff.

Parks

Discovery Cove

A lovely relaxing day, you can consider it a rest day as its nice and relaxing.

Get there early, I think checkin starts at 8am. Dont have breakfast before you go, you can grab something to eat before you do anything in the park. They will give you some suncream which you should use as its animal friendly. All the food and drink is included!

The first photo you get when you go into the park is free and you can pick it up anytime during the day.

There are lots of photographers around the park, they will take photos of you and you can view them towards the end of the day. They are expensive to buy but then again you do get some amazing photos. I believe that now they also e-mail you afterwards and try and flog photos. Not sure if they offer the DVD of photos after the day. To be honest the DVD of all the photos is great as they also put professional photos of the park on there.

Seaworld

A good park a couple of great rides. Manta is awesome! The Dolphin show is great, lots of things going on. The sealion show is good. Funny/cheesy and the mime guy at the start is brilliant, get there early to see him help people get seated :D

Aquatica

The newest water park in Orlando. Some great slides. But get there early as it does fill up quick when its hot and sunny. The lazy river is nice and the rapids are so much fun! I would not bother with the dolphin plunge slide as you really don't see anything.

Busch Gardens

A lovely park. Depending on your ticket you might have free transfer to and from Busch from Seaworld.
Lots of animals, some amazing rides, saly Cheetah hunt was not fully built last time I was there. There is a nice all you can eat pizza and pasta restaurant which is worth a visit.

Universal Studios

A great park. Lots of rides, Rip Ride Rockit is great fun good selection of music to listen to. The Mummy is a brilliant ride! One of my favurites in Orlando.

Island of Adventure

They have the new Harry potter area which is impressive. The forbidden Journey ride is amazing, so much technology in that ride.

Dragons challenge is a great ride, sadly they dont run them together anymore :( But one coaster is better than the other ;) I know which one I prefer. Also its great for eating up queues, last time we visited they showed queues of about 35 mins and we only waited about 5-10 mins.

The hulk is great but it is getting a bit bumpy.

Posiedons fury is a good show to see, lots of special effects not sure how much longer it is going to be about.

Do not miss spiderman, its a great indoor 3D ride and one of the best I have ever been on!


I am not sure how busy it will be when you visit but one thing to do is use single rider queues when you can if it is busy. They normally cut the wait down at least in half. There are lots of rides that have them, just ask the ride op at the entance if you cant see a sign for them.

When me and Carla first visited in early June in 2009 we were sometimes usung the SRQ to skip a 20-30 min queue. It can be great.
We found that the SRQ on Harry Potter was great, the Normal line was about 75 mins and we waited about 20 mins. Also if it is busy and you have done the ride with the SRQ you can just ask to do the castle tour so you can see everything thats in the castle but not actually queue to go on the ride.

There are plenty of things to do in the evenings. Citywalk is nice to spend some time at. They have lots of bars and a cinema.

There is plenty of minigolf about. The pirates Cove golf on Idrive is meant to be good. We did a pirates golf but it was not the idrive one. We did do one on idrive which has a big volcano on it, it was a bit worn and we were not really impressed with it.

Wonder works is a good diversion for a couple of hours. Maybe if you have a misrable day.(not likely!)

If you can afford it and fit it in a trip to Kennedy Space centre is a must! Its an amazing place. Really mind blowing. The Hubble I-max show is amazing, really stunning. Even if you just have a passing intrest in space you should go. Its a truly amazing place!


Also an Airboat ride is great fun! The only way to travel.

Shopping!

Not sure how much luggage you will be able to take home but there are pletny of places to shop. There are some great outlet shops on the Northern and southern end of Idrive. I think they are now both called premium outlets.

Both have a great selection of shops and some great prices!
There are a couple of malls nearish to you. You can reach both by bus.
Mall at Mellina which is a posher mall and a bit more expensive.

Florida mall which is little on the cheaper end. (Not tacky in anyway still a very nice mall) They have M&M world which is great but a tad expensive for M&Ms they are cheaper to buy at a 7-11

If you do go shopping they are both big malls with lots of shops.
Anything else feel free to ask. If I am not online you can always just send me a msg on facebook.

I will leave it here for now, I also have a big post on restaurants if you want any recommendations that I saved from that other forum.
 
Make sure you visit Busch on a weekday. It's literally dead apart from Cheetah Hunt, so you can get near-enough unlimited rides!
 
Have a great trip. I'm currently saving up with my partner to go next July after graduation (touch wood I pass finals!)

I highly recommend the Brits Guide to Orlando - It's about £10 on amazon - and is well worth a read! Thick book with small font, so plenty in there to keep an enthusiast busy :p Good information on the bus routes and other attractions in Orlando too!

I recommend visiting Ripleys Believe it or not too!
 
I can also recommend the Brits guide to Orlando. I read that cover to cover a few times before I went hi-lighting all the important stuff!
 
Oct is a great time to go and i have been a couple of times at this time of year. The weather is great and in fact when went last there was no rain at all not even any of the afternoon storms. The parks are also not overly busy if you plan them right. A great site to look at is the www.thedibb.co.uk, which is a great uk orlando planning website and has all the info you would ever need. They also have all the parks hours, show times for disney parks and what attactions are closed (universal times are not yet available for oct) the link for that info is- http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/parkhou ... rs=10+2012

Also generally certain parks are busy on different days of the week and there is a busy day guide which shows the parks which will likly have the smallest crows and the busiest for each day. I would Use this to help plan which days you visit parks ie you want to aviod going to a disney park that has extra magic hours that day (extra park hours for hotel guests only) as thats the day all the on property guests visit the park and with all the hotels thats alot of people!. http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/busy-da ... rs=10+2012

Seaworld is a great first day park, also the 8th Oct is a bank holiday but found on both the last two occassions didnt make the parks much busier, went to seaworld on this day last time and the atlantis and kraken were walk on and after the initially morning rush manta was 10 mins.
 
You should 100% consider a helicopter flight with these guys. Pick a nice day weather wise, and it's certainly something you won't forget anytime soon. It's not too far away from Sea World and has easy transportation links via Lynx buses and the I-Ride.

The pricing isn't too bad and a wide selection of options are offered in terms of flight paths. The longer the flight, the more costly it gets. But it's definitely worth it!
 
I'm going to Orlando at the very end of August for the first time as well. My girlfriend is addicted to The Dibb and we've got the Brit Guide to Orlando, I recommend both, lots of information on both sources.

We've already got tickets and we've planned out a lot of our days already, at least we've got a good idea what we're going to do each day, with a few blank days in there as well. Hopefully all will go well, I'm certainly very excited.
 
Ive just recently returned (Aka today) from Universal Orlando, Disney and Sanibel Island - so any questions - fire them at me! :)
 
I know everyone raves about The Brit Guide, but I honestly could not have planned my trip without The Unofficial Guide ;D
 
Hey guys and sorry Wortho for hijacking this thread, but some great info here I couldn't resist asking a few questions for the guys myself.

Myself and my girlfriend are seriously thinking about booking a last minute deal to Orlando, we'd be flying out on the 19th of July and it would only be for 5 nights. Obviously we wouldn't have any park tickets yet as we only decided to look into Orlando last night, I'm just wondering are we mad to try to organise such a trip on a last minute whim and for such a short time, any advice, comments, tips would be muchly appreciated! :)
 
Hi chris. I don't think it was a problem doing it last minute. Me & the other half done it a few years back. As long as you have a rough idea of what all the parks are like (which ones you want to visit) it can easily be achieved.

Tickets are as common as muck out there & we found some offers to be cheaper than Inet, but others worse. Disney probably best getting in uk I found.

We managed to plan our holiday on the 9hr flight to Orlando, although we both had been there before & had done a SMALL amount of research on public holidays and which parks to avoid on certain days.

Unless you are big animal fans, :s busch is not a full day. Once you've done kumba, montu, skeikra, & gwazi. Although we did go on a rollercoaster experience tour (a kind of behind the scenes to the big 5) which I would reccomend. Think it was about $60 each though.

Unless you are a big Harry potter fan. IOA is easily done in 1 day too. as is universal.

Te Disney water parks are a must IMO, but aquatica not worth it at all. I'd probably go for typhoon and blizzard.

Sea world just for kraken & manta if nothing else. Awesome!
Although you can easily fill a full day there.

Whoops kind of went off on a tangent....


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smudge said:
We managed to plan our holiday on the 9hr flight to Orlando, although we both had been there before & had done a SMALL amount of research on public holidays and which parks to avoid on certain days.

Unless you are a big Harry potter fan. IOA is easily done in 1 day too. as is universal.

Whoops kind of went off on a tangent....
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the reply! Universal and IOA are the two I really want to do over there, re-jigging a few things it looks like we can get 6nights there now.
Obviously we'll be doing our research between now and the 19th of July! Just wondering is there anything we should look out for that wouldn't be as obvious until you experience it!

Thanks again!!
 
I can't think of anything off the top of my head tbh, the only thing was that behind the scenes thing @ busch.

Also the staff out there are very knowledgable, if you show interest in something a lot will 'go the extra mile' to explain something to you. Infact at universal, just came off the mummy, and asked how big the building was and if it was difficult to monitor the trains and the guy ended up showing us the op booth and pictures of the inside with the lights on. (I was hoping maybe he was going to show me round though instead of pictures, but it was nowhere near closing anyway)

Any questions I'll try to answer, as would most people on here so don't hesitate to ask, but other than that, can't really think of any 'hidden gems' or 'tips' tbh.

Oh, the olive garden restaurant. (its a chain) Brilliant italian. Also avoid 'english' bars as I'm sure most people do anyway.


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After being to Orlando twice I would not feel very happy going for 5 days. There is so much to do. Depending on how busy it is parks can take at least a day to do.
It would also depend if you are going to hire a car out there or rely on public transport. Even with a car it can be surprising how long it can take to drive to some parks get parked get to the entrance and get in the park. I know some parking lots at Universal its a long walk even to city walk.

But personally I can easily spend more than a day at IOA, Busch, Universal, seaworld and Aquatica.

Every time we have gone we have always had multiple days at all of the parks we visited (we didnt do disney)

5 days I guess is doable but I would feel cheated on the Orlando experience.

If I was going to do 5 days it would be.
Seaworld: (good started park)

Island of Adventure: I am not a Harry potter fan but the ride is amazing, very well done and lots of technology in it. Dragon challenge is good apart from they no longer send the trains off together :(
Spiderman is awesome and I hear its even better now! The hulk is good if getting a little rough. Dr Dooms is a great ride, so much fun and a good view at the top :D

Universal: Revenge of the mummy is a brilliant ride, one of my favs in Orlando. T23D is always good fun and I do enjoy rip ride rockit.

Busch: Got some amazing rides there, Cheetah hunt looks brilliant, saw it being built. Gwazi is fun for a good brain rattling. Sheikra is a great ride, does not have the noise of Oblivion but still good fun. Kumba and Montu are also great fun.

Either go back to a park or do Aquatica for your last day.
Its a nice water park, the newest in Orlando I think. It has some good rides, some nice beaches and wave machines and normally very attractive women :D
 
I agree with Jem - for 5-6 days either do the parks above or do Disney - you will not be able to do both.

Only difference, I didn't rate Aquatica, it seemed so lacking compared to the Disney equivalents.

For 5 days ideally I would do:

Day 1 - Sea World - Agreed - A good starter park.
Day 2 - Universal - Perhaps spend the evening/night on 'resort' too in Universals City Walk. You will be able to relax the following day too - (any hang-overs etc)
Day 3 - Waterpark to break up the week - I would choose Blizzard Beach personally, but you will probably get a combo ticket (as you will be going seaworld) for Aquatica (its still good)
Day 4 - IOA
Day 5 - Busch Gardens - longest drive / journey of the lot, but some awesome coasters to leave a lasting impression & not too stressful like Disney. (quieter)

I would highly recommend a car, but public transport is available to all of the above. ( never tried it though )
 
Hi Chris
I would agree with Jem that 6 days is not enough but if that is all you have to play with then this is what I would recommend.

Check out the following chart to get an idea on how busy it will be

As it is only 6 days I wouldn't really plan a rest day as the flights are so expensive it just seems a waste. I have assumed you want to do the best rides in all the theme parks but you may decide Disney is not for you and you would save money and time by not going.

Day 1 - Universal - An express pass can be purchased if it is busy
Day 2 - Busch Gardens
Day 3 - Acquatica in the morning then Seaworld in the afternoon (Kraken, Manta, Journey to Atlantis, Shamu show)
Day 4 - IOA - An express pass can be purchased if it is busy
Day 5 - Best of Disney - Studios (Toy Story, ToT & RnR, Star Tours), Epcot (Test track, Mission Space) then head to Magic Kingdom (Space Mountain, BTM, Splash Mountain,, Haunted Mansion) ending the night with their firework show, Wishes. If you do this you need to be at Studios for opening and go straight to Toy story as the queues for this can get very long.
If you have the 6th day for parks then you could split out the best of Disney over the two days and add a visit to Animal Kingdom and end in Epcot to see Illuminations

HTH!
 
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