I started to write one on TTF but kinda forgot to update it. Going to take this opportunity to write a new one, which will be more in-depth. However, I can't find my SD card with the photos I took. Hopefully I'll be able to find them, but bare with me if not.
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Day One: Downtown Disney (2nd April 2012)
Orlando, Florida. It's the one place I would consider a necessity to visit for all roller coaster enthusiasts of all ages. Hold on, scratch that. I think of it as a necessity for anybody and everybody to experience the central Floridian theme parks. And this was before I had taken my most recent trip back in April of this year. I had already been twice in my lifetime, as a two year old in 1999 and a six year old in 2003. Of course, I was much too young to remember any features of these parks, let alone ride the rides located within the boundaries of the attractions. In the few years since I've become an enthusiast, Florida was the one place I had always wanted to make a return to. As a fifteen year old, I was much more prepared to fully explore the secrets which I was unaware of nine years previously. I travelled with my grandmother and my younger brother. My parents had to drop out of the trip for personal reasons (although we hadn't fully booked the trip by then), and my grandfather also didn't join us due to the visa office changing the delivery time by a few months after he had ordered and after we had booked the holiday, meaning it turned up about a week late.
On the second of April, I woke up in the Best Western hotel residing next to Gatwick Airport (ironically, the night before, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was on TV). The previous day I had travelled from my grandparents house in Cambridgeshire, and stayed overnight in the Gatwick Moat House, a hotel which I would recommend due to it's close proximity to the airport - made even easier to reach due to the hotels shuttle bus service - and the free parking it offers over a two week period. It was an early start, waking up at 6:30 so we could grab a final full English breakfast before we left for the States. We took the crowded shuttle, before lounging around for a few hours before the flight, including a quick Starbucks. The flight was booked for the four of us, in two sections of two at different parts of the plane. I volunteered to sit on my own, but the British Airways staff managed to sort everything out for us and we got to sit together.
The flight left at 11:35. We each had our own touch screens built in to the seat in front, which allowed us to watch and listen to a variety of films, TV shows and music albums. I watched an episode of Family Guy and The Simpsons, but afterwards opted to listen to music, played a bit of Professor Layton and spent an hour or two playing Temple Run. I attempted to catch a little shut-eye, though I couldn't sleep due to the excitement of the last seven months finally beginning to come to fruition. After a seemingly agonizingly long flight, I saw on the flight map which I had been staring at for at least two hours that we were almost at Orlando. Sure enough, when I looked out of the window I began to see the murky swamps and vast lakes of Florida. Just a quick note: The Swarm by You Me At Six is an awesome song to land to.
After getting through security, we eventually found our way onto the airport monorail and soon after we got to the Disney Magical Express bus stop. Stepping out of the airport, the first thing I noticed was the intense heat, which would stick with us for the first few days. We got on the coach which took us straight to the All-Star complex that we would be staying on for the two weeks, which meant that we were finally in Disneyworld. The one thing which shocked me the most was the size of Disneyworld itself – somehow, the fact that it was 40 square miles slipped my knowledge and caught me off guard slightly. Passing Blizzard Beach, we had completed the first leg of the journey, and checked into the All-Star Sports hotel. It was very nice for a budget hotel, split into ten different blocks themed on five popular American sports – American football, basketball, baseball, surfing and tennis. It had two swimming pools, a couple of sports facilities, some shops, an arcade and a food court. The eatery was a large hall with four different food counters selling a variety of foods (one sold pizza and hot dogs while another sold salads, for example). The menus of each place changed through the day to accommodate for all three main meals.
The atmosphere in the food court was strange. Although I've never been to one myself, it felt sort of like a summer camp. The majority of people there were teenagers, mostly wearing sports clothing. I think there were quite a few people staying there because they were playing in a competition at the ESPN Wide World of Sports which was located inside Disneyworld.
We didn't get anything to eat straight away, instead opting to leave our suitcases and bags in our room to save us carrying them. It was quite modest, although we weren't really intending to stay there quite a lot. It had two double beds (we rented a third fold out bed for myself), a TV and a bathroom, and had some paintings and other decorations to do with American football (that was the section we were staying in).
We had time to look around the hotel that night, but instead we decided to head on the bus service provided by Disney between all of their parks and hotels to Downtown Disney. One of the reasons we did this was because it was a spot we could pick up the Disney portion of our ultimate ticket, although an error led to us worrying quite a bit over the next few days (more on that with tomorrows report). Although I told my family in full confidence that we could walk there in just five minutes, it turned out it was half an hour by bus. Happy that I wasn't listened to, we headed off to see some of the shops.
For those who don't know what Downtown Disney is, it's an entertainment district full of fabulous shops, restaurants and shows. Some of it's better known additions are a Cirque du Soleil arena and DisneyQuest, an indoors interactive theme park. We looked around some of the shops such as Team Mickey for sporting goods and apparel and the Disney Christmas shop. As we made our way to the far end of Downtown Disney, we were going to have a look at DisneyQuest, but it was $55 dollars for the day and as it was getting late we decided we'd come back another day. It was at that point my stomach began to really hurt and I realised I hadn't ate since we had breakfast at the hotel back in England. I bought a few snacks, just some pretzels and an ice cream, to tide me over before we got back to the hotel. When we got there, I ordered a pizza with chips, and bought a special drinks bottle which was refillable for the duration of our stay for just $13 or so. The pizza was alright, it tasted a bit like Pizza Hut but it sufficed. We went back to our room, watched a basketball game before swiftly falling asleep. We would decide where we were going tomorrow over breakfast.
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Day One: Downtown Disney (2nd April 2012)
Orlando, Florida. It's the one place I would consider a necessity to visit for all roller coaster enthusiasts of all ages. Hold on, scratch that. I think of it as a necessity for anybody and everybody to experience the central Floridian theme parks. And this was before I had taken my most recent trip back in April of this year. I had already been twice in my lifetime, as a two year old in 1999 and a six year old in 2003. Of course, I was much too young to remember any features of these parks, let alone ride the rides located within the boundaries of the attractions. In the few years since I've become an enthusiast, Florida was the one place I had always wanted to make a return to. As a fifteen year old, I was much more prepared to fully explore the secrets which I was unaware of nine years previously. I travelled with my grandmother and my younger brother. My parents had to drop out of the trip for personal reasons (although we hadn't fully booked the trip by then), and my grandfather also didn't join us due to the visa office changing the delivery time by a few months after he had ordered and after we had booked the holiday, meaning it turned up about a week late.
On the second of April, I woke up in the Best Western hotel residing next to Gatwick Airport (ironically, the night before, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was on TV). The previous day I had travelled from my grandparents house in Cambridgeshire, and stayed overnight in the Gatwick Moat House, a hotel which I would recommend due to it's close proximity to the airport - made even easier to reach due to the hotels shuttle bus service - and the free parking it offers over a two week period. It was an early start, waking up at 6:30 so we could grab a final full English breakfast before we left for the States. We took the crowded shuttle, before lounging around for a few hours before the flight, including a quick Starbucks. The flight was booked for the four of us, in two sections of two at different parts of the plane. I volunteered to sit on my own, but the British Airways staff managed to sort everything out for us and we got to sit together.
The flight left at 11:35. We each had our own touch screens built in to the seat in front, which allowed us to watch and listen to a variety of films, TV shows and music albums. I watched an episode of Family Guy and The Simpsons, but afterwards opted to listen to music, played a bit of Professor Layton and spent an hour or two playing Temple Run. I attempted to catch a little shut-eye, though I couldn't sleep due to the excitement of the last seven months finally beginning to come to fruition. After a seemingly agonizingly long flight, I saw on the flight map which I had been staring at for at least two hours that we were almost at Orlando. Sure enough, when I looked out of the window I began to see the murky swamps and vast lakes of Florida. Just a quick note: The Swarm by You Me At Six is an awesome song to land to.
After getting through security, we eventually found our way onto the airport monorail and soon after we got to the Disney Magical Express bus stop. Stepping out of the airport, the first thing I noticed was the intense heat, which would stick with us for the first few days. We got on the coach which took us straight to the All-Star complex that we would be staying on for the two weeks, which meant that we were finally in Disneyworld. The one thing which shocked me the most was the size of Disneyworld itself – somehow, the fact that it was 40 square miles slipped my knowledge and caught me off guard slightly. Passing Blizzard Beach, we had completed the first leg of the journey, and checked into the All-Star Sports hotel. It was very nice for a budget hotel, split into ten different blocks themed on five popular American sports – American football, basketball, baseball, surfing and tennis. It had two swimming pools, a couple of sports facilities, some shops, an arcade and a food court. The eatery was a large hall with four different food counters selling a variety of foods (one sold pizza and hot dogs while another sold salads, for example). The menus of each place changed through the day to accommodate for all three main meals.
The atmosphere in the food court was strange. Although I've never been to one myself, it felt sort of like a summer camp. The majority of people there were teenagers, mostly wearing sports clothing. I think there were quite a few people staying there because they were playing in a competition at the ESPN Wide World of Sports which was located inside Disneyworld.
We didn't get anything to eat straight away, instead opting to leave our suitcases and bags in our room to save us carrying them. It was quite modest, although we weren't really intending to stay there quite a lot. It had two double beds (we rented a third fold out bed for myself), a TV and a bathroom, and had some paintings and other decorations to do with American football (that was the section we were staying in).
We had time to look around the hotel that night, but instead we decided to head on the bus service provided by Disney between all of their parks and hotels to Downtown Disney. One of the reasons we did this was because it was a spot we could pick up the Disney portion of our ultimate ticket, although an error led to us worrying quite a bit over the next few days (more on that with tomorrows report). Although I told my family in full confidence that we could walk there in just five minutes, it turned out it was half an hour by bus. Happy that I wasn't listened to, we headed off to see some of the shops.
For those who don't know what Downtown Disney is, it's an entertainment district full of fabulous shops, restaurants and shows. Some of it's better known additions are a Cirque du Soleil arena and DisneyQuest, an indoors interactive theme park. We looked around some of the shops such as Team Mickey for sporting goods and apparel and the Disney Christmas shop. As we made our way to the far end of Downtown Disney, we were going to have a look at DisneyQuest, but it was $55 dollars for the day and as it was getting late we decided we'd come back another day. It was at that point my stomach began to really hurt and I realised I hadn't ate since we had breakfast at the hotel back in England. I bought a few snacks, just some pretzels and an ice cream, to tide me over before we got back to the hotel. When we got there, I ordered a pizza with chips, and bought a special drinks bottle which was refillable for the duration of our stay for just $13 or so. The pizza was alright, it tasted a bit like Pizza Hut but it sufficed. We went back to our room, watched a basketball game before swiftly falling asleep. We would decide where we were going tomorrow over breakfast.
