Orlando June 2009: Part 6 - Halfway House
Probably a poor choice of title as this has nothing to do with actual halfway houses, more to iterate that we had reached the half way point of our vacation in our American house. OK... I'll get me coat....
PART 6 - HALFWAY HOUSE
It was Sunday the 21st June and after a late night on Saturday I almost managed my first lie in of the holiday. I was woken by the kids jumping on the bed and shoving a card and some apple and cinammon waffles under my nose.
"HAPPY FATHERS DAY!" they shouted.
"Aww.. you shouldn't have" I replied. "No, you really SHOULDN'T have" I thought to myself as I tried to pull the covers back over my head. It was a sweet gesture though and I was just probably suffering from grumpysleepyitis a little.
After a reasonably lazy morning we headed out toward Epcot arriving around 11.30. It was a blazing hot day.
After doing the ride in the dome (I forget the name) we headed over to Honey I shrunk the Audience as the queues weren't too bad. It was enjoyable although Jack did suffer a couple of 'nearly brown trouser moments' - those who've been on will know which ones I mean!
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We then did Nemo and checked out the waits for the more popular rides such as Test Track, Mission Space and Soarin. They were a little long for my liking and all the fast passes had already gone for most of them so we decided to head around the World Showcase and come back later.
Off we went globetrotting through Morocco, Norway, China and the likes - the kids actually seemed to be enjoying it more than I expected as there's not much in the way of entertainment for them.
Of all the far away lands and international cuisine we could have chosen we stopped off in the good ol' U S of A for a late lunch. We weren't really even that hungry, just wanted to get out of the heat for an hour into somewhere with air conditioning.
Re-fueled and re-cooled we headed off again round the second half of the showcase, stopped in Blighty for a nose in the shop, seen an American lad buying a Newcastle United football shirt - you could probably buy the whole club for around the same price at the moment! After failing miserably in trying to wisecrack with the girl on the till in the shop we headed on our way and before we knew it were back at the dome.
We then went over to Test Track in hope that the queues had died down a bit. Sixty five minutes still! We decided to slog it out in the hope that it may move a little quicker but nope - it was 65 minutes on the dot. Jack had decided against this one so waited outside with Angela but we enquired about the child swap thing so Ben got to go on twice. He proclaimed this as his favourite ride of the holiday so far!
We did the child swap thing on Mission Space too where Ben then proclaimed that as his favourite ride of the holiday. We then took the boys over to the character spot and got photos with all the Disney favourites and were hoping to do Soarin but time got the better of us as we wanted to get a good spot for the fireworks.
The firework and laser show was as amazing as I remember from the previous times and the boys thought it was great too. We had a good starting point for getting out afterwards too so beat the rush back to the car park and made it home in good time. It had been another top day and a perfect Fathers Day as the kids had behaved impeccably.
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The plan on Monday was to go to Aquatica. The weather forecast was good again and we got up early.
Ben & Jack both then said that they weren't really that bothered and would just as much prefer to have a pool day. I didn't give them a second to change their minds as water parks aren't really my thing and it meant I got a day off from driving so grabbed the sun lounger, slapped on the sun tan lotion stuck in my earphones and shut myself away from the outside world.
We decided to e
