Day 10 - Up early again and headed off to Islands of Adventure. We arrived as the park was opening along with a huge crowd of people and headed straight to the new Harry Potter land. We all agreed that they had done a great job of this area of the park, it had a really good feel about it and brought the books and films to life. To be honest, we though the ride itself was a bit frantic, but we really enjoyed the walk through Hogwarts - almost wishing that the queue was bigger so that we could take our time taking in all the different areas. We had purchased express passes again and so we took our time doing all the rides, got soaked on the rapids, screamed on the Hulk, laughed on Spider man - we all had a great day. We then called into Olive Garden for dinner on the way home.
Day 11 - we headed off to the Blue Springs state park (Kids choice again) and had a really fantastic day tubing down the springs, enjoying all of the nature - I really recommend this to everyone as we had a brilliant time, it was a bit of a drive from Orlando though.
Day 12 - Luke and Annie wanted to go to a water park again and chose Typhoon Lagoon. My wife phoned to see if she could book a beach shack and was told that this was not possible on the day, but we could book one for the next day so we decided to have a day at the villa (with a bit of shopping) and put off our trip to Typhoon lagoon for a day. For dinner we headed back to Manny's
Day 13 - up and off to Typhoon Lagoon (via Bob Evans for Breakfast) - We arrived just before the park opened and were booked in for our beach shack. Once the rope dropped we were taken round to our space for the day. This was more expensive than the Cabana at aquatica, but much more comfortable and had a great view over the wave pool. Whilst these premium spaces do come at a premium cost, they are well worth it in our view as they provide a great base camp for the day with it's own lockers etc. At disney it also came with a very friendly host who fetched everything for us all day - coffee, drinks, lunch, ice creams etc etc. At 3.30 he came round to tell us that they were closing the park as a storm was forecast. At this point we couldn't see a cloud in the sky. By the time we arrived at the car it had started to rain and then suddenly huge hail stones started landing all over the car. It was a pretty dramatic storm.
Day 14 - Luke and I went to Seaworld for the morning and did all the shows. Afterwards, we took a drive along the 192 and were amazed at just how run down so much of it now looked. Nearly all of the cheep motels had closed down and were boarded up with weeds all over the parking lot, lots of other businesses had also closed and generally the whole road looked really tired and a bit seedy. A real shame, but I guess a sign of the lack of visitors to Orlando. We then called into TGI's for take out before heading back to the villa. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and starting the packing (extra suitcases purchased!!).
Day 15 - up early again and off to Busch Gardens. We arrived at 9.20, just before the park opened and walked straight onto the new Cheetah hunt ride - this was excellent and visited another 5 times during the day. This really is a our favourite park and we all had a great day enjoying all the rides and attractions. We called in at Olive Garden again for dinner on the way home.
Over dinner we all agreed that, whilst we had enjoyed a great holiday, this (our 8th) visit was probably going to be our last for a while. We have just outgrown it and got the bug for travelling wider whilst we lived in China. We all listed places we would like to go and when we put them all together we realised we had 3 holidays a year for 6 years covered... We may come to Florida again in a couple of years, just not Orlando. I hope business picks up here again soon so that all the run down and boarded up areas on the 192 will get redeveloped and the whole area can get back to its former glory.
Tomorrow is our last day and we have a late check out arranged at the villa so we have plenty of time to pack and get organised before joining the BA flight home...
Farewell Orlando, it's been fun, may see you again, but I suspect it will be with my Grand Kids
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