Sunday

Everyone is up very early this morning Gary was the latest getting up at 5 am, the girls were in the games room by 6 am playing air hockey and fooseball. I managed to stretch out making breakfast until about 7.30 by which time everyone was very hungry so out came the bacon, eggs, sausages etc and everyone tucked in. On asking the girls to load the dishwasher I got met with "but we are on holiday..." soon put them straight on that !!

Brittany from Park Tickets came round just before 9 with the tickets we had ordered and a lovely bag of goodies for us and after she had gone we all relocated to the pool for a couple of hours. It was decided by all that a trip to the shops was in order so looked up directions to The Altamonte Mall just north of Orlando and we were off. It took about an hour to get there but it turned out to be well worth the trip, Jennifer wanted to go into Hollister to try and get herself a hoodie (can't afford to buy Hollister in the UK) and came out with some bargins, $12 each for t shirts and she got the hoodie she wanted for $30, Bryony also bought herself a zip up jacket for $20. After a wander round the shops we found the food hall and were spoilt for choice ... decisions, decisions...
after eating a substantial lunch and another wander round Jennifer started to complain that her throat hurt really badly and she was feeling quite hot so we decided to make a move and head back to the villa via Walgreens where I bought some throat spray and cold relief tablets. Back at the villa the girls disappeared into their rooms (nothing has changed there then !) and Gary and I went out for a dip in the pool. We managed to stay awake until about 9 pm.

Monday

Up very early again this morning so I went outside with my book and a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise and about 15 air balloons floated across the sky above the villa, it was a beautiful thing to watch. Jennifer woke up with a full blown head cold (quite relieved it wasn't toncillitis and didn't need a trip to the dr) so she was dosed up with tablets and throat spray we headed out to Gary's favourite place for breakfast, The Waffle House, after a huge breakfast of waffles, sausage, egg and hash browns (we never eat this amount in the UK !!) we headed off to Islands of Adventure, on the advice of Brittany we headed through Dr Seuss to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter which is where the girls were desperate to go. At 9.30 it was already quite crowded but we headed straight to the dragon ride which had a 30 minute wait which Gary and the girls went on (I held the bags), Jennifer came off looking quite green, which I think had something to do with her not feeling very well because she usually loves all the rollercoasters and we headed over to get some butter beer which was delicious we had a wander through Hogsmeade until we got to the Hippogriff ride which Gary and Bryony went on after a 45 minute wait, no one fancied the simulator ride so we wandered back down into the village, Bryony wanted a wand but after seeing the queue of about 100 people waiting to get into Ollivanders she decided against it and we went into Honeydukes and Zonko's where she and Jennifer bought themselves a chocolate frog. On the whole I was quite underwhelmed by the WWOHP, after all the hype I expected it to be a lot more spectacular than it actually was. We decided that as IOA seemed to be filling up very quickly we would head over to Universal and spend some time there, there were no crowds and we got onto MIB twice by simply walking in, we went on the ET ride and then Shrek 4D, there then seemed to be some sort of parade so we stood watching that whilst munching on Churros when the decision was made to go back to the villa. I had forgotton just how much the humidity can drain you. When we got back to the car I looked at the time and we had actually been at Universal and IOA for over 5 hours which explained why my feet were throbbing. Back at the villa we spent the rest of the day in the pool before going to Beef O'Bradys for dinner and then back to the villa to watch a film in the Hi-Tech room, by 9 pm we were all pooped so everone said good night and off to bed we went ......