We had hoped the parks would be quieter the second week but we were wrong!. Once again waiting times for the larger rides were around 1 hour with Universals Fast Passes selling out around 10:30 - 11:00.
Once again we opted for the 'late start do 1/2 a day' option for most days but made the effort to go to Universal early on Thursday to get passes for Shrek. We went for relaxing visits seeing the shows and leaving most of the rides to those willing to stand in 86f for an hour!.
SeaWorld was as usual the quieter park and we did 3 afternoons/evenings here taking in the Shamu Rocks America show and Odyssea. We also did the Saving a Species Tour which cost $50 for 4 of us (with AP discount), this lasted an hour and was almost interesting!, we saw a few manatee and dolphins in their pools but the only contact with the animals was feeding a very small dish of live grubs and fruit to about 15 birds at the end of the tour, Miriam kept getting grubs dropped on her by the birds and Charlotte wouldn't go in the bird cage at all!. Next time we'll try the Predators Tour and report back on that.
Having had our plans for spending time with our friends in Spring Hill messed up we rang Katie to ask if she could use the microwave we'd bought when she went to Kentucky, after a chat with Katies mom we took a second trip to Spring Hill (97miles each way!) on the Friday morning and left it with them, Katie had left at 6am for the 800 mile drive to Kentucky!. We decided to do Weeki Waachi Park and pulled into the car park around 12:30, checked the notice board and the park closed at 3:30 so $85 for about 3 hours?, a quick family meeting and we decided to head for Homosassa Park instead!. We drove off up the I-19 with no map and about 1/2 hour later found the park. $50 to get in but we got coupons to save 20% off our next visit.
Homosassa Park is home to 7 female manatees, a collection of aligators, panthers, owls, otters and various other animals including several million squirells which seemed to be everywhere!. It's a nice place for a quiet day out and take a picnic lunch etc. The park is very nicely kept and there is a small but informative educational building with lots of interesting stuff for adults and kids to look at. We had lunch in the restaurant which had a fair range of food and was reasonably priced (National Trust take note!), we had the usual burgers/fries/corn dogs/sodas and everyone was happy!, the burgers were handmade and came with lettuce & onion with all the sauces etc. being available for you to put on or not as required, a much better idea we thought!.
Having spent 1/2 a day happily we decided to head back to the hotel as I didn't fancy getting lost when it got dark!, we stopped at a Walmart on the way and picked up hot munchies for the trip back, chicken strips, corn dogs and potato wedges. Another quick stop for gas and a very large hot chocolate and a coffee for $1 each and we were on our way getting back to the hotel around 9pm to find they hadn't fixed the dead AirCon which we'd reported the previous day
After several calls to reception the engineer finally turned up, opened the access panel in the bathroom and whacked the motor which spang into life, it then worked for all of 5 mins and died again. After a few more calls we were told it couldn't be fixed and we would have to move rooms if we didn't want to bake, so at 10:30 we moved, all the way to the room next door!, luckily we'd packed most of the cases etc. on Thursday evening as we didn't want to start packing after being out all day on Friday.
Saturday morning we did a final shopping trip for odds & ends we'd forgotten and spent a coupe of hours in SeaWorld having an ice cream and watching the dolphins. The trip to Sanford was quiet and the I-4 was trouble free.
Arriving at Sanford we dropped off the van and headed for check-in, 'did we know our fight was delayed?' well we did now!, it was delayed 2 & 3/4 hours!. MyTravel check-in were remarkably unhelpful, not only had they lost any trac
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