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The theme park capital of the world - Orlando

This is part of a series of travel stories, based upon the experiences of me and my wife, on our tour across America. Read more at 

http://www.thebizz.biz/travel-bizz/

Orlando – Florida, FL

The History:

Suitably dubbed the “The Theme Park Capital of the World” Orlando is as enchanting as one would expect. Home to Disney World and Universal Studios, there’s a constant sense of magic in the air.  The fairy-tale feeling captivates the imagination, resulting in permanent smiles being carried wherever you may go. The resort names alone reveal the secret power of the experience – Magic Kingdom, Sea World, Animal Kingdom, Discovery Cove, Wet n Wild, Aquatica, Islands of Adventure, Typhoon Lagoon, Epcot, Blizzard Beach etc.

The Setting:

After surviving St Paddies in Chicago, the Niagara Falls in freezing temperatures and then Miami Beach over Spring break – All within a week. Not surprising, we needed some serious downtime and “The City Beautiful” provided the ideal milieu. We jumped into our rental and took a scenic drive down the Florida beachfront en-route to Orlando. After a 4 hour drive and geared with our park-hoppers we checked into the most beautiful resort – Orange Lake River Island. What awaited us stretched beyond our wildest dreams…..

The Experience:

I’m not sure what you get when you combine a researcher with an auditor, but the apparent result is organized chaos. Frantic planning is an absolute necessity when you have only one week to squeeze in about 50 rollercoasters, 9 theme parks and too many other rides and shows to count – while scheduling a respite to actively appreciate the most beautiful resort in the World. Our combined expertise might annoy others, but in these pressing situations we’re potentially the ideal touring companions. Armed with our Excel spreadsheet of awesomeness, we were blown away upon check-in when we gleefully discovered that our luxury resort plays host to multiple golf courses (4), shopping centres (6), water parks, swimming pools (7) and restaurants (9) all geared towards creating the vacation of a lifetime. Failing epically in scale to be known as a hidden gem, this oasis of magic more closely resembled an opportunity to dip into Uncle Scrooges Money Well. The only sense of melancholy that momentarily surfaced was a result from the realisation that our pinpoint schedule would not allow too much time to be spent gold-digging in this lagoon of awesomeness. Nevertheless, our treasure-hunt would fortunately lead us to the bigger jewels found in the theme parks enclosing us. So began our brisk journey through dreamlike city and its surroundings.

Our accommodation resembled a storybook penthouse with 2 massive en-suite bedrooms and a large open plan lounge and kitchen. This place would swallow all the rooms we occupied since the onset of our journey and still be able to accommodate a Springbok scrum. The apartments crowning jewel however, was gloriously on display in the centre of the bathroom – a mini-pool masquerading as Jacuzzi bath. Foaming from its centre, this just screamed out with bubbling relaxation. The schedule was not the only thing that was tight, so was our budget. Having a kitchen at our disposal suddenly became a blissful luxury and consequently our first stop was the supermarket to stock up on a weeks’ worth of groceries (and deluxe craft beers). Next on the agenda was an evening dedicated to cleansing, both ourselves and our traveling attire, after numerous consecutive days on the road in shaky hotels. While Chantel performed her womanly duties of power laundry-ing with aplomb, Neil continued his precarious relationship with smoke detectors. While living in Harrisburg Neil discovered the strikingly obvious correlation between braaing “South African style” and activating alarm-bells on numerous previous occasions, but he momentarily got lost in limbo and largely proved this relationship once again. The smoke alarm, jointly followed by the smell of braaivleis, quickly welcomed Orlando to these boere. Word probably circulated from Harrisburg, because strange stares strengthened our conspiracy theory that we were on the Orange Lake suspect-list of possible Pyromancers.

We deterred from this spoiling our first non-fast-food meal in 10 days and we were two delighted, yet tired, souls when we bedded down that evening. Unintentional Pyromancing is a draining sport it seems. Refreshed, we got an early morning wake-up call to herd to the welcome centre, where the promise of cheap tickets to Disney was allure enough. Unfortunately, written in the fine print, was the luckless fact that you had to endure a 2 hour marketing ploy, filled with cheap sales tactics. Murphy once again had his hand in our draw and ensured that our Sales Guru was none-other than a close relative of Kenny Rogers, even sharing the same surname. Moreover this one accommodated his famous uncle to a once-off show in Sun City ages ago, thereby taking it upon himself to use his “substantial” knowledge of the African psyche, to convince these budget-strained tourists to invest more than a million, in this once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. Unsuccessful in using every ploy covered in marketing 101 and thereafter, he moved through tactics covered in Sociology, Psychology and very nearly Taekwondo. But we survived every feeble attempt. Frustrated to the core with pulsating veins throbbing on his forehead and neck, Mr. Rogers admitted defeat and near violently handed the baton over to the next luckless individual. Eventually victory was ours and we left the welcome centre with enormously discounted tickets to both the Universal Parks as well as SeaWorld and Busch Gardens.

Our point of departure was mutually decided to be Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure. We needed a solid foundation to start spinning our web of exploration and who better than the webbed master himself to assist – therefore our carefully selected first ride would end up being Spiderman, the rollercoaster. Neil is a clandestine adrenaline junkie, with an acquired taste for the rollercoaster drug. Conversely, Chantel is a greenhorn who has never dabbled with the dark-side of rollercoaster addictions, due to a related post-traumatic fear picked up when nearly falling from one as a mere sibling. We needed to evolve this “Coaster Neanderthal” and as any good drug lord would, Neil decided that baby-steps could perhaps be averted for this goal. We hit her with the hard stuff, since Spiderman ended up being on the opposite spectrum of a heyday carousel. Surprising bravery ended up being the order of the day, and like Spiderman producing his superpowers once bitten by a spider, Chantel’s evolution has begun. Shaken and torn, yet in a manic state, the addiction slowly poisoned her veins as she eagerly nominated the next big coaster. Resembling Sparta soldiers we braved the one coaster after the other. The theme park proudly lived up to its name, as we coaster jumped through different worlds and experiences. Launching at excessive speeds on the Hulk, twirling upside down on the Rip-ride rocket, freefalling to defy gravity on Dr. Doom, reverse engineering through loops on the Mummy and duelling dragons in Harry Potter world, the thrill seeking adventures in the Universal Park are endless. In between we watched a few shows and mellowed down in storybook favourites by becoming Minions in Despicable me, escaping from Krusty while in cahoots with the Simpsons, then flying a bike with ET, escaping Twisters and Earthquakes, zapping aliens with the Men-in-Black, laughing at Donkey in 4D Shrek world and many more. There’s no shortfall of adrenalin shocks to the system whilst exploring this crazy world.

We however soon discovered a few things. Firstly the parks are EXPENSIVE and not streamlined for South African thirsts. Secondly, the queues are draining. Thirdly, it’s a mission to carry anything around that needs to be put into a locker, thereby confounding the difficulties, because you need a mobile phone to make the queues more bearable. Solution-bound we brainstormed our tactics for the remainder of our park visits. Our action plan entailed packing lunch in a cooler-box (including a few beers), purchasing a moon-bag (that was ceremoniously dubbed a fanny pack by most Americans), loading our mobile phones with a host of entertainment options and taking bottles of frozen water along. This enabled us to carry our necessities in the moon-bag, without worrying about lockers. We were also freshly hydrated with our ice cold bottled water for the morning session. We entered the parks early and immediately ran to the most popular attractions to thereby minimize the queuing time. We were constantly geared with on-screen entertainment, which all snuggled nicely into the fanny-pack. Lunch time we would catch a breather by eating in the car while downing a few cold beers. We would then swap the bottled water for a frozen replacement and then hit the parks again. We also ensured that we arrived first and left last each day, thereby optimizing our experience. This was a strategy that we successfully deployed on our trips to Seaworld, Busch Gardens, Universal (again) and finally our day-trip through Disney.

The key to appreciating any rollercoaster lies in the experience and like any classical “had-to-be-there moment” it’s impossible to justify them individually with words. Therefore to deter from boring you with detailed descriptions of all the rides we did, focus will rather be placed on a few acme moments. Seaworld might be known for its aquatic experiences, but like discovering the lost city of Atlantis, we stumbled upon two hidden gems of rollercoasters – the Manta and Kraken (which Neil constantly shamed by pronouncing its name incorrectly in his Dutch driven utterings).  After previous accomplishments and premature celebrations, fear majestically returned to Chantel’s face when she confronted these behemoths. I don’t think a night shared with Bubba in an underground prison facility, could elicit as much fear as Chantel experienced enroute to boarding these coasters. Manta is a flying coaster filled with inline twists, pretzel loops, reverse corkscrews and insane inversions while flying at a breakneck speed over water to create a truly unique experience. Kraken, in turn, is a floorless rollercoaster built by the leaders of rollercoaster designs and features two vertical loops, a dive loop, a zero-g roll, a cobra roll and a corkscrew allowing for a constant feeling of weightlessness (which was Chantel’s renowned Achilles Heel of fear). We not only braved these beasts a few times each, but we also experimented with front-row and back-row seats (or anywhere else the daring might apparently sit). This also became a trend and throughout our enthralling Florida theme park blaze, we rode on nearly every coaster available and did this by experiencing near all of them from the prime position (normally front-row seats). The only coaster where Chantel’s fear was the victor, also ended up being Neil’s favourite – The Sheikra in Tampa Bay.

Fulfilled by the roller-coaster distinctions we achieved on our Florida evaluation, we decided to work in a relaxing day to inhale the magical surroundings offered by our chesty resort we called home.  In proudly South African spirit we defied the definitions of a barbeque, to host our own version of a braai at the pool. Lindy and Joe went park-hopping on this particular day, but in gratitude of the accommodation we offered them, they spoiled us with some tantalizing Craft Beers (even including a Killian beer). Equipped with braaivleis, beer, boeke, briquettes, bikini (Chantel), broek (Neil) we were ready to BRAAI. After feeding the beast, we spoiled ourselves by cruising on tubes through the lazy river and drinking slushy cocktails. Our batteries were slowly recharging, subsequent to constant touring and successive 12-hour days spent within theme parks on our feet and on rides. Rested and reinvigorated we decided that we can’t leave Orlando without experiencing Disney. Having only one day left we were faced with the enigma of which parks to include and where to let go. Never ones to back down from a challenge, we decided to purchase a one day hopper and tackle as many parks as humanly possible. We moved through parks, rides and shows like two possessed addicts and achieved the impossible – 4 parks in one day (including most of the popular shows and rides). Through immaculate timing, planning and marathon endurance we zipped through Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom before ending our last day in Orlando on a fairy-tale note, with fireworks in front of Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. A dreamlike kiss under the sparkled sky sealed this charmed chapter perfectly…..

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