15th August 2009
The day my camera batteries died!
We had a lazy start and then headed out to get some fuel as we already down to a quarter of a tank (must have been the air-con). Took a while to figure out how to actually get the pump to work! If you paid with cash you had to go inside and prepay, a friendly Brit told us. All the while hub was trying to get it figured out and filled up the kids and I were beginning to drip in the car it was so humid!
We then took off in the direction we'd just come, down the US 27 to join the I4 as we figured the 192 might be a bit busier than usual on this, a Saturday, morning.
We stopped at Denny's for breakfast. Big mistake, we all thought it was horrid! Worse than a Little Chef! Initially we thought we had ice cream on our french toast (but it was a massive dob of butter which we all scraped off!), the eggs were hardly cooked (we ordered sunny side up, later in our holiday we tried over easy but still they weren't to our liking, we could never get an egg white that wasn't runny!). The bacon was so brittle, now I like my bacon very well done, but this stuff was cremated!
Lee hated it the most and swore no more Denny's! Looking on the bright side the server was very good and the restaurant was clean.
Back on the road and Lee was insisting that he needed to stop for some chewing gum to lose the tsate of his brekkie and the awful english tea! We didn't get any though, by the time we arrived at SW's parking lot he'd forgotten all about it.
After a couple of piccies of the kids by the lighthouse and grabbing a massive park map (how am I going to scrapbook that?!) we stopped to stare in awe at the new Manta ride. Awesome indeed! I could have stood and watched for ages. I set my camera up on continuous shooting and stood, and stood, and snapped some nice shots.
The screams of the riders only served to compound our thoughts of "I'm not going on that!" (all except for our intrepid rider Katie, of course, who would have ridden every upside-down, loop-the-loop, scream-your-tonsils-out, toss-your-dinner-upside-down ride out there!). It was more fun, I figured, to just stand and gawp and besides, the spray from the ride was refreshing.
We wandered over to Stingray Lagoon
...how nice it was not to have a plan of rides to be hit in the first hour for a change! Not that I have anything against such plans, they'd worked for us so far, and I'd make similar plans in the future, but today we were on a go-slow. Next was the Dolphin Cove, where it was difficult to get any decent pictures, so busy was it, and so keen were the dolphins on hanging around the area where guests paid to feed them :)
We then backtracked because we realised that Believe was due to start in half an hour. It was a nice walk there, over a wooden bridge that crossed a lake.
We were all very much taken with Believe, cameras (3 of them, Sam's new birthday cmaera, Katie's and mine) and camcorder were out....but, darn it! My camera batteries decided to die within minutes of the show starting, probably because I'd tried out the continuous shooting mode on Manta!
Nevermind, the kids got some fab shots.
Next up was Wild Arctic, a fairly wild ride, a bit like Hollywood Studios' Star Tours, only flying across the Arctic and not through space!
The great thing about SW was the massive fans dotted along the paths that cooled you with their fine mist of water. Very freshing in the heat! This was the park in which we most noticed the heat - probably because were were spending less time in queues undercover and more time outdoors.
Shamu's Happy Harbour was our next destination and the kids enjoyed a ride on Shamu Express while hub and I sought shade.
A quick beat on the kettle drums then time for a snack...
At this point the heavens decided to open and it began to thunder. The shower was refreshing and we found a bench tos it on with our cherry slush and BBQ crisps. Sam really wanted to see the sharks (in fact, he hadn't stopped asking to see the sharks since we'd arrived!) but in this heat we weren't planning on doing anything other than an anticlockwise tour back to the exit...no crisscrossing of the park today! So we continued on our path and ended up in the right time at the right time to watch one more show - Clyde and Seamore's Pirate Island, after checking out the noisy sealions (we loved 'em and took far too many photos, but I won't subject you to any more than two or three )
and a little fluffy fella who clearly wasn't expecting visitors as he hadn't brushed his hair!
We noticed an eerie silence...there were no screams coming from the direction of Kraken behind the sealions...we guessed they must have stopped the ride because of the weather. The silence was deafening
Clyde and Seamore...what can I say...not as good as Believe but entertaining. Best parts - the entertainer who sttod at the entrance to greet (imitate or intimidate!) the arriving guests (he was hilarious, the star of the show in our opinion) and the refusal of the sealion to do its part at the right time
The rest in the stalls was good too and an opportunity for me to play with the kids' cameras!
Here's that entertainer before he came down and really got started on the guests!
...and the mis-cueing sealion (in this shot behaving himself!)
We moved on to a brief look at the sharks, Penguin Encounter and Journey to Atlantis, which we couldn't be bothered to queue for, and then we were on our way. We'd missed alot, but the kids had seen enough for the day, were exhausted from the heat and wanted to get back to chill by the pool.
Lee and Sam chilled in front of the TV, Katie played with her new Lego and I spent ages putting photos onto my EeePC. We headed out for some dinner in the evening. We'd planned on Cracker Barrel but the parking lot was full so we decided to try Shoney's. Nice choice! The kids had spaghetti bolognaise while hub and I had salads. A family in the booth behind me complained and left barely having touched their same meals but we couldn't figure out what the problem was. No piccies of these meals, sorry, I was too hungry to remember to take photos!
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