I think I'm on my way to becoming one. I've always loved roller coasters (well, since I had enough couage and encouragement to ride my first "upside-down" one in the sixth grade), but now I'm realizing I like extreme sports much better than team sports (except for soccer!). Or maybe it's because I just spent two weeks riding roller coasters, skydiving in a wind tunnel (Kazanaa! haha), snorkeling with sting rays, parasailing, and jet skiing. We would have gone scuba diving too, but the visibility was crap. I have a very short bucket list that is actually written out. However, the stuff I did in Florida should definitely have been on it!
Here's the whole thing list form:
Day 1 [Orlando]: Arrive at 9M, Gatorland, La Nouba (Cir Du Soleil) after walking around Downtown Disney
Day 2 [Orlando - Tampa]: Busch Gardens
Day 3 [Orlando]: Aquatica and Seaworld
Day 4 [Orlando]: Wet 'n Wild
Day 5 [Orlando]: switched hotels and went to Islands of Adventure (straight to Hogsmeade/Hogwarts!), watched Disney fireworks from the roof of the California Grill, where we had dinner
Day 6 [Orlando]: Explored Hard Rock Hotel, Universal and Island of Adventures (this is when Mom and I went back in the evening and were the last two people in Hogwarts/Hogsmeade)!
Day 7 [Orlando]: More Universal and Islands of Adventure! Hogwarts and Hogsmeade photos during the day. The first time we were there, we just rushed to make sure we could do everything. This time we went through much slower so we wouldn't miss anything, explored the shops more. We had a delicious meal that included scrumptious pumpkin juice, a cauldron cake, and a chocolate frog!
Day 8 [Orlando]: iFly/Sky Venture indoor Skydiving! And we left Orlando for Key Largo.
Day 9 [Key Largo]: drove from Orlando to Key Largo, through the everglades and over the bridge from True Lies, and went to two famous eating spots.
Day 10 [Crystal River]: We swam/snorkeled with wild mantees and then went scalloping. We had a restaurant cook them for us!
Day 11 [Sannibell Island]: Went to a famous tourist spot/market, then we went with a couple out into the Gulf on their boat for dinner and to watch the sunset.
Day 12 [Key West]: Walked around Key West. Breakfast at the famous Blue Heaven (TBS, anyone?), stopped by Hemmingway's house, Key West Cemetery, went to where Highway 1 starts (mile 0), watched some street performers and the sunset, then walked down that one street with all the bars and shops.
Day 13 [Key West]: We went on a boat tour that included breakfast, snorkeling, lunch, jet skiing, parasailing, and they had a trampoline and inflatable slide/rock wall, neither of which were as cool as they sound but still fun.
Day 14: just packed up and went home, sightseeing from the car as we drove through Miami and stopped at a famous market where I got a dragonfruit smoothie! Mmmm....
Some memorable details:
We started out in Orlando, where we went to six, count them, SIX, theme parks! The first one we went to was actually in Tampa, and it was the best one: Busch Gardens. It had the most roller coasters, but also had a
safari/zoo, and a bunch of other stuff. The other five theme parks were Universal, Islands of Adventure (also owned by Universal and even though it's next door, it's a separate park), Wet 'n Wild, Aquatica, and Sea World. One ticket got us into all those parks. Also, my evil genius mother figured out how we could get into the
Hogwarts/
Hogsmeade section of Islands of Adventure an hour before the park opened! Heard about six hour waits just to get into the Harry Potter section? And the 8 hour lines to get to Ollivander's?
We didn't even wait twenty minutes.
Ollivander's isn't even a ride, but it's typically the longest wait. You go into an exact replica of Ollivander's wand shop from the movies, where an
actor chooses a kid to find a
wand. He tests a few and has the kid say a spell. The first two go wrong, and stuff actually happens in the room. A vase broke, wands shot off the wall - I went there three times and something new happened every time. The third one works and then you go into the Dervish and Banges, where they have more wands, Hogwarts
cloaks/uniform stuff,
Monster Book of Monsters that actually bites, Sneakscopes, Remembralls,
Quaffles, etc, etc. If you look at the ceiling, they have a Nimbus 2001,
Firebolt, and a Cleansweep that hover. There are 3 rides in that area. One is the kiddie ride, and it's called Flight of the Hippogriff. The only real roller coaster is the racing dragons one. The line is decorated like the first task of the Triwizard cup and you're going to fight your dragon. Also, Ron's
car is out front for some reason and so is
Hagrid's hut (it looks like they might add onto the park behind it). There are two different tracks and the dragons "race." There's a part where the roller coasters are coming straight at each other, but you only get the full effect if you're sitting in the front. When you're at the front of the line, the ceiling is decorated like a tent and you can see the silhouettes of dragons moving "outside." They really went all out. The other ride is part coaster, part virtual. It is amazingly well done; sometimes you can't tell which is virtual and which is real. This is the Forbidden Journey ride that goes through Hogwarts. Even the line to get there is a lot of fun. They have the
Mirror of Erised, the
humpback witch statue that marks the secret passage to Hogsmeade, then you're back outside the castle in the Herbology classroom. It's also decorated really well and along one of the walls, there are a bunch of
Mandrakes. Luckily, they don't cry. Then you go back inside and can see statues of
Godric Gryffindor and
Salazar Sytherin. Another wall has the
house points. At the end of the hall is the
hippogriff that leads up to Dumbledore's office, but first you go through the tall room that has pictures from the floor the ceiling. The ones of the heads of houses move and talk, discussing Harry Potter. They did an AMAZING job on these pictures! They look EXACTLY like the movie ones, very believable. That room then leads to Dumbledore's office, complete with a surprisingly convincing hologram of Dumbledore himself that talks to you while you're in his room - the walls of which are decorated with all sorts of knicknacks you see in the movies, including the pensieve. You go from there to the
Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, just like when Remus taught there. It has a hologram of Ron, Hermione, and Harry telling you about the ride you're about to have, and Ron makes it
snow by accident (foam falls from the ceiling). Then you go passed the moving/talking portrait of the
Fat Lady and into the Gryffindor Common Room where more paintings talk and demonstrate how to ride the ride, which is the next. When you get on, the ceiling has the
floating candles. The ride is really fun and it's the only thing that creeped me out... It starts with a Floo Powder powered trip, courtesy of Hermione, through the chimneys (half real, half virtual) where you catch up to Ron and Harry who are flying on brooms (and so are you thanks to Hermione again - virtual). You follow them to where a dragon has gotten loose (thanks for that, Hagrid), it chases you and breathes fire at you (real). You go through the Forbidden Forest where there are a LOT of giant, spitting spiders (real!! and that's what creeped me out...). From there, you go to the Whomping Willow (real), a welcome sight after the spiders.... then you find yourself in the middle of a Quidditch match, and Malfoy is rude to you (virtual). Dementors, party-crashers that they are, ruin the match and then your thrown into another dark and creepy place where dementors pop out at you (real and also freaky!! They never bothered me in the book/movies, but when they're in your face, it's another story completely. But still fun.) So the only way to get rid of the Dementors is happy thought...Somewhere in the ride (I think in the spiders, which is odd), your picture is taken. During the Dementor portion, fog comes down and your picture is projected on to it, along with the 3 other people you can ride with. So my happy thought was my family. Or strangers. But a cool idea! Then Harry does his
expecto patronum thing and for some reason all of Hogwarts cheers for you (virtual) before another Floo Powder trip back to where you started. The whole time your seat is moving and dropping and stuff, just like a coaster, so it was a REALLY cool ride. And the second time I rode it, I was the last one on! (So my projected picture was just me lol.) Everyone who worked there was really nice. My mom was waiting with my camera in the child swap and then she and I were the last two people to walk through Hogsmeade!! So we had it ALL TO OURSELVES. It was so cool. In Hogsmeade, you can eat at the Three Broomsticks and get drinks at the Hogshead. They had cold butterbeer and frozen butterbeer, both of which were good, but very sweet - it was hard to finish one. It also has Zonko's, Honeydukes, Ollivander's, Dervish and banges, and the and Owl Post. There are a lot of other stores that you can't go into, but have really cool stuff going on in the windows on the first and second stories. We spent 3 days at the 2 Universal parks. Island of Adventure also had a comic book hero section (the Hulk!!), Dr Seuss, Jurassic Park, and the
Lost Continent.
Seussland was REALLY cool but sadly I didn't go back to it when I had my camera :( We spent the first day at Gatorland and Busch Gardens. Also in Orlando, we went to Aquatica and Seaworld one day. Wet 'n Wild another.
We also went INDOOR SKYDIVING. Which was EXCELLENT. But hard... lol. They have a giant fan in the floor and they put you in all this gear and you go in for a minute at a time with an instructor. I was only in for two minutes 'cause you pay by the minute. IT was a LOT of fun but hard to explain... We have a video of it though. Advice: You'll want to grin like a fool when you're in the there. Unless you want to see your drool shoot to the ceiling, don't do it. But that's better than it running down your chin, so it's not that bad! Now I kind of want to try sky diving.
Another night, a couple took us out on their boat for dinner and we watched the sunset. Oh, I almost forgot! The first night we were there, we went to see Circ Du Soleil, La Nouba! It was pretty darn cool. Sadly, no photography allowed.
Hemmingway's house was also really cool. He was apparently a crazy cat guy and had over 50 at his house. They even have their own house modeled after his. He lived in Key West for about 9 years and wrote his most famous works here. After he divorced his second wife, he moved to Cuba. He had a cat named
Snowball. Today, there are
46 cats at the Hemmingway House, and they are all descendants of Snowball! Also, his crazy 2nd wife took out all their ceiling fans to install French
chandeliers. I really dislike her for this because it was about a million and five degrees. Also, apparently Picasso was a fan of Hemmingway, because he made him a
funky cat sculpture, which was in the house until two years ago, when some local loco ripped it from its place nailed to a piece of furniture and stole it. The police figured out whodunnit, but he literally saw them coming and smashed it to bits... WHAT A JERK. Other interesting Hemmingway facts? He was the first American in WWII to be injured in Italy. He was 18. He, along with his actress granddaughter, Margot Hemmingway, and his father, and probably some other relatives, all committed suicide.
If I come up with any more details, I'll post about them later. This is long enough I think....
btw, that take 365 pictures challenge? I think I just caught up.
