Imagine living 10 minutes from this…

Looking out over this….

Oil free pelicans.

When I mentioned (briefly – every few weeks or so for about 13 months) here on the blog that we were heading to Florida I was tickled pink when one of my favouritest (tis too a word) photographers in the whole wild world suggested a meet-up.  I’d read Rachel’s blog American Mum as she and her family relocated from North Carolina to Southwest Florida and thought to myself “Yeah MrW can drive that”.

In the end we booked a hotel and made a night of it, that turned into a night and a day of it. Rachel, Michal and their gorgeous munchkins Noah and Chloe first took us down to their local beach where, seriously, there were dolphins frolicking around in the sea. Heaven or what?

In the evening we were introduced to Rachel’s parents and we all talked the hind legs of a donkey over much yumminess at the local Olive Garden. This is what happens when a group of teachers get together, honestly you should see the edubloggers yapping on Twitter

We must have managed to talk slowly enough to convince them we weren’t nutters (although Michal being a Scot no doubt helped all round) because we were very kindly invited round for some pool time the next day.

Rachel and Michal’s home is gorgeous, bright and light its huge walls are graced with stunning canvases and prints, all Rachel’s own work. It’s a strange experience, walking into someone’s home for the first time when you have already had glimpses into it though their blog. You feel like you know the place, you can point to canvases and “remember” where the photo was taken, how it was chosen to be hung, the shopping trip to IKEA to buy the discontinued furniture. It’s weird this blogging malarkey, that lets us into the lives of strangers without them knowing we’re there. I felt like a bit of a stalker!

By the time we hit their community pool the boys had warmed up to each other and got on swimmingly…

We swapped teeth rotting confectionary (as you do) Cadburys from Scotland to the US and a cornucopia of American icons from the US to Scotland (and we’re still working our way through them – the Chex are mine .. all mine!) and it was all we could do to drag ourselves away in time to drive back to Kissimmee.

We had an absolute ball, a real highlight of our month in the US. A wonderfully laid back time and we didn’t even talk about blogging or photography all that much.

And there’s a rather exciting p.s. to all this.

The Duriks are pondering a visit to the UK next summer and Rachel has mentioned she’d love to run one of her (un)workshops in London.

I’ll bite the hand of anyone who tries to get in front of me in that queue.

I imagine these things take a bit of organising and it would help to know of there’s enough interest to make it viable. So… can I take this opportunity to introduce the the most fabulous portrait photographer I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and I highly recommend that anyone interested in learning from the woman who taught me how to get off manual (and much more not really in evidence here since I never did get to grips with the D90) go here and tell her so we can persuade her en masse that she simply MUST get on that plane and bring her (un)workshop to our shores.

That is all.

How did this happen?

I caught the tiny, fleeting hint of apprehension

Then it was gone

And now I have three school children

And thus begins another battle against conformity, uniformity and bashing them into round holes

Wish us luck!

My niece – she likes the camera.

And her shades.

Almost unpacked, a bit browner and many thousands of dollars poorer, we are home. Actually we’re not even nearly unpacked – we were “lucky” in that we booked our flights early enough to get a check-in allowance of TWO 23kg bags each – they halved the allowance in October. It’s a perk we took full advantage of and explains two things… why we were getting funny looks at the airport with our three trollies full of bags and (somewhat) where the thousands of dollars went to (we’ve blown it all on Fruit Loops and Pop-Tarts!).

Where do I start?

Universal is still brilliant, Busch Gardens is fab, Seaworld is appaling, Aquatica is majorly disappointing and despite buying tickets in advance I still haven’t managed to get to Cape Canaveral. I can’t pick a favourite coaster… could be Shiekra, could be Rockit… could be Montu. There was even a 360 inverted coaster for little people at Busch Gardens, The Scorpion. My thrill seeking 5 year old loved it. Busch Gardens is great for big rides and has tons of fairground type rides for little ones. It really is a pretty close to perfect as far as rides go and well worth investing in a Quick Queue ticket. Not so sure about the animals….

We spent a total of three hours in Seaworld, again with Quick Queue tickets. This got us all on Atlantis, and us big peeps on Kraken and Manta as many times as we wanted. Now it’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of captive animals, but I am a member of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and I am able to appreciate the need for conservation and breeding programmes. The manatees at Seaworld are rescued from the wild during cold snaps or after injuries, rehabilitated and freed back into safe waters. This I “get”. Manatees are endangered. I understand the need for human intervention.

A swimming pool full of baby bottlenose dolphins I don’t “get”. According to the keeper on duty it’s OK since the pool is 12ft deep. Aye right… the oceans are about that too then? Bottlenose dolphins are not endangered and personally the thought of spending the rest of my life in the equivalent of a bathtub doesn’t do much for me. It’s little wonder they have been known to commit suicide. Seaworld also owns the majority of the world’s captive orcas. Creatures that can swim upwards of 100 miles a day are confined to tiny pools and made to perform in return for food. Their lifespan is severely reduced in captivity. The fact that I supported all this when I handed over my money turns my stomach.

Don’t take my word for it, Ric O’Barry who trained Flippers for 10 years has campaigned against dolphin captivity for nearly 4 decades… I think he’d know.

There’s more, keepers who stand back and watch park visitors feeding (i.e. abusing) manta rays I don’t “get”. Doing nothing whilst people grab hold of the rays and prevent them from swimming away, slap them as they pass, throw food at them despite the detailed instructions on how to feed them… no this I do not “get”.

And just when I thought I’d seen it all we found the polar bear. Here in Scotland we have Mercedes, a polar bear who was rescued when she ventured into a Canadian town in search of food. Locals wanted to shoot her, she ended up in Edinburgh zoo in less than ideal conditions. The RZSS never claimed Mercedes was in suitable accommodation and earlier this year she was finally moved to a purpose built enclosure at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kingussie. It’s cold there, she has a large open area to roam and water to swim in. It’s not perfect but she’s never been a candidate for release into the wild. At Seaworld they keep their polar bear in a FRIDGE. Literally. A fecking fridge. Totally enclosed in an artifically cooled environment complete with roof, the poor creature doesn’t even see sky let alone breathe fresh air. What the hell makes anyone think that central Florida is a suitable place to keep a POLAR bear anyway??

Seaworld is a horrible place and one I will not be returning to. Ever. I am ashamed I didn’t research it more before I went as I could have avoided the place altogether. Head, sand, me, yes I am ashamed.

Aquatica I had high hopes for and whilst it wasn’t as awful as Seaworld it was disappointing. Actually I’m not so sure it was the place so much as the crowds of ignorant people…. I wish the staff had the balls to stop the stupid granny who sat and smoked on the beach, stubbing her fag ends into her beer bottle. I wish they had the balls to stop the family of fat kids spitting on the beach and the ignorant bitch who tipped her coke can out on it. Go on, guess where they were all from. Adults thought nothing of shoving little kids out of the way in the wave pool; the day after we visited a child was hospitalised after receiving a thump in the face from a grown up elbow. I think it says a lot about a place when all three of your kids don’t want to go back after spending only 2 hours there.

Brazil and Argentina both need their own theme parks, like NOW. Swarms of South American teenagers blocking up queues, clapping and singing throughout the queues and the rides and not taking STFU at face value were more than irritating if the truth be told. The desire to chew their clappy little arms off and shove them soggy end first into their chanty little mouths was overwhelming at times. I can understand (if not forgive) their parents for sending them as far away as possible for the summer. Actually I could almost forgive them if they at least equipped them with basic manners i.e. when you want to ride with your friends you don’t move them UP the queue, YOU move BACK. Not much to ask is it dickwads?

None of us tired of visiting Universal Studios though. We were all more than a bit sad when our 14 days were up. I lost count of how many times we went…sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes 2 parks, sometimes 1, sometimes we left after an hour or so, sometimes we stayed all day, sometimes we went on the rides and sometimes we just ate and watched the shows.

And that was the parks. We got a really good deal on tickets from Attraction Tickets Direct. Our 14 day 5 Park Combo Ticket lasted a whole month since the Universal and Seaworld tickets arrived as two separate tickets. We were able to activate the Universal tickets for our first 14 days then the others for the second 14 days so for 4 adults and one child we got a month of Florida theme parks for just over £900. Not bad huh? When you consider that adding on 14 days at Disney would have cost an additional £1500 I think we got off lightly which is just as well after the Seaworld experience… next time will be even cheaper.

Obviously we didn’t spend the whole month in theme parks. But I still have a bit (ahem) of unpacking to do so I’ll save the beaches, bloggy meetups and the joys of HFCS for another post.

We’d seen the crowds of people in a stationary queue to get into the Harry Potter area of Universal Islands of Adventure the day before so were under no impression that it was going to be an easy of comfortable experience getting in there. It only opened on 20th June after all. So we planned a campaign. According to all available evidence the parks open at 9am so we got there for 8:30 and walked straight through. We hit the Harry Potter queue at the bridge over Dudley Do-Rights Ripsaw Falls, which is a whole Jurassic Park away from the entrance. According the the park staff the queue starts forming at 7:15 and they open it up at 8:45 so our campaign was a bit badly timed, however we were squeezed in there by 9:15.  And I mean squeezed.

They have around 30,000 people a day visiting this part of the the park and it aint big. Actually I was shocked at how aint big it is. And how little there is to do. Duelling Dragons has been rebranded as Dragon Challenge and the queue was 5 minutes, considerably shorter than the queue to get in, meaning Neil and the big kids managed to ride both the red and blue dragons whilst Paul and I baked in the early morning sun. We queued for Butterbeers which are absolutely delish, seriously sweet, a sort of cinammony cream soda with a vanilla cream “head”. I recommend a frozen one, the cold wasn’t cold enough really.

The Flight of the Unicorn ride has been rebranded as the Flight of the Hippogriff and had a 20 minute queue – Paul, my little thrill seeker, loved it. The actual Harry Potter ride itself had a hellish queue, it said 115 minutes but these things are rarely that accurate and since you had to be 48″ tall to ride we were not prepared to have Paul stand in a 2 hour queue for nothing more than a child swap.

The queue for Ollivander’s was equally daunting so at that point we left. There was nothing else to see and no way we were going to get into any of the little gift shoppes, no way. We could barely negotiate our way out through the crowds. All in all we spent less time IN the Harry Potter area than we spent queuing to GET in. Before visiting we couldn’t figure out why people would queue for so long (some later entries to the park queue for over an hour to get into HP) and not spend the rest of the day in there blocking any new entrants. Now we know… there’s not much there!

Which means the rest of Universal, the bits I love, look like this….

Yay for space!

This 14 day pass experience is a world away from our usual 3 day thing, I am loving that we can walk out of the park when it rains, or when it gets busy without the pressure of having to squeeze it all in. Today will be a pool day. Or a Mount Dora day. And tonight we’re going to go see if Harry Potter quietens down a bit after 7. I might even take the big camera out at last.

We need something child friendly for the weekend – it’s Paul’s 5th birthday on Saturday and we don’t want to spend it queuing!

After 20 hours and 21 minutes….

Oh happy day!

Peanut free soya butter, Margarita mix by the gallon, frozen juice, Fruit Loops and the smell of Tide, oh I have missed you America, especially your tumble driers that – DRY.

The journey was long and boring and fairly uneventful, you had to make your own fun..

Scaling dizzy heights or sucking on nicotine sticks that look uncannily like a Lillet…

British Airways cabin crew are, bar the lovely Kevin, pretty pissed off. There’s a political statement in there somewhere.

Getting here via Orlando International Airport was a mistake I might not make again. I’ve never in my life taken more than 90 minutes to get out of an airport and that was Atlanta Hartsfield which is huge. Three hours after landing we finally picked up our hire car feck off huge truck type thing and got the hell out of there.

Lovely villa though. There has been plenty pool time…

and a bit of shopping at the request of the young uns…

Yes they are sad and so miss Woolworths.

We found the local curry house…

Or maybe not.

We spent Monday at Universal Studios without a camera. I’m having some trouble with cameras here, every time I take one out the lens steams up… it’s killing the spontaneity. And they are heavy… so I can’t be arsed… too much to see and do!

Sometimes I’ll be happily dumping gigabytes of RAW files onto the first hard drive I can find with a smidgen of space and I’ll come across a photo that makes me go “Huh?” as in “Huh? Who took that?”.

All three of my children have a habit of sneaking my camera away when I’m not watching. Actually my daughter, now 15, started these shenanigans when she was a pre-schooler back in the days of film. More than once I’ve parted with hard earned cash in return for a whole reel of photos of stuffed furry things posed in a row.

This is Kathryn’s latest surprise shot caught when I was otherwise engaged.

I like surprises.