Aquatica

We went to Aquatica on Olivia's birthday.  My sister Hannah and her family visited this park last summer, and she raved about how great it was.  She was right- the park was nice, clean, and had plenty of shade and chairs.  They even had sprinklers come on and wet the sidewalk so that we didn't have to carry shoes or "hot-foot-it" to the different areas of the park.  Brian said that this was his favorite day of the vacation.  Yes:  Brian said that- about a waterpark.

  There were some really neat rides at Aquatica including a capsule-launch waterslide.  For this ride, you get into a "capsule" standing straight up and once you are shut in, the floor disappears from under you and you fall straight down the waterslide.  It was a bit nerve-racking.  Another waterslide  took us through the Commerson's dolphin tank.  The sides of the slide were clear so that you could see the dolphins as you went through.  There were two wave pools and two river rides- one slow and one not-so-slow.  We really liked the not-so-slow river. 

One take-away from our trip is that October is definitely the time to visit Orlando.  The weather was still hot enough to enjoy the waterparks, and the lines were virtually non-existent at all of the parks.  We had a great all-around experience.

SeaWorld Day 1

 A perk of going to Discovery Cove is that you get free admission to SeaWorld and Aquatica for 14 days.  We paid an extra $25 to get the "utlimate" package which added Busch Gardens and free parking at all parks.  So, our second full day in Orlando was spent at SeaWorld.  I love SeaWorld.  I feel that they do a lot of good work with conservation, and it's an all-around nice place to visit.  We arrived at rope-drop and spent our morning riding the rides and seeing shows.  We rode the re-themed "Kraken Unleashed", which was our first coaster using the VR headset.  I liked it better without the virtual reality.  We also tried the new Mako coaster, which we all loved and rode multiple times.  We had the Quick Que, but the lines weren't bad so we didn't use it all that much.

 We were able to knock out many of the animal exhibits on the first day.  The penguin building was a must-visit.  Owen is obsessed with these birds.

 The kids also liked the sea lion area.  I bought them a tray of sardines each so that they could feed the seals and sea lions.

 We also saw a lot of the shows on our first day at SeaWorld.  The Clyde and Seamore show was so funny and was a favorite.

Of course, we saw Shamu's show.  Before the show we were able to meet four pilot whales who had beached themselves in 2012 and been rescued by SeaWorld.  SeaWorld actually rescued several beached whales, but these four were deemed "non-releasable" by the state and now have a permanent home at SeaWorld.  I have never seen a pilot whale before, so it was really cool to see these.

 I know SeaWorld catches a lot of flack for keeping orcas, but they sure are beautiful.  It was a thrill to see these animals.

We were at SeaWorld during their Spooktacular Halloween event.  As part of the celebration, the kids were given a bag and were able to trick-or-treat at various places in the park.  We left with so. much. candy.  They were giving out the good stuff, too- lots of name brand chocolates and candies.  

There is so much to see and do at SeaWorld, that we couldn't do it all in one day.  

Dolphin Swim

The dolphin swim at Discovery Cove was a definite highlight of our vacation.  There are three pods of dolphins and each have their own lagoon.  We were in the lagoon with the Sand Dollar pod, which was the only all-female group.  Within the lagoon, guests are put into small groups and paired with a trainer.  Only positive reinforcement (usually snacks) is used, so dolphins can choose whether or not to interact with a group.  Yoko was the name of the dolphin that came to interact with our group, and she acted just like you would expect a dolphin named "Yoko" to act.  There were some behaviors that she was happy to do (like the deep water tow) and some she did not want to do (like receive any type of attention from us).  She would come over for a little bit and then randomly swim off to hang out with other dolphins.  At one point she started jumping around in the middle of the lagoon.  Because Yoko was a bit of a diva, other dolphins were asked to come over so that we could do the various interactions with them.  We ended up interacting with five different dolphins.  It was kind of cool to see how the dolphins had different personalities.  Some of them were very affectionate and seemed to like having us love on them.  The trainer told us a lot of information about the dolphins and about Sea World's work with dolphins.  We were able to touch all of the dolphins, kiss one, feed them snacks, and do hand gestures to communicate different behaviors. For the grand finale, we swam out into the deep part of the lagoon and were towed back by Yoko (it was the one thing she liked doing).  We couldn't bring our camera into the lagoon with us, but they had a photographer present to take pictures of us.  This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so of course we bought the photos.  And since I paid quite a bit for them, I'm going to share a lot of them.

Discovery Cove

On our first full day in Orlando, we visited Discovery Cove.  This was my favorite day of the vacation.  Discovery Cove is not your ordinary "theme" park, it is an all-inclusive experience.  When I say all-inclusive, I mean it.  Everything is included- parking, food and drink, locker rental, wetsuits, snorkeling gear, towels, and even sunscreen.  They cap the number of guests that can visit each day, so it's not crowded and you don't feel rushed.  It was such a relaxing day.  

We arrived early for check-in and then proceeded to breakfast.  We were in the first group for the dolphin swim, so after breakfast we went to get a locker and change into our wetsuits.  The dolphin swim was amazing and will be getting its own post.

There are two major swimming areas other than the dolphin lagoon- one is a salt water area and the other is a freshwater area.  After our dolphin swim, we went to the salt water "Grand Reef" to snorkel with the sea creatures.  The Grand reef is a huge artificial reef filled with fish.  Some places were pretty shallow, while others were quite deep (up to 12 feet).  Brian said that it was like swimming in a huge fish tank, and he was right.  Our kids have never been snorkeling before, and this was a great place for them to learn.  They had a little trouble catching on at first, so we took the equipment to the other side of the park and practiced in the freshwater pools (so if they got water in their mouth it wouldn't be quite as bad).  Once they got it, we came back to the reef and they were snorkeling all over the place.  This was probably our favorite part of the park, and we spent the most time here.

The freshwater side of the park was also pretty cool.  There were no fish in the water here- it was more like a large pool and a huge lazy river.  The lazy river was the best one that I've ever been in.  It kept changing depth, so there were some places where you had to swim.  It also had a cave, numerous waterfalls, and it went through the aviary at one point.  There were no floats for the lazy river, but you could bring life jackets and pool noodles if you wanted them.  

We were among the first to arrive at Discovery Cove and left within an hour of closing.  We had a full, fun day.  I would highly recommend a day at Discovery Cove to anyone.

SeaWorld Vacation

For fall break this year, we went to Orlando to visit Sea World and its sister parks.  We had such a good vacation.  We stayed at one of the "official" partner hotels, and the location could not have been better.  We were literally right across the street from Sea World.  We could even see the roller coasters from our hotel window.  Another perk of staying at a partner hotel was that we received free Quick Que for the major rides at Sea World.  This was a nice bonus.  The whole stay was nice and relaxing- except that one morning when the fire alarm went off at 5 a.m.  That was a hard way to wake up.

Olivia's birthday occurred on one of the days that we were in Orlando.  She opened her gifts and received many nice things- including a wizard wand, aqua beads, a new hatchimal, and two dresses from Poppy and Nana.  We had spent her actual birthday at the water park, so it was a great day all-around for her.

Irma

After having to deal with hurricanes Matthew and Hermine last year, I was hoping that we would get a reprieve this year.  But, that was not to be.  Hurricane Irma made landfall on the gulf coast of Florida in early September, and even though that is quite far away, it was so big that we felt the effects here in our hometown.  The worst part of the storm came through on Sunday night / Monday morning.  I sat out on the carport for a good part Monday watching the wind and rain.  I actually saw one of the pine trees across the road fall to the ground, and I was reminded of how happy I was that Brian had cut down the trees in our front yard last year.  We actually had numerous trees down in our neighborhood- 5 of them knocking out power lines.  There were wide-spread power outages in our county, so it took awhile to get everything back to normal.  Our house was without power from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon.  I guess you never really appreciate a thing like electricity until it's gone.  We spent three days living in darkness, taking cold showers, and charging our phones at McDonalds.  My parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, and aunts/uncles also lost power.  Some of them had generators, so we were able to move last year's corn to their freezers.  The rest of the items in our freezer ended up having to be tossed.

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The damage from the storm was so bad, that school was canceled for the entire week.  The kids got to stay home and get a feel for what life was like in the olden days (before electricity).  It was probably good for them to be reminded of all of the things they could do without electricity.  Of course, we did spend a bit of time cleaning our yard and helping some of the neighbors with their yards, but we also made time for things like playing basketball and soccer outside. We played a lot of board games and had more rounds of chess than I can ever remember playing at one time.  Once the electricity was restored, we cleaned up our house (which had begun to look like a campsite), and tried to get back into our normal routine.  We were quite sad to learn that the pier at Amelia-by-the-Sea had been knocked down again.  It was knocked down by Matthew last year, and they rebuilt it.  I doubt that they will do so again.  I don't know what this means for our beach vacation next summer.  I guess we will have to wait and see.