jaye’s spot

Friday, March 25, 2011

Fantastic Vacation! New Freebie Template Also

Our vacation was so much fun! The weather in Orlando was glorious, warm and sunny every single day we were there.  The resort we stayed at was close to a Publix so I got us milk, juice, eggs, bread and cereal for breakfast and we of course ate elsewhere for lunch and dinner.  Matter of fact our first day there we went to Outback Steakhouse which was also across the street and dove into a nice juicy steak.  The Orlando Premium Outlet Mall was literally at our back door, as in we had a gate to walk over and just use our room key to let us back on resort property, so we hit that a couple of times to kill a few hours.  Yes I did do some shopping, I hit up the Coach outlet and bought my first every Coach purse(s)..........deals were incredible!  Got myself some Skeechers as well with a buy one get one half off.  That was my shopping spree done, lol.  The boy got himself some Vans, a couple hats and a pair of Skull Candy headphones that he just loves.  No touristy type 'souvenirs' for us.

Attractions?  Yep we did both Universal Parks, SeaWorld, Aquatica and a Pirate dinner and show.  As for Universal I bought a two day one park each day pass, word to the wise buy a one day two park pass.  Seriously we could have done both parks in one day, unless of course you want to wait hours and hours and hours for Harry Potter.  The Harry Potter part of the Islands of Adventure park was at capacity by 9:15 am and they were handing out times to come back.  So we lined up and got our time slot, with there only being two of us our time was only an hour and a half away.  Time to go investigate Harry Potter...................OH MY GOODNESS it was nuts there!  You could literally not move, people were lined up with an hour wait for butter beer.  We took a look around, attempted to walk to the back, found it difficult to move anywhere, looked at each other and got the heck out of there.  Ask me if it's great and I honestly can't tell you, neither of us wanted to stick around.  I ended up upgrading our tickets and we went back to Universal Studios where we went on the Simpsons Ride (best ride in the park) and the Mummy Returns (another fun one) again.  Honestly, Universal was fun but if I were to go back I'd just do one day and stick with Universal Studios, not go to Islands of Adventure.
SeaWorld/Aquatica----a blast!!! I bought the combo ticket which allowed us entry to both parks and it was good for 13 days after first use.  In other words we could go as many times as we wanted.  This was perfect!  Spur of the moment one afternoon we went to SeaWorld for a few hours and visited some of the exhibits.  I bought the $10 ticket that allowed us to feed Sea Lions, Sea Rays and the little Sharks rather than the $5 for each one.  The shark exhibit is so cool as you walk through a tube with huge sharks swimming overhead.  Of course a trip to the Penguin Emporium was on the list. I could have stayed all night and just watched them play.
Next day was Aquatica, SeaWorld's water park.  I want to say that I went on every ride!  Some were two person and others solo. B~man and I laughed and laughed the whole day.  Our favourite was Roa's Rapids where you just go in and let the current take you around, and there is a good speed going on as well.  We opted to wear the life jackets so you just lifted your feet and off you went.  Think we spent hours there and probably where we got our sunburns.  A definite must go to again for us. We headed back to SeaWorld for a couple hours to see some of the exhibits we didn't get to the afternoon before. Ticket has already paid for itself at this point.
Another visit to Aquatica and more fun in the water for us.  We both decided that rather than a pool something like Roa's Rapids would be cool to have in your backyard as we again spent hours zooming and floating around in there.  Later in the afternoon after becoming waterlogged we again hopped on the SeaWorld shuttle bus and back over to that park.  This time we went just for the shows, but we only wanted to see the dolphin one and  Shamu.  B~man was amazed at the dolphins and laughed as Shamu and the other Killer Whales splashed the folks in the splash zone.  We also had some fun paddling pink flamingo paddle boat around.
The Pirate dinner and show was a good time.  It is expensive though but you are paying for the show more than the meal for sure.  We were in the red section and our pirate's name was Jack.  A large group of high school students were also in our section so we definitely had enthusiasm for our pirate on our side.  There was singing, dancing, acrobatics, 'fighting' and audience participation for about two hours.
All in all........................a FANTASTIC week.  Now it's back to work and we were greeted with cold weather, rain and possible snow flurries :(.  Would love to go back next year but not sure if I can do it, going to see if I can somehow budget for it.

On to the template!  Here you go and hope you enjoy it :)

You can download it here: A Little Off

2 comments:

CBH said...

Thank you so much for this post. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, under the Page 6 post on Mar. 25, 2011. Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave in the Graphics category today [26 Mar 01:00am GMT]. Thanks, Maria