2013-04 Orlando, FL

Ray had business meeting in Orlando and we took the opportunity to have a small mini-vacation in the area.  Hailey's friend Lauren joined us on the trip, and we spent a couple days in and around Orlando.  It happened to be a good weekend to be out of Minnesota, as we had a late season snowstorm dumping over 6 inches of snow back in Minnesota.  This caused delays for both LeAnn and Hailey, and Lauren, who came down on a different flight.  Lauren didn't end up getting into Orlando until about 3:00 AM.  Despite that, we got up the next morning and headed to the Magic Kingdom.  This was all of the Blooms first visit to this park, although Lauren had been here before, so gave us some good thoughts and hints as to what to do at the park.

It was a very warm day, with the high int he upper 80's, a welcome change from the everlasting winter this year back home.  After taking a few group pictures at the beginning, we let the kids head off and see the sights and do the rides while we wondered through and took in our own sights and rides, deciding to meet up for lunch and dinner throughout the day.

 It was a very busy day at the park, even though spring break was over for most.  Many of the families were there with pre-school aged kids, which means they don't have to worry as much about school schedules.  The park was full of strollers, and whether they were parked in the parking area, or out in the streets and walkways, there we log jams and traffic jams everywhere.

The biggest disaster of the day happened to Lauren early in the evening.  She suffered a direct hit of bird poop by a low flying bird.  As she was trying to clean up and get the poop and the stink off, one of the Disney managers came up to find out what happened.  They brought her to first aid to help with the clean up and gave here a Disney t-shirt.  However, the poop had gotten into her hair and onto her shorts and shoes too.  She was able to clean most of it off, but still had a residual smell.  Hailey also had some collateral damage of a few spots on her clothes and shoes, but not nearly as bad as Lauren.

As the night approached, we got in a position for the electric parade, fireworks and light shows.  It is just amazing how they they can use Cinderella's castle as a theatre screen and project the colors and images onto a 3-D object and make them look like they are on a flat screen.  During the parade, I heard someone say that it was like the Holidazzle parade, only on a bigger scale, so I knew we in the vicinity of some other Minnesotans.

 After the fireworks, we worked ourselves down Main Street and into the queue for the ferry to bring us back to the parking lot.  The line moved along quite well, as do most of the lines at Disney.  We had utilized the fast track system when we could, which was so nice to just walk up to the front of a line and wait less than 5 minutes rather than stand in a 60 minute line.   A much better use of time for the popular rides.

 The weather changed a lot on Saturday as the highs were only the low 70's, and it was windy.  We had planned a beach day, but the weather kept us from spending too much time at the beach.  We did go over to Cocoa Beach and walked the shores, watched the surfers (in wet suits) and went out to the end of the pier.  As we were returning from the end of the pier, LeAnn ran into 2 of her preschool students and their family.  You just never know when or where you may run into someone you know.

 Saturday evening, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for an early birthday dinner since we would be travelling on Hailey's actual birthday.  We followed that up with a trip to Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf, always one of the kid's favorite places to go when we travel.  The soon to be 17 year old posed in front of her favorite hole.

On Sunday after checking out, we headed to the Nike clearance store, which was a true clearance store instead of one of their outlet stores.  On the way there, we passed a Thai temple which was having a festival for Sangkron, or Thai New Year.  We went back after shopping and wandered through.  There were tents selling Thai food, drinks and wares.  We tried some fresh pressed sugar cane juice.  It was very refreshing with the right amount of sweetness, but not overly so.

After the festival we headed back to the airport for our trip back to the frozen north, with another snowstorm on the way.  This will hopefully be the end of winter this year