Skip to main content

Our Florida Trip: Part 1

Our family went to Florida for vacation, returning just last week, and very little went as planned, but that's OK. It just meant that there were many interesting stories to tell.

The plan was to visit Disney World for three days, then go to Cocoa Beach for 3 days. What we ended up with was 4 distinct portions of the trip, and what follows is a brief description of each:

1. Disney:  The first day was Epcot. I was less than impressed. But I had been to Six Flags just a month earlier, and was ready for some thrilling rides, and Epcot's not about that, although Space Mountain was pretty fun. I had been told that Magic Kingdom was better, and it was, as we found out the next day. Our last day, we went to the Hollywood studios park, and although I am sure I'm in the minority, I have to say I liked it best. It had two rides more like thrill rides: The Rock n Roller Coaster, and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.  Most Disney rides were inside and failed to meet the criteria that is most essential to a good ride: At some point during the ride, you must believe you might just die. I only experienced this with 2-3 rides at Disney.

That said, Disney had a lot to teach Six Flags about how to treat people who are waiting for rides. They offered the Fast Pass, which enabled you to get a guaranteed place in line for a ride later in the day while you explore other things. And when we did have to wait, most lines were inside air-conditioned buildings. That directly addresses the one thing that keeps me from going to Six Flags more than I do.

2. Cocoa and Daytona Beach. We didn't know much about Florida, so we picked Cocoa Beach because it was close to Orlando and because I had heard it was close to NASA. Problem was, it was overrrun by jellyfish.  In fact, we tried to go out into the water and work around them, but one of them stung my 9-yr-old son. So we called a hotel at Daytona Beach and found that they were not experiencing jellyfish issues. We booked a room at the Daytona Hilton, and left Cocoa Beach a day early.  And I have to say, Daytona was a beautiful beach. It was pretty much the opposite of Cocoa Beach in every way.

The kids loved it, never having been in the ocean before. With their inflatable surf board, trying to fight the waves, I just saw hours and hours of smiles from them, and that was a joy to see.

There are two more parts to the trip, much more interesting than the first two. Read here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly.  In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history.  As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room...
6 comments
Read more

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those ...
14 comments
Read more

Is U2 a Christian band?

Ephesians 2:10 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them" U2's new CD comes out this week, and it brings up that old discussion among Christians about whether u2 is a Christian band or not. Scripture tells us that all of creation speaks to the glory of God. Mainstream Christians have no problem acknowledging that mountains, flowers, and waterfalls glorify God without actually speaking His name. But we are mistaken if we forget that humans can do the same, simply by walking in their calling. If a country singer, for example, is truly walking in his calling, he can continue to sing about the pain caused by adultery, for example, and it glorifies God every bit as much as biblical tale of David and Bathsheba, which carries the same message about adultery. If God has created you to be a story-teller (and singers are story-tellers), then be a story-teller, and you will glorify the one who cr...
26 comments
Read more