SeaWorld
It’s a pretty big park, at least bigger than I expected and there are definitely attractions suitable for all ages. You can spend hours wandering round all of the enclosures and watching the shows, and the rollercoasters such as Mantra and Kraken were up there with some of the scariest I’ve been on.
Shamu Stadium |
As you may have
realised, there is a lot to get through at SeaWorld, and if you’re only there
for the day it’s worth getting Quick Queue – we did and we still didn’t manage
to fit everything in!
Making friends |
Best Ride: Antarctica: Empire of the
Penguin starts of as a family-friendly ride, following the journey of a penguin
and once you get off the ride you enter the penguin enclosure. I could have
spent so long in here if it wasn’t freezing cold – penguins are my absolute
favourite.
Best Attraction: All
of the shows are great, but the dolphin show ‘Blue Horizons’ topped it for me.
Just make sure you get there early – we got there just as it was starting and
had to stand at the back.
Aren't they just the cutest? |
Blue Horizons show |
Aquatica
We also spent
one morning at Aquatica,
SeaWorld’s waterpark. It’s a pretty standard waterpark, with a range of flumes
and slides, a lazy river, rapids and wave pools, although it does have the
added attraction of a flume that goes through the dolphin pool.
It seemed we did
it right by arriving before 9, as we got on almost every ride without having to
queue too much, and by the time we were leaving at 12ish, the queues were
really building up.
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CHEEEEESE |
Universal
Studios
Universal is, not
surprisingly, yet another huge park, and you could spend days here trying all
the rides and attractions. It’s similar to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in that
much of the areas are designed to look like film sets.
Had to be done |
The resort is
split into two parks: Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of
Adventure. As we had two days to spend at Universal, we decided to tackle the
Harry Potter areas first, as these are spread across the two parks, linked by
none other than the Hogwarts Express.
Just chillin' on top of Gringrotts |
The Hogwarts
Express, which takes you over to the other park, has screens for windows, so
that your journey really does resemble the trip to Hogwarts. Once you arrive at
the other end, you’re in Hogsmeade. Magic! Hogsmeade is similarly impressive,
although it does feel a little strange to be surrounded by snow in the Florida
heat. Luckily, the ride inside Hogwarts, Harry Potter and the Forbidden
Journey, only had a 45 minute queue, so we zoomed onto that one. There’s also
the Dragon Challenge rollercoaster, complete with loops and G-force, but I
found it more painful than fun!
As the Harry
Potter sections had taken up one whole day and we only had a day left to do the
entirety of the rest of the park, we decided to get Express Passes, but STILL
didn’t get on every ride. The parks are split into different sections,
including: New York, San Francisco, World Expo, Hollywood, Marvel Superhero
Island, Toon Lagoon, Jurassic Park, the Lost Continent and Seuss Landing. The
rides were all so great – I was continually impressed all day, especially by
the innovative simulation
rides that felt so ridiculously realistic.
Yep, this actually happened... |
Best Attraction: Everything
Harry Potter.
The Jurassic Park area was fab also |
Now that it’s
all written down, I can completely understand how exhausted I was by the end of
the 10 days. Fortunately for us, we were then off to St Lucia for five days of
relaxation – but that’s another post to come!
My advice for
anyone going to Florida? If you want to do all the parks in full, go for as
long as possible so that you can spend more than one day in each park and have
time for days off in between, you need them.
Have you been to Florida recently? What are you
favourite parks and rides?
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