To the Gulf Coast - Club Class all the way.

[Kingy]

(08-26-2015, 08:17 AM)croweman Wrote: Just like Southport......      NOT!!!

Looks amazing that view from the hotel is spectacular.

Ha ha. Cheers. It is a lovely place.

(08-26-2015, 09:25 PM)BB Wrote: Looks fantastic, warm every day.... wouldn't that get boring? lol

I'm sure with a nice cold drink to hand we'd manage


So, another day, another beach.    They are all similar, but different. Some are known for 'shelling', others have softer sand with no shells. 
We avoid the busy beaches like Clearwater. We've been there and weren't impressed. It's the 'go to beach' if you ask, but that means, as lovely as it is, it's crowded compared with others and too noisy for us.
 
This is Reddington. A lovely place (we'd live there happily) with a stretch of beach and a boardwalk/ pier. 



We saw the odd jogger and cyclist on the beach. No one was working too hard because of the heat. I loved the bikes they had. We saw a shop at India Rocks beach which hired them. I couldn't as I was on Doctors orders to rest my knee as stitches were only taken out the day before we flew, but these bad boys looked a good laugh ...



Mid way though the holiday we had a trip to Orlando. I'm not a fan of the place at all. I've spent a week there before we had the kids. We then had a week in Naples (further down the Gulf Coast) and I needed that to get over the daily bunfights in Orlando. The only thing I enjoyed there was a trip to Daytona Oval.
The kids did Disney last time we called in at Orlando, so this time it was Universal. It's a complete rip off for a day, but we couldn't spend more that that length of time there. It cost us $25 to park (thieving gits) and then $104 per person to enter the park, which works out at about £280. They tried to get us to pay another £160 so we could ride on the 'Hogwarts Express', but my comment that I could buy a fecking train for the money we were paying saw them backoff from 'upselling' to us. 

So, suitably fleeced we went to join the queues which averaged 60 minutes, with popular rides 90 to 120 mins. 
I went to a ticket booth and enquired about 'Fast track tickets'. These let you go into a seperate queue which is quicker as people are paying for the privelige. I know tickets are cheaper if you buy them for a week, but I was a tad shiocked when told four woud be $117 per person = $468 / £300. That would have taken our ticket spend to £580 for one day! Given the max number of rides we could get on (due to queues) was eight, we would be paying £18 per person per ride! 

So, we stuck to what we had! 

After doing a couple we decided to try 'single rider' queues instead of 'family' Got on rides within 15 minutes and managed to keep the kids together, or the kids and Yasmin so all was good. 
Had some (crap but expensive) food there and stayed to watch the movie show at the end of the day (9pm). It was a clever idea. They projected a film onto a waterfall shaped like a large screen, and occasionally sent up wide jets of water and broadcast onto those, with fireworks in the sky. This was all set up in big ponds and you sat around the grounds watching it. The film itself was 100 years of Universal. Tbh it was shite - a self promotional pile of crap, but it was done in a novel way. 

By the end of the night we had two kids who had thoroughly enjoyed the rides and were knackered, so our work was done. 

Universal by day ...



Aliya looked a bit moody walking past 'The Mystery Machine' because she was trying to stay out of the photo! 

The rollercoaster which drops straight down (bottom left) was a good laugh. Yaz doesnt like rides like that, hadn't weighed it up at all and took my description of it being a ..... "Meandering ride aimed at small kids" on face value (the fool!). She found out different when it set off forward them immediately climbed up 90 degrees to then drop down before starting its loops and sending us upside down.   I wasn't popular! 

And Universal by night ...



Aliya checking the warm sea out as we arrived at the beach ...



And Samee doing the same at another ...



To be continued ...