Spring break 2011 - Wednesday

The first part of the day was really nice... we visited iFly to redeem the gift certificate that Mom and Wil gave us for Christmas.

I admit that I did panic a bit when I could not reach them via phone for 2 days... the phone message sounded like they went out of business. I ended up calling corporate HQ to verify this place was still in existence . Even though their VOIP phone system was on the fritz, they were open and doing booming business.

We scheduled a 4 pm flight time which meant that we had our training session at 3:30. We went back to The Fountains and actually used the outdoor pool. We lounged, swam and ate and had a great afternoon. We then went back to iFly to begin our skydiving adventure. The training class was pretty basic, learning the critical hand signals and the concepts involved with skydiving.
Then at 4:00 we started our session which lasted about 15 minutes. We each had two skydiving sessions that lasted a minute and 40 seconds each. We discovered that we each thought we did better than we actually did. It will take more practice before we are considered experts. :-)
We walked out of there a little sore, extremely excited about doing this again, plus we have a 15 minute DVD of our adventure. Thanks to Mom and Wil for this wonderful gift!
The heavy rains (and severe weather) started just as we got back to our condo. Even though there were tree branches being knocked down with the extremely heavy winds, I am not sure if there was any hail; I although I did get hit in the side of the head by what looked like an ice cube as I was walking into our condo building. (Although I haven't been here nearly long enough to make any enemies.)
Here is a picture of the 'hailstone' along with my keys to put the size in perspective... although this was the only hailstone in sight.

That night we went back to Downtown Disney to do a little shopping and to hit the Portobello restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, even though it was still raining, we found that Wednesday night must be the night for eating out in Orlando... the restaurant was packed and they were not taking any walk-ins. We decided to go back to our own neighborhood and hit a local Italian place called Carrabba's Italian Grill

The food was superb and we left very satisfied from the Calamari to the Linguine Pescatore, Seafood Canneloni and the Mezzaluna... in a word: Fantastico!
We retired to play some cards (Kyle won) and watch a movie before we went to bed.

Spring break 2011 - Monday and Tuesday

Well, the bad weather continued to follow us. Monday was a complete washout... so we took advantage of the rainy weather and scheduled our owner's update meeting. This is Bluegreen's way of upselling to existing owners. We usually skip these meetings since we have no intention of buying more timeshare points... but between the bad weather, the lure of $75.00 off attraction tickets and the fact that we haven't done one in a while... we had a weak moment and signed up. 'Long story short' they restructured the system and it would cost $30,000 to buy 10,000 more points and add to our existing 15,000 points, so we can take advantage of the new system. That was not going to happen. Even though they swore up and down that it will take no more than 60 minutes, we were there for 2 hours... but in the end, we still said no. It's also a good thing the weather was crummy.

We explored the clubhouse, had a late breakfast at their Cup 'o Joe's cafe, walked around and went back to the condo.
That afternoon we went to Downtown Disney (in our requisite raincoats, slickers, or ponchos). After walking through the whole area including Pleasure Island, we went into Disney Quest which is 5-stories full of interactive games and activities. We played some virtual reality games (Ride the Comix), played human pinball (pictured) and rode some simulation rides. The best were the human pinball, the Pirates of the Caribbean virtual reality pirate ship battle and the Virtual Jungle Cruise where you "Plunge down a prehistoric river on a raft in the Dinosaur Age trying desperately to avoid dangerous obstacles in the running rapids" in an inflatable raft, complete with paddles.
Since this activity is indoors, it is highly recommended for rainy days but that is also the time when everyone else goes; so when it is raining, it will be crowded.
Tuesday - we finally hit a good day. The expected bad weather pattern didn't materialize, so we went to Universal Studios and spent a rain-free day in the park. The highlights were E.T. Adventure, Men in Black - Alien Attack, and the Simpsons ride.

My brush with fame on this trip... I saw the Simpsons drive right by us. Now that doesn't happen every day! :-)

I also went to 'Disasters' on my own which simulated making a fun disaster movie. Rosie went to a Horror make-up demonstration while Kyle and I went back to Men in Black a few more times... and tried to better our scores.
We learned that you can shave off a lot of time by going through the 'singles' line... even though you are not guaranteed to sit with each other. It is much cheaper (free) compared to the Express pass which they up-sell at parks to allow you to skip ahead to the front of the line. The cost is upwards of $50+ per day per person... so it should be a busy day and you should be planning on spending most of the day for it to be worthwhile. (Staying in some specific resorts gives you this valuable feature for free.)
We ate dinner that night at Lone Star Steakhouse which is a wonderful place for a good steak dinner. We all enjoyed that restaurant very much.

Spring Break 2011 - driving to Florida; Days 1, 2 and 3

Well, we made the trip to Orlando, Florida this year for spring break. We had originally booked a week at the Fountains Resort in Orlando 2 years ago to swap for our Hawaiian trip, and thought, "if we can't get a swap, this place will do fine". That swap did come through so we didn't get a chance to go to the Fountains, so this year when the spring break topic came up, we decided to actually go to Orlando.
We booked this vacation months ago and didn't worry about booking non-refundable airfare that far out. Well, the airline industry decided to make up for lost revenue during our spring break week this year and try to charge $850 for each ticket from Minneapolis to Orlando... that would have cost us $3000 for airfare and rental car. I brought up the possibility of driving to and from Orlando and met no resistance from my family, so we decided to do it.

We departed Eden Prairie around 9:00 am on Friday 3/25 and headed south. We stopped in Waverly, IA for a quick lunch at BK, then back in the car.
We then took a break in Metropolis, IL and we took pictures with Superman and Wonder
Woman.

We stopped at a Drury Inn in Belleville, IL on Friday night for a good night's rest. We got a double-queen bed room and when we entered the room there were other people's belongings on the bed. They moved us to another room and gave us a discount on the room. Nice people, nice hotel... with lots of amenities. Free Internet, free pop and popcorn, free DVD rentals, a really nice hot breakfast; I really liked Drury.
We got on the road early and headed toward Nashville, and visited Martin's BBQ for lunch which was highlighted by Guy Fieri on Food Network's Diners Drive-Ins and Dives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgqjbi5KQ1w
It was an outstanding BBQ choice and we are all glad we made that side trip.
We then went through the Atlanta area and met up with some severe weather. The rain was coming down hard and the wipers were on 'really fast' and were having a hard time keeping up, so we pulled off for gas and DQ. Sirens were going off and we found that they were in fact tornado alarms but no one was paying them any attention... we then found that they had been going for about 4 hours and people had gotten quite immune to the potential danger. The rain has abated and after a quick check of the weather patterns on my computer, we got back in the car and headed south. We pushed on until we got to Lake City, FL and stayed in a brand new Comfort Suites hotel. We met our expectations of actually getting to Florida by Saturday night so we were happy with our progress. We left the hotel by 9:30 and had another 3 hours ahead of us before we got to our intended destination.

We got to the Tampa area on Sunday afternoon and got to visit with my cousins Terry & Frank Ryan and Carol Salta. Unfortunately, Terry couldn't make it that day, but we had a nice lunch with Frank and Carol. I hadn't seen them for many years and it was great to spend a little time getting caught up.