This truly is a city of dreams! Unlike New york, this one is absolutely spacious. In fact, traveling within this city without a transport is a big head ache. The city is superbly built with such cleanliness that it will shock you. And add to that some sun, beaches and the theme parks, this becomes the hottest destination in US to visit. Ditto for us too! We spent nearly 6 days in Orlando, and believe me we couldn’t see half the things we would have liked to see!!!
Places I visited: Disneyworld Universal Studios A little bit of Orlando city itself.
Hotels and Lodging: Every major hotel chain heard or unheard of exists in this city. In fact half the city is made up of hotels. EVEN THEN, at peak times, ALL hotels might run FULL!!! Nonetheless, on a decent day, you might find lodging in a good hotel. It’s a good idea to book your hotels atleast one month earlier so that one gets the best deals on rates. Ideally, if you book one month earlier through websites, you will end up with a deal for a family suite for just 61$ dollars!!! ( believe me, that’s what we took!). Every hotel
runs their bus service to all the major tourist destinations, and they are all well timed. However it’s a good idea to take the first available shuttles. There are taxis in plenty and are surprisingly affordable, but take them if you miss your shuttles.
Righto! Accommodation done! Now lets get down in detail to which places I visited and the first hand account of the same!
DISNEYWORLD: Disney is definitely a World of its own. Spread across a massive 53000 acres of land, this is a city in itself. Walt Disney brought this land for 6$ per square foot at the time of inception, and now the very same square foot there costs nearly 300,000 to 1 million dollars!!!(did I hear a gasp!). The Disney world consists of four kingdoms, a sea world, a downtown, a resort, and some other places as well.
The four kingdoms are the magic kingdom, the animal kingdom, epcot and the Disney/MGM studios. And man! What massive kingdoms are they! Each one of them is colossally huge and will eat up a entire day to actually take a look. And even then, don’t be surprised at the end of the day if you manage to miss something in each of those parks! Every park has its own charm, their great rides and the themes which are so prominently displayed in all of the parks. The ambience in all the theme parks is just wonderful to say the least, and you never feel tired inspite of walking the whole day.
tip: Arrive early! By the middle of the day each of the parks get packed and each of the rides will take a long time to get to. However there is a good way out. Each ride has something called as "Fast pass" which as the name suggests gives a fast pass to the ride at the specified time. It’s a good idea to take fast passes for rides you wanna see at a specific time and then roam around other places instead of waiting in the lines.
The cost of visiting all the 4 parks is 50$ for a day. And believe me, its worth every single penny of those 50$ dollars. You also get 4 day, 5 day and 8 day passes too for all the theme parks. Ours was a 4 day pass worth 200$ for each person.
Transportation is no problem. Your hotel shuttles usually come to pick you back. Else, taxis are available in plenty.
Rides and Stuff not to be missed: Space Mountain, Its hard to be a Bug (3D show), All the broad-way shows and the musicals, Tower of Terror, Aerosmith Roller coaster, The Jurrasic world, Kali river rapids, The 3D puppet show and the Indiana Jones show. Also, don’t miss all the ending shows at night which are full of fireworks and stuff. The best show is at Disney MGM studios which is called Fantasmic featuring a laser show on a fountain backdrop. This is one show not to be missed!
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS If Disney can do it, so can we seems to be the motto of these guys. However, its not as huge as Disney. But then it is! The universal studios are divided into two theme parks - The universal studios and the The great adventure island
The universal studios has all the rides associated with their underlying movie themes like ‘twister’, ‘MIB’, ‘ET’ and stuff. The island adventure on the other hand has all the roller coaster rides and the stuff. The park also has ‘jurassic park’ which is simply awesome! The rides are great too!
You cannot see Universal too in one day. It’s a good idea again to buy a 2 day or 3 day passes. The universal world also has its own downtown and clubs where u can enjoy at night. Seeing all of them will literally take another 2 days! The cost of a 2 day pass is around 90$ and for a single day single park entry is 50$. Though, unlike Disney, I think the ticket price is quite high ( I mean, you don’t feel your 50$ worth here).
The rides which are not to be missed are the The E.T adventure, Back to the Future ride, and The great roller coaster. Just don’t miss them when you come here. However, Universal studios is not as good as the Disney world studios.
If time permits, I will definitely write on each of those parks in detail, and I am happy that CIAO has listed them. So that’s a encouragement to write on them.
ORLANDO The city is beautiful full of jazzy buildings and fountains all over. The downtown unlike other places is quite nice and spacious. There are several great companies too, and Orlando does host one of top 10 research laboratories of science in U.S. The kennedy space center is also very near, and again, visiting the center is going to take up another day of your trip! We didn’t visit it though because of the days constraints on us. The food in this city is awesome. The food is dominantly Mexican and my! How I love Mexican. The people are very good and polite. However, you will find many Mexicans here. The night life is good, and safe too! There are some awesome discs here too but the days weared us out so much that this was out of the question!!
Overall This is one city you JUST CANNOT afford to MISS it! You MISS coming to this city, you probably haven’t seen the BEST of this country!
Happy Holidaying!
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kya bhidu.. full form mein... u were writing a series right.. what happened to the rest of the series... major roap trip eh ? so where u now ? moi is in mysore..
jilmil 22.07.2002 06:33
Sounds like a great place !! :)
Happiness always,
Pallavi
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