I write this on Tuesday evening as tomorrow we are off to Forever Florida and have to be there for the 1pm trail so I may not have enough time in the morning since it’s a good hours drive away. It’s 9pm and the kettle is on! We’ve just got back from dinner at Applebees. We were both tired and not overly hungry so it was the easy choice. I had chicken Caesar salad and Paul had French onion soup followed by a spicy prawn wrap. We’ve been there twice now but still not met the dog that can drive 🙂 Oh yeah, the other disappointment is that Delilah is not on Magic 107.7 anymore :-(. We checked her website which still lists this channel as playing her but it was deffo not on.
We left the villa at midday again and drove to boardwalk. We park here as it is free as opposed to the 15 bucks charged at the Swan and Dolphin. Plus we get to look around boardwalk and get the boat over which is all part of the fun. There was a boat just loading as we got there so we jumped straight on and round to the Swan and Dolphin hotel. It was absolutely scorching as we wandered around the beach to the Cabana restaurant. In fact, it has been on the news that it is record breakingly hot for this time of year.
Lunch was good; I had chicken BLT and Paul had the beef hotdog. Afterwards we got the boat back to Boardwalk and in a quick stop in the Disney store I picked up a nifty tinkerbell iphone case. When we got back to the car we need to change into jeans ready for the cold temperatures of ICE, there was no one around so we did a quick change and drove to the Gaylord Palms where was had to pay 12 bucks to park – what a rip off!!!
We went into the ICE exhibition entrance to get our Parka’s which took several attempts as I clearly look huge having been given a large to start with and Paul clearly looks skinny having to size up 3 times!! The exhibits were different to last time we went – more colourful and if I’m honest not as impressive. We took pics though so check them out below. It was sure cold in there too! We went through really quick and came out at 10 past 3. I know this as the Snow exhibition was letting groups in every hour on the hour so this could not have been worse timing. Mind you we sat outside for a while so got some more of the good weather.
Snow was very disappointing. It was a few fairground games, like hoop the bottle, knock off the bottles with a ball etc etc. In each game with a ball we used snowballs. The games were very easy; designed to be won most times by anyone (unlike the fairground). Winning got you a raffle ticket. We won about half a dozen or so on various games and were told that at the end of the 45 min session there was a raffle but after 20 mins we’d had enough so left. We were very good and donated our tickets to a small child (though if I had spotted that child later with one of the big stuffed polar bears on offer in the raffle I would have snatched it back :-)). There was also a snowball fighting area in there (full of noisy kids) and a small ice hill where kids could get in a rubber ring and slide down. It was all very children orientated hence our sharp exit!
Our entry price entitled us to a free hot cocoa so we made our way to the atrium for this. There was a show about to start, well I say show, it was 4 very pitchy singers singing old-fashioned Christmas songs. We watched for a short while and then decided to do the “hunt the polar bear”. There were 10 hidden polar bears (12” stuffed ones I hasten to add – there’s a couple of pics of these included) around the atrium area that we had clues to find. They were fairly easy and we found all 10 in about 30 mins or so.
We’d pretty much done all there was to do so left and came home. It was about 6pm so we chilled for an hour so before heading to Applebees. And so you’re all up to date for now. Like I said tomorrow we are off to Forever Florida which is a trail through the top area of the Everglades where we should see some wildlife.
Night y’all!
Ooh, almost forgot to say. The Pool maintenance man has been and fixed the pool heater so tomorrow we may get to swim…….watch this space.