Orlando

Orlando was one of the stops on our original honeymoon plan for two reasons: to visit Mayan's uncle Dinu and Angelina and to revert to childhood at Harry Potter World.

It was great to see Dinu and Angelina, who had a lot going on while we were there helping to organise a Romanian community day and hosting Ana Maria Ferentz - a singer who had flown in for the event. They helped us get around, and made sure we were ok - we hung out together every night and went to Clearwater one day to check out the Florida beach scene.

Harry Potter World was awesome - easily as good as we hoped. The rides were great, the shopfronts in Diagon alley and Hogsmeade were full of character and detail, and the food was English enough to be convincing. We went back every day for three days and totally got inspired to watch all the movies again.

 

 

 

We also visited the rest of universal studios (Harry Potter World is just one part in both sections of the park, linked via a real train - the Hogwarts Express), which had equally immersive themed areas (e.g. Dr Seuss, Men in Black, Transformers, Shrek, Jurassic Park, etc.) and great rides.

 

Later, we went to Disney World, which is much larger than Universal and has a lot of different areas to explore - it's a bit daunting really. The hotels for Disney seem nicer, but we enjoyed the parks at Universal more, as they seem to be for an older (teenage) audience with better rides and less "make your wishes come true" stuff. Epcot was a bit different, like a permanent World Expo, but has a strong focus on selling merchandise and not much on country-specific rides or activities.

 

One cool thing about Epcot though was the gardening of the future exhibition which takes you on a tour of some government agriculture projects like hydroponics and aquaponics.

 

We found the Kennedy Space Centre really inspiring. We hired a mustang and drove out there for the day, where we got to visit a platform at the spaceport, see and hear about the cutting edge private sector companies setting up shop there to provide paid passage to space. We saw the Apollo 8 rocket and Atlantis shuttle, spoke to a real astronaut, rocket engineer and shuttle engineer and learned heaps. For instance, did you know that the outside of the shuttles were silicon tiles - they felt like a cushion wrapped in asbestos, and were largely hand-stitched with either stainless steel thread or something more high-tech and heat-resistant?