Back from Vacation. Part 1

Well we are back. And its about time we updated our blog as well. Yesterday we returned from our big Caribbean Cruise and Florida trip that we had been planning with our friends Tyler and Rachael for the last 6 months. It was alot of fun to get away from the stresses of life and just have a good time. I got a lot of criticism from my last vacation recap for writing way to much detail about the trip. This time i'm going to try to keep the recap the a minimum and post lost of pictures instead. Anyways the recap will be in 6 parts. Orlando, Universal Resort, Our Cruise Ship, Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. I figured the wouldn't be much better then giving a 12 part entry recaping each day like the last vacation was. This first part will most likely have the most text content since it covers so many different things over so many different days that we did in the Orlando area (excluding Universal). With that said I will move on to Part 1.

Part 1: Travel and Orlando

We left on the trip on the 7th of October bright and early. Our flight left Salt Lake at 7:10 so we were up around 4:30. After picking up Tyler and Rachael we were off to the airport for our day of travel. A word of advice when booking plane tickets is to keep in mind that most airlines now charge a bagage fee. When pricing tickets out keep that in mind when comparing slightly higher prices by airlines that don't charge the baggage fee.

Our first layover for the travel day was in Chicago. We were there for about an Hour before continueing on to Orlando.






We were soon to Orlando. After picking up our Pontiac G6 rental car we were on our way to our Hotel. We deceided to share a room with Tyler and Rachael to help cut down on costs. Which helped greatly. However I don't recommend booking cheap hotels in Florida. We booked two different Days Inn's for before and after the cruise. Both were very ghetto lol. Don't take your chances. Just book a decent hotel thats at least a 3 star hotel.





That night we decided to head up to Downtown Disney to get at least some Disney feel in during our Orlando portion of the trip. Unlike in California Downtown Disney isn't near any of the theme parks. Its its own entertainment complex with shopping, movies theaters, restaurants, and live shows. We ate at the House of Blues which was really good. They serve Southern Style food there and it was a fun atmosphere. We then checked out some of the shops and walked around Downtown Disney for a little while.











After browsing Downtown Disney we headed over to the Disney's Polynesian resort which sits on the opposite side of the lake from the Magic Kingdom Theme Park where we would have an excellent view of the Parks fireworks. The fireworks were very well done. Some of the best i've seen. Disney also a little electric light parade on the lake right before the fireworks started.







Our hotel was next to a ugly swamp. There were signs posted everywhere to not swim in it because of Gators. We didn't know if this was true or not but we do belive it was cause we think we saw one. This of course added to the ghettoness of our hotel.




The Day we went to Islands of Adventure we were so wet after ending our day there that we went back to the Hotel. We decided since we were already wet we might as well do some swimming so we did.




That night we drove up and down International Drive looking for a place to eat. International Drive is like the major street that many of the Tourist attractions in Orlando are located. We saw this upside down building which was pretty cool. We decided to eat that night at a chicago style restaurant called UNO's. The food was pretty good but they were extremly slow and messed up some of our orders. Oh well what can you do. After dinner we Rachael had 4 free movie tickets that she needed to use before the cruise so we headed back up to Downtown Disney to go watch the movie "Couples Retreat". The movie was actually pretty good and funny. It had some parts that weren't needed in it of course though.




Fast forwarding now a week. We just got off the cruise ship and now had another day to spend in Orlando before we would fly home. Port Canaveral is around 50 miles from Orlando so after picking up another Rental car (which was another Pontiac G6) we were on our way back. We decided to make a slight detour though on our way and drive past the Kennedy Space Center.






We decided as well that we wanted to go to the Orlando Temple while we were back there. So we made our way to the Temple after passing thru the downtown area as well as a nuclear power plant. One thing to keep in mind if your traveling to Florida anytime soon is that florida has many toll roads so make sure you take plenty of quarters with you.





The Orlando Temple is very pretty. We decided to do Sealings there and spent about 2 1/2 hours doing the work. It was great to take a short break from our vacation and give thanks by serving the Lord in his house. Such a wonderful spirit felt there.





After checking into Ghetto Hotel number 2 we decided to go Mini Golfing for our last night in Orlando. Now Orlando does Mini Golf big. Seriously these things are on like every corner of International Drive it seems. And they arn't just little ones like we have here in Utah. These are big very detailed and themed courses. The one we went to was Congo River Golf where they even had live aligators that you could feed there. We had alot of fun golfing there.










After Golf that night for Dinner we decided we were done with trying new things and just settled with Chillis. It was located next to this small amusment park thing which looked pretty fun even though I wouldn't ever do any of the tall things they had lol.



The next morning we would soon be on our way home. We stopped by the worlds Largest McDonalds for Breakfast before heading to drop off our rental car. We didn't realize our flight time changed so we had to sit at the Orlando airport for 3 hours before our plane finally left for Dallas before connecting to Salt Lake City. But after another long day of travel we finally returned back into Salt Lake the night of the 18th of October.