Travel: USA - Florida/Orlando
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Trip Review (Part 2 - Epcot)
2. Epcot - there are 2 worlds in Epcot, Future World and World Showcase. This is the biggest park in Epcot and my son says that Epcot stands for Every person comes out tired! We spent 2 half days and one evening here.
The rides here are mainly at Future World. The good ones are Soarin which is also at the LA park. It simulates taking a hand glider and flying over California. Even my girl likes it and we did it twice. The queue for this can be long so plan wisely if you want to take this multiple times. We have 5 mins wait each time. The other ride which my sons love is Mission Space, but it gives me motion sickness. Test Track simulates the test track of a racing car and has been recently updated. My sons say it is now better than previously. There is a Nemo ride for family and a show turtle talk with Crush which lets the kids in the show communicate with Crush. Pretty cool and funny. Other rides are Space Ship Earth, Ellen’s Energy, Figment imagination etc, all suitable for younger kids. We skipped the Michael Jackson show. Did not like that previously.
Each time we spend the early morning in Future World and went into World Showcase for lunch. World showcase features diff countries in the world with replicas of their landmarks. Nice place for photos. Merchandise and restaurants reflect each country so food is more varied. DD did the Agent P world showcase adventure which gave her a cell phone with clues to find in each country. It is a scavenger hunt and when she completes each mission, there is a special effect or secret that she uncovers. This activity makes world showcase fun for her and even my boys who helped her. Without doing agent P, world showcase can be boring for kids. World showcase is also a place to meet characters, if interested.
We had one lunch at Chef De France in France. Here there is an animatronic Remy which comes out 4 - 5 times a day. I timed lunch to meet Remy. Very cute and the kids were truely surprised to see the little Remy on a cheese tray responding to them in rat language.
Brought DD for lunch on another day at Akershus in Norway to meet princesses. The boys did not join us. Overdose of princess for them. They were happier catching their own counter service lunch in Japan. They miss their Japanese food. Between CRT in MK and Akershus, we met most of the disney princesses. For this trip, DD was able to meet all the disney princess, sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Belle ( in yellow gown and blue provincial dress), Ariel in dress and fins, Mulan, jasmine, tiana, rapunzel, Merida and Snow White.
One of the days, we went back after our afternoon nap for a late dinner at Rosé and Crown in England and saw the Epcot night fireworks and laser show Illumination from our outdoor dinner table of the pub. Great to be able to sit down and enjoy dessert and coffee while watching the show. Food is pretty good English pub fare. If we did not stay at Poly, going back to rest and then coming back again would not have been easy. We had direct monorail so it was feasible.
(To be continued…) -
Trip Review (Part 3 - Disney’s Hollywood Studios)
3. Disney’s Hollywood Studios was set up after Universal Studios set up shop in Orlando. It is suppose to be a movie based themepark so there are many live performances and shows here.
We made used of our early park entry privileges here because we wanted to catch the popular ride Toy Story Mania which is a recent addition and so is new to us. This ride is very popular but has a slow load factor so queues can go up to 60 minutes or more. So going there during extra magic hours for on site guests helped us take this ride 3 times each with minimal wait. This was really fun, similar to buzz light year in MK, but instead of shooting aliens, you are playing fun fair games like throwing balls, hoops etc. very cool.
The other headliners in HS are Hollywood Tower of Terror which simulates a 13 storey fall. I did that previously and have no guts to do it again. DH did this with DS2 who is a thrill seeker. The other headliner is rock and roller coaster, a fast and smooth coaster ride with Aerosmith. We did this a few times too, but without DD of course. We use child swap.
DD enjoyed the stage shows here. Particularly, Beauty and the Beast stage show, a compressed live performance of the movie and the Voyage of Little Mermaid stage show. The Indiana Jones stunt show was also good. We brought DD to the Disney Junior puppet show, but she didn’t like It. Said it was for small kids. Other interesting rides/ shows are Muppet 3D, Star Tours, a Star Wars ride. There is the Great Movie Ride featuring movies over the years. DH thought it was boring. Other stuff we skipped were art of Disney animation, the backstage tour etc. These we did previously and didn’t like. Thought the backstage ride was pretty waste of time. There is also a Light Motor Action car stunt show which is good.
We had lunch at the Italian restaurant, Mama Melrose on the Fantasmic package. It gave us reserved settings at the HS nighttime laser show, Fantasmic. Besides Fantasmic, during this year end season, HS has an Osbourne Family light up in the New York section of the park at night. Very pretty and worth seeing.
This is our longest and most tiring day with no mid day break. DD fell asleep on the bus back to the hotel.
(To be continued…) -
Wow thank you.
Waiting for part 4 anxiously.
Dnls u could publish a book on yr Orlando experience! -
Trip Review (Part 4 - Animal Kingdom)
4. The 4th park at WDW is Animal Kingdom which is also the smallest. While some people don’t really like it, it is one of our favorites.
We started our day at Animal Kingdom with a pre- park opening breakfast at Tusker House. The characters we met here are Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Mickey, all in Safari wear. We had picked up our car by then and so drove to Animal Kingdom rather than take the Disney bus. The breakfast was the usual Disney breakfast buffet with a delicious jungle juice which is an orange, passion fruit mix. Tusker House is situated quite far inside AK in Africa. The walk in was again nice and peaceful and provided great photo op opportunity. The next best thing is that Tusker House is right next to Kilimanjaro Safari ride, the popular safari ride in AK. Again we were able to finish BF before park open and were the first to get o the Kilimanjaro ride. The best thing about riding this early is that the animals are most active in the cool morning and this time, we were able to spot the Big fives and many more animals very few meters. It was great. We love the ride.
After Kilimanjaro, we went for the next big thing, Expedition Everest, in Asia. Did this 3 times with no wait. Next we headed for Dinoland where we rode Dinosaur, Triceratops spin and primeval whirl. Dinosaur is quite scary, and DD set out like for Expedition Everest, as well as primeval whirl. Primeval whirl can cause motion sickness. We don’t really like it. triceratops spin is the typical spook and hub ride.
After that, we headed back to Asia to ride Kali River Rapid and got bottom half of our jeans wet since we had ponchos on. Did this twice. If did it once would have been ok. Lunch was counter service at Yak and Yeti for some semblance of Chinese food.
Thereafter headed for the Festival of the Lion King show. They have changed it a little somehow and it is diff from the one in HK Disney. the one in HK Disney was same as what we same here 5 yrs ago. DD met Pocahontas today. The other good rides which we went to was It’s Tough to be a Bug, a 4D show inside the AK icon, the Tree of Life. This show has also been updated and is now better than 5 yrs ago with better effects.
We skipped the bird show and walk through zoological stuff since we get l see lots of animals in our SG zoo already. We watched the parade and left AK around 4pm, and went back to our hotel to rest.
That night we went to the counter service restaurant at Contemporary resort for dinner. The boys ooh the monorail and we took the car o see who is faster. We got there faster because of the loop the monorail took, but they got back faster. They have sushi there which delighted the kids. The Mahi fish sandwich was good too.
(To be continued…) -
Dnls_mum:
:thankyou: for the information.
I have done both Sin-New York - Orlando and recently also Sin- Houston -Orlando.BBEwee:
Can someone advise me which is the best way to Orlando from Singapore?
1)SIN-Houston-Orlando
2)SIN-New York -Orlando
3) SIN-LA-Orlando
Did the direct Sin to NY then Orlando. This is the best since it is the shortest route with 18 hour direct to NY. But I think the direct flight no more now, SQ just announce canceling it. So now go NY still have to transit Frankfurt.
Sin to Houston need to transit Moscow. So now whether go,via Houston or NY all need a stop either in Moscow or Frankfurt. No diff. We chose Houston because we travel during winter and weather in NY is more uncertain and could affect flight schedules and punctuality.
To me Sin-La or SF is out because they seems to be the longest, and more importantly, LA or SF to Orlando is much longer than from NY or Houston to Orlando. That means more time on a US airline, which cannot compare to SQ in terms of inflight service. I'd rather minimize my flight time on a US carrier.
With all this ,I can easily plan my flight to Orlando.DH is so worry about the kids unable to take the long flight there.
I guess will choose Houston too,I prefer to fly in Dec too. -
For our Orlando Trip last Dec …we took the route
SIN-SFO-MCO (Orlando).
I hate cold weather so I avoided New York.
I did a review that NY airport is old and not so friendly , an during winter …planes might be delay…
SFO airport reviews stated it is new , big and friendly…and of course the weather is warmer…
From SFO , I took domestic flight to MCO(Orlando) -6 hours …so not too bad… -
We did both the sin-Houston-Orlando as well as the sin-new York route too.If your kids are not used to long hours flight, sin-Houston route could be v fatigue for them. The new York route is more merciful in my opinion for younger children.
If you travel early part of dec, I think weather in new York would not be too bad. -
iluvjr2:
Did you do the direct NY or the stopover in Frankfurt? The direct NY is definitely great but still got meh? If stopover in Frankfurt, than no diff from Houston right, or is it still better?We did both the sin-Houston-Orlando as well as the sin-new York route too.If your kids are not used to long hours flight, sin-Houston route could be v fatigue for them. The new York route is more merciful in my opinion for younger children.
If you travel early part of dec, I think weather in new York would not be too bad.
Both Houston and NY to Orlando about 2 hours so much more bearable on a US carrier with no inflight service. Anything more, really cannot tahan for DH and I...too spoiled by SQ ...hehehe -
Dnls_mum:
Thanks Dnls_mum, for all the wonderful sharing. Makes me want to start planning for next year's year end hols. haha
Did you do the direct NY or the stopover in Frankfurt? The direct NY is definitely great but still got meh? If stopover in Frankfurt, than no diff from Houston right, or is it still better?iluvjr2:
We did both the sin-Houston-Orlando as well as the sin-new York route too.If your kids are not used to long hours flight, sin-Houston route could be v fatigue for them. The new York route is more merciful in my opinion for younger children.
If you travel early part of dec, I think weather in new York would not be too bad.
Both Houston and NY to Orlando about 2 hours so much more bearable on a US carrier with no inflight service. Anything more, really cannot than...too spoiled by SQ ...hehehe
Just wondering, will it help to break the journey mid-way? In other words, if one takes the SIN-NY-Orlando route, does it make sense to disembark at NY, spend a few days day to tour the city and then take the domestic flight to Orlando?
Likewise with the SIN-Houston-Orlando route. Stay a few days at Houston and then depart for Orlando.
What do u think?
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Dnls_mum:
Did you do the direct NY or the stopover in Frankfurt? The direct NY is definitely great but still got meh? If stopover in Frankfurt, than no diff from Houston right, or is it still better?iluvjr2:
We did both the sin-Houston-Orlando as well as the sin-new York route too.If your kids are not used to long hours flight, sin-Houston route could be v fatigue for them. The new York route is more merciful in my opinion for younger children.
If you travel early part of dec, I think weather in new York would not be too bad.
Both Houston and NY to Orlando about 2 hours so much more bearable on a US carrier with no inflight service. Anything more, really cannot tahan for DH and I...too spoiled by SQ ...hehehe
It is definitely shorter even it is via Frankfrut. Total flying + transit time for Houston is 23.5hours plus minus. For NY route, it's only 21hours there about. This year we did sin - Houston & new York - sin so was v clear of the flying time. Moreover, NY has more connecting flights to Orlando.
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