Florida Trip - December, 2004

I was finally able to convince Mark to go on a vacation of some sort with me.  We decided on a trip to Orlando, Florida to visit 4 of the amusement parks that are there.  We hit Sea World, Busch Gardens, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

And in a strange twist of events, we were able to meet up with my two brothers and my dad and his wife.  They went to one of the parks with us and took me out to dinner for my birthday.

click play to see a video...

This is a sunset taken from the airplane on our way to Orlando.	Our first stop was SeaWorld.  They had fish.	This was taken from within an underwater tube with a moving walkway inside it.
We rode the roller coaster in the background.	One of the stars of the video above.	Sea lions napping on poop covered rocks.
	I don't know what that tall tower is to the left, but both of these were taken at Sea World.	At some point we went to Chili's for dinner.  They serve you 2 beers at a time in 10oz mugs.  We were fascinated.
	A Ripley's exhibit was along the strip.  But it cost some obscene amount of money to get in, so this is all we saw.	Busch Gardens...
Land of crappy beer.	But they have decorations that make for fun pictures...	Some of my family showed up in Orlando while I was there.  That's my brother, doing his thing in our crappy hotel room.
We drove into downtown Orlando looking for a bar.	Instead, we found a fountain.	And a bar that seemed too obvious to go into.
We finally ended up at Crooked Bayou.	This place was actually pretty cool.  We got to sample a lot of local beers and finally get away from the "Bud, Bud Light, Michelob, Mich Ultra, Coors Light" nonsense.	I had enough to drink that I had to make an emergency pit stop.  I think that's marshland.  Good thing a gator didn't get me.
Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure were easily the two best parks.	This ride in particular was great fun.  The Dueling Dragons had two independent coasters that ran simultaneously and came close to collision on a frequent basis.	The Incredible Hulk ride was pretty neat too.  Here's a group shot of the 3 brothers and the dad before we got on.
Obligatory.		<= We ended up on a ride that was just above "kiddie."  We saw the big splashdown at the end and determined we wouldn't get too wet.  Little did we know the greatest danger was in the middle of the ride where water just poured into our logs completely drenching us.