During peak season, there are certain parks that we can only stay in two weeks instead of three. Orlando is one of them. This year, they allowed Thousand Trail members to stay in an "overflow" Encore park, and let us stay there for up to two weeks--just on our membership at no charge!
The "overflow" park this year was Sherwood Forest. It is only about 15 miles from the Orlando park and was great. It is only 4 miles from Disney World and just off the main road down through the city of Kissimmee. The only bad thing was that we heard sirens around the clock. But, after a while you get used to them and don't notice it. We had a nice spot (no pics!) with an orange tree in our yard! We rode our bikes a lot in this park. It is just one mile around the perimeter sites, with lots of roads in between because most of the sites were pull-throughs. I set my bike odometer on 0 and by the time we left the park, we had ridden almost 30 miles! That takes quite a while when you are only supposed to be riding 5 mph.
This park has a really nice miniature golf course. We had fun playing, but Terry always won! The farmers' market came to the park twice a week so we had lots of fresh veggies and fruits. The bread lady came with really good bagels, too. The warmer it gets, the more humid it is getting. We stayed in the park a couple of extra days to participate in the "yard sale at your site" and put out our Scentsy. Because of so much dew in the mornings, we put up the canopy the night before, with the tables under it, thinking it would keep them dry. WRONG! Everything was still really wet and the awning "rained" on us most of the morning! Good day with Scentsy, though. We sold four warmers, a Scentsy buddy, and some bars. Time to order more stock!
This is a real tourist area and there are gift shops on every block. There must have been some in the same chain that had these really cool fronts on them.
Here is one with a bunch of "jungle animals" on the front.
I didn't get a very good picture of this one because of the sign in the middle. They all had a lot of Disney souveniers in them.
Our friends from the other park, Bob & Linda and Lance & Adrea, were leaving to go to another area so they invited us out to lunch with them before they all left. Actually, Lance and Andrea invited us join the LEO Club and we were just having a meeting (that is the Let's Eat Out Club.) I think I like this club!
Yes, we did make it to Disney World!
In Hershey PA we met Jim and Jo Ann at the craft fair while we were selling Scentsy. They gave us a card and said when we were in the Orlando area to give them a call. So, we did.
They both work at Disney World. They took us into Epcot on a guest pass and were our personal tour guides. The World Showcase is in Epcot and is a mile-long tour around a lake where you walk through ten different countries: Canada, where we saw a great movie about their land; United Kingdom, where we ate in a pub; France, where we saw another great movie (I would love to got there); Morocco; Japan, where there were some Taiko drummers performing; America, where we listened to the a great a capella group sing some patriotic songs; Italy; Germany; China, where we went into a museum; and Mexico. We had to hurry at the end to hit some other sites.
This is the Spirit of America Fife & Drum Corps in the American village.
It was a little drizzly that day to some of us put on ponchos. Jo Ann has bad feet so Jim got her a wheel chair half way around the "world." It came in pretty handy--getting us into some of the events a little quicker!
The Japanese Taiko drummers were playing.
These are the tomb warriors of the Qin Dynesty (221-210 BC). The very first act of Qin Shi Huang (before he was emperor of China) was to make preparations for the afterlife by beginning construction of his tomb. These tomb warriors were intended to be protectors of the emperor beyond the grave. Over a period of 36 years, a vast underground city that included a massive palace and a life-size terra cotta army of over 7,000 troops, chariots, and horses were constructed. This tomb has been dubbed "metropolis of the dead." It was amazing!
There were a few Disney characters running around. We saw Chip 'n Dale several times. We also saw Mary Poppins.
You could get your picture taken with Minnie and Mickey, but the line was too long and I didn't think any of those little kids would let me crowd in!
It was so fun going to Disney World, especially having "special guides" who knew where to go and knew so many facts about Disney World. We also went on Spaceship Earth, Ellen's Energy Adventure, had a Turtle Talk with Crush, went on a boat voyage through amazing greenhouses and a fish farm, and then went "Soarin" over California on a free-flying hang gliding adventure (one of our favorites." We rode the monorail before we went home and got to see some really fancy hotels that are part of the Disney Travel Club--the Polynesian and the Grand Floridian.
Later on in the week we went to lunch with Jim and Jo Ann and they drove us around the town of Celebration. It is a town that was built by Walt Disney and then turned over as an incorporated city later on. It has beautiful homes, townhouses, and apartments, besides a really nice downtown and square. Another evening we went with them to Disney Town where there are a lot of theme restaurants and shops--legoland, dinosaurs, rain forest, etc.--and then went to the Riverside Hotel and watched a piano-comedian show. It was really good. He even got Jo Ann and I up front to do the can-can! Thanks so much to Jim and Jo Ann and all of the fun. We hope to see them again some time.
No comments:
Post a Comment