We went there in ...1990.
Orlando, Florida (September 28 - October 5)
For the trip early in our traveling career, we went completely tourist and focused on one of the stereotypical tourists hot spots....Disney World! I did not do as good a job with trip notes this year compared to the trip to the Smokies in '89 (shoot, trip notes will be spares for a few years, until we start the bigger trip out west around 2006). But we did have a fun time and really covered Disney World in pretty good detail. I friend at work, Jerry Lenhart, gave me a tip about touring the Disney parks. He suggested that when entering the park to turn left as most folks will turn right or go straight. By turning left and working counterclockwise around the park we could miss the crowds to some extent. We tried that and it seemed to work pretty well.
Here are the limited notes that I have from the trip. We did not take a lot of photos (this trip predated the digital camera). The better pics and the ones that sort of tell the tale were scanned and included below.
Friday, September 28 – Heading south. We took a taxi from the apartment (the old place at Jamestown) to Hopkins. Our flight was canceled due to weather in Albany (the plane could not get to us) so we were rerouted through Indianapolis. We finally departed Cleveland at 9:35 and eventually made to Orlando around 2:30. We collected our luggage and the rental car then headed to the Ramada. We signed up for a timeshare tour in exchange for a pair of tickets for the Arabian Nights dinner theater show. We chilled for a couple hours in the afternoon then headed out about 5:00 for a look around and dinner. We ate at Banana Bay Café…sort of average.
Saturday, September 29 – Epcot. We spent the morning at the Vista Resort timeshare pitch. The sales guy was a hard sell kind of guy. At one point he said that anyone that does not take this deal is an idiot. Well, that sealed the deal for us….we were not going to buy anything from this guy. But the ordeal was over at 10:30 and we were on the road to Disney World. This was our day for Epcot Center. It was a little rainy but still a wonderful time. We toured the entire international village and almost all of future world. Favorite attraction was The See at Epcot. We finally left the park at 10:00 PM.
Sunday, September 30 – Magic Kingdom. More Disney today. We spent most of the day at the Magic Kingdom, arriving at 9:00. We had breakfast at the park, and then toured the entire area. The highlights were Main Street and Frontier Land, the Hall of Presidents and Space Mountain; Lynn also like the draft horses on Main Street. We stayed at Magic Kingdom until 7:00 then headed over to Epcot for the evening. World of Motion was the highlight of the evening.
Monday, October 1 – NASA Kennedy. We hit the road at 9:45 for NASA Kennedy. It took just over an hour to drive to the visitor center. We toured the visitor center, saw the shuttle Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the launch pads (from about a mile away). The shuttle Discovery was on pad 39B. We were back at the motel at 4:30 and rested a bit before our 7:00 PM dinner show at Arabian Nights. This was a great show and a lot of fun. Plus the prime rib was very good. Lynn said this was her favorite event of the trip.
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Tuesday, October 2 – MGM Studio. We spent the day at Disney MGM (8:30 to 5:30). Our favorite attraction was the Indiana Jones Stunt Show. During the evening we heading to Disney Market and Pleasure Island. The highlight there was the Adventurers Club, which was based on a 1930s British club for adventurers; the cast of characters were quite entertaining.
Wednesday, October 3 – More Disney. We split the day between the Magic Kingdom (8:30 to 3:30) then finished with Epcot (3:30 to 10:30). The highlight for the day at the Magic Kingdom was the Diamond Horseshoe Jubilee. At Epcot we finally made it through everything except the World of Energy as we just ran out of time. Oh, well, something for the next trip. I did get “volunteered” to be a player in the street play in England. This was the production of “Romeo and Edna” by the Old Globe Players. I was Riff Capulet. It was actually quite fun. Lynn said I was born to be a ham! We had dinner in Japan at the hibachi steak house. The chef put on a very good show and the food was excellent. After four days at Disney, I think we covered it about as thoroughly as possible.
Thursday, October 4 – Miscellaneous Disney. We just kicked around Disney Village in the morning then over to Fort Wilderness and Disney Island in the afternoon. We did a drive-by of Typhoon Lagoon, just to check it out. Then it was back to the hotel in the late afternoon to relax before heading out to Pleasure Island for dinner. We had a great meal at Steerman’s on the old stern wheeler.
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Friday, October 5 – Back home. Easy trip home. Checked out at 9:30; back Hopkins about 3:35 where we jumped in a cab for the drive back to the apartment.