We got back last night from a week-long sojourn to Florida to visit the in-laws. It was a nice trip, but a week is about our limit there as a family. I love the warm weather and laid-back atmosphere -- it's a bit disturbing how amenable I am to the lifestyle of an 80-year-old retiree -- but my digestive tract can't take much more than a week. I treat my time down there as something of a culinary rumspringa. I gorge myself on my mother-in-law's delicious Indian food and almost constantly partake in the many snacks on-hand -- crackers, cookies, chocolates, ice cream, mixed nuts, etc. I also drink about a pot of coffee and eat at least three bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats each day. Cereal is one of those things I love, but cut out of my regular diet almost completely, so when I allow myself to eat it, I go way overboard. But there are no free lunches in nature (nor any other mealtime), especially not in middle age, so I pay for my gluttony in the form of a perpetually churning stomach.
The only saving grace is that I also work out a lot during these visits. There's a lot of downtime, and the in-laws have a nice gym in their community center. I hit it up every day we were there this trip, except for one, and on that day I walked nearly 20,000 steps (many while pushing a wheelchair), because we went to Universal Studios. It was a lot of walking, but also a lot of fun. Of the three Orlando theme parks I've been to -- Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom being the others -- it's my favorite. It was also, by a huge margin, the most expensive. We decided to shell out and buy the fast passes, which allowed us to use the short lines, and it was totally worth it. We did eight things that required waiting in lines:* the Harry Potter ride, two Simpsons rides, the Mummy ride, the Bourne stunt show, the Minions ride, the ET ride, and the Transformers ride. Without the fast passes, the total wait time at these attractions would have been over eight hours, which is longer than we spent at the park. We maybe could have done half of them, but we would have been fighting and miserable the entire time. The Harry Potter ride alone had a posted wait time of 110 minutes. For us, it was about 15 minutes -- like I said, totally worth it, even if I am embarrassed to say how much four fast passes cost.
*Not including lunch, which was our longest wait time. The kids wanted Luigi's pizza in Simpsons Land, and I told them we should go somewhere else or come back at a different time, because the line was outrageous, but they insisted, so I decided to use it as a teaching moment. I said, "Okay, fine, we'll wait, then." About halfway into it, they were complaining about how long it was taking, and I was like, "See! Told you so! You guys made your bed, now you have to lie in it." The problem, of course, is that I also had to lie in it, because I was still the adult responsible for two hangry kids. We finally got our pizza, which was subpar, and we also got a massive Lard Lad doughnut, which made the experience somewhat tolerable.
The thing about theme parks is that I can take them or leave them. S's mom came with us, and she just sat* and waited for us while we went on the rides. I totally could have done that and been perfectly content (and saved ourselves the money for my fast pass). In fact, I would have done that, but for the fact that I wanted us to have a family experience together, and I'm 25% of the family, more if we go by total mass. And the experience was great, that all worked out, but the rides themselves... I'm just not that into them. I like the roller coasters the best, and I don't even really like roller coasters that much. At least they don't give me a headache, though, and the nausea is temporary. The fake roller coaster ones, where you get in a box and the box shakes as you watch a VR screen spit images at you at a million miles-per-hour, make me so sick the entire time I'm in them. Thankfully, there were only a few of those (The Simpsons and Transformers). The rest were thankfully not extremely headache-inducing, and the Harry Potter ride and the Mummy ride were legit fun. The Bourne Stuntacular was pretty cool too, but even it had an element of "shaky box" to it, as it was a mix between live performance and VR screen.
*Even though she can walk fine, we got her a wheelchair, so that she could sit whenever she got tired and still keep up with us.
Actually, the thing I liked the best was probably this mini Macy's parade thing they did in the evening right before we left. Just S's mom and I watched it, as S took the kids to the Minions ride (I figured we had already hit our quota for family experiences), and it was cool to see the choreography and stilt-walking. Also, it was festive and sentimental, which I'm becoming more and more of a sucker for the older I get. Although, it's kinda weird because it was all Christmas-themed, but it was two days after Christmas. I guess you get a Christmas grace period until the New Year, but it doesn't quite feel right to me. We need more generic holiday music and paraphernalia for that interim period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The party is usually still going, but it feels fake to still be listening to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" everywhere you go.
Alright, a few pics, and then I'm calling it a post. Until next time...
[View from a lanai near the in-laws']
[A festive house near the in-laws']
[Stilt walkers at the parade at Universal Studios; I think they're supposed to be snowflakes]
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