Orlando was a bit of a bonus as we were there for two day training event - getting together out North East (Boston, New York, DC etc) and South (Texas etc) practices due to our combination. We were all staying at the Marriott World not too far from Disney World, which is apparently the busiest Marriott hotel in the world - certainly one of the biggest I've ever seen, it had it's own world class 18 hole golf course (more on later).
A few of us took the opportunity to fly in on Saturday morning (the course kicked off officially on Sunday night with a booze-up). We met up with some of the crew out of Dallas (for some strange reason only the people from Texas were there early) and then went our separate ways. We went to Universal Studio's "Islands of Adventure" theme park, which is right next door to the original Universal Studios theme park in Orlando. We then went on all of the roller coasters and thrill rides. To anyone who is stopping through I would recommend the "Dueling Dragons", "Incredible Hulk", and "Spiderman" rides. Most of these were cool, but we were down to 50% of the group of us at the end of the day because too many roller coasters in a day can apparently give you a major headache. That night we had a quiet night... which turned out to have been a good decision...
The next day Eric, one of my erstwhile workmates, and I decided the golf course looked too tempting, and having mortgaged our souls to be able to afford to play the course we teed off. The course if one of those god-awful narrow courses with water all over the place. 15 of 18 holes to be precise. Plus it was something like 30 degrees at least. I got a couple of photos of us in action (see below). After we ran out of balls on the 15th hole (which was longer than either of us had expected to last) Eric was 13 over and I was 31 over. The nice Calloway clubs I was using didn't seem to help my game any ;-)
Anyway, that night we went out on the town, to be precise we went to "Paradise Island" which is a collection of bars not too far from the hotel. We caught up with some of the crew from New York and partied until at least 2am. The place it self was structured like an amusement park - Disney does the bar scene is how a lot of people described it...
The next morning was a write off, but that night we went out to dinner (and later out drinking) at the bar scene in between the Universal theme parks (called the "City Scape" or something. That was far cooler than the previous night, and the scenery was much nicer ;-)
Anyway - on to other things, check out the photos:
The boys at Islands of Adventure
The Incredible Hulk rollercoaster
The Hulk as it goes under a footbridge
Dr Seuss's Island :-)
Inside the castle at the Dueling Dragons castle - frozen knights and horses
I took these photos when only one was operating. You can see where there would normally be two Dueling Dragons roller coasters nearly hitting each other
