Orlando: Day 6

We woke up a bit later on this day as we thought that Busch Gardens, the safari-themed theme park we were going to opened at 10am and was only a short drive of 30 minutes away, according to the information from the guy who sold us the tickets. However we were sadly misinformed and when we finally got there ( 1.5 hours later!!!!) we found out that the park not only opened at 9.30am, but closed at 5pm ( as opposed to the 6pm we thought previously--> Kudos to the ticket seller-.-) No thanks to him, we reached at about 11+am, close to noon and only had a mere 5 hours to play at the park.

First glimpse of one of the park's roller coasters ( some of which are world famous and highly ranked in the roller coaster arena)

Do you see a lion?

Signboard at the entrance when we first walked in.

Do you see alligators? At first I thought they were fake :P

Initially we had already planned to take the tram ride around the safari first, but when I spotted this roller coaster, the newest addition to their coaster family known as the Cheetah Hunt, I couldn't resist and rushed to take it with my mom :)

Oh boy it was as scary as its namesake as pictured ^. At the beginning the coaster suddenly sped up from 0km/h to 60km/h in a split second. In case you don't know how fast that is, IT IS FAST. Even though I expected the sudden increase in speed, it still came as a surprise to me and for the split second I could actually think, I was like ' Why did I get on this ride???!!' But it was good fun and I really enjoyed it, and it gave me lots of confidence to ride the other coasters later on this trip :P And luckily I insisted on riding this coaster as it was the only coaster out of the 5-6 coasters in this park that I managed to ride ): (due to time constraints)

'Oh I'm just a cute fatty hippo, happily munching on my grass...'..ZOOOOOMMM!!!!AHHHHHHH!!!!! * human screams*

That was one of the issues we were discussing about this idea of merging a safari with a theme park.. it doesn't work out too well. The animals hardly have any silent time due to the constant shrieks of thrill-seeking homo sapiens and the loud screeches of the roller coaster rides.. plus the opening times are so short, one simply does not have time to ride all the rides AND see all the animals.

we did get to see some gorillas though

and their asses

and I even got to ride one! :)

Passed by a kangaroo feeding station where entrance was free but a cup of feed costs US$5.

Being the cheapskates we are, we went in and fed the kangaroos with the scraps picked off the floor :P ^ it actually ate from me!!! :))

So cute <3

Passed by some flamingos as well

And passed by a 'Sesame Street' section of the park where we were lucky enough to take a pic with the sesame street characters!! ( we were one of the last to :P)

All these pics were taken before my brother and I took a water ride and got absolutely DRENCHED at the end. I also didn't take a picture of our late lunch at Zambia Smokehouse, where we had the most AMAZING smoked meats ( namely brisket, ribs, chicken)

Oh wait, I momentarily forgot the existence of google images. Picture above is not mine :P

The soft fluffy bun pairs so well with the various meats, which are all done to tender juicy perfection, and doused with an addictive sweet sauce. And the fries.....ohmigawd. We officially declared there and then that these were the best fries we had eaten so far. Still piping hot, and crispy on the outside but soft inside <3 It was so good my dad went to buy another platter. ( On hindside however, maybe it just tasted so good because we were standing there sopping wet from the above mentioned water ride haha :P )

All too soon however the park was closing so we made our way back without having tried many of the rides. No regrets though, it was still a great day :)

And the early closing time was a blessing in disguise, as we got to eat at Olive Garden, one of the restaurants I wanted to go to in America! I decided to order a soup as my aunt ( who also ordered the same) highly recommended the particular soup, and it was free flow so the greedy and kiasu Singaporean in me couldn't resist :P Besides, I love the classic combination of hot soup with bread <3

My parents ordered a set ( which was 2 for US$25) and came with an appetizer and entree of choice. Thank god they only ordered 2 portions instead of the originally intended 4 as the portions were HUGE.

Deep-fried lagsana as one of the appetizers. Well what do you expect, lagsana is a classic italian dish and put an italian restaurant in America and you just get it deep-fried ;) This were good though. Just don't think of the calories.

When I think of breadsticks, I think of puny little cheesesticks small enough to finish in a bite. THESE ^ however, are not breadsticks contrary to their name in the menu, but breadBRANCHES! They were enormous and long and even though they were supposed to be free flow we couldn't even finish the first basket among the 5 of us O:

This is Zuppa Touscana, an italian sausage soup recommended by my aunt, who always eats this when she dines at Olive Garden. It comes with bits of italian sausage, small cubes of potatoes and some veggies, and sprinkled with grated cheese upon request. While I liked it for its mild peppery taste and wholesomeness, I felt that it was a tad too salty for my liking. And even though I had previously envisioned myself chugging down bowl after bowl of soup ( greedy singaporean speaking), I pretty much gave up after two :P

House Salad! Came in a huge glass bowl and had a tangy dressing.. free flow as well but we only refilled it once as the bowl was so bigggg.

* I didn't manage to take pics of my parent's meals but they were HUGE as well.*

Overall a great dining experience ( apart from the fact that I was so STUFFED at the end :P) 

Orlando: Day 3 & 4

*This is a continiution of my previous post*

Day 3:

So we (my family+ my aunt) woke up bright & early on the 3rd day (about 5.30am), had breakfast and my uncle drove us to the domestic airport to take the 2.5 hour plane flight to Orlando, where we would be spending the next week at.

When we reached there at about 10am, it was too early to check into our hotel so we decided to go for an early lunch nearby before returning later, and my aunt suggested Fuddruckers, an authentic American burger place.

The inside of the store

The store has a system where you had to order food before sitting down, and the queue was right next to a shelf storing the desserts. I was amazed by the sheer size of the red velvet cake as shown above ( the picture makes it look smaller but it is super tall)

The carrot cake of the same size

Me just bein' amazed

So we ordered the family set, which came with 2 regular burger sets and 2 kids burger sets, which cost a total of $25. ( my aunt shared a set with my mom)

The kid's burger set ( which was the same as the adult set, just with less fries)

In case you're wondering why the burger set looks so empty, it's because you're supposed to build-your-own-burger!

Check out all em' fresh produce!

Singapore certainly has no cool shizz like this ):

Choose and add your own sauces, however much you want!

Also came with a refillable drinking cup, and my brother and I decided to choose the strangest drinks which we had never come across before- wrong choice. They tasted like over-sweetened cough syrup ):

So after a bit of deco, my burger set looked something like ^! It.was.awesome. My 3rd day and 1st burger here and it already exceeded all burgers in Singapore! The bun was soft and fluffy and the patty itself was juicy and flavourful. Paired with the veggies, I was in burger heaven. The fries were quite something too, not the skimpy shoestring fries most fast food joints offer, instead they were thick, freshly fried potato wedges. They were so goood paired with the sauces but abit too filling :/

After the satisfying lunch, we went to the high-class grocery store next door to stock up on water.

Huge frozen pizzas

Look at the size of the candy store!!

Cutest mini pumpkins<3

Aaand we spotted this too and couldn't help buying it to try ( Singapore doesn't offer these donuts). They were disappointing though. Waay too sweet and obviously not fresh. We had to throw away half the box in the end ):

Oh right. We also bought these 3 apples for S$4++... cos I ate one on the plane and liked them. Even though they were quite big and juicy it was still not worth the $$

Next we headed to our abode for the next 7 days, Hawthorn Suite. The welcome mat looks like this^, and we chose the place as it was located near Disneyland as well as Universal Studios.

The lobby of the hotel ^

Didn't take a picture of our hotel room but it was very spacious and had a kitchen!! It also comes with a complimentary breakfast every morning :)

Then we headed off to an outlet mall for some shopping. Mostly spent the time at the adidas and nike outlet shops, but there were so many other shops!!

Curious me was attracted to the chocolate store selling these chocolate-coated apples!! Wonder how they would taste O:

After a while, everyone felt a little peckish so we decided to go to the food court. The food court in America is vastly different from the ones here, there were only a few shops selling fast food ( of different cuisines: chinese, mexican, italian etc)...

This is from the chinese shop: fried rice, some veggies and noodles. The veggies were DRENCHED in a sticky salty sauce and were super soft.

Fried chicken tenders with coleslaw. The burnt-looking brown stuff at the top right corner was fried plaintains ( uh..bananas). Closest thing you can get to a goreng pisang here and my dad bought them for my pisang-loving aunt. The difference is that they have no batter coating unlike goreng pisang..

And a burrito from taco bell. Just a tortilla stuffed with sauce, chicken and rice :/

I only tried a bit of everything as somehow I wasn't hungry at all ( plus the food kinda sucked)

Day 4: Universal Studios Florida

Woke up early to have breakfast as we wanted to maximise our time by reaching USF at the opening time of 9am.

First breakfast: Apple juice, scrambled eggs with salsa, a stick of fried french toast and an english muffin ( with a jam spread. However the hotel also offered many other spreads such as cream cheese, low-fat cream cheese, breakfast syrup, honey, peanut butter etc.)

Followed by a bowl of fruit loops and banana

And followed by a bowl of oatmeal then strawberry & vanilla yoghurt with canned peaches ( not pictured). Yes imma pig but hey, I needed energy for the long active day ahead!!

So that was basically what I had for breakfast every morning for the subsequent week. The menu for the hot food rotated from day to day ( on later days there were pancakes, waffles, donuts, ham, hash brown, beef patties etc.) but the yoghurt, cornflakes and oatmeal remained the same. I was complaining to my aunt about the low quality of the hot food on the first morning ( too little choice s of food, the scrambled egg was tasteless, the french toast stick too oily and the english muffin too dry etc) and she told me that for an American hotel to have such a spread was already considered good! Plus the price of the hotel rooms were quite low so I shouldn't expect much.. Well after she said that I felt much better about the food :)

I was practically skipping into this place with excitement!

To avoid confusion, Universal Studios in Orlando consists of 2 different theme parks- Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure, and we went to both on separate days.

Fortunately it wasn't very crowded on that day and we seldom experienced ridiculously long queues for the rides the whole day.

 Despicable me ride!! Minions are sho cute <3 It was kinda like a 4D show.

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea??

Look who we met!! Childhood love <3

Some beautiful scenery. This is when the sun came out later during the day ^

JAWS!!! Unfortunately there is no more jaws ride but I still got to take a pic with it heheh :)

We then ironically had a late lunch at a seafood place called Lombard's Seafood Grille.

Pity I didn't take a pic of the interior but it was so beautifully set and quite high-class looking.

Started off with some rolls and butter

We ordered a lobster bisque, which I felt was wayy too saltish for my liking. My brother however said he liked it as it had a strong lobster taste.

As well as clam chowder that my dad was craving. This tasted far better to me :)

Order 2 dishes of Fisherman's Wharf which came with fried shrimp, fish and lattice fries. ( We switched the fries from the other plate to sweet potato fries, however I personally prefer normal fries :/

Also ordered a chicken risotto. My first time trying risotto, it tastes like super saltish sticky porridge. I didn't like it too much..

The dish at the top right hand corner is fried calamari. It's quite a unique rendition of the classic fried squid dish, the calamari is super soft and came in strips. Yummyyy!

How did we end up with the 8 mini desserts pictured above?? The waiter was asking us if we would like dessert, and out of curiosity we asked what they had. He replied: ' Raspberry cheesecake, chocolate mousse, wait let me show you.' I was thinking like how do you SHOW a dessert?? Shortly after, he came out holding the 8 mini desserts in a tray shown above, and started pointing out the names of the desserts offered. When he said ' one is US $1.75, 8 for US$10.75', to my immense surprise my aunt said we'll take all! And that is how we ended up with 8 mini desserts to share among 5 ;)

Raspberry cheesecake. 

]

Eggnog mousse. Tried this, way too sweet and had a cinammon taste :/

Chocolate mousse. Quite light and not too sweet :)

Key lime cheesecake. 

Sugar-free chocolate mousse and the one behind is peppermint mousse. Some of the desserts were basically repeated so I didn't mention all..

We stayed all the way until the closing hour of 8pm, where there was a spectacular show featuring fireworks reminiscing the various movies over the years, with grand music. It probably made many a hardcore movie fan tear :')

A night shot of the Simpsons ride, which was a 4D stimulator ride crazy enough to make people nauseous. (aka me)

All in all we managed to ride all the rides except for a scary-ass roller coaster known as the Hollywood R.I.P rock ride, for obvious reasons as shown in the name.

Great end to a great first day of fun.

*More posts to come soon*