Thursday, September 14, 2006

Around Florida in 1000 Dollars - Part II

Orlando greeted us with blue skies, green grass and no hotel reservation. Official tour managers Faruk and Sushant took over with able support from our PR manager, Mohit 'Can we get a room over here' Juneja and we finally managed a fairly decent priced hotel.

The day was set for some exciting adventures and Universal didn't disappoint. You have to be there to feel it all. The rides were exhilarating - Hulk and Duelling dragons(roller coaster), Dr. Doom's Fearfall(free fall from 150 ft) and the others rocked. I didn't take the duelling dragon ride though because,

a.) I started feeling bored
b.) I already had one roller coaster ride and they felt all the same
c.) We had to cover the Universal studios as well,

I could go on with those excuses. The truth is that I simply felt uneasy taking that ride with my feet dangling in the air. Turned upside down with no base to keep your feet onto gave me jitters.

The best in the 'Islands of Adventure' theme park was undoubtedly the 'Adventures of Spiderman' ride. Believe me, you'll never feel as close to the virtual world as this ride makes you feel. Since we had bought the express passes for these rides, we didn't have to negotiate the long queues and almost all the rides were done in 6 hours flat!

The other theme park of Universal - 'The Universal Studios' was again a treat. Shrek, Back to the Future, 'The Mummy' ride and Terminator were all too good. We were all tired to the extreme by the end of it all and then that hot chick from Nascar restaurant robbed us of $150 for some silly nachos, fried chicken and diluted margaritas. I was totally against the extra $15 that everyone else wanted to give her(besides the 15% gratuity already included in the bills!) but had to bow down to the shit they call - 'Voting!' I lost 5-1-(Ratul Da kept thinking which way he would go).

The next morning was again the same old story.

Sushant: Abe kallu uth
Abhishek: Nahi tu uth..

..and the battle continued.

Now came the most controversial part of our trip. Though we decided in favor of Keneddy Space Center, it seemed that the 'Let's vote for it' ploy was not used in deciding. I was game for visiting NASA but the more adventurous of the lot were not. They however played the perfect gentlemen by not creating a 'Tu apne raaste ja main apne raaste' scene and we finally went there. IMAX movies(it was really good!), touching the surface of moon, almost experiencing the last 3 minutes of Apollo mission to Moon and having a look at the Atlantis space shuttle to be launched was good but not worth the fortune and the time that we spent going there. We were on the lookout for some simulated space walks and stuff but we returned disappointed.

The next on the list was 'Seaworld'. As we sat for lunch, the Kennedy Space Center wounds started to show up again. But again the gentlemen that we are, we set aside the minor tiffs and the plan to give Sushant the 'bumps' of his life and decided to have fun together, Hum Saath Saath Hain style!

The first show was the Dolphin show. Amazing would be the apt world to describe it. Loitering around here and there, we finally decided for th eonly roller coaster ride there. Kraken was a cracker. A high speed, real high, 'no-base' roller coaster ride and this time I decided not to play a spoilsport. I lost my Nike cap somewhere during the ride though!

The best part was yet to come though. Abhishek aka Kallu and Mohit were about to take centrestage and what followed was non-stop commotion and fun not just for us but also for the other people to see and feel. That's coming up this weekend though as I have some work to catch up with. Will get back soon!

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