'Tis the season for horror, which means going to the scariest place on earth to me—Florida. As anyone knows my deepest fear is the state of Florida as the rules and regulations that are traditionally associated with any normal functioning society are thrown out the window for debauchery and identity theft. As I write this on the plane ride back, I am already preparing myself for the bevy of fraudulent charges that are often associated with our annual travel to Florida.
The cross-nation flight began bright and early at 7 am on Friday. The goal was to get to Florida as fast as possible to take advantage of the Orlando nightlife. Not sure what we were expecting as the majority of the town shuts down unless you’re at a theme park that stays open. However, if anyone was going to find something ridiculous and over the top to do it would be Grant. Insert Mango’s Latin Cuisine. This dinner and a show venue featured an over the top tropical island theme with Latin based dancers and performances.
We expected two friends to join us for the show, but there was some miscommunication and so the four-top right in front of the stage was only occupied by the two of us. To compensate for the lost revenue that the two would have generated for the restaurant I went ahead and ordered an appetizer to snack on. This meant that I spent $18 extra dollars on top of the mandatory $39 or $49 prix fixe menu on fried cheese. While they were good…the price was outrageous. The rest of the food arrived as the show was happening. We ate salad and the show was going on. We ate dinner and the show was happening. We ate dessert and the show was still happening. Finally, it became apparent that the show would never end. After 3 1/2 hours, I finally asked Grant to leave, which he graciously obliged. He was hopped up on chocolate cake and so I made him drive home.
Fortunately, our hotel was out of the touristy area, but that did make the commute back to the hotel a pain. We crashed hard and I didn’t wake up until 12:20 pm. On California time, that’s only 9:20 am. When I woke, Grant was coming in from having worked out at the fitness center. I had no idea that he left. The plan for the day was that we would eat at Cici’s for lunch and then take advantage of our resort amenities until the main attraction—Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Night 2019. Grant put us at the Omni Hotel which contained an adult pool, a wave pool, and a lazy river. Grant loved Cici’s so much it just made my day. In fact, this meal would go down as his favorite meal of the day.
After hitting the water for a while, we made our way over to Universal. Florida has so much space that I think it’s crazy that they charge $26 for parking. However, the theme parks will get you one way or the other as this was an avoidable charge for sure. We made our way in much faster than last year and decided that we would do the rollercoaster first. This resulted in a classic photo of Grant looking like he smelled his own flatulent that will be in our house next to other classic theme park photos.
This year there were 10 haunted houses throughout the park with the main attractions being focused on the movie Us, Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and House of a 1000 Corpses. Each one offered something new and different and none of them were duds. The one criticism that I do have to say is that unlike Hollywood, Orlando herds you like cattle through these mazes. To combat that we just go really slow to create separation between ourselves and the people in front of you. This way the “monsters:” have time to hide so we get to experience the full scares as intended. The people working there hate it, but with the amount paid for these tickets I don’t think Grant, or I care all that much.
House 10 this year was Killer Klowns, which was my favorite because I absolutely love that atrocious 80’s B-movie. Having eaten awful food in the park we stopped at CowFish at Citywalk. The premise was that you could get sushi, a burger, or burger sushi. This weird concoction was pretty yummy as we got Cheeseburger Sushi and BBQ sushi. I don’t know of any other place that serves this type of “sushi,” so it was a bit of a fun mashup. The check arrived at about 1 am and we quickly paid to head back to the hotel.
We were burned out on theme parks and so Sunday was a bit of a plan by the seat of our pants. Of course, Grant wanted to eat at Carrabba’s because he loves this place. Since we don’t have it in California, I thought it was only fair after my lunch of Cici’s the day before. The food was better than normal and the conversation with our waiter was…. interesting. I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found Grant having a riveting conversation about how our waiter did not believe that global warming was actually occurring. Gotta love Floridians.
Afterward, we debated a bit as to what to do and finally settled on Grant’ suggestion of going to the beach. The closest beach to where we were located was Cocoa Beach. We drove the hour without traffic and ended up there in no-time. The town itself reminded us of Port Aransas, which was comforting and familiar. We stopped, got out, and walked on the beach for a little bit. Since we didn’t have a shower readily available, we didn’t want to go all the way in. It was a nice time killer and much more enjoyable than just hanging out at the airport. On the way back we stopped at a Wawa (local gas station) to fill up and have an impromptu picnic. We ended up bringing some Carabbas with us and instead of letting it go to waste we added some gas station fine culinary treats to make it a meal.
We dropped off the rental car and made our way into the zoo that is Orlando International Airport. This city loves lines so it should surprise no one that the security was rough. The signs said 20-29 minutes, but it was longer than that. We finally made our way through and quickly boarded the plane. Another successful two-person trip in the books.
Funny people of Florida we saw along the way…
Lady hiding a bag under a blanket, random guy showing up on stage to take photos, and an interesting bike rider.
