This year's little vacation took us down south to Orlando and it was great fun! What's the first thing you think of when you hear Orlando? DisneyWorld and SeaWorld, right? Well, contrary to most other tourists, we spent an entire week in Orlando without seeing either DisneyWorld or SeaWorld! So now you may be asking: what's left to see? LOTS! Take a look...
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This is Wonderworks. The building is designed to look as if it was turned upside down so in the picture you should see the upside-down palm tree and street lights. Inside there were displays that let you experience hurricanes and earthquakes. There's lots of optical illusion displays and mind games that could keep me busy for a long time. The top floor is reserved for a laser tag game. |
In Mercado Village there's a Titanic Exhibition in which they have re-created a few areas of the ship. There is a guided tour (your guides do their best to imitate the accents of their character and even dress in early 1900 English garb). The tour is a bit like a story, set on the day/night that Titanic sank. I couldn't record the whole thing, but here's a sort of pictoral tour of Titanic.
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One of the sitting rooms reserved for the first-class passengers.
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Everyone should recognize this...the Grand Staircase. It spanned six decks of Titanic. You can't see it in this picture, but the middle panel shows the two muses, Honor and Glory, who were supposed to bring the ship good fortune.
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Since everyone thought Titanic was unsinkable the ship's cargo was uninsured. The only exception was this 1912, 35 horsepower Renault automobile belonging to first-class passenger William Carter. He insured the car for 500 dollars.
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Of course, no Titanic exhibit would be complete without a display for the movie Titanic. These are two of the costumes used in the Titanic movie.
| I have found one of the greatest toy stores ever! The store is called FAO Schwartz Toy Store and it's in Pointe Orlando. If I had an unlimited supply of money, I'd buy every stuffed animal they have in there!. |
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Here's the Guiness World Records exhibit...you can guess what's inside. A lot of the displays are designed so that you can challenge world records, for example, how many basketballs you can sink in 10 minutes. They pack a lot of information into this exhibit and many of the displays are interactive so count on spending at least a couple hours here. |
| This is Ripley's Believe it or Not! The TV show is strange enough, and this place is absolutely crazy. There are displays here for models made from matchsticks; a guy with two pupils in each eye; shrunken heads and a guy who could withstand oven temperatures! Yes, some of the displays are pretty weird so this place isn't for everyone, especially people who get queasy easily. |
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If you get the chance, I really recommend that you go see Splendid China. They've re-created historic buildings and Chinese landmarks to such detail it's incredible. They've got the whole Great Wall of China in a 1:15 scale! They even use bonsai trees around the mini-buildings to that everything looks balanced and proportional. There's also a great evening show with acrobats, dancers, and martial artists, but the show changes as different performers come from China. If we go back to Orlando, I'm going back to Splendid China and I'm bringing a lot of film for the camera!
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Right after you pass into the area requiring paid admission, you see this...the stone forest. It's beautiful in it's mini state so now one of my goals is to see the real thing..
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I couldn't fit the whole thing into the photo, so what you see here is a portion of the Forbidden City, or Imperial Palace. It had 999 1/2 rooms...I guess one of the rooms was never fully completed.
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Here's a 1:15 re-creation of the Terra Cotta Warriors. They're housed in a sort of cave and I imagine that seeing the real thing would be amazing, and also a bit eerie.
