Orlando

Being back in rainy New York is not quite like being in Florida, and nothing like being in the bizarre time warp of an Orlando amusement park. Armed with some JetBlue buddy passes (a birthday gift to Chris), the boy and I hit the airport at 4am on Friday morning and waited for standby seats to Orlando. 

This trip was only semi-planned. If you know us, you know Chris and I are nothing if not planners, schedulers, list-makers, etc. This trip was very adventurous for us! Knowing that there was a chance we might not get a flight, we decided to book our hotel, car, and park tickets once we made it to Florida. 

And did we ever make it to Florida! We even ended up getting great last-minute hotel and car rental deals through Priceline.

We agreed to sit through a mind-numbing timeshare presentation on Saturday morning to save money on our theme park tickets. I wouldn't recommend this as a general practice, but in trying not to break the bank for a 4 day trip, it worked out well this time. As I told Chris, "Be a writer about it!" Anyway, once we skipped away from the salesmen, the cynicism was gone and we commenced acting like 5-year-olds.

I thought about Travels in Hyperreality a handful of times, but every time I started getting intellectual about the experience, there was some kinda spontaneous parade:

  Or ice cream!

Or fairy-tale thing!

We spent the first day at Disney, making it to nearly every ride in the Magic Kingdom park, staying til close and topping it off with cotton candy and fireworks. The second day we spent at Universal's Islands of Adventure, where Chris went on giant roller coasters like The Hulk and I was enthralled that there was an entire "world" constructed to look like Jurassic Park.

I find occasion to quote this film alarmingly often, as do, I believe, my brothers. I'm not sure why a movie about a failed science experiment involving deadly prehistoric creatures is so applicable to our lives, but I do hold it near and dear to my heart.

That just about sums up our whirlwind weekend! I don't know when I'll be in Orlando again—either in 2010 when Islands of Adventure finishes building their Harry Potter "world," or not until I've got little ones in tow. It's an interesting town, to say the least.