Orlando: A rocket, an alligator, and Disney overload
Updated: Sep 1
A little bit of background
Our Orlando wanderings happened by chance when my husband (W) had a last minute opportunity to attend a week-long tech conference in the city in 2008, paid for by his company. Orlando is not somewhere I'd ever have thought of to visit, so this was definitely an experience of opportunity.
Orlando the seat of Orange County and fourth-most populous city in the Florida.
Tourism from its theme parks and major-event conventions keep the city alive. Aerospace engineering and manufacturing is also key, with Cape Canaveral close by.
The city was once Fort Gatlin, taken by the 4th US Artillery in 1838 during the Second Seminole War, and named after the Army physician who was killed in the 1835 Dade battle. There are multiple stories about the origin of how Orlando got its name.
In a move very unlike me, we organised for my parents to look after our kids [who were 10 and 8 at the time] so I could go with him. It felt like a big step for us, as it was the first time both of us had been away on our own since we'd had children. We literally flew out only a couple of weeks after setting things in motion, so I hadn't planned what we'd do in Orlando, other than organise a tour out to Cape Canaveral. We also had a few hours to kill in Los Angeles on the way back, giving us a second albeit brief experience of the city.
Travelling to Orlando
Brisbane to Orlando is no easy trek, involving three flights, first from Brisbane to Sydney, then Sydney to Los Angeles, then a third leg to Orlando. Flying time for this journey is 90 minutes from Brisbane to Sydney, 12 and a half hours from Sydney to Los Angeles, and another five hours to Orlando from there. Travelling internationally certainly is a privilege, but living at the bottom of the world has its drawbacks when it comes to travel. I actually really hate flying. I am a nervous flyer and I hate being cooped up in a giant tin tub in the sky for hours on end. I also always feel kind of icky when I get off at the other end.
Our Qantas flight from Sydney was late leaving so we literally had to run to the American Airlines Orlando flight, charging through LAX with the aircraft doors firmly shut behind us as the last people to board before take off. That was such a mortifying experience!
We arrived in Orlando tired and hungry and minus one of our bags. Food on the flight was an additional cost and we didn't much feel like what was on offer. Fortunately our bag arrived arrived later that evening. As I write this post in 2023, that is the only experience I have had with delayed luggage.
Our Orlando hotel and a rocket launch
Orlando as an air of artificiality about it, at least in the part where all the resorts, hotels, conference centres and theme parks live. The first few hours of our experience felt surreal, not just from the travel fatigue but for the feeling of having stepped onto a films set where everything has been meticulously constructed. We stood with the other guests on the edge of our hotel golf course not long after we arrived, watching a space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral. Yep. You read that right. Wild.
We were staying at conference venue hotel, the Rosen Shingle Creek, a massive event centre with meeting rooms, shops, and restaurants and the aforementioned golf course. The place was almost a self-contained village in and of itself. Some of the food places were deli-like for selecting meals to takeaway and the shops were mini markets with all the basics. We'd never seen anything like it before and it was all a bit overwhelming. The whole place felt like some sort of polished, commercial fever dream. Deeply introverted and perennially self-conscious, we felt completely out of place.
Rosen Shingle Creek was opened in 2006, only two years before we stayed there, during the birthday of Harris Rosen, founder of Rosen Hotels and Resorts.
The resort covers 103 hectares of accommodation and event spaces plus the 18-hole par 72 championship golf course, designed by Arnold Palmer's company.
There are 1501 guestrooms, 15 dining options, and an on-site farm that provides fresh, sustainably-farmed produce to the hotel.
We were in Orlando at the start of summer, but it was hot and humid, very much like Brisbane. The hotel and surrounds were just as I imagined a Floridian place to be: beige tones, manicured lawns, and lots of obligatory palm trees. Everything felt so bright, big, clean and artificial.
The conference itself was really well-organised and a useful professional development opportunity for my husband. A free shuttle bus for conference guests to use over the first three days had been organised. This made it easy for me to get around Orlando on my own while W was at the conference, but I was still rather proud of myself for my solo explorations. This was 2008 and we had mobile phones, but it was a bit before constant and reliable connectivity was the norm.
What I am calling the tourist area of Orlando is out of the city centre. This part of the city is overwhelmingly enormous, full of theme parks, resorts, shops, and conference centres. I can't imagine living in such a place as the heady atmosphere would exhaust me and it's all so fake. The tourist area is spread out along International Drive and most things are concentrated on either side of the massive road. Orlando is a crazy kind of place, seemingly only in existence to feed the Disney obsession and cater for a gazillion conferences. I understand that Orlando is the fourth-most visited city in the United States, after New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles. Yeah, I can totally see that!
Fly me to the moon
I've arranged this post around our different experiences during our whirlwind week in Orlando. One of the most memorable was our visit to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, W's number 1 bucket list item. I'm not into the whole space travel thing at all. I actually feel uncomfortable with the billions of dollars of spending on space shuttles. Sure, it was cool to watch the space shuttle launch, but it's not something that I ever thought I'd have or need on my bingo card.
The space shuttle had launched on a Friday evening so the Space Center was a little quieter than usual, post-launch. We may have missed out on getting a ticket in normal circumstances, seeing as our trip was such a last-minute thing. In hindsight and with the benefit of more travel confidence, we should have hired a car as the complex is around 90km from Orlando. Instead, we bought a tour ticket that wasn't really a tour, just transport out to the Visitor Complex and a day admission pass. The thing that most sticks in my mind was our guide, who fit with the Orlando vibe but sounded inauthentic and just a little over the top to our Antipodean ears.
Travel tip 🌏 My suggestion is to hire a car for the day to experience the Space Center from Orlando rather than do a tour if you have the time and are happy to drive on the right hand side of the road. The tour was worth the money for the ease of being collected and dropped back to Orlando, but we would have preferred the flexibility of doing things on our own.
The tour took us first to the US Astronauts Hall of Fame, at the time of our visit located 10 kilometres to the west of the Visitor Complex. The building is now closed and the Hall of Fame now housed in the Heroes and Legends exhibit inside the Visitor Complex.
The Hall of Fame was interesting, even for someone like me with little interest in space travel. It features lots of bits of spacecraft and astronaut suits on display. It is a nice monument to the people who have pioneered space travel, especially those who have lost their lives doing so.
I looked up the Visitor Complex to write this post. Tickets are $77USD for a day pass. That sounds expensive but the Complex definitely takes a whole day to explore. The day pass includes entry into the Visitor Complex and access to all its bits. The whole place is really impressive. It's something unique and interesting to do in Orlando, if nothing else a palette cleanser from all the theme park madness. The complex is integrated into the working operations at NASA and even though it's a schmick operation, it feels less like a Disney experience and more like a tourist attraction with a purpose.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is the public access part of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island.
In 1963, a NASA administrator first gave self-guided tours along a set route through the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and a small trailer had basic displays on card tables.
The complex has developed to compete with the Disney pizazz. It now includes a bunch of exhibits and displays, historic spacecraft and memorabilia, memorials. two IMAX theatres, and the Shuttle Launch Experience.
There is only one ride at the Visitor Complex, the Shuttle Launch Experience. Rides terrify me so I approached this one with my usual anxiety. It was actually fun and super cool to experience the feeling of a shuttle launch. Not that I know what it would be like, but the ride does feel like what I imagine launching into space would be like!
I was super impressed with the organisation of the place. We jumped on the Behind the Gates bus tour and that took up a big chunk of our day. There were still people to shuttle around even though the crowds were smaller than usual after the launch the previous day. The bus system that transports visitors to each part of the NASA complex is super efficient. There's lots of cool stuff that visitors have access to at the various stops on the shuttle bus tour.
The top left hand photo above (and insert) shows the view of the rocket launching pad from the viewing platform that visitors have access to as part of the shuttle bus tour around the complex. The bottom right hand picture is of the contraption used to move the massive craft around. I was surprised at how much access the public has to parts of the NASA complex and even for me, not someone much into space travel, it was an unforgettable experience. Just standing in front of bits of rockets and other spacecraft and on the launching pad observation deck was a thrill.
Travel tip 🌏 I suggest allowing a whole day to explore the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex. It's about an hour out of Orlando and there is a lot of stuff to see and do if taking advantage of all the stops on the shuttle bus tour and having a good poke around the visitor centre.
We spent ages in the store once back at the main part of the Complex. I recall that all the merchandise was just as overwhelming as the Disney stuff I was to encounter later. Below is the surviving memento of our day at the Kennedy Space Center, a coin collection of key NASA missions. Nifty, right?
I also bought this book of the Center. I'm a bit of sucker for a book, and I still buy them as mementos of places I've visited, despite the availability of information on the Interwebs. The guidebook is a comprehensive explanation of the all the bits of the Center and I'm glad I have it to refer back to as a reminder of the incredible workings of the complex and all the awesome bits visitors are able to experience. Mind you, there has been a lot of developed at the site since our visit in 2008, so best to check the official website for information on all the cool things to do there. My book is probably wildly out of date now!
Shopping and more shopping
International Drive is the 18 kilometre tourist strip in Orlando with a similar vibe to the Las Vegas Strip. It is a complete sensory overload, filled with over fifty tourist attractions, restaurants, shops, and entertainment hubs. Totally not our thing at all! We spent the second day of our pre-conference weekend together wandering a section of the Drive. We discovered a massive strip mall and bought some new clothes. This was at a time when we didn't have a lot of the stores in Australia and the exchange rate was favourable. Ah, the good old days!
We live in a hot and humid part of Australia, but we'd come from winter and we found Orlando to be super hot. Taking a taxi to our starting point on International Drive seemed like a good idea after we wandered off from the hotel and got lost and tried unsuccessfully to ask for directions. It was such an odd thing, but we were struck by how hard it was to make local people understand what we were saying. I didn't recall this being a problem on our first trip to the US, to LA in 1996. I spoke to another Australian tourist whom I randomly encountered the next day. He'd had the same experience. Perhaps something to do with how fast Australians speak? I don't know, but it was weird to be speaking English to other English speakers and not be understood.
More shopping overload ensued on the first day I was on my own and the conference was underway. Randomly, I did a shopping tour! So unlike me! It was an easy thing to do on my own, though, and I'm not super into theme parks, so my options were limited. Hilariously, I was the only person on the tour! The 'tour' turned out to be a guy in a minivan dropping me at a an outlet mall - and I can't recall the name of it - then picking me up later to take me to The Florida Mall, the largest at the time in the state. It was all completely overwhelming and I hated myself for buying stuff I didn't really need. I was had it by the end of the day. The overstimulation of massive shopping centres will do that to me. The van driver was very friendly, though, and I enjoyed listening to him to talk about living in Orlando. He also told me that lots of British tourists have the shopping tour as part of their holiday packages but often don't turn up. What I remember most about him is that each time he picked me up he was eating something humongous and drinking a massive cup of soft drink. That's super-sized America for you!
The best thing about my shopping day was M&M's World. What a a sensory overload! I had never seen anything like it before. The place is an explosion of colour and chocolate and it feels more like an experience than just a store. Who knew you could make M&M's into just about anything! Way to do merchandising on a supercharged level.
M&M's World is a retail store that sells M&M's candy and merchandise. The first store was opened in 1997 on the Las Vegas Strip.
M&M's World Orlando opened in 2005 and closed in 2020. It reopened in 2021 in its new and current location at Disney Springs at the Walt Disney World Resort.
As to be expected, the merchandise isn't cheap and even the M&M's themselves are more expensive than in a standard store. It's all about the experience and the M&M's madness!
I've since been to the stores in London, New York, and Las Vegas. There are also stores in Shanghai (two, actually), at the massive Mall of America in Bloomington (Minnesota) and Berlin. The London store is the largest of them all, at 3250 square metres. I first visited it just after it opened in June 2011. Even if you don't like the candy and don't want to buy any of the merchandise, the stores are worth the experience for the completely over-to-the-top gear and the giant M&M characters.
Around the world at the EPCOT Center
I know I've said I'm not much into theme parks, but I did have five days to experience Orlando while W was at the conference. Opting for the EPCOT Center, I used the conference shuttle to get part of the way and then a Disney train for the rest, feeling rather chuffed with myself for navigating my way to the park. This was my first experience of getting myself around a different country on my own, the start of many such experiences to come.
The EPCOT Center was recommended to me by a work colleague. I remember mentioning to her that I was going to Orlando and looking for something other than Disneyland and Universal Studios to visit as I'd been to those places on our 1996 trip to LA.
The EPCOT Center is part of the Walt Disney World Resort, opening in 1982.
The name is an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and was born from Walt Disney's vision to celebrate innovation and culture.
Planning began for a purpose-built utopian future city in the 1960s. Plans were transformed into a theme park in the 1970s after Disney's death.
The park spans 123 hectares and is the eighth-most visited theme park in the world.
EPCOT is my kind of theme park. It has rides, but it's not really about that. As per Disney's vision, the park is designed to celebrate innovation and culture. It is divided into two parts - Future World and the World Showcase. The bridge that I am standing on in the bottom middle photo connects the two worlds. EPCOT's most enduring iconic landmark is the giant geodesic sphere seen in the below collection, housing the Spaceship Earth ride.
It was 2008 when I visited and between 2010 and 2024, the park was significantly expanded and new rides built. The Future World section now houses World Celebration, World Discovery and World Nature. My exploration started in Future World, back then nowhere near as full of attractions as it is today. That didn't bother me as rides aren't really my thing. I just went on the Spaceship Earth and Soarin' Around the World rides. The latter was easily my favourite even though I lined up for an hour for it. The ride is still there, in World Nature, but I notice it's now just Soarin' across America. Pfft. Anyway, at the time, the Soarin' ride seemed awesome to me. The ride is a 180-degree 25 metre IMAX digital projection dome that simulates a hand glider, but sitting upright. It's very un-scary, more like a tranquil glide around the world, soaring above spectacular scenery. Totally my jam.
The best part of EPCOT for me was the World Showcase. There's a showcase of eleven countries, all kind of joined up like a massive world village across a little bridge from Future World. The eleven nation pavilions are Canada, the United Kingdom, France. Morocco, Japan, the United States, Italy, Germany, China, Norway and Mexico. The nation pavilions all surround the World Showcase Lagoon, spanning a 1.9 km perimeter space around the artificial lake located in the centre of the showcase.
Each showcase has buildings and landmarks, shops and cafes, food places, and shops that are designed to recreate as close as possible the country they represent. The detail is quite impressive. I wandered around in the heat for most of the day and had a wonderful time in each pavillion. I had a quiche lunch in a French cafe in the Parisian showcase.
As is to be expected, there is a souvenir shop for each pavillion. It would be so easy to spend hundreds of dollars there. I decided on one print from the France pavilion shop of the construction of the Eiffel Tower. It really appealed to the history nerd in me.
I spent a bit of time in the France, United Kingdom, Norway, China and Moroccan pavilions, staying to watch the acrobatics show in front of the China pavilion and checking out the mini terracotta warriors display. I'd been to Morocco the previous year and I found myself feeling quite moved by the national pavilion, as it took me back to a country I'd fallen in love with. The exhibits are so well put together that it almost feels like being in the actual country!
That said, there are plenty of visual cues as reminders of a Disney theme park, even on the World Showcase side. It's definitely less Disney-ish than Disneyland itself, though.
Now, the visor in the below shot isn't particularly helpful in a hot place like where I live, but I loved the flag motif, so I purchased it as a memento of my day out at the EPCOT Center. It was a cool experience without going full monty Disney. I can't recall now how much I paid for a day pass, but whatever it was, it was worth it. Looking up the park to write this post, the tickets seem to range from $120-$160USD, becoming cheaper if you purchase multi-day passes. I imagine park hopper tickets that cover all four parks - EPCOT, Magic Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney's Hollywood Studios - might work out cheaper if Disney x 4 is your thing.
More Disney overload
Honestly, you kind of have to roll with the whole Disney vibe when in Orlando as there's not much else to do. One Disney theme park was enough for me but I did have a wander around Downtown Disney while I still had access to the conference free shuttle bus to get me there and back to the hotel. The experience added to my Disney overload and I'd definitely reached peak Disney by then.
Downtown Disney is an outdoor shopping, dining and entertainment complex. It first opened in 1975 as Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village. Since 2015 it has been known as Disney Springs.
The complex covers 49 hectares of space, around 2.5km from the four main Disney theme parks.
As it's outdoors, Downtown Disney has no entrance fee so it's a cheap way to inhale Disney without paying for a theme park experience.
The place has received a major overhaul since I was there in 2008. Back then, Downtown-Disney-now-Disney Springs was a cluster of shops and restaurants on a constructed lake with a replica paddle steamer. It's still that, just with loads more shops and things to do. I spent most of my time poking around in the massive Disney shop, a similar sensory overload to my M&M's World experience. I had lunch at the Earl of Sandwich, shown in the below collection. What a cool name for a café!
We went back in the evening after the conference activities finished for the day so that W could see the place. We checked out the Planet Hollywood restaurant, not for dinner but for a glimpse of one of the costumes from our favourite sci-fi film, The fifth element.
Orlando really is an assault on one's senses. I bought a shedload of things at the Disney store for the kids as they were the right age to appreciate the stuff, but I was also kind of mad at myself for buying into the whole merchandise thing.
For all my banging on about Disney overload, I do recognise the impressive nature of what Walt Disney created and the legacy that he has left. I found the below print in one of the many stores at the EPCOT Center and it really spoke to me. From a piece of dirt has spanned an empire and I can't help but admire the Disney vision.
Channeling my inner David Caruso...Airboat riding
I booked myself a last-minute spot on an airboat ride tour on our final day in Orlando, dead keen to do anything other than look at more Disney stuff. It was actually a really cool thing to do! You can book a a Twister Airboat ride at Lone Cabbage Fish Camp and travel there yourself. The ride is on the Saint Johns River, around 70 kilometres east of Orlando. I understand no booking is necessary for the 30-minute ride, costing $40USD at the time of writing. I did a small group tour as I had no way of getting there. We travelled in a mini van to and from Orlando.
The ride takes you through the grassy marsh of the Saint Johns River and Lake Poinsett. We sped along the river, channeling our inner David Caruso a la CSI Miami. When I say speed, I mean the boat went WAY faster than I was expecting. Apparently, the airboats hoot along at 73 kilometres per hour. That doesn't sound fast, but it certainly felt like it. You can see my hair in the above photos kind of plastered to my head after the ride. Fun, though! The best bit was seeing an alligator up close. We stopped to watch it get up and walk into the river. I had no idea that alligators walked like that. Awesome.
That's just about it for Orlando!
On our last evening, we caught a bus into the city centre as we wanted to see what was beyond the tourist strip and all the theme parks. Nothing much, I can report. We drove past endless low-cost housing once we'd left all the Disney and convention centre stuff behind. It was all rather depressing. That's the part the tourists don't see, the poverty away from Disney kitsch. It made me feel sad.
Later, we took the International Drive bus to an outlet mall for final shopping and dinner. The bus at the time was $1USD for unlimited travel up and down the Orlando version of the Las Vegas Strip. We missed the bus on the way back and decided to walk. It was a long way to the hotel but nice in the cool of the evening.
LA layover: Second visit to La-La Land
What a whirlwind week! We'd arrived the previous Friday and started the long journey back to Australia the following Saturday morning. The trip home included an 8-hour layover in LA. This was our second visit to LA, having spent a 3-day stopover in the city on our way to London way back in 1996. It felt less daunting this time as that earlier trip was our first foray into the world beyond Australia.
Layovers make me anxious as I worry about getting back in time for the next flight. I felt OK leaving the airport, though, as it was the two of us. We decided to take a local bus down to the Santa Monica Pier as it's only 27 kilometres from the airport. It was easy to catch the bus, although it took around an hour each way to make the journey. The hardest part is getting out of LAX! A friendly guy we sat next to on the bus told us where to get off.
It was early on a Saturday evening at the Pier and the place was crowded. It was kind of cool to go there after having seen the pier in so many films and TV shows. We wandered around for bit and had dinner in the one restaurant where we could get a table without a reservation, just soaking up the atmosphere of such an iconic place.
Santa Monica Pier sits at the foot of Colorado Avenue. It contains a small amusement park, concession stands, video arcades, an aquarium, a trapeze school, and restaurants.
The carousel is the original one from the 1920s, complete with hand-carved horses.
The pier is actually two adjoining structures, opening in 1909 and 1916.
The pier has been used as a filming location for decades, mostly from the 1950s. Google it and you'll find a massive list of film, television and video game credits.
We didn't have time to wander along the beach, but managed to take these cool shots from the pier. The beach is flat and there's a huge stretch of sand between the buildings and the ocean.
We hadn't done any prior research before we got to LA and jumping on the bus to Santa Monica was a spur of the moment thing. We spotted a Bubba Gump restaurant and thought we'd go there for dinner, but it was too crowded. We did have a poke around the shop and I bought the key chain in the below photo. I still use it to this day!
For more on my Santa Monica Pier wanderings, check out my 2016 post. You might also like to read about my 2012 visit to LA where I did actually eat in a Bubba Gump restaurant!
This was our first ever "work" trip and it was an odd feeling, to be in another country on someone else's dime. I struggled with it a bit even though we were paying for my expenses. And, I have to admit, Orlando is not somewhere I would choose to visit. I don't imagine I would have gone there if not for the work opportunity. The whole place feels like being in a giant theme park and it's a complete sensory overload. Everything is on such a grand scale and the consumerism on display is mind-blowing.
Orlando was essentially my first solo wandering. Getting myself around was a huge confidence boost. I was proud of myself for making the most of the days I had on my own.
This was our first time away from our kids. I felt both free and guilty. I am not sure which emotion was the strongest!
Being in Orlando seemed far away from where we had come from, but it was rather nice to feel that we were evolving in our journey through life. Our previous (and first) international experience had been 14 years earlier!
Orlando feels so manufactured and inauthentic, existing solely for Disney entertainment and conferences.
Rosen Shingle Creek is HUGE. It is completely self-contained, with convenience stores and loads of food options. Staying there felt surreal.
All the Disney merchandise was completely overwhelming. Capitalism at its (not) finest...
Standing on the hotel's golf course with a bunch of other guests watching a rocket launch above us is something I will never forget, even if space travel isn't my thing.
I had lots of iconic experiences on that trip, but a place built on theme parks, conventions and shopping isn't my vibe. I'm still grateful for the opportunity to experience Orlando. It helped me realise what I DO find most meaningful in my world wanderings.
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