Orlando: A rocket, an alligator, and Disney overload
- Andrea
- Oct 1, 2023
- 13 min read
Updated: Nov 29
A little bit of background 📝
Our Orlando wanderings happened by chance when my husband had a last minute opportunity to attend a week-long tech conference in the city in 2008, paid for by his company. He wanted me to go with him and, 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. 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, given us a second albeit brief experience of the city.
💭Reflections on what my experience meant to me and my most vivid and lasting impressions of Orlando are at the end of this post. |
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.
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. We arrived in Orlando tired and hungry and minus one of our bags, but fortunately it arrived arrived later that evening. As I write this post in 2023, the only experience I have had with delayed luggage was on that trip.
Our Orlando hotel and a rocket launch 🚀
The exhaustion of the flight was forgotten as 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. This was on a Friday in early June. The photo below doesn't look like much but it was still super cool to be on the ground for the launch even if we weren't out at the launch site.
The hotel where the conference was held was the Rosen Shingle Creek, a massive event centre with meeting rooms, shops, and restaurants and the aforementioned golf course. We'd never stayed anywhere as posh before and we felt a bit out of place! The hotel and surrounds were just as I imagined a Floridian place to be: beige tones, manicured lawns, and lots of obligatory palm trees. We were there at the start of summer, but it was hot and humid, very much like Brisbane.
The conference itself was really well-organised and a useful professional development opportunity for my husband. There was a free shuttle bus for conference guests to use over the first three days which made it easy for me to get around Orlando on my own. The conference and tourist area of Orlando is out of the city centre and it's massive. This area is spread out along International Drive. Orlando is a crazy kind of place, seemingly only in existence to feed the Disney obsession and cater for a gazillion conferences. Conference venues, shops and Disney is pretty much all you get if you hang out in the tourist areas that are based along and around International Drive.
Fly me to the moon 🌕
We had the weekend to do touristy things before the conference started, but my husband's number one priority was to visit the Visitor Complex at the Kennedy Space Center. There was one bonus to missing out on tickets to be out there for the launch (which of course you have to purchase months in advance) and that was the complex was fairly empty post-launch. We opted for a tour as the complex is around 90km from Orlando. It wasn't really a tour that we did, just transport out to the Kennedy Space Center Astronaut Hall of Fame and the NASA complex itself. Just as well, as the tour guide was kind of annoying (to our Australian understated vibe anyway).
Travel tip 🌏 My suggestion is to hire a car for the day to experience NASA 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. |
I'm not much into the whole space travel thing, but the Hall of Fame was interesting, with 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.
The Visitor Complex is really impressive, even if you're not into space travel. It's something you should definitely do if you're in Orlando, even if a palette cleanser from all the theme park madness. The complex is integrated into the working operations at NASA. The whole thing is massive, comprising the the touristy bit and a museum of sorts plus the various working sites across the Kennedy Space Center to which visitors have access.
There is only one ride at the Visitor Complex, a flight simulator. 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 you are launching into space!
I was super impressed with the organisation of activities at the Visitor Centre. There were still loads of people to shuttle around even though the crowds were smaller than usual, post-launch. The bus system that transports visitors to each part of the NASA complex is efficient and 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 who's super 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 you take advantage of all the stops on the shuttle bus tour and have a good poke around the visitor centre. |
We spent ages poking around the store in the Visitor Centre and 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?
Sunday shopping 🛍️
Sunday was spent wandering along International Drive after we finally figured out how to get there in a taxi. I was struck by how hard it was to make locals understand what we were saying on this our second trip to the US (the first being to LA in 1996). I spoke to another Australian tourist the next day who said the same thing. Perhaps something to do with how fast Australians speak? I don't know, but we asked for directions a few times and it was weird to be speaking English to other English speakers and not be understood. Anyway, eventually we found 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 good. Ah, the good old days!
More shopping 👜
I was on my own after the weekend as the conference was underway. On Monday I did a shopping tour, something that is totally unlike me! It was an easy thing to do on my own, though. 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 (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 total shopping overload for me and 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 super 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. I'd forgotten how super-sized things are in America.
The best thing about my shopping day was M&Ms World. I've since been to the M&Ms Worlds in London, New York, and Las Vegas, My first M&Ms experience was a sensory overload. Who knew you could make M&Ms into just about anything! Way to do merchandising on a supercharged level.
The EPCOT Centre 🌏
I opted to go to the EPCOT Centre on Tuesday, using the conference shuttle to get part of the way and then a Disney park train for the rest. The EPCOT Centre was recommended to me by a 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. EPCOT is my kind of theme park: not many rides, but an amazing world showcase to explore. The park is divided into something that resembles a smaller scale Disneyland 'worlds of rides' and the World Showcase section.
I mostly wandered around the Future World section of the rides part of the park as rides aren't really my thing. I just went on the Spaceship Earth and Soarin' Around the World rides, the latter easily my favourite even though I lined up for an hour for it. This was 2008 and 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 11 countries, all kind of joined up like a massive world village across a little bridge from the rides part of the park. Each showcase has buildings and structures, 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 'world'. I had a quiche lunch in the Parisian showcase.
As you can imagine, there is a souvenir shop for each 'world' in the showcase. You could spend hundreds of dollars at the Centre! I decided on one print from the France showcase 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 showcases, staying to watch the acrobatics show in front of the China pavilion and checking out the mini terracotta warriors display. You almost feel like you're actually in the country!
That said, there are plenty of visual cues to remind you that you're in a Disney theme park, even on the World Showcase side. It's definitely less Disney-ish than Disneyland itself, though.
Now, this visor 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 Centre.
More Disney overload 🎉
The next day I explored Downtown Disney while I had access to the conference free shuttle bus to get me there and back to the hotel, adding to my Disney overload. Downtown Disney is a cluster of shops and restaurants on a constructed lake with a replica paddle steamer. I poked around for ages in the massive Disney shop and had lunch at the Earl of Sandwich (bottom right hand shot). What a cool name for a café!
We went back in the evening after the conference activities finished for the day and 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 your senses. So much Disney stuff! I bought a shedload of things 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 Centre 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.
Air boat riding🐊
Saving the best for last, I booked myself a last-minute spot on an airboat ride tour on our final day in Orlando. It was actually a really cool thing to do! The tour was a small group thing. We travelled in a mini van from Orlando to a swampy kind of place outside of the city. There we had the chance to channel our inner David Caruso a la CSI Miami and speed along the river. When I say speed, I mean the boat went WAY faster than I was expecting. You can see my hair in the photos below 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.
Final wanderings🌏
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 $1 for unlimited travel up what is effectively 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🎬
The trip home starting on Saturday 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.
We decided to take a local bus down to the Santa Monica Pier as it's relatively close to the airport. It was easy to catch the bus to and from the airport, and a friendly guy we sat next to on the bus told us where to get off. The hardest part is getting out of LAX!
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.
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 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.
I have to admit, Orlando is not somewhere I would choose to visit and I don't imagine I would have gone there if not for the work opportunity. The whole place feels like you're 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 wanderings. Getting myself around on my own was a huge confidence boost. I was proud of myself for making the most of those few days.
This was our first time away from our kids. I felt both free and guilty. I am not sure which emotion was the strongest!
Orlando was to be the first of many personal and professional travel experiences I have been fortunate enough to have. 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.
Orlando feels so manufactured and inauthentic, like it exists solely for Disney entertainment and conferences.
Rosen Shingle Creek was 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.
I had lots of iconic experiences on that trip, but a place built on theme parks and shopping isn't my vibe. I'm still grateful for the opportunity to experience Orlando and to help me realise what I DO find most meaningful in my world wanderings.
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