Photo TR: Andrew's Adventures in the South- Fall Semester

I've been popping up here and there in other people's TR's recently, so I finally decided to stop being lazy and do some of my own. As some of you know, I moved from Clemson, South Carolina to Florida last May and I will be going to The University of Florida starting in January, so this means I now live less than two hours from Orlando! I've been going to quite a few parks since summer ended and the crowds are pretty manageable, but I'm just going to post some random segments so I don't bore you with the repetition of seeing me go to Universal over and over again. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Friday, 9/19/2008- Part One: Sea World Orlando

Today Bryan (Not For Sale) and I decided to hit up $5 Friday at Cypress Gardens so we could whore some credits for cheap! The plan was that I was going to go meet up with Bryan in Orlando and then we were going to drive over to Cypress Gardens together. However, Bryan lives on a gated campus and he accidentally gave me his MOM'S phone number so that I could call him to get through the front gates. So I was kind of driving around outside of Bryan's campus without a way to (1) get in or (2) reach him, so I just ended up just going to Sea World and hanging out until I could figure out a way to break into the UCF Rosen College fortress.

...and so part one begins!

So long story short I finally got a hold of Bryan and the UCF Rosen security decided to lift their ban on me. Screw Sea World, now we can actually go to a good park!!!

$5 Friday at Cypress Gardens coming up soon!

OMG!!! You saw it here first folks, aerial construction picks of the new Contemporary wing!

I see you Journey...

A good portion of Kraken is built in tunnels and trenches towards the end of the ride.

Kraken navigating its cobra roll...

Kraken's first half from the air...

After Journey I decided to take a solo ride on the observation tower.

...awkward.

I also want to give Journey to Atlantis a nomination for having the coolest exit area of any coaster I've been on. They have an aquarium in the floor!!

I decided to take a spin on Journey to Atlantis. I have to admit that along with being a coaster enthusiast, I also have a thing for themed flumes, so Journey is like heaven for me!

The dolphin area here gets mad crowded during the day, but it was pretty calm this early in the morning.

When PETA takes over the park this better be the first thing to go!

These things look viscous, better stay back!

"Most badass animal ever"

I'm not going to name names, but the next few photos go out to any manatee fanatics that may be on the boards...

Oh, so Sea World has some marine life and stuff, who knew?

Hey Disney, how's this for a living character initiative?

I always saw pictures of these "Kraken eggs", but before I visited the park I didn't realize that they actually have live eels inside of them! Pretty creepy....

I love how Sea World landscaped the back half of the ride, it really just makes the finale that much better.

This ride is all kinds of awesome, it makes me eager to see how Manta will turn out!

Yeah, I had to throw in a "through the trees" shot...

This is an acceptable amount of Kraken queue!

What else is a coaster enthusiast to do when he's hanging out at Sea World by himself?

I guess if I have to wait on somebody I can think of a few worse places to do it...

In case you didn't read any of the text above, I'm hanging out at Sea World until I can figure out a way to get into Bryan's gated fortress!

Friday, 9/19/2008- Part 2: Cypress Gardens

As a Floridian, Cypress Gardens has always been a place that I have been curious about for some time. As a kid I remember seeing signs for the park before it went out of business and was strictly a garden attraction with some shows. Ever since Cypress Gardens reopened as an amusement park I've been wanting to go check it out, but I honestly never thought the price of admission was paying to go whore out a park. That problem was solved this past September when the park ran a "$5 Friday" promotion for every Friday of the month.

That's all! See ya later Cypress Gardens.

Magic Kingdom + Toy Story Mania coming up later...

We made our way back to the front of the park through the garden section which was pretty nice. The flying island wasn't running which was kind of a bummer as it's one the park's old attractions.

Now we were stuck at the back of the park with all of our credits done. Do you think this is the exit?

We actually got some pretty intense spinning on this thing!

I'm not sure if I'm taking a picture of the spinning mouse or of this awkward empty concrete spot, but lets just say that I was taking a picture of the last coaster we had to conquer.

Bryan went and did their drop tower.

I didn't because I hate drop towers with a passion.

These things look so cool, it's a shame they will scar so many children at such a young age...

Cypress Gardens is nice enough to give you two laps with each ride! Hooray for double the pain!

The Jr. Hang n' Bang is the the coaster that's farthest in the back.

I always assumed this sign was at the front of the park, but it turns out it's actually at the back.

Curious placement Cypress Gardens...

Hell yeah we are! We paid our five dollars and we want our credits!

*Sigh*

Are we really going to be that dirty?

The coaster sort of roams around with a series of little hills and wide turns

Knoebels fans take note: straight up buzzbar with no seat divider or seat belt.

The next ride we did was The Triple Hurricane, which was definitely the most unique coaster in the park. It's a family sized wooden coaster that was really fun.

In my opinion it's the best Vekoma junior coaster in Florida, although it obviously lacks the theming that the other ones have.

A lift hill shot for those of you dirty tire fanatics...

Individual lapbars on a roller skater?

The next ride you come up on is the park's roller skater

After we conquered The Starliner, we made our way down the path towards the rest of the coasters.

The turnaround was kind of awkward, but as a whole I think the ride was pretty solid. It certainly is different from the other wood coasters in Florida.

It's a fun coaster that has some decent pops of airtime, but at the same time it's pretty much your standard old wooden coaster.

The first ride you come up on is The Starliner which is Cypress Garden's biggest coaster.

We headed to the section of the park that had all of the coasters, it was pretty much a long path that stretched all the way back to the water park.

Life goal: make it rain at a theme park by paying for admission with $1 bills.

(check)

Inside the dome are the ticket counters. Even though they were offering admission for $5 there weren't many people around!

Here's the park entrance, it's a sprawling brick plaza with a big awkward white dome at the end.

After a while of driving to the middle of nowhere we arrived at our destination.

So our trip to Cypress Gardens started in the parking lot of Bryan's dorm. The lucky bastard can see Dueling Dragons and Dr. Doom from his campus!

Friday, 9/19/08- Part 3: Magic Kingdom + Toy Story Mania

This part of the day sort of just happened on a whim. We were pretty much leaving Cypress Gardens and then thought it would be fun to go hang out at Disney for a little bit. There's not really much to it, so here are some photos....

Hollywood Studios gave me the chance to practice my night shot skills in preparation for HHN. No more parks today, thanks for reading!

Bye Pixar! Thank you for being awesome!

The ride was really cool, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It's actually pretty addicting, I want to go back and play again!

Aha! I found him! Now give me my 50 Bzillion dollars!

I thought this sign was cool

The queue was pretty much empty compared to the zoo we saw earlier in the day, but we still had to wait about 15 minutes

The queue had looked really awesome, the toy theming was pulled off really well

We managed to hop in line for Toy Story Mania right before the park closed

With the magic of Disney we were back at Hollywood Studios with next to no crowds

Another attempt at a monorail shot to please the PMW party...

We left the park because Mickey's Not-So-Scary was starting, so we went back to Hollywood Studios to hop on Toy Story Mania before the park closed

I got dominated on Buzz Lightyear, turns out I'm really bad at this ride...

Taking a ride on the People Mover makes you realize how much of an epic fail the High in the Sky Trolley at IOA is.

If Disney insists on having a low capacity attraction up here, I think they should install Knoebel's flyers to create the most awesomely frightening death trap ever.

The line was unusually short so we took a "spin" on the Astro-Orbiter. I haven't done this ride in ages...

Fun fact: Space Mountain is still awesome

I demand Indy!

This ride is dead to me.

For some reason I had never taken the time to do Philharmagic. It turned out to be a really fun attraction!

The wait was really long though

I really liked the renovated Haunted Mansion, the new scenes were pretty cool and so were the updated special effects

Any day that I can ride both Journey to Atlantis and Splash Mountain is a good day for me.

The wait wasn't very long and we got to see the million dollar bunny today!

I've been out of Florida for the past two years, so I'm in need of a spin on my favorite ride on property.

The park was all decked out for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween.

(and yes I know this photo is crooked)

Scott, I don't know if this counts as monorail porn, but I'm doing my best here...

This is what a nerd looks like when you pass a construction site....

Now this is more like it! After a short bus ride from the studios we hopped on the monorail and headed to The Magic Kingdom.

I hadn't done Toy Story Mania yet, but upon seeing an 85 minute wait sign we just decided to leave Hollywood Studios all together in favor of a hopefully less crowded Disney park.

We decided to go to Hollywood Studios, which must have been the only crowded park in Orlando that day. Luckily we came into the park right as the parade was going on, so it was next to impossible to navigate to the back of the park

Hmm...

Lets just randomly go to Disney!

Nice TR

My sisters one and only big coaster to this point is CG's Roller Skater...and she hated it. I paid her a digital camera to ride it (the camera is at the moment broken).

On TH, did you find out about the final curve the hard way? When I rode, I was on the inside of the curve until I started going through it and I was instanstly thrown to the outside. The next5 times I rode, I learned my lesson. I wasn't a credit whore the day I was there adn did everything in 2 hours and left.

Cool TR, love the shots of Kraken. I was wondering about the flamingo's at Sea World though, they just have them walking around randomly?

^They have a couple of handlers that walk around with them, it's sort of Sea World's version of having characters walk around the park.

^^ Yeah, it's almost like they were going to run two trains on it and there was going to be a brake run before that turn. I don't know if that's the case, but there's that straight segment before the turn that looks like it was meant for brakes and the turn isn't banked at all. Aside from that part the rest of the ride was enjoyable.

Great TR.

Florida is such an awesome place. I hardly can wait for our next visit which we have scheduled for April 2010.