Matt looking very calendar ready in our Airbnb pool. This place was great, you can see the Kennedy space center from that dock. Launches would have been amazing! But the pool's beauty is hiding its extreme polar temperature. We sadly barely swam in it it was so cold, even for the kids. But I and maybe Brock did at least jump in each day once for our daily "constitutional" we called it.
Speaking of Kennedy Space Center, let's go there! Here we are outside.
They recommend you start with the bus tour that takes you out to the shuttles and the Saturn V/Apollo center where you can see that big building (it apparently has its own clouds it's so tall, Matt says he went inside when he was a boy, but you can't anymore) and then ....
The Saturn V! Insane. HUGE. These pics don't do it justice.
A giant missile garden next door and yet the crocs are not afraid.
Artemis! The new NASA shuttle! This view is from the space center, but you can see it from our pool!
A super fun replica of the space station for the kids to explore.
You could stand below three stories and see them overhead!
Alice and I play around in the training center, it allowed visitors to use similar computer programs that astronauts use to practice maneuvering.
In the gift shop Alice picks out a "baby shuttle". This is now her absolute favorite toy and sits along side the ranks of Myrna!!
This place was just awesome. An indoor play "space" (ha!) that was in the theme of the planets.
Brock prancing on a solar flair.
Pure glamour radiating from that sun.
And did I mention they had a bar? That's right. Parents can get a drink and watch their kids frolic in space. There are no words.
AND the bar had interactive tables! Here is the air hockey option.
Complete with light up chairs.
All day, no nap, here she is feeling it. Thank goodness she has her cuddle shuttle.
Brock and Matt's perfect dock.
In line for ice cream with interactive plasma.
Since the line was insane to get a pic in front of the famous NASA globe, we went to the side and did it at the end. Look at those suckers over there all getting a better shot and stuff.
Back at the hotel house, Alice is caught with some age appropriate reading.
I seriously did not set this up.
A view from our dock. We went swimming here, in the Indian River. It was warm, crystal clear, calm, and had glorious soft sand at the bottom. But sadly, the nature part of swimming has been wigging Alice out lately so she did not join Brock and I on our many snail hunting expeditions.
Breakfast ritual.
The water temperature was truly terrifying.
And leave it to Matt to find a pretty great disc golf course close by. We went once as a fam, then Matt and Brock too went multiple times throughout the week.
And a croc! In the park. at the disc golf park. omg. This. Is. Flordia.
Dying Easter eggs while Matt works. We were there the week of Easter, so no time to do the eggs at home this year. Thank goodness the house had like 50 coffee cups.
The next day it's off to a gator farm!
Chicago is there on that sign somewhere. But the town we were in was named "Christmas"! Christmas Florida!
Little turtle friends.
Oohhhh I got a great shot of this wild lizard in full frill! Right before he attacked! Just kidding.
The creature encounter was low key in a good way, and the guy who lead it was awesome. You got to snuggle a gator! Who actually ISN'T a baby! Isn't that crazy? He is a mini old man, for reals, he was like the runt of the litter and is an adult. He was still cute.
Matt is treating him like he is a little baby. Alice is in the background thinking, "daddy, his is a mini old man, not a baby, don't patronize him".
Look at this charmer!
We learned so much about gators. Don't feed them. Don't wrestle them. I mean this is very sophisticated animal psychology here.
Why there was a photo op with a Spanish Conquistador along the nature walk I don't know but it was impossible to resist.
And then we were eaten.
And of course after seeing gators we had to go eat some at a local joint called the Lone Cabbage.
And the next day. The main main event. We totally surprised Brock with a day at Universal Studios to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! He didn't figure out what we were doing until we were almost at the attraction, which is buried deep in the park and you have to walk by everything else to get there. But he was blown away. Here we are just after entering Diagon Alley.
First stop is the Gringotts ride. They have it set up so well here, waiting in line is part of the ride and they have a completely immersible world along the way.
Here we are with the Goblin bankers. I'm not sure if Alice is shuddering at the goblins, or inflation.
about to get on the ride. Sooo much excitement!
Theme parks have come a long ways. In general we prefer other vacations to those that center around a theme park, but we all love Harry Potter and the time was ripe for a refresher on lines, chaos, overpriced schwag, and weather. BUT, here, they had the most amazing service. It was the "trade off" cue. So a family can wait in line together, then before you get on the ride you let them know and they take the person who can't ride and their guardian to another room (that is playing Harry Potter movies and you can still see the ride) and wait till the other people you were in line with get on. Then you trade!! So Brock actually got to ride twice, and Matt and I each got to go and Alice got to see the cool stuff in line and watch movies. Amazing.
Then, to the wand shop! High priority for Brock was to pick out a wand. There are interactive areas all over the Wizarding World that you can use your wand with to cast spells.
He chose Voldemort's wand! Without knowing at first, just cuz it looked the coolest.
Brock with his first Butter Beer. We opted to for the boring normal beer. My, I think that the Name that must not be said's wand is getting to him.
Brock wasn't too crazy about butter beer, but Alice LOVED it.
I've been there girl.
You could exchange your money for Golden Galleons, the tinder in the Wizarding World.
Matt and I in front of the Owlery.
We went into Honey Dukes, the famous candy store in the Harry Potter stories, and got the Jelly Slugs. Why this picture made it to my phone but not the giant Dragon blowing fire is beyond me.
They tasted as expected. But it just isn't a theme park day without a little wasted money, is it?
Some fun live performances, this was a puppet storytelling from Beedle the Bard, the one about the three brothers. We also watched the Giant Frog choir here.
and ice cream of course.
Then we hoped on the Hogwarts Express to take us to Hogsmead, the second part of Wizarding World across the park.
They made Hogsmead look all wintery. Which was sooooo ironic (although we were not complaining, going in April to Flordia was a great idea, a perfect 80 degrees).
Brock's wand got stepped on in line at the Hogwarts Express, so we went to a wand shop to get it fixed!
Back to casting spells. Outside Hogwarts Castle.
At this point in the day the crowds were just too much. We wanted badly to ride Hagrid's motor cycle ride, but there was no option to schedule a ride time, and the line never got below 2 and a half hours. Not worth it. So we took a break while stalking the line for the Forbidden Journey ride and exited the Wizarding World to head to Jurassic Park land. Which had a fantastic play area with water guns, a net maze and many elevated platforms. Great for the whole family.
And old scared of rides Alice ASKED to go on the Pteradon ride! Here is it, and here she is, about to be suspended fifty feet in the air on a hang glider sitting next to no one. I was so afraid she was going to bail, but we had waited in line for 45 minutes (our longest wait of the day I think) so I had all encouraging strategies at the ready, but she did it. She is holding my hand here, I did get to sit in back. She loved it, but was quite shocked by the experience.
Brock crawling in one of the misty caves under the play zone.
and back to the Wizarding World. Here is a challenge between the
Beauxbatons and Durmstrang houses. We ate lunch at the Leaky Cauldron (awesome meal actually!) and watched this show.
Then another break from the Wizarding World to head to Dr. Seuss land. We got Alice on another ride! She loves the Cat in the Hat (the second book) and there was a ride there dedicated to it that had a 5 minute wait! YES.
Dr. Seuss land also had a fabulous play area that both kids loved. Here they are getting VERY wet.
Very, very, very wet. I brought extra pants but no socks or shirt or shoes! So we coughed up 20 bucks for a souvenir tee shirt and I camped out under the Xlerator dryer in the bathroom until her shoes and socks were acceptable. Brock toughed it out though.
We got green eggs and ham for dinner!! And Who Hash! It was actually quite good, a big improvement from Jelly Slugs.
They even trained the trees here to grow in a Seussical way.
The Forbidden Journey ride alerted us that its line was down to 45 minutes so we heading back to Potter land.
The ride was amazing and is the only way to see Hogwarts from the inside -by waiting in line!These pictures are all "alive".
And luckily they had the trade off option so could all see Hogwarts together.
At night, there was a projection show on Hogwarts. It was quite cool with each house putting up their own segment. Here is a glimpse of the Slytherin show.
And we promised Alice we would leave time to ride Red Fish Blue fish before we left as our grand finale.
What an amazing, long, day. But sooo happy we were not going back the following day.
While Matt was at work the next day I took the kids back to Lone Cabbage as I saw they also offered Airboat rides.
Thank goodness they had ear protectors. Alice is going through an all noise is bad noise phase.
gator.
Well, we hadn't been to the beach yet, so we went to one! It was actually pretty cold at 65ish but we had fun wading and playing in the sand.
The airbnb guy was super nice an brought over a huge bag of sand toys that Alice was begging to use.
That night we ate at a great spot on the water and listened to their live band.
For our last day on Vacay Matt introduced us to the grand town of St. Augustine, one of the oldest cities in the U.S. -and it has a ton of awesome history including pirates.
Here we are at the old castle that was first occupied by the Spanish.
St. Augustine is now my favorite city in Florida, probably because it is not like Florida at all and reminds me of Europe with its very old world Spanish architecture. We ate a great little lunch spot called the Old Mill that was above an ...old mill.
Many of the fences were made of shells!
And then to the Pirate Museum! We learned so much there. Like why Pirates wear eye patches... to help vision adjustment when going in and out below deck!
Before heading to our dinner reservation, we spent forever getting to an actually very close and very cool playground. That was closed. But the tire swing was open!
Which was absolutely delicious! The dinner reservation, not the tire swing. You can see the castle from our view...
Oh wow. What a fun trip. It was so nice to go for more than a weekend, even if Matt had to work! Here is Brock signing the guest book before we go, saying goodbye to our beautiful view!
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