Friday 18th December 2009

[10:08 EST]

It was raining a little outside when we got up today. Watching the weather forecast on TV a local station they warned that Kissimmee would get a storm in four minutes! Sure enough, a few minutes later the tv stations disappeared and it tipped down for a good ten minutes. Now that's what I call accurate!We're off to the ICE show again this year. Trying to keep indoors as much as possible :)[07:10 +1 EST]So we headed off to the Gaylord Palms Hotel to see the ICE show. For those that do not know, this is a large area indoors at the hotel that has filled with ice sculptures all with a Christmas theme. The whole area is kept at a very chilly 9'F (that's -12'C) via the use of huge air conditioner units. To walk around there, you are supplied large blue parkas to keep you protected. Shame these parkas don't come with pockets though.

My fingers were frozen by the end - not helped by using the video and stills cameras all the time. Even Linda, who'd brought a scarf and glove set over especially for this, still had cold hands by the time we finished.We've been to this exhibition the last three times we have been here at Christmas and the items on show were more mature in that they had improved over last year. You can check out photos from 2008 here.We were in there for about a hour.By the time we emerged from the hotel, the rain has eased. Although it kept popping up over the remainder of the day, it never returned to the torrent that we'd seen in the morning.We stopped of for some last minute supplies at the store before heading back to the villa for some packing.

At just after 6pm we left to go to our cinema showing of Avatar. This was at the newly refurbished IMAX screen at Universal Citywalk. We had to stop off at a shop first to exchange an item bought earlier and sadly Linda was being served by one of the slowest cashiers on the planet. A simple exchange took almost 20 minutes! Thus by the time we arrived at the screen, there were no 2 seats empty next to each other that weren't 2 feet from the giant IMAX screen. We ended up sitting behind one another on the end of a row. Thankfully, although this was a 3D film, the 3D wasn't affected by our chair position.

As for the film, quite enjoyed it myself and didn't notice that it was almost 3 hours long. Visually stunning and the 3D was great, however District 9 still tops this as my favourite film of the year.

Back home in light rain again!