Thursday 10th December 2009

Up Up And Away!

[07:55 EST] Well, that was the idea anyway. We were up very early this morning 4:45-ish to be down to the balloon pick up point by 6am. It was still dark when we arrived at the pick up location (a nearby Ramada Hotel). As I was parking up, Linda got out to find the meeting spot. By the time I got there, I could see just Linda and one other guy. Were we to have the balloon to ourselves?? Sadly, no.

The pilot told us that unfortunately, due to weather conditions, he'd had to make a last minute decision not to fly this morning. It seems that the wind levels were just too high to make it a safe trip. Looking up at the clouds across the moon I could see what he was on about - they were speeding past, showing just how windy it was out there. We still have time to rebook the flight, so fingers crossed for better wind conditions later in the week.

As the balloon flight included breakfast, we'd both had nothing to eat, so we drove back in the dark to the villa and had something there. We are now getting ready to drive down to a place selling park tickets, then straight on to Universal Studios.

Weather forecast for today is for a 10' drop in temperature as a cold front passes over. That means it'll be, what, mid 60s. Brrrr!

[07:16 +1]

OK, OK - I'm late updating this blog. Truth is, the jet lag hit us both last night. After getting in from a late dinner, I set about picking some photos for the blog. However, some time later, I woke up with just a few photos picked. Just couldn't type straight after that. So, refreshed, here we go!

Above I mentioned that we went over to Universal - actually, we ended up in Disney's Hollywood Studios (MGM). As we were heading out of the villa complex we just had to stop and take this photo.

Not something you see every day - what I assume is a pack of Buzzards finishing off something on the grassland. They are pretty large!

MGM was pretty busy actually, even though it's only a Thursday and still ten days or so before the schools close for Christmas break. Hopefully this trend won't continue next week.

We were there pretty early and went straight over to the Toy Story Mania ride - this was the busiest ride when we were there last time - 80 minutes wait! This time it was just 50 minutes - and the park hadn't been open a hour! We collected Fastpaths and left for something more productive. We wandered over to Ride the Movies and the Backlot tour (which was a bit broken - no guest participation for some reason).

The weather turned a bit messy in the middle of the day - it had been overcast since dawn, but the rain came over at lunchtime. We spent lunch time together huddled under an umbrella drinking coffee.

We returned to Toy Story Mania to find the wait now 80 minutes long. Still the Fastpath reduced it to 10 minutes. Mind you, as soon as we started the ride, my side of the ride broke. So I sat there watching Linda have her fun. I catch the attendant's attention at the end and happily they put us back onto the ride without leaving. It's a great ride though!

We hopped from ride to show until the sun went down, and headed over to the City Streets area to see the lights turning on.

On the way back to the villa we stopped off at TGI for dinner - this gave Linda the chance to enjoy one of her favourite cocktails. The place was one of those sports bar combined places and had once of the biggest indoor TVs I've seen outside of a stadium. I'm guessing projector!