Disney World Dazzles--Part 2

After viewing the Asia section of Animal Kingdom, next we visited Africa....We took a safari tour, which is a really fun way to see the typical animals you would see at the zoo in a not-so-typical way...You board a "jeep" type vehicle like this.....

The driver carries on a pre-recorded "conversation" with a ranger who is "investigating poachers" on the African range. It's sort of like a pretend "Let's Catch the Poachers and Save the Animals" trip. Meanwhile, the driver provides little tidbits about the animals you see as you drive around the "savanna"....The animals can be very up close and personal, like right next to the vehicle! You could have stuck your foot out and touched this guy with it.

And of course, you see the usual giraffes, gazelles, and kudu that you would see at the zoo, but it's such a bigger, more beautiful environment for these animals, that it seems more natural and humane to see them in Disney's park than at a zoo in a confined area.....This ugly fella could have easily charged our vehicle, so the driver didn't hang around long for us to take a picture of him....He said that rhinos have poor eyesight and a bad temper. Sounds like my ex...haha.....

We saw several groupings of ostrich eggs in different places as we made our way around on our jeep tour. Ever the skeptic, Sparky wondered if they were real eggs..They were according to the guide...Well, how come no bird was sitting on them? she wondered. She didn't get an answer to that....We had to move on.....We saw some more exotic animals that we hadn't seen in zoos...They were cool!

Then, we decided to go to Hollywood Studios for our next stop....We took a tour that was supposed to include special effects and how they do it in the movies...After watching an "actor" get a wave of water through a wall and window, a REAL torrential downpour took place and ended the special effects tour early. We sat outside under an umbrellaed bench and waited it out. On to a movie tour on a tram through movie history with animated "actors" and "actresses". The technology of the moving characters, their faces and mouths, seemed a little dated, even for Disney. There's a little live action with "Mugsy" and the guide on our tram, a fake shoot out, and lots of visual action and imagery to hold most people's attention, including Sparky's. That was one of our longer waits to get to see the tour, about 30 minute wait. Disney does a great job with keeping wait times down with their Fast Pass (?). You get your ticket ahead of time with a pre-stamped return time and come back to the ride later.

By this time we were getting hungry, so we headed to the Hollywood and Vine Restaurant for an all-you-can-eat buffet for 29.99. Yes, that was expensive, but it was the best buffet we had ever tasted. Chicken with Asiago cheese sauce, prime rib, pastrami rubbed pork loin with pickled apples, maple mustard glazed salmon, vegetable casseroles, tons of other choices and a terrific dessert center. The food was really very tasty, perfectly prepared, and not your typical buffet food. Well worth the money, in our humble opinion, so we pigged out!

It was getting to be early evening....our last stop of the day, Magic Kingdom. Eldo said that Sparky really needs to see the evening parade on Main Street down the street to the castle...We're going to save the magic for tomorrow's blog, there's so much to say and show.....See you at the castle!

Disney World Dazzles Sparky

I know I'm probably in the minority, but I've never been to Disney World in my life until yesterday. We just decided that since we're seven miles from the park, and it's one of Eldy's favorite destinations (he thinks he's been about ten times or more) that we would go. We didn't pick Lake Magic RV park for that reason, we just have been checking out our Florida Max Pass parks as we start to make our way out of Florida. But it's just too tempting not to go and is an added bonus that Lake Magic is so close....Let's go see the magic!

Sparky was thinking this was a place for little kids, for families with children and that she wouldn't be too interested because she's not into amusement park rides. She couldn't have been more wrong. It really was a magical place, and it's going to take two days to tell you and show you how magical it was for her....You could write books on Disney World, but Sparky is just going to share her impressions with what she saw without trying to give a complete tourist breakdown on what's available! It would take WEEKS to cover what's there for a visitor. Hopefully, you'll see a little different perspective here...So here we go.......

Where do I start? It's one of the most beautifully designed amusement parks I have ever seen. The landscaping, the flowers, the architecture in the different sections, the layout, the cleanliness of the park and the facilities, how easy it was to get around, the food, the easy transportation to get from one part to another, everything was truly amazing! The cost to get in for an adult was 85.00 per person. We purchased a "Hopper Pass" for each one of us for 35.00. That enabled us to visit as many different parks within Disney World as we wanted to for one day. They have lots of different combinations of Hopper passes and admissions, depending on how many days you wanted to explore the park. We had just one day, but we did a LOT and ended up visiting three sections of the park. We rode a few rides, but no roller coaster. (Let it be said I was REALLY disappointed that Sparky would not ride the Killaminjaro roller coaster ride with me, says E.) No way, no how am I ever getting on a roller coaster. You could offer me a hundred bucks and I STILL won't get on one!

Let's start with Animal Kingdom, because that was the first part of Disney World we visited....We walked into the park, and the first thing Sparky saw was roseate spoonbills. Sparky went nuts with the camera! (242 photos later......) Here are some of my favorite shots from the Animal Kingdom visit.

Here's another spoonbill....

The settings in which you see the animals are very very natural and realistically designed with their real habitats in mind. It's not like a zoo where there are glass walls and fences everywhere. There are a lot of natural barriers in place that separate you from the animals, yet keep everyone safe from each other! "Asia" was wonderful, the atmosphere was amazing....the settings in which the animals were seen was beautiful....We lots of exotic animals we can't remember the names of that you don't normally see in a zoo....We both felt that it's wonderful to come to Disney when you are young, but it's even more wonderful to come as an adult to see these kinds of things. You have a whole new appreciation for the park and Disney's vision as an adult....


Seeing the beautiful settings in "Asia" felt like being in another world or country so different from your own...

We saw other beautiful, incredible birds flying around above us and walking at our feet in the "Asia" section of Animal Kingdom...Like this Mandarin duck.....

These little beautiful lemon yellow birds were flying above us and busily working inside their nests upside down! The holes for the nests are at the bottom! They are called Taveta Golden Weavers.

You walk past the Tree of Life....manmade but so real looking....

And then you start to see the intricate carvings that make up the tree....

We went for a short river ride and got soaked, we watched a 3D movie with special effects "It's Tough to be a Bug" and endured screaming young children who didn't understand that the bugs weren't REALLY crawling under their seat or flying into their faces. A lot of kids were scared on that movie! We really enjoyed the Asia section of the park. It's wonderful to be a kid for a day....







These guys didn't get to go on the water ride probably. But they were having a ball in the fountain!

A street scene from the "Asia" park......

An unusual animal seen in the Asia exhibit...Or was it Africa? It's all starting to blend together....

OH! I almost forgot the flamingoes...these have always been in captivity here at the park, but what a privilege to get to see them! They are not native to Florida, you know...

Here's one preening himself....

The Disney guide/host standing nearby had an ipad, and he played a mating call of a flamingo for us...All of a sudden...heads came up.....

She's HERE??????

And then one of them did a quick mating feather flourish!  Most of them looked up to see what the excitement was about.  Cool!

See you tomorrow.....More Disney magic!

M-M-M-M, M & M's

Sparky had a brochure with a DISCOUNT for the M & M store in Orlando, at the Florida Mall. For our first little trip out of the park at Lake Magic, Sparky convinced Eldo to take a trip to the Florida Mall to see it. Not only was there an M & M store there, there were tons of other stores that we like to window shop, like Brookstone, and the Apple Store....

It was about a 30 minute drive to the mall, and what a mall it was. Two hundred sixty stores and 30 restaurants, that wasn't enough to get Sparky's heart a beatin', but the fact that it had an M & M store did! We passed a huge outlet mall on International Blvd. off I-4 on our way to the mall in Orlando, but didn't stop. Sometimes those outlet stores just don't have the bargains you would hope for, we're not sure about the Orlando one. Our main objective was the M & M store...(AHEM! That was Sparky's main objective, I'm just the driver and along for the ride, clarifies Eldy.) It was a cool store, he has to admit!

There was every possible color of M & M's and it boggled Sparky's mind. (Doesn't take much to boggle her mind, laughs E.) Look at the size of the shopping bag they give you to put your choices in! And all colors and flavors sell for $12.99 a pound. Ouch!  But the M & M colors, combinations and merchandise were so cool! There was a $3,000 Savarovski crystal and lambskin leather M & M jacket, custom made if you wanted it, among the hundreds of tee shirts with your favorite M & M character, AND the Nascar M & M race car, too.

Hard not to buy with the way the store was organized....gives a whole new name to the meaning, "eye candy"....Yuck, yuck!

Sparky managed to assemble quite the stash....which should last all of about two weeks, nah, just kidding...probably a lot longer...Unless a certain someone raids her stash! Not to worry, Eldy is not into chocolate like Sparky is, the stash will probably remain safe! The colors were wonderful...Sparky's favorite are the raspberry chocolate ones in the lower right corner....They had all different shades of pink, purple, blues, greens and reds...Hard to choose!

On to Brookstone....Brookstone is another cool store worth looking inside, even if you don't buy anything. They have all kinds of products, some useful, some quirky, some ridiculous, like this cereal bowl product. You put the milk in the big section, the cereal in the small section, then pull small, bite-size amounts of cereal down into the milk. No time for it to get soggy! I'll bet this inventor started out on Sharks, that TV show where you pitch your invention to a panel and they give you advice and startup money. Whaddya wanna bet?

Sparky LOVES Brookstone for all the chair, neck, and back massagers that they have on the floor that you can try out....If this chair had been empty when we walked in the store, that would have been Sparky laying in it instead of this guy! For about $3,000 and plenty of room in your house, it's yours!

Or, for a whole lot less money, you can get one of these....

Eldy and Sparky loved this chair massage cushion so much, we bought one! Now, we'll just have to take turns in it!  It turns out that the cushion roller options don't operate correctly when placed in the captains' chairs--the driver and passenger chairs are too soft, but if you put it in a regular, harder backed dining chair type, it works much better with the different Shiatsu effects and massage rollers.

We'll see you tomorrow, we don't know where...Right now, Sparky is going to get an in-house massage....in the chair!

Thousand Trails Orlando Park

As one of our exploratory trips around the Orlando area, we stopped to check out the Thousand Trails park there. Reviews can be found at rvparkreviews.com, but we'll just add our two cents worth. It's a great park....huge....Over 800 sites. We got a day pass and drove throughout the park. It was extremely brown and dried out. They are really needing some rain. There was a nice clubhouse, a campstore in the clubhouse, and an on site little restaurant.

one of the TT pools

We liked the layout of the park, there's some shade available, but not a lot. It looked clean and the sites looked reasonably spaced. There are two pools, one for the adults, one for the kiddies....The only bad thing about the pools is there is ZERO shade, no umbrellas, no protection from the sun. Sparky would not use the pool much because of that, but she DOES love the lakes and the boats. Heck, she could even put her kayak in and paddle around a bit.

Many of the sites are 30 amp only, but there were plenty of 50 amp sites available as well...NO cable TV. There are two non-swimming lakes because of alligators. You can use one of the park's rowboats to go out and row around the lake if you want to. Sparky LOVES rowing a boat!

They have weekly travelogues at that park, and other activities as well...Some of our blogging friends have stayed there and really loved it. I hope they will report in and add some extra comments about this park. We did notice that the sites are somewhat typical for older Thousand Trails parks...uneven and not in very good shape. There is a newer section, section "I", but even those sites were not concrete, they were gravel and had significant sloping sides on many of them.

The coolest thing we saw today, was a pair of sandhill cranes with their "baby", who looks more like a teenager.

If you've been following our blog, you've seen the sandhill crane photos of tiny little babies with their parents, in our blog from just a few weeks ago. Here, you can see the babies as they have gotten a little older.

I have no idea how old this sandhill crane is with its parents, but it's getting closer to an adult age, with some more mature feathers coming in in the color range of the adult.

He or she, even ruffled the feathers as I got a little closer...The parents and the little one really were very comfortable and not threatened by my presence. I talked to them while I took my photos, and hopefully, I sounded non-threatening and soothing to them....It was a thrill for me to see this more mature baby sandhill crane, after seeing the really little ones back in Port St. Lucie a few weeks ago.....You can see the graying feathers coming in signifying more maturity in this young bird. I LOVE the cranes! I've yet to see the mating dance, but there's a blog coming up with a flamingo mating dance...Stay tuned for the Disney blog on Animal Kingdom!

We would definitely stay at this Thousand Trails park in the future...See you later!

Lake Magic Encore RV Park

After a harrowing day yesterday figuring out what to do about my bank card that had been hacked, we settled in to the Encore Lake Magic Park in Clermont, FL. An update on that is, Wells Fargo did an awesome job helping me sort things out. I've already been reimbursed for the fraudulent charges even though they still have to dispute the charges with the merchants. Yay!

Lake Magic is close to Disney World, within 7 miles, and we are thinking about going there, MAYBE, because Sparky has never been to Disney World. We picked up some brochures from the office like we usually do, to read about the area. We are here for just three nights and two days, so we're gonna have to move quickly if we do tour Disney World, AND we're going to have to agree on which park section to see. Eldo has been to Disney World many times, so he is really not too picky about which one he sees. It's just that it's kind of expensive, but we've gotten some tips about where to get discount tickets and it's NOT from the street shops leading to Disney, that advertise with gigantic signs, shouting, "DISCOUNT TICKETS HERE!"  Stay tuned, we might be going.....

Our site at Lake Magic #233

Lake Magic RV park is a very nice park....level, spacious concrete sites, but very little shade...It is surrounded by pretty apartment/vacation rentals. It has two pools, laundry, shuffleboard, pickleball and a small lake...our site, #233, a pull through, has no concrete patio and the ants (fire ants? wonders E. nervously) are everywhere. The sign at the office says to let them know if you are concerned and they will come and spray. Sparky got bit just the other day and YES, WE WANT YOU TO COME AND SPRAY! Man, those fire ant bites are PAINFUL! Those little boogers are tiny, tiny, but they come with a BIG bite and leave a nasty, pus filled sore the next day. UGH! Here is another view of the park....

We love the pool, it's very pretty and it has shaded areas for sitting...

Our first full day here...Eldy woke up and went outside to enjoy the early morning sunrise. He saw about TEN hot air balloons come floating by. Knowing that Sparky loves nature photos and events photos, he came inside to the bedroom and whispered, "Sparky, are you awake?" Sparky was fast asleep so SHE MISSED A GREAT PHOTO OPPORTUNITY! Rats! Eldy did not get any photos of the balloons, he tried with the camera phone, but just missed the bunch. Sparky caught an errant balloon that seemed to be part of the group, but was having difficulty staying in the air. Next time, Eldo, YELL for Sparky to come out and what's going on! I guess these balloon outfitters are regulars around the area, and they have been known to land in the park! Bless his heart, he knew she needed her sleep with a bad shoulder that had been keeping her up at night for the past couple of nights. But, first night on the sleep number bed and she was out like a light!

The park has a little laundry room with a beautiful shady porch just outside it for waiting for your laundry to get done...nice touch!

Free cable TV, 30-50 amp at all sites, you pay for Wi-fi (3.00 a day Tengo Internet services), seasonal cottages available to rent for 60.00 a day, or 1850 monthly (ouch!) Four hundred seventy-one full hookup sites, seventy pull thrus, 45 foot maximum length RV. There is pickleball and tennis....There's a boat launch and a lake--Lake Davenport, at the back of the park, it's big enough to kayak in! This park is part of the Florida Max Pass that we obtained at the Tampa RV show, so we are staying for FREE!  We are only going to stay three days, because that's the maximum stay allowed to move to the next Thousand Trails/Encore park without having to stay out a week of the system. We're kind of checking out the Thousand Trails parks this year in preparation for next. Since the Tampa RV show was in January, we've got till the end of next January to use our Thousand Trails zone memberships and the Florida Max Pass.  This park charges 35.00 a day at this time of year (April) and 180.00 a week, if you don't have the Max Pass. Great rates, but this is April.... We really like the park and highly recommend it!

That's the latest on the park for now.....We're heading over to check out the Thousand Trails park in Orlando later today, and the Florida Mall where there is an M & M store...(Sparky's in trouble already, she LOVES peanut M & M's. The last time we visited an M & M store in Las Vegas, Sparky had a stash that lasted for months! explains E.)  See you there tomorrow!

Sparky's Been Hacked!

Things were going along pretty normally today...we packed up and headed over to Camping World to get our new bed put in....Since we were going to be there for a few hours, Sparky pulled out her beach chair and sat outside under the shade of a big ole tree, and knitted for awhile...

Until the phone call came.....An automated call from Wells Fargo Fraud department..they wanted me to verify the last five transactions on my debit card. I've had to do this before when we move around more than normal. After the first time my card was declined because of traveling patterns, I made an effort to notify Wells every few weeks about where we were, and had done it recently, so I was a little surprised to get this call. The first transaction was made in California...my mind started reeling. Did I buy anything on line where the company was based in California? I didn't think so...The next two transactions were also from California....Now, I started to panic. The transactions were for more than several hundred dollars each. After punching a few more buttons affirming these transactions were not made by me, I was put in touch with a live representative from the fraud department. We started digging, and apparently, someone got my debit card number and started a charging spree. Luckily, for me, I don't keep a whole lot in the checking account at one time, and so after three tries of buying stuff, the card got declined due to insufficient funds. My checking account had been emptied. By this time, I was pretty upset.  I filed a fraud claim with the bank, and then the hassles started with how to proceed from there. Wells offers several options for protecting your numbers and accounts. Without going into those details, it took me an hour and a half of talking to bank representatives. To complicate things, when you are in a different state than where your accounts originate from, that affects what you can do if someone starts using your bank card or hacks into your account.

Wells Fargo explained that your debit card number is not the same number as your checking account so only the debit card number was compromised. But heck, they might as well have compromised my checking account as well, as it got emptied faster than a speeding bullet even though Wells called me the very next day when the charges went through.  Wells had no idea how they got my debit card number. It could have been an online purchase (highly possible), a gas station, a restaurant employee. I just saw a TV show the other night where they showed a waitress with a little device that many home party dealers use to record credit card sales. I had one myself when I sold Tastefully Simple but never used it. It seemed to risky to me and not very secure to be carrying this little card reader/swiper around in my pocket in order to record credit card numbers to be entered for sales credit later. The show showed the waitress running the card thru the little reader as she walked back to her service station and stowing the card reader in her pocket. What's to prevent anybody from purchasing these little readers for about a hundred bucks and scamming people on a regular basis? I try to watch my card wherever it goes, and stand there and wait when running the card inside a gas station if I don't run it at the pump, I try to look at the card readers at the pumps to make sure they haven't been tampered with, but I'm still clueless how they got my number and for now, so is the bank. I'm supposed to get my money back in a couple of weeks, I sure hope so! Debit cards are not handled the same as credit cards, that I know. We shall see......

There are apparently "rings" of scammers working in the Tampa area who obtain numbers one way or another, and then sell the numbers to people who make fake debit cards. That was just one scenario the banker explained to me. Seems like I had just heard about central and south Florida being one of the top areas of the country for credit/debit card fraud in the country. And now, I'm a victim.....

Back to the Camping World Store....Our bed was done....The great thing was, it was an easy install. Tiffin already has the outlet in place for sleep number beds AND a compartment for the motor. We didn't lose any storage space under the bed! The tubes are at the head of the bed, and everything worked out great and very neatly, and the Camping World tech guy did a great job. One good thing that happened today.....Yay!

We're at Lake Magic, an Encore park that honors the Florida Max Pass, so, our stay is FREE! We'll preview the park for you tomorrow....See you then!

Bye Bye Sarasota and Ocean Blues

We're kind of sad to be leaving Sun 'n' Fun...It WAS really, really fun! We heard more great entertainment poolside in two and a half weeks than we have heard all year. The singing, guitar and vocals that were provided were, for the most part, top notch entertainment. Sparky exercised almost daily swimming laps at the fabulous indoor pool....

Eldo  was on bikini patrol at the outdoor pool--lucky for him it was spring break spread out for about three weeks this month! We rode our bikes all over the park daily.....You can ride miles inside the park and not have to worry about going outside and getting into traffic or riding those scary bike lanes that are right smack in the middle of vehicular traffic. We played a little pickleball, whetting our appetite for more games in the future and more involvement in the sport. We each have tricky things we have to watch--Eldo has knees that complain now and then, Sparky has an Achilles heel that acts up without proper stretching and care. Sparky is starting to have to admit that you can injure yourself VERY easily without hardly doing anything as she gets older. She is currently nursing a very painful shoulder after tugging and pulling on a very heavy kayak bag in the car out of her reach. Must have pulled a muscle or something...it really hurts.

We found a great little farmstand right down the road, less than half a mile where they have fresh squeezed orange juice, grapefruit juice and grapefruits and loads of other fruits and veggies for very reasonable prices. We stocked up and froze some fresh squeezed o.j. for later down the road.....

Sparky found a great place to get a haircut, very reasonably priced...at the Supercuts studio, on Lockridge Road in Sarasota. Then, for a special treat, she got a deluxe facial at the spa inside the park from Melanie Russin, grew up in South Bend, IN, Sparky's old hometown!...They offer massages and all kinds of facials and skin care there. What a small world it is, even though we travel all over the country!

The park has cleared out, and we're clearing out, too, first thing in the morning...But first, one more trip to Ocean Blues, where we got our mojo on, our last night in town. David Smash, a terrific young guitarist, has got a regular gig on Monday nights there. The kid is a whiz guitarist, he is something else! We were hoping to see Steve Arvey play with David, Steve has kind of taken David under his wing and is mentoring him, we understand. Steve was off recording a new song he wrote to be played at the Tampa Bay Rays ball game on the Jumbotron the next night. Steve helped David get some backup players for a band tonight. The guys had never played with David, so it was interesting to see them all interact and communicate with each other, having never practiced before tonight. They did a fantastic job and once again, David rocked Ocean Blues. We ate pizza there tonight at the Club, and it was terrific! What a great place....If you are in Sarasota, check out the entertainment at Ocean Blues and have some great food while you are at it!

It's time to say goodbye to everything here that we love so much--the terrific beaches, Woody's River Roo bar and grill, the great music and activities at Sun 'n' Fun and the great blues bar Ocean Blues in downtown Sarasota. We're coming back next December to spend more time here....It's a whole lotta fun!