What's So Great About Florida Anyway?

As a family we love Florida but not just because of Walt Disney World. We love active holidays, not ones where we sit on a beach all day and do nothing.

The Monorail exited the Contemporary Resort as we drove a boat on Bay Lake


In Florida there is a never-ending list of things to do.

Walt Disney World is one of them, with four theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot) and two water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon) the place is huge. With rides, restaurants, and street entertainment to keep you happy, plus the "Magic" that everyone talks about, Walt Disney World is amazing.

But that is just one in a long list of things.

Celebration, Florida


Celebration, Florida is basically Disney Town - it's a quaint town with picturesque American style housing, perfect lawns, and cheerful people.


We took a trip to Celebration one afternoon during our holiday to have a look around. There were lots of restaurants and small shops with Disney merchandise in the windows. It was quite surreal strolling around and seeing the manicured lawns, and perfectly painted houses with large American Flags outside. Certainly not something we're used to seeing here in the UK. 

As we walked through the town centre (or center in America) we stumbled across a small shop and the kids were eager to go in.

The choice of flavours seemed endless
I thought they were just for show!


Le Macaron sells macarons, obviously, but also chocolates. Inside the shop was shiny and pristine, the macarons looked tasty and the chocolates... Well the chocolates didn't look real. Not only were they shiny but the decoration on top was so perfect I thought they were ornaments.

We took a while deciding but in the end we all tried some chocolate and macarons. LP didn't like the macarons, but the rest of us really enjoyed them. We all loved the chocolate, who wouldn't right? Some of the chocolates even have alcohol in them, I had a Lemon Vodka one and it was delicious.

Golf


The boys love miniature golf, we've been to Alton Towers Extraordinary Golf lots of times. Last time we visited Florida we played at Winter Summerland, another miniature golf course, two in fact. This time we wanted to try out both courses, and we did.


In our opinion the Winter course is far better than the Summer course.


We also tried out Fantasia Gardens and Fairways Miniature Golf, again there's two to choose from and we chose Fairways. This course is more like a shrunken version of regular golf with a few extra bumps and sand traps. 

We all enjoyed the golf, so much so that on our very last day LP wanted to play golf again instead of going to a water park.

LP loved it!

Rent a Boat


At the Deluxe Disney Hotels located next to Bay Lake (Grand Floridian, Polynesian, The Wilderness Lodge) you can rent boats and wave runners (jet skis). You can also go water skiing, but we didn't do that this time.


The Hubby, LP and BP all took out a wave runner (jet ski) and enjoyed half an hour on the water. They raced around, got splashed and had a fabulous time.

LP doing his best Leo Dicaprio impression!

You can also rent boats, there's different kinds, and towards the end of the holiday we rented a large boat. I can't remember the name of it but it was very big and very slow. I loved it, I didn't feel unsafe and happily sat snapping as many photos as I could get. We sailed around for about 30 minutes but were then told to take the boat back to the dock as weather was on it's way. 

The weather certainly was on it's way.

By the time we reached the dock the weather had caught up with us but we did have a great time renting the boat.



There's so much to write about I'm going to stop here and continue in another post. Check back soon for more fantastic things to do in Florida.

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