KatelynMarch 13, 2020 – March 19, 2020
Where We Stayed: Ft. Myers Beach House
Trip Highlights:
- Disney World’s Magic Kingdom
- Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure
- Relaxing by the beach
Favorite Restaurants:
To Orlando we go! We started off our Florida vacation in Orlando spending a few day at our favorite theme parks. Day one of the trip was Disney’s Magic Kingdom! As anyone who knows me probably knows, I’m a bit of a theme park nut, so we of course started the day bright and early at rope drop right as the park opened.
We spent the day exploring the park and taking full advantage of the rides and delicious snacks. After the fireworks show, we took a Disney bus over to Disney Springs to eat at Raglan Road. Our main reason for stopping here? Gluten free onion rings! And not just any gluten free onion rings – gluten free onion rings that were literally the size of my face! See the picture below for proof.
After a very exhausting and long day, we grabbed an Uber back to our hotel to rest up for another exciting theme park day.
Our second day brought us to Universal Studios! As huge Harry Potter fans, this was an obvious stop for the two of us. This was also Sam’s first trip to the Diagon Alley side of the park, so we spent plenty of time admiring the dragon and various shops and shows on that side of the park.
One of the strangest things that happened on that day had to be when we had made our way over to Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure later in the day. We were hanging out near the stage, waiting to see if one of the shows, when they made an announcement that the show had been cancelled that afternoon. As the crowd started to disperse, a custodian told a group of us that were standing there that we should stick around. Apparently they cancelled the show because a celebrity was going to be filming something nearby in a couple minutes.
Sure enough, a minute later a person with a camera came out and team set up a small stage nearby. A couple minutes later, Mario Lopez and a small crew emerged from behind the scenes and filmed a clip with Hogwarts Castle in the background. Neither of are particularly big Mario Lopez fans, but it was cool to see the entire thing unfold.
After indulging a few treats from their Mardi Gras festival (giant spiral potato, anyone?) and taking my traditional photo with Bruce the Shark, we watched the Hogwarts castle light show, and called it a night.
Following our Universal day we packed up our hotel room, rented a car, and drove ourselves down to Fort Myers Beach for the remainder of our trip. We were lucky enough to have use of Sam’s family’s beach condo for a couple of days.
Our first full day in Fort Myers Beach was the following day, during which we took full advantage of the relaxed “island time” atmosphere by sleeping in and then catching the free shuttle that runs on the island down to The Whale for lunch.
For our afternoon, we booked an Eco boat tour that took us out into the Gulf in search of wildlife, dolphins in particular! We did see a couple dolphins, including the one I managed to take a picture of that popped up several times pretty close to our boat.
Our second full day was relatively uneventful – which is how we intended it to be! We spent the day relaxing in the pool, going out to lunch (surprisingly at a Packer bar, which we weren’t expecting to find in Florida!) and enjoying a nice dinner at Charley’s Boat House Grill.
Overall, this trip was the perfect mix of excitement and relaxation!
