2008 in Orlando part 1

Still sticking with the look back at past Orlando trips. After 2005, the next time I went to Orlando was in March 2008, again with the Irish dance school except this time we danced in Universal Citywalk, Universal's Hard Rock Cafe, Disney's Magic Kingdom and Kennedy Space Centre. With the dancers we always stayed at the Holiday Inn across from Universal Studios and so our first park day was Universal Studios because it wasn't to far away after a day of travelling. This year in Universal Studios we noticed even more new characters from the time we got to the entrance gates:

It was spring break time so the park was decorated for Mardi Gras

We also found a really cool Van Helsing exhibit:

 On St. Patrick's day that year we danced in Universal's Citywalk and were going to be dancing in the Hard Rock cafe that night so between times we didn't want to go to far away from the hotel so we hung out in Universals Islands of Adventure:

                              

There's not much in that park if you're not a big thrill seeker but we hadn't been before so we thought we'd check it out. On the other hand one of my favourite parks to visit outside of Disney is Seaworld. They had a new whale and dolphin show that year along with a show featuring the Sesame Street characters:

We also went back to Busch gardens on this trip for the first time since 1995. It was really funny in Busch gardens as there was another Irish dancing show and my mum and I went along to see it. As we were waiting we were talking to some Americans and mum was telling them how I was over with a dance school and we would be dancing in Disney the following weekend. They asked if we knew anyone in this show and both mum and myself were like no no there's loads of Irish dance shows so you wouldn't particularly know each other whatever. Then the show started and out dances one of the girls from my music class in college! Small World much!!!

After St. Patrick's day, Kennedy Space centre was our next dancing day and we were the first Irish dance school ever to perform there which was really cool:

One of my mum's favourite things to do and I suppose I don't complain much going along is to shop for the cheap designer clothes. Since we were there at Easter time the Easter bunny was in the shopping centre:

 continued on the next blog