Thursday 1 July 1993. It was the first time we had left British soil. The first time we set foot on an aeroplane. The first time the Memsahib and myself visited the colonies...
America in fact. Orlando, Florida to be precise. The heat hit us like a slap in the face with a furnace as we got off the plane. We were bussed to Dollar Rent-a-Car where we picked up a Mitsubishi - hey! same make as my camcorder! - and then we coped with turning left across six lanes of traffic after I was pleasantly surprised to find the usual combination in the right order of accelerator, brake, ah... no third pedal as it was an automatic! Given that it was a camcorder manufacturer it might well have had a ► to go, a ►► to go faster and a ■ to stop...
Anyway, the rest of that first day we were somewhat jet-lagged. In fact Fran stayed jet lagged for about 3 days but that was more to do with giving in to it and going to sleep whilst Gill and I rented videos to watch in the room and forced ourselves awake until it got close to bedtime.
Friday 2 July 1993. We spent some time the following morning meeting the Cosmos agent and buying tickets for some of the theme parks we intended to visit. We were warned that Disney World would be crowded on Sunday which was 4th of July holiday - trust us to go to America when they are celebrating their Independance from British rule! Later we motored down to Sea World and were delighted to be given entrance plus free tickets to return another day.
The first things we noticed were the cleanliness of the place - not a piece of litter to be seen and then the baby strollers, which were in the shape of dolphins. Babies sat in the dolphin's back whilst parents pushed by holding the tail flukes. Also there were fountains everywhere, spectacular in their design.
By mid afternoon we were walking around holding a sleepy Fran up but what a great place. The shark tunnels, the aquaria, loved it! I had a camcorder with me that we'd bought specially for the holiday and I'd never do that again as I "saw" almost the entire holiday on a 1.5 inch black and white screen... All the photos have come from Gill's camera which I occasionally borrowed. It was a Canon AV1 I think. Fran had an Olympus Trip camera which was crud in the light metering department and also had a noticeable light drop-off as you got to the edge of the photo. So even where they were well exposed in the centre, the edges of the photos came out dark!
Anyway, what I'm saying is that there won't be masses of photos from this trip, though there is a 6-hour video condensed to a 3-hour short version that we never watch these days as it's just far too long and I wish I'd just taken my normal camera... [Edit on 23 Dec 2022 - ...especially as only about 15 minutes of that 6-hour video still exists due to the pure naffness of VHS tape technology!]
We marvelled at the tropical plants, we marvelled at the constant music coming from loudspeakers hidden inside moulded plastic rocks (we called them singing rocks and constant background music in public places annoys the hell out of me now...) and we marvelled at the sheer size of a beaker of Coca-Cola, enough to take a photo of one, though sadly the same is all too common here nowadays and is swelling us all to the same bloated size as our American counterparts - that was something else we marvelled at...
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