Well, that was really fun. We just got back tonight from a week in Florida.

The weather in Orlando was great. It was much like a really hot humid summer day in Auckland, so it was bearable enough for me, although I don't think I would like to go there in the middle of summer. I actually found it really good to be someplace again where there is moisture in the air (not to mention a landscape that includes other colours than brown, red, orange and beige.)

I went for a run and then a gym workout at the hotel gym, one of the first days we were there, and it surprised me how normal and easy it seemed. Even with the heat and humidity, I could
jog normally for around half an hour, yet in Denver even 30 seconds of running just about kills me. It was encouraging to know that I haven't really got THAT unfit in just a few months, it's only the altitude.

We bought a three-day pass to the two Universal theme parks, Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. We went to Islands the first day and it was the best theme park EVER. (Well, considering the only other ones I've been to are Disneyland and New Zealand's single and incredibly lame one.) It's aimed at adults more than kids, so all the rides are really good and you don't have to put up with all the horrible giant-cartoon-animal costumes walking around waving at you. Being a non-Disney park, it was also very pleasant not to have pictures of Mickey Mouse on absolutely freaking everything.

Islands of Adventure has lots of really great roller coasters. The best was Duelling Dragons, a double coaster where the two trains, Fire Dragon and Ice Dragon, set off at the same time and go through their tracks within a foot of each other at some points. It's an inverted coaster and a really good long ride too, with huge numbers of awesomely scary drops, loops, corkscrews and everything else you can imagine. We went on each dragon two or three times to figure out which was more h4rdc0re. Fire was definitely better, mostly for the very first drop, which is just indescribable. To finish off our last day at the two parks, I waited in the "front row" line for Fire Dragon for about half an hour. Being in the front row on that first drop was pretty much worth the cost of admission all by itself. The other really noteworthy rides at the park were the Incredible Hulk rollercoaster, and the Spiderman 3-D ride. Dr Doom's Fear Fall was OK too, but not really worth more than one ride like the others were.

The second day of the park pass, we went to Universal Studios, which sucked rocks. Bleh. Not recommended to anybody. No thrill rides, and the movie-studio stuff was at the level of "stand around watching a presentation on a screen and get sprayed with water when it rains." Oh yay. There are only one and a half cool things to do at Universal Studios. The Men In Black theme ride is one, where you ride around in a little train with laser tag guns and shoot cardboard aliens, getting a score at the end. The "half" was the Back to the Future ride; I have it on good authority that this is a cool ride, but investigation proves that everybody who thinks so was sitting in the FRONT seat of the damn car. When you sit in the back seat, the effect is identical to standing still for five minutes while somebody whales you in the back of the head with a frying pan every two seconds. It is the poorest-designed ride I ever heard of; 50% of riders leave the building moaning, staggering, and clutching the giant bruises where the back of their skull has been slammed repeatedly into a hard plastic roof. Within ten seconds of the ride beginning, it was impossible to even pay attention to what was going on -- considering the cost of admission, it doesn't seem like it would be all that much effort to just glue a couple of cheapo vinyl cushions onto the damn thing.

So the third day we went back to Islands of Adventure and did all the rollercoasters again.

One of the few bows to theme-park character traditions was that a bunch of people dressed as Marvel superheroes would periodically ride around the park on ATVs. Personally I can't think of many jobs that sound better than being paid to dress up like a comic book character and ride around on an ATV all day, occasionally waving at people. I mean, this is a line of work which the world basically restricts to theme park employees, the Queen, and the Pope.

We watched Captain America, sporting that classic Adam West "puffy padding" look, terrify numerous small children who clearly had no idea at all who he was, but whose parents wanted them to pose with him. I also speculated on how long it was going to take before the park changed the costumes of the X-Men to the movie versions; there was a general feeling among the younger viewers of "Hey, a black woman with white hair, and a guy with fake metal claws -- they'd look just like Storm and Wolverine from the X-Men if they weren't dressed like comic book superheroes."

So that was the holiday. I need to go on more rollercoasters. Rollercoasters = good.