The Life of Ian and Lukas: Ian Does Orlando

OK, long overdue, here is the story of Ian's trip to Florida in February(courtesy of Grammie and Pa - hooray!). We returned with remarkably few photos, but fortunately Aunt Julie, who joined us for most of the week, did much better. Most of these pictures are hers (the downside being that she doesn't appear in many of them).

The plane trip down was delightfully uneventful, and Ian was well entertained by some sticker books (Usborne makes some great ones):

Other than spending time with family (in addition to Grammie, Pa, and Aunt Julie, Ian's great-aunt Faith and great-uncle Bob were staying nearby), there were two major destinations on this trip -- Seaworld and Universal Studios. We also took side trips to a great petting farm (me and Ian) and downtown Orlando (me, Doug, and Ian).

First, Universal. This is the first place we visited after Aunt Julie arrived. Doug, Ian, Julie, and I spent the day there. The adults (or as Ian has started to refer to, the "grown-ups" -- "are you a grown-up Mommy?"), wanted to see the new Harry Potter attraction, and there were also some good kids areas, particularly Seuss landing and the Curious George play area.

Seuss landing was fun for us Dr. Seuss fans (and Doug was extremely excited about the reference to his favorite character, the Vipper of Vipp!). Here are Ian and Aunt Julie waiting for the little up-close character show to begin. As is typical for his age, Ian is not a big fan of larger than life-sized characters, but he made it through the show okay, since they didn't insist on getting too close:

We did some nice rides, including an elevated railway over the whole Seuss area. Interestingly, the characters featured most often are not ones that Ian is very familiar with yet (Cat in the Hat, Thing1, Thing2, and the Grinch). But everything Seussian is recognizably so, and he seemed to get the connection to the Seuss landscapes in his books.

Ian wanted to go on a roller coaster, and we found one described as "family-friendly" listed in the Harry Potter section that he was tall enough for (I'll note that some of his same-aged friends have much fewer or no ride choices at such places - it helps to be tall!). So we made the trek to the new Harry Potter section, with the Hogwarts Express at the entrance (Ian was frustrated that we couldn't actually go on this train, which was just for show!):

And on to the roller coaster. The lines weren't bad at all the day we were at Universal, and this was the longest we waited in (~20 minutes -- still a long time for a 2-year-old). The coaster itself was quite short, but also quite fast. Not a kiddie coaster by any means. It was hard to tell if he liked it -- he said he didn't, but then he was excited about going "super-faster!", and wanted to go on another later in the day. He was definitely eager to tell his teachers and classmates about riding the roller coaster when he got back home. This is the first climb the Harry Potter coaster made:

Then we walked to the other half of the park to get to the Curious George play area, which was water-oriented and a lot of fun.

Silly Daddy!:

There was periodically a very enormous amount of water dropped off in this section!:

Ian had fun standing in front of this hydrant which continuously sprayed water at his level:

Fortunately we were prepared for water and had dry clothes to change him into. He was wondering in the Curious George area where the monkey was, and on our way back to meet Grammie and Pa we found him! As expected, Ian didn't want to get too close:

We met Grammie and Pa at the entrance in early afternoon, and they helpfully took Ian back to the hotel so Doug, Julie, and I could do some more Harry Potter on our own: