TravelwithMitsugirly

Walt Disney 2020

Day 8: ICON park: ferris wheels, saltwater, wax and swings 450' in the air!!! Yikes!

Today we were heading to ICON park. I read about it online right before our trip here and figured it would be a nice addition to our "off" day. After all, I had to keep the munchkin active and busy and she was officially on Christmas break as of Friday. No more homework or difficulty trying to connect to her zoom classes. Plus this was a sleep in day for us...I mean her basically if you wanna know the truth.

We had finally ran out of breakfast items to make and decided it was time to let someone else do the cooking. We looked for breakfast places close to us and I put in "Denny's" on the GPS because during all of our out-of-the-way traveling from place to place, I knew I had seen one. So, off we went.

Along the way we seen a Waffle House. I absolutely love Waffle House and their breakfast sausage bowls so we decided to stop there. Now I have to say, the place did not have any plastic barriers between the booths like we do back home, there was no social distancing...people could sit back to back or at the table right beside you, and the staff had their mask down under their chin about 90% of the time. One of the other things that irked me was the cook didn't even have a mask on AT ALL!

Now this was all discovered AFTER we had sat down and ordered and more people were coming in and they sat them down at tables beside us or behind us (which was weird to us because at our waffle house, you always seat yourself).

Our food was good as always, but I couldn't help but think of all the things I had seen in that place.

As we were finishing our plates I hear Sakari say "eeeewwww". Oh boy now what. She watched "Vic" the cook drop a waffle on the ground, pick it up with his gloved hand, throw it away and then pick up a clean dish to put food on (including touching toast with his hands) that he just cooked to give to the waitress to give to the customer. That's just gross! Change your gloves!!!! This place needs to be reported!

I couldn't wait to get out of there so off we went with the GPS telling us where to go.

When we first arrived at ICON we went inside and purchased our tickets. We did the pack where you ride the wheel and go to Sealife Aquarium and the wax museum. Might as well do it all while we are here and it's cheaper to buy the 3 events pass than buy separate.

Up first was The Wheel!

INFO:

*It goes up 400 feet over Orlando and you can see various attractions.

* Opened in 2015 after 3 years of construction

*Equipped with 64,000 color-changing LED's for light shows

*Deemed the brightest beacon in the Orlando sky

*Can see the Natural lakes, Walt Disney World, Central Florida Landmarks, Universal Orlando

Now before getting into the area for the Wheel, they took our temps and also did a metal detector on us. It was weird and I have no idea why. They didn't do that at any of the other attractions.

The wheel keeps moving and the hubby was really worried about me stepping onto a moving object but it does go slow and I didn't have a problem with it. Up we went.

Inside the capsule they had these monitors that you could touch and scroll over to see what everything was and where it was located. I could definitely tell that we were close to Sea World because we pass it on the way and you could see the roller coasters.

Close up of Sea World

Walt Disney World off in the distance

Disney

And then there's this thing. Sakari spotted it and immediately wanted to go on it. I gasp and said no way! You're not getting me on that thing and I don't think you should go on it either. They are swings for heavens sake! These went taller than we did on the Wheel. So scary looking and I'm not afraid of heights. They looked like they went pretty quick spinning as well. I just really didn't want to go on it and the hubby wasn't sure either.

It was a nice ride and lasted for quite some time.

We enjoyed ourselves and it was a nice way to

start the day...nice and calm, high up, but safe.

Enclosed! No feet dangling. Very slow. Yea, I

liked this ride.

It was time to get off and the hubby warned me

"No tricks! You take it slow! Hold my hand!" I was

able to get off the moving Wheel with no issues

but landing is always weird to me. Just like when

you come off an escalator.

"Can we go get on the swings??????" I hear coming from some direction I was trying to avoid.

"Ok, do you want to go to see the ocean or the people?" I said. Sakari's reply...."Swings". That wasn't one of the choices. Sea or People?

She decided on the ocean of course and we came off the Wheel and back into the building and turned left and we were at the Aquarium.

Sea life was basically that...the ocean and fish. There were a few fresh water displays but most was saltwater.

We stood in line and then gave them our tickets. When you buy the 3 pack, they give you receipts for each attraction. Then in we went down under into the ocean blue.