WALT DISNEY: Day 8 ICON PARK
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.
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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.
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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!
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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).
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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!
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I couldn't wait to get out of there so off we went with the GPS telling us where to go.Â
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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.Â
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Up first was The Wheel!
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INFO:Â
*It goes up 400 feet over Orlando and you can see various attractions.Â
* 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
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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.Â
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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.
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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. You can also see Sea World.
Walt Disney World was off in the distance
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.
 DisneyÂ
t 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.
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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.
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"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?
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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.
The first room was a bright blue round room with schools of fish swimming around and around us.
Then these guys came out to pose for a picture for us.Â
The red jelly fish room!
So many pretty fish and corals
I just love aquariums.
We came to a rather large tank with sharks and rays.
There was a VERY curious Grouper that would follow us back and forth and even posed for a few pictures for us.
The next area was pretty neat. It was the Axolotl area. I know a lot of people have never heard of an Axolotl and that included me too until Sakari was in Elementary and her librarian raised these both at home and in the library at her school. Every year she would give the kids who wanted any of them a few. Sakari was always bringing them home. They are supposed to be very easy to care for and great pets for the inexperienced person who wants to own an exotic pet. Well, in my opinion, they were very hard to take care for. Her first one died. I guess the temps had to be a certain coldness and since it was young, water could only be so many inches. Then feeding them...had to feed them on some tiny cup down in the water so they'd know where to get the food from and you had to buy blood worms from the pet store.
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The next round would be the teacher giving her eggs (they produce eggs over and over and over). Well her eggs never hatched despite doing everything she was told...they remained in their egg state for eternity.
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Next round a few months later produced some eggs THAT ACTUALLY HATCHED!!! It was amazing to see them. She managed to keep a few of them alive for awhile, but eventually they didn't make it. Gosh they were so small.
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Fast forward to the last and final try...The teacher hatched some eggs for her and then gave her a male and female baby. She managed to keep them alive for quite some time, but only 1 survived long term. I think we still had the girl up until last year and then I have no clue why she ended up dying. I think Sakari just wasn't feeding her on the right schedule anymore.
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Anyhow, I have NEVER seen these things anywhere. Not at a store, not at an aquarium place or anything. So, we were thrilled to see this display area dedicated just to them here. Although, they only had the black ones there. They do come in a variety of colors and we had a pink one.
This is what Sakari's Axolotl looked like....a little alien lizard
Moving on after quite some time spent in this area...
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Who's this strange fish?
Sea Horses!!
We came across this fish...we were like "Is that a nurse shark?" It sure looked like one but man was it FAT! Could it be pregnant? I didn't see any other nurse sharks in the tank and this one just sat on the bottom hardly moving most of the time and it had a really large grouper hanging out with it the entire time and the grouper didn't go very far from it.
Is it really supposed to be that big? Was it really a nurse shark? I was so confused!
This guy got himself in a pickle...
When we came to this area, Sakari immediately said, THIS is what I picture your tank being like if you ever do another saltwater tank....lol
And lastly, we came to the "petting" area. I was really shocked that they had this open. I know at our local zoo, they have it closed due to the Corona and I don't mean beer.
Accomplished two attractions so far. I hear this little voice "Can we go on the swings now?"
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Alrighty then, let's do the wax museum now and I headed toward Madame Tussauds museum.
Sakari kept looking up at the display and said "Is that really made out of wax? It looks so real!
We stood in line, gave them our receipts and headed in. We've been to a lot of these before (but this would be the first for Sakari since the last time we went she was very young. Anyone who has been to these knows that it's mostly movie stars made out of wax. So, I'm just going to show you most of them without comment unless there's something that I feel needs to be said. I mean it's a wax museum, they're made out of wax, they look real, end of story.
Except this caddy should be fired.
So many famous people...can you guess them all?
I swear I don't know how she does this! Yes, she was on her toes.
Eeeeh heee
Everyone always says that Sakari is going to grow up looking like Ariana Grande but if this wax figure is anything close to her actual size, then it's probably not going to happen because I swear her head was the size of an orange or darn near close to it. I kept looking at it over and over and kept commenting that there's no way her head is that small???? Of course it's hard to tell in the pictures but I'm telling you, it was SMALL. It didn't help that Sakari didn't have her hair down, heels on, skimpy outfit on or make up done. Then maybe she would look more like her in this picture.
We came to an area that you could interact with the figures and you had to figure out a "puzzle" type of thing to get something interesting to happen with the figures displays. If you could figure out the codes to certain things or look for the clues, lights would come on, sounds and everything. It was pretty cool. Then the helicopter you could actually lift up and become that superhuman you've always wanted to be growing up.