Orlando 40th Birthday Trip 2025 - PART 9
Staying at Universal, visiting Orlando's Theme Parks,
relaxing in the Water Parks and animal sightseeing!
Seaworld & the journey home
My last full day of this unforgettable trip was spent at Seaworld, which was easily accessible by the I-Ride Trolley Bus. This was another big highlight, and a perfect end to the trip, combining high-octane rides with adorable aquatic animals.
Some of the rides are themed around animals, and in the case of Manta, the named rays even appear in the queue line! This is a flying coaster, lying on your front experiencing positive and negative g’s as you swoop over water, and is a pretty intense but enjoyable ride. There is an amazing water ride called Infinity Falls that is high on the drench factor and lifts you up separately for one particular colossal drop. Journey to Atlantis is a classic Log Flume with excellent theming.
The star of the show is Mako, in the shark area, which is actually Orlando’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster, with an amazing 200ft opening drop and plenty of airtime moments. It is very smooth and a real crowd-pleaser, and certainly ranks highly on my list. I would also experience my first stand-up coaster with surfline (which luckily I wasn’t too tall for!) with a neat adjustable lock-in restraint and emulating riding a surfboard over the curved wave-like track - great fun!
There is such a great ride line up here - there’s also a ‘boomerang’ style coaster, and ones themed around dragons and penguins, but the lasting memory has to be seeing the Dolphin and Orca shows, as well as the sea turtles, stingrays and other animals i would see.
In the blink of an Orca’s eye, it was the end of another great day, and time to reflect on everything I had experienced. It had literally been 2 weeks in dreamland, and perfect escapism from everyday life, also including lots of relaxation time at the water parks and hotel pool.
It was surreal at times, challenging at others with the radically different carefree, impulsive US culture and outlook. A real eye-opener that will stay with me for many years.
This has been my mad couple of weeks in Orlando!
‘Til next time!
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