22nd April 2010, 06:33
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| Senior - BHPian  | Travelogue: Florida Drive (Cocoa beach & Disney) Trip to Florida (Disney World, Cocoa beach) Route: Greenville (SC) – Columbia – Summerville – Savannah – Brunswick – Jacksonville – Orlando (454 miles) Members: ROYs & MISHRAs in Dodge Grand Caravan V6 Well, it has been really long long time that I went for any drive. One fine day in mid march, myself and Mishraji (Ashok Mishra, my project mate popularly known as Mishraji) decide to take the family somewhere. It has been just work and work for 7-8 months now. Immediately the first thing we did is to block our Outlook calendars for mid April so that no one can keep any meetings (naughty idea but it worked). Families were excited just by the idea that we are finally planning to go somewhere for a drive. We decided for the Disney world as both of us has 2+ yr olds and they will enjoy the most. In my area, which is a small county, getting a minivan, as rent is a challenge more so during summer weekends so the first thing I did was to call Enterprise and booked a minivan for an entire week. After some online research booked a hotel through hotwire near Magic Kingdom. Later realized it was not at all required. We can search the hotels nearby, call them individually and strike a deal with them. Although we planned to leave on 14th April noon, I went to Enterprise to collect the van on 12th morning. Although I wanted a Honda Odyssey but they had none and the next best they offered was a 3.3L V6 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan. The car was good with 40K in ODO and new Yokohama AVID 225/65/16 tyres. Looking at them, I thought it will fun cornering the beast. The interiors were indeed huge and it had about 13 bottle holders. Then I went to Sams Club and load the car with water bottles, chips, cookies, juices, chocolates etc. Day1: Apr 14, 2010 (Wednesday): Our initial plan was to start by 3PM but soon it went for toss when Mishraji was dragged into an urgent meeting at 4-5PM. Still I went back home from office at lunch and packed up and mentally geared up for a long night drive ahead as we are badly behind schedule. One after the other I loaded all the stuffs into the car. Its boot took in a huge stroller, 2 big bags, huges food packets, kid toys etc etc. I had booked a videocam (Sony HDR CX150) for this trip three weeks back it didn’t arrive yet but as luck might be, Fedex boy delivered it at 2PM (we lost all hope of videos by then), immediately I had just enough time to charge the battery and were good to go by the time we started. By 5 PM I decide to pickup bhabhiji (Mishraji’s wife) and Anu (mishraji’s daughter) from their flat and slowly crawled to office and wait for Mishraji to come out. Finally Mishraji came out at 6:10PM, changed his attire there (Ok, I mean in the office bathroom). Excited families before the start  Finally we start the long journey by 6:30PM. Within a few miles we were on I-385 and start to zoom around. Initially I was driving in the 70-80mph range. The Dodge van was handling exceptionally well in the curves with full load but I tested till 105mph and it was fine. After 35miles on I-385, which merges into I-26 before Columbia. By the time we are crossing Columbia it was already dark. Somewhere before Charleston we hit I-95 (East coast interstate) and headed towards south along the coast. Rest Area: After 2.5 hours, I see the trip meter reading 210miles. Not bad, as it was past 9PM, I decided to stop by at a rest area to complete the dinner. I really liked the huge rest areas in US specially truck parkings. We stopped at the car parking area near restrooms. As it was slightly colder outside, we decide have the dinner in the car. We had some mouthwatering dishes prepared by the ladies. The menu included Puri, Alo parathas, bhindi-fry, Gobi-matar, Rice, Achar, Payesh (Rice-pudding which my wife prepared for my birthday a day before). It was a real leisure dinner and took us about an hour there. Pics @Rest Area    I start from there at 10:15PM. It was pitch dark that time and another 350miles to go. I had to cross the jungles at Savannah at midnight. After the heavy meal who wants to stay awake (except for me ofcourse). Within an hour all of them we snoring in the car. Now it was just me, the music and the beautiful I-95 for company. Luckily there was only some trucks and interstate was not so crowded. So I pumped the pedal. The speed was hovering in the 85-95mph range while crossing Savannah and the surrounding jungles. The state of Georgia went in a whisker and I was entering Florida. By 1AM I had covered 405miles where I stop at an exit. I fill the car’s tank and empty my tank at a Shell bunk. I was feeling a bit tired now so took 5-10min break and had some Gatorades with some kajus. The ladies too woke up and freshen themselves. It was 1:15AM when I start again and within no time I was crossing the city of Jacksonville. It was amazing in the night with tall buildings lighted up and multi-lit flyovers. After Jacksonville, we cross the famous Daytona beach and leave I-95 to I-4W for Orlando. I-95 goes further south to Miami and Keywest. We hit Orlando town by 3AM and it took 30miles to cross Orlando bypass. It was very well lit and can be easily identified as a tourism town by the number of hooardings of hotels / resort along the way. After crossing Orlando we reached Kissimmee where we had our hotel booked. Finally we checked into Howard Johnson Inn by 3:40AM. Tripmeter reads 545 miles (~872km). This is my best nonstop (no halt) drive, last one being the 800km (Tirupati to Vizag in 2006). Well I had one thing to do, hit the bed so ate a few remaining puri and parathas and went to bed. Day2: Apr 15, 2010 (Thursday): A phone call from Mishraji woke me. I realized it was 9AM. We decided to cover the beach today rather than the Disney world as we wanted to cover it after a good night sleep. After tossing between Clearwater beach (in west @Gulf of Mexico) and Cocoa beach (East @Atlantic) we finally decided to do Cocoa beach. Some pics before starting   By 11:30AM we start from hotel and head towards Cocoa beach that is about 60miles from there. The drive was fabulous and we did some nice videos on the way. We also crossed couple of cable stayed bridges to enter Cocoa beach. Before hitting the beach we decided to finish our lunch. We entered Subway and had some veggie delights and buffalo chickens on footlongs. A stuffed footlong is always very filling. We had our stomachs full before we entered Cocoa beach. The smell reminded me of Pondicherry though but the beach was clean and less crowded. The baby was given a nice bath on the sea (first in her life) and we had a galla time there. We also strolled a bit of distance along the coast. The kids also kept themselves by playing in the sand. Before we realize anything it was already 5PM. Pics @Cocoa beach, Florida    We headed back to the car slowly and slowly. A beautiful day in the beach came to an end. Only thing we missed was chicken tandoori @ the cocoa beach. Some More @Cocoa      By 6:30PM we were back to the hotel. We noticed many places selling used Disney tickets. On enquiry we found a good deal on magic Kingdom tickets (a good $25 less than the counter price) and quickly bought 4 of them for the next day. For dinner, we decided to try out the nearest Indian restaurant called “Passage to India”. We had some nice naan, dal fry, matter paneer and very chilli south Indian fried rice. After the sumptuous food, we head back to hotel by 10PM and crashed to bed. Can’t imagine a better start at Orlando than sitting and watching the waves of Atlantic at the beautiful Cocoa beach. to be continued... |
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22nd April 2010, 06:38
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| Team-BHP Support   | |
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22nd April 2010, 06:39
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| Senior - BHPian  | |
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22nd April 2010, 07:11
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| Senior - BHPian  | Quote:
I did not go to the amusement parks. i went to a car show there. http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/intern...ml#post1844311 I finished my round of theme park visits earlier this month. | |
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22nd April 2010, 07:55
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| Senior - BHPian | Quote:
No I didnt come through Gainesville (it is on I-75 from Atlanta). I came through I-95 and then took a detour to I-4 from Daytona beach. Quote:
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How abt a mini TBHP meet @ATL? Abhi | |||
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22nd April 2010, 08:17
| #6 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: TSTN
Posts: 6,236
Thanked: 9,637 Times
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22nd April 2010, 08:18
| #7 | |
| Senior - BHPian  | abhi nice to see you back.Its been long since we have had a TL from your end. On a lighter note, aren't you missing your regular attire.The KURTA !! Well a few oldies out here surely miss it  .Quote:
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22nd April 2010, 09:25
| #8 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
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22nd April 2010, 10:42
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| BHPian | Quote:
Understood that you had to do an overnight drive on this route, but the I-95 route is pretty picturesque around Charleston and Savannah. May be you have done it during day time on your return trip. Quote:
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Hooked on to the thread. | ||||
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22nd April 2010, 15:44
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| Senior - BHPian | Quote:
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thats cool. I am gonna be in ATL next week myself. Oh by the way, i live 2 hrs south of ATL. we can definitely meet. We'll discuss over PM's | ||
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31st May 2010, 17:29
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| Senior - BHPian | |
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31st May 2010, 18:46
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| BHPian  | We are still awaiting for the same abhi .... roll it on ... |
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31st May 2010, 20:30
| #13 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| You better roll it on quickly akroy. Else I have over 3000 photos of florida at my end. |
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1st June 2010, 05:07
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| Senior - BHPian | Day3 Travelogue: Magic Kingdom Day3: Apr 16, 2010 (Friday): Trip to Magic Kingdom This day we woke up fresh at 6:30AM after a sound sleep. This was really refreshing specially for me as I couldn’t catch much of sleep for the last 2 days. We had a nice breakfast with bread, butter and the haldiram snacks alongwith tea in our hotel room itself and start to Magic Kingdom by 9:30AM. Walt Disney World Resort: The Walt Disney world resort has some theme parks like Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom etc. We chose Magic Kingdom and Studios as part of our 2 day Disney trip. It took us about 10min from the Kissimmee hotel to reach the parking area of Magic Kingdom. The parking area was big and we thought we should be walking to the main entrance from there as typically that’s what we have seen so far. Travel to the entrance: As we reached the huge parking lot. We opened the stroller and quickly starting walking to a place where we had to board a road-train. With huge excitement, none of us really cared of the parking lot number. I was in that impression that it will be the only parking lot as it looked huge. Anyway, I would realize my mistake soon later in the day. We took the road-train to a place where you have choice to reach the entrance gate either by water (through Ferry) or by train (through Monorail). We decide to take the ferry now and return by train. It took the unique ferry ride and reached the finally reached the gate. I now begin to wonder, if to reach the entrance from the car-park, I had to take a car and then a ferry (or train), how big the park be? Parking Lot  Group geared up to catch the road-train  Waiting for Ferry  Ferry Coming  Pic from Ferry  We enter the park and at the first floor of the entrance I can see a circular toy train (known as Walt Disney Railroad) passing across all the theme parks inside. Magic Kingdom entrance: Once I enter the kingdom we are into a different world altogether. It was as if the Disney country is at your neighbourhood. We were in the Main St, USA as they named it there. One corner we see Donald duck and another corner there is Mickey. All the characters were live and entertaining the audience. The kids were mad and so were us as well. We started to walk through the Main Street and towards Cindarella Castle where the characters were doing some road shows. Main Gate (with Disney RailRoad Station at the top)  Walt Disney  Main St.  Mickey Show @Cinderella Castle   After spending some time, Myself and Mishraji assessed the situation. It was already 12:30PM and we have to cover 5 parks inside Magic. We went through the map of the area and planned the route and sequence so that we can cover it in time. Liberty Square: We first entered Liberty Square and checked out “Hall of Presidents”. It houses pictures and relics and proud possessions, letters of all the Presidents of USA. We walked down to take a cruise of the river across US cities popularly known as Liberty Belle boat. Even after boarding the boat we had to leave the ship as it was grounded for a technical snag. Anyway no problem, we decided to walk across the perimeter of Liberty and saw the Splash mountain ride and mountain railroad. With 2 yr olds it was not adviced to do both of them so we watched and walked back. Hall of Presidents  @LibertySq  Adventureland: Our next destination was Adventureland. We decided to take a small break at a icecream joint and had lunch on icecreams and some home made sandwitches which the ladies prepared the morning. Adventureland took us to MiddleEast, the place of Aladdin. We had a nice ride of Aladdin’s magic carpet and also met Aladdin and his girlfriend live there. Aladdin & Jasmine  Snakes of MiddleEast  Jungle Cruise: We then took a memorable jungle cruise. It took us past Amazon, Asia jungles. I took a full 15min video of this ride. It was simply awesome experience. It was as if we are seeing the Bengal tigers, African elephants, hippos, temple ruins, asian tribals haunting after us. Hats off to Disney for that amazing creation. Pics from jungle Cruise   After jungle cruise, we went to see Pirates of Carribean experience. The ride was dark and looked scary atleast for the kids. My kid started to cry and kept on crying till the end. But overall we had a nice exp of pirates and ends with John Sparrow with all the treasures. It was a wonderful creativity. Ride on DisneyRail  From there we decided to take the Disney railroad toy train to next destination Mickey’s toontown fair. We visit houses of Mickey, Mini and Goofy. Then we decide to visit the Disney princess. Three beautiful ladies behaving like the character posed for pics. The Kids really enjoyed the experience. On seeing the princess, my kid started to tell, “I want to take pics with Aunty”. I replied, “Even I too  ”Pics of the beauties    We also decide to take the kids and us for a small roller coaster ride. The ladies took the first seat and the males with their babies took the subsequent seats. More than the kids, I could hear the ladies in the front screaming out of hell during the ride. Later my wife told that, “She was scared in the front, it was as if I am going to hit something at a very high speed”. It was already 8PM now and sun was gone now. It gets dark by 8:30-9PM. We quickly wanted to cover the Tomorrowland theme as well. It had a car race section which I had to ignore as it was very crowded. We then took the wonderful and long ride of Space mountain. It takes us through all the space themes and around the park. We enjoyed that ride a lot and more so it was a rest for all of us as well. Now it was complete dark and time about 9:15PM but we were feeling as if we have not covered anything. No wonder why you need atleast 2-3 days to complete Magic Kingdom to fullest. Its indeed huge. Light & Sound Show: we then slowly walked towards the Cinderella castle which was now looking wonderful under the lights. The light and sound show starts at about 10PM and the area on Main St. and surrounding of the castle was fully crowded with masses. It was great to see so many people in the surrounding in US where you hardly get to see people on road (which is unlike our Indian way !!). The light and cracker show was the best I had seen so far and I am pretty sure it will difficult to match for anyone at that scale. A full 10min video is dedicated for the show. Cinderella Castle  NightCrowd  Now we were very tired and slowly in the crowd we walked towards the main gate and this time to the Monorail station. Soon we take the train ride and then onto the road-train which will take us to the parking lot. Where is the Car: We happily took the monorail and reached the place where we took the road-train. Little did we realize what in store for us. Now the road-train conductor started to announce the stops with name of parkinglot. I begin to wonder, “What !!”, What is the number? Now we look around and see we are passing one parkinglot after another and those were huge (each parkinglot takes in about 400-500 cars). Nobody remembered the number where we parked the car. Maan, What a miss, it is already 10PM and we are all very tired and now I have walk around to search the car. Anyway with some logic we got off the road-train at a parking. The ladies and kids waited at a corner. Now myself and Mishra went for the car finding mission as all the parking lots looks similara and in the night we were not able to distinguish one with another. We kept searching the car for 30min by running around and clicking the remote continuously. Finally we found it in the next parkinglot. Believe me, the sound of the car alarm was the sweetest sound which I ever heard at that moment. It was a wonderful feeling. Morale of the story: Orlando Disney takes in about 30K visitors on weekends and there is always about 5-10K cars in the parking lot. Always note down the parking lot number because in the night the parking looks lot different than what it looks in the morning. It was 10:30PM now and we were hungry as well. Mishraji ordered Pizza from PapaJohn’s and I set the GPS to the nearest PapaJohns counter. We reached hotel by 11PM after picking up the pizza. As the kids were sleeping by then, we four had a quick dinner on pizzas and hit the bed. It was indeed a filling day. Universal studios calling for the next day. to be continued... |
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1st June 2010, 06:13
| #15 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: cincinnati, jabalpur,chennai
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