Orlando and Key West - Summer 2016

The last 16 days of the summer was spent on a family vacation in Florida. Here are some of our experiences and tips we would like to share from our stay!

The first days of our vacation was spent in Orlando - The theme centre of the world! Theme parks are expensive, so we decided to only go to two of them: Universal Studios and Disney world.

We spent two days in Universal Studios and we absolutely loved it! Universal Studios consists of two parks - Universal studios and Island of Adventure - and you can choose between just going to one of the parks or buying a park hopper. The advantage with the park hopper is access to "Hogwarts express", a Harry Potter like train that takes you through a short story before you end up in the other park. However, the parks are close to each other and you can easily visit any of the parks simply by walking. If you are only going to one park, I personally would recommend going to Island of Adventure. They have a great kids area in this park and I loved the more grown-up rides in this park as well!! It really got my adrenaline working!!
The must rides in any of the parks included the 3D Harry Potter rides. I loved the combination of a story with a rollercoaster together!
There are lots of food in the park, but for dinner I would recommend going to the area between the two parks. Food here is, in my opinion both cheaper and tastier. We absolutely loved the Italian restaurant there!

Disney World consists of four parks and we spent 3 days there.  The four parks are Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Epcot. We had a park hopper ticket so we did all the 4 parks.

Magic Kingdom is the oldest park and this one is almost the same as the one you find in Paris and California. Here you will find all the original Disney stuff, like Cinderella’s castle, Pinocchio’s restaurant; it’s a small world and so on. Here you will find a lot of people, and many kids. At 10 o’clock in the evening you will find a wonderful firework here.

Animal Kingdom is Disney’s Zoo. Here you will find a lot off animals, and some carousels. This is the park to go to if you would like to see animals but don’t wont to drive to much stuff. I recommend to go to this park and another like Epcot.

Epcot is the world showcase park. Her you will find a lot of stuff from all over the world. In the Norwegian pavilion they have made a Frozen trip, if you like to do this, come early, it can be up to 2 hours of waiting in line. You will find a future team also. I will recommend to take the Soarin’ trip, it is amazing ( but the queue can be long here to)

Hollywood Studios is the smallest of the 4 park. It is Disney’s movie park. You can take some great movie trip her, se a lot of Star Wars stuff, like meat and great, Star Wars training, Star Wars show, Star Wars 3D trip. It is also in this park you will find the Tower of Terror and Rock and Roll coaster. This is 2 trips for the grownups.

I will recommend having a park hopper, then you can visiting all the parks in one day. We had 3 days and that is the shortest time I will recommend because it is a lot to see. Do you travel with small kinds I will have more days and go to the hotel a little bit earlier. You get tiered with all the walking, the hot sun and all the other people in the park. 

Orlando is a huge city and there are plenty of things to do that does not involve theme parks. My favoritt is shopping, and in particular the outlet mall with a Victoria Secret outlet store!! A few things to remember in Orlando. Tax is not included in the price so everything will be a bit more than what you often expected! Resort fee, an extra fee on top of the hotell prices is also common.

We rented a car and drove through Florida to Key West, which is an island and the southernmost point in the USA. It is a long trip so we decided to sleep one night on our way down and one night back up. That way we got to see a bit more and have an relaxed trip. We went to St. Petes beach for a short stop, which was absolutely beautiful and the water had such a nice temperature! The night was spent in Ponta Gorda where the fishers village had some really lovely tasting fish food. Some of the best we had on the trip I think! Highly recommended! On our way back we stopped at Miami Beach for a short swim and sightseeing. The night was spent in Fort Lauderdale beach.  The beaches here are nice, but the hotels are not all that great so I would recommend to drive into Fort Lauderdale for sleeping.

We spent four nights in Key West and we loved it. The island is really pretty and there is a lot to do if you like water activities. We went on a snorkel and dolphin watch trip with (navn på selskap). The snorkeling is not as colorful as they would be in more exotic places, but there is still a lot to see from smaller sharks to huge piggrays. Absolutely amazing!! The island otherwise have lots of museums and really good food. The seafood was great and I loved the Key Lime pie! Just walking around watching the typical Southern-USA houses, the iguanas and the wild chickens with the addition of a beautiful sunset if you are lucky made Key West into a place I would highly recommend for anyone else to go to!