It has taken me forever to try and blog about a two-week vacation. I didn't want to overwhelm readers, but I'm tired of writing about it. I need to finish this up so I can move on to other things.

The day after Christmas was a solo day for both Erika and me. She went off to a spa and I wandered through Islands of Adventure for a few hours. Thankfully it was pretty deserted, and I managed to ride everything I wanted at least 3 times. I ended up riding Dueling Dragons six consecutive times that day. Had I not wanted to make sure I could get through the rest of the park, I would have ridden it another dozen times. It's much easier to ride when you can hop off, jump through a shortcut and ride again. Many times, as soon as I got to the coaster I was on the next train. At one point, I think I got off a train and jumped back on the same one.

Over the rest of the week, we wandered around Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure several times. The crowds became bigger and bigger forcing us to buy Fastpass tickets one day to enjoy Islands of Adventure.

We spent our evenings at Downtown Disney and Fantasia Gardens (Disney miniature golf). The Friday after Christmas we finally went to Disney-MGM Studios. It was disappointing and has changed the most of all the Disney parks in the last 5 years. The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire attraction was gone which pissed me off. The Magic of Animation attraction was butchered from actually watching what Disney is working on to a short film about how a character goes from idea to film. The Backlot Tour had also been cut. The arena for the Lights, Motors, Action stunt show wiped out a lot of the houses from the Backlot Tour (which also wiped out a good portion of the Osbourne Spectacle of Dancing Lights). Half of what was left of the Osbourne Spectacle of Dancing Lights was not working because of the rain. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Aerosmith's Rockin' Roller Coaster and Fantasmic were awesome as usual.

The last Saturday we were there was Sea World Day. There isn't much more of anything that you don't see at any other Sea World. There's the dolphin show, the sea lion show and the Shamu show. The Shamu show should have been the Shamu trainers show. There was too much of their blabbing and very little Shamu. We managed to get through Sea World before it even got dark.

New year's Eve was our last full day there, and what a day it was. We started the day in Islands of Adventure. We rode some rides (Spiderman, Incredible Hulk) before going to breakfast with Spiderman and Cat in the Hat (and Thing 1 and 2). Spiderman was hilarious. The guy in the suit probably spooed himself when he got that job. He has to be a bigger comic geek than I am. After breakfast, we went back to Universal Studios to ride some rides and for me to get a few more photos with people dressed in costumes. What a dork!!

That evening we went to House of Blues and ate dinner before standing in line for a New Year's Eve party with Sister Hazel. The concert was great and it was a very fitting end to a great vacation. Hope you weren't too bored as I tried to let you into a little piece of my world. It was probably boring, but I'll try to do better in my next blog.