Latest / Mom Street USA / 122. Other Orlando Theme Parks (with Kirk from Walrus Carp)

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122. Other Orlando Theme Parks (with Kirk from Walrus Carp) · Mom Street USA

• 0:05
  Welcome everybody to Mom St. USA.
• 0:07
  My name is Jackie AKA Wishes Mama.
• 0:09
  And on today's episode we are joined by a good friend of the
• 0:13
  podcast. We are joined by Kirk from
• 0:16
  Walrus Carp. And today we're going to be
• 0:18
  talking about some of the other Orlando theme parks.
• 0:21
  So recently here in the last couple months on Mom St., we've
• 0:24
  kind of bridged out of Disney and started talking about
• 0:27
  Universal. But there are some other theme
• 0:29
  parks in the kind of greater Orlando area that I wanted to
• 0:32
  chat about. And Kirk's got that knowledge
• 0:35
  because he has been to all of them.
• 0:38
  So I figured I would pull him in and ask him some questions.
• 0:41
  And then at the end of the podcast today, he's got some new
• 0:44
  exciting theme park app information to share with us.
• 0:48
  So we're excited for that. But Kirk, thank you for being
• 0:51
  here. How are you doing today?
• 0:53
  I'm good, Jackie. Thank you for having me on as I
• 0:55
  delve into the dark, mysterious parks that no one goes to.
• 1:00
  No, I'm just kidding. These are, these are like your
• 1:02
  secondary parks because obviously when people, there's
• 1:05
  over 68,000,000 tourists who come to the Orlando theme parks
• 1:08
  every single year to enjoy them and they typically just stick to
• 1:12
  Disney and Universal. But there is a slew of other
• 1:15
  parks to choose from, especially if you have a little bit more
• 1:18
  leniency with your timing if you're here, especially overseas
• 1:21
  guests to have you know they're here for like 2 weeks.
• 1:26
  So what do you do with that extra time?
• 1:28
  So. Yeah.
• 1:29
  And I think that's it. People don't remember or they
• 1:33
  maybe have like stigmas about these parks that maybe they've
• 1:35
  heard like, oh, it's not very good or it's not worth it, you
• 1:38
  know, those types of things. So I just figured we could give
• 1:41
  some information and kind of give your input.
• 1:44
  You know, you've got kiddos that you've taken to a lot of these
• 1:47
  places before or can, you know, put yourself in that mindset of
• 1:51
  taking kids to these places. So definitely figured that was a
• 1:54
  good resource for us to pull on. So we've got 5 different theme
• 1:58
  parks that we're going to chat about.
• 2:00
  Some of them will probably be a little more information that we
• 2:04
  can give because they've just got more at these parks and some
• 2:07
  of them will be probably a quicker conversation.
• 2:10
  But I'm just going to head right down our list here, Kirk, that
• 2:12
  I've got on our notes and we'll start with SeaWorld.
• 2:15
  So what can you tell us just first like overview of SeaWorld?
• 2:20
  Yeah, so SeaWorld Orlando has been integrating and adding a
• 2:25
  lot more rides. It's been a legacy park for a
• 2:27
  very long time and its main focus has been marine, aquatic
• 2:31
  animals, and they still have that as a main focal point.
• 2:34
  But now it's become a destination, particularly in
• 2:37
  Orlando if you are a big roller coaster fan.
• 2:40
  So starting off with SeaWorld Orlando, the one thing I would
• 2:44
  say is if you were coming here specifically for this park, you
• 2:49
  may want to only do it some older kiddos for the big rides.
• 2:56
  Now, they've been adding a lot more inclusive attractions to
• 3:00
  this park. However, it's because of the way
• 3:03
  that they have been adding additional rides.
• 3:06
  The focus has been predominantly on the big massive thrill rides.
• 3:11
  So when you look at Seaworld's Orlando, a lot of people want to
• 3:14
  know like, well, how far away is it?
• 3:16
  So in the, it's literally equidistant in between Universal
• 3:20
  and Disney. So, and, and there's a lot of
• 3:22
  people who will stay on iDrive to save money and stay off
• 3:27
  property. So this is a great park that's
• 3:30
  got a great location and it's it's very, very approachable for
• 3:34
  most guests and price point wise, they always are running
• 3:39
  sales and deals to get in there. I know ticket wise, I, I just, I
• 3:45
  don't look at this because I use either our fun cards or our
• 3:49
  passes. Now, if you are local and you've
• 3:52
  never delved into SeaWorld before, you should look into it
• 3:55
  at least with the bronze pass because they give $10 away free
• 3:59
  feeding trays. Like all these great experiences
• 4:02
  for past members that don't really get promoted enough.
• 4:05
  Plus discounts on food. A lot of times I'm saving like
• 4:08
  30 to 50% off on almost all merch and food purchased there
• 4:13
  because of past member benefits. But if you're just looking for a
• 4:16
  single day, right now, they're running a deal on spring break.
• 4:19
  They're saying that tickets are 100 and 4799.
• 4:22
  Let me just say something about SeaWorld and Busch Gardens.
• 4:25
  They're lying to you. The price is never 14799 unless
• 4:30
  you're like there for Thanksgiving.
• 4:31
  Almost always you're going to find a ticket somewhere around
• 4:33
  $80. They typically will do bundle
• 4:35
  packages too, where you can do a 2 park because remember, there's
• 4:39
  there's all these sister properties that are there as
• 4:41
  well. In Orlando itself, you have
• 4:45
  their water park, which is completely stand alone, which is
• 4:47
  called aquatic. Yeah, Aquatica.
• 4:49
  And then you also have a very animal inclusive, think like
• 4:55
  Caribbean all inclusive style animal experience with Discovery
• 5:00
  Cove, which you could also bundle up as well or bundle
• 5:04
  their sister park over in Tampa with Busch Gardens or Adventure
• 5:09
  Islands. So I always tell people, listen,
• 5:11
  if you're going to spend 80 bucks, it's almost worth it to
• 5:13
  get the two day at 55. Like it's not that much more.
• 5:17
  And even if you never leave Orlando, well, it would be a
• 5:20
  benefit to go to both SeaWorld and aquatic because both parks
• 5:23
  are great. Or just just combination and,
• 5:27
  and hop between the two cause Aquatica and SeaWorld are right
• 5:31
  next to each other. The, the other thing that's
• 5:33
  really great is if you have really young kids, they will
• 5:36
  give out a free toddler passes. So I, I know SeaWorld and Busch
• 5:42
  Gardens both have preschool passes, which are completely
• 5:44
  free. You just have to say that
• 5:46
  they're under that age and they will give them a pass completely
• 5:49
  for free. So for again, if you have young
• 5:52
  kids, they want to see animals, they want to do touch tanks with
• 5:55
  Stingrays and you could you could get yourself a single day
• 5:59
  ticket just for the adults or for folks that are over fives.
• 6:03
  Let's now look into what attractions, entertainment that
• 6:07
  SeaWorld has to offer and kind of like what age group and
• 6:09
  brackets this fit in. We're going to first start off
• 6:12
  with the young kiddos, right? So we're talking about the any
• 6:16
  kid who is under 36 inches, right?
• 6:20
  Those groups are going to really enjoy all of the touch tanks
• 6:24
  because there's a Stingray tank, there's a sea lion feeding,
• 6:27
  there's shark feeding too. So there's a really fun.
• 6:30
  They also have some shows. There's a dolphin show, which is
• 6:33
  really fantastic. There's a whale show, there's a
• 6:36
  sea lion and Otter show. And one thing I want to also let
• 6:42
  you all know is that SeaWorld changes a lot.
• 6:44
  So they have food festivals for those that are familiar with
• 6:48
  Epcot food festivals or even universals overlay ones that
• 6:52
  they do at USF. They will have like right now
• 6:55
  it's the Seven Seas festival, which has a bunch of concerts.
• 6:59
  So there's free entertainment and then you can go around and
• 7:03
  buy lanyards and, and get a really good price point on
• 7:05
  getting and trying a bunch of snacks and drinks.
• 7:08
  But then also they have for kiddos dialing that back.
• 7:14
  They have Sesame Street lands now.
• 7:16
  They used to have a parade that's gone on a slight hiatus.
• 7:19
  I imagine that'll come back in the summertime as this is the
• 7:22
  offseason for SeaWorld. But there's lots of different
• 7:25
  smaller attractions for the kids to go on to Sesame Street land.
• 7:29
  They have attractions like Abby's Flower Tower and Cookie
• 7:32
  Drop or El Maho's Choo Choo train.
• 7:35
  They have a splash pad. They have a little playground
• 7:37
  area, they've got a slimy slider, they have a carousel,
• 7:42
  and then they have a very, very small roller coaster which you
• 7:45
  do have to be 38 inches for. But pretty much everything else
• 7:50
  you don't have a ride height requirement except for the Choo
• 7:53
  Choo train which I'm assuming kids like jump out of unless
• 7:57
  unless you ride with an adult, which if you ride with an adult
• 7:59
  there's probably 0 limits on any of these attractions so.
• 8:03
  Yeah, could depend on where that track goes to.
• 8:06
  If there's spots that are, you know, they got to make sure the
• 8:08
  kids stay in their seats. That's, I mean, that's basically
• 8:12
  it 'cause they're, you know, what are they going to do?
• 8:14
  Jump up and grab like Elmo's foot or whatever?
• 8:16
  Also, what is up with this? They the one thing that's really
• 8:19
  interesting and I I will showcase this in a second is
• 8:22
  that they they have sensory guides for all of the Sesame
• 8:27
  Street attractions, which you'll see this a lot for the Merlin
• 8:30
  properties that would be Legoland Florida and Peppa Pig
• 8:33
  Park. I don't know why on earth that
• 8:36
  this makes me laugh is I guess because one is the lowest they
• 8:39
  use on this sensory guide. Legoland uses a 0 but they put
• 8:42
  taste as a what for the Choo Choo train.
• 8:45
  Don't lick the train. It will be low sensory
• 8:49
  stimulation. If you do, please.
• 8:52
  Don't. We do not recommend.
• 8:54
  We do not recommend licking anything, anything in any of the
• 8:58
  theme parks, quite honestly, unless it's an ice cream cone.
• 9:01
  That's good. That's very good advice.
• 9:03
  Please listen to Jackie. I usually don't follow that
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  advice. All right, so other experiences
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  right now when we want to age up, this is really where
• 9:13
  SeaWorld shines is their world class coasters.
• 9:16
  Now they do have a indoor dark ride that is called Expedition
• 9:21
  Odyssey. Most people don't know this.
• 9:22
  It was built in 2025. It is a sort.
• 9:26
  So if you're used to soaring, is it a baby soaring 1000%?
• 9:31
  It's not a massive, huge ride, but it still is really, really
• 9:36
  fun and explorative of the Arctic.
• 9:39
  So there's a lot of educational components that happen here that
• 9:44
  most of us who are Disney folks remember what it looks like in
• 9:47
  Epcot, this experience, after you're done doing the Sauron
• 9:51
  ride, it literally exits out into their Arctic exhibit.
• 9:55
  So you're getting to see beluga whales, walruses, Penguins,
• 10:01
  very, very fun. And it's freezing too.
• 10:03
  So it's actually really nice when it's cold or it's really,
• 10:06
  really hot out. But but that's one of the
• 10:08
  biggest problems I would say in terms of SeaWorld is that when
• 10:12
  it rains, which it does all the time, most things shut down
• 10:16
  because most of the attractions are outdoor experiences because
• 10:20
  they're mainly roller coasters. Sequel Expedition Odyssey is one
• 10:24
  of the experiences that they created so that they could have
• 10:28
  more indoor experiences, which were they're basically focusing
• 10:31
  right now for a long time, what SeaWorld was doing was building
• 10:37
  a bunch of coasters so that they could compete with Universal and
• 10:40
  Disney, which makes total sense. But right now they're building a
• 10:44
  new suspended dark ride. So think something that's like
• 10:47
  Peter Pan but will rotate and that is called seaquest legends
• 10:51
  of the deep. So this will be done probably by
• 10:55
  summer or fall of this year and it's going to be an indoor dark
• 11:00
  ride that's suspended and your cars will actually independently
• 11:03
  move as it shows the deep. This is actually a hard show for
• 11:07
  me. I hate underwater stuff like
• 11:09
  this. It gives me the heebie jeebies.
• 11:10
  But I'm I'm excited to try it. Yeah, you got to try it at least
• 11:13
  once, right? I'll do it every time because I
• 11:16
  love dark rides, but everything you're seeing in this like a
• 11:19
  dark silhouetted shark, another dark silhouetted shark and I
• 11:23
  can't see in the little these little flecks in the water give
• 11:26
  me nightmares. Even that whale is horrifying.
• 11:30
  I am not into any of this, but it's it's going to be a great
• 11:33
  ride and a much needed experience.
• 11:36
  Once once we get out of that, you're looking at how many
• 11:40
  roller coasters are there? There's Kraken, which is a
• 11:44
  looping coaster, Mako, which is the only hyper coaster in
• 11:48
  Orlando, which means it goes over 200 feet.
• 11:51
  So it's actually fantastic and it's considered an out and back,
• 11:54
  which just means that it's nice hills.
• 11:56
  It's one of the best coasters we have in all of Orlando, hands
• 12:00
  down. Top five fantastic, super smooth
• 12:02
  crack and it'll break your back. Then you've got a lay down
• 12:05
  coaster that is called mantis. Let me go back to ride so I can
• 12:11
  show pictures of some of the stuff.
• 12:13
  So there's a lie down coaster called Mantis.
• 12:15
  That's this blue one right here. There's Penguin Trek, which is
• 12:18
  more of a family coaster. It actually has a show building.
• 12:20
  So there's a little bit of a storyline that's integrated and
• 12:23
  the ride heights only 42 inches where most of the coasters like
• 12:27
  Mako are 54, although there is a 48 with icebreaker, which is an
• 12:32
  interesting like backwards reverse launch.
• 12:35
  So it uses this like swinging effect to get some momentum
• 12:39
  before it shoots out, which is really fun.
• 12:41
  They also have Pipeline, which is the very first surf coaster.
• 12:44
  So if you're like a coaster nut, this is a one-of-a-kind, the
• 12:48
  very first style surf coaster where it's a stand up, but the
• 12:52
  seats are independent, meaning that they will move up and down
• 12:55
  throughout the experience. As it does it's it does do I
• 12:59
  think 2 inversions and it has a really thrilling launch too,
• 13:02
  which is really fun. It definitely one of the best
• 13:04
  coasters they have in the park. We have also there's a water
• 13:08
  ride. I I mean, technically this
• 13:10
  journey to Atlantis is a water coaster.
• 13:14
  It's made by mock rides. So it does kind of like Splash
• 13:18
  Mountain or Tiana's Bayou Adventure.
• 13:21
  It has one part that is water ride, boat ride and has an
• 13:24
  indoor show building, which is fantastic.
• 13:27
  And it tells the story of going to Atlantis.
• 13:30
  And then there's the surprise factor where you start going
• 13:35
  through like a roller coaster section.
• 13:36
  So there's it's, it's not showcasing it here in any of
• 13:39
  their photos, but there's a whole entire roller coaster
• 13:44
  track in the back, which is really neat.
• 13:46
  And it's it's shocking because like again, you're, you're so
• 13:48
  used to it being a log flume and experiencing as a log flume and
• 13:51
  then it boom goes into this coaster section.
• 13:53
  That's really cool. Like hybrid ride?
• 13:57
  Now one thing that's really weird is they have an attraction
• 14:00
  that's called the Sky Tower. Sky Tower has its own emission
• 14:03
  price. So you pay $6 unless you're a
• 14:07
  past member to ride this one, which it's just a a giant
• 14:12
  observation tower. This is one of the very first
• 14:14
  rides that they ever built. So it's a legacy attraction.
• 14:17
  A lot of times it's not working, which is interesting, but it's
• 14:19
  gives you a 400 foot revolving. If you've ever been to Hershey
• 14:24
  Park, it's like the kissing tower, but a lot of a lot of
• 14:27
  parks have this. It's not a drop tower, it's just
• 14:30
  a scenic spinning, nice relaxing ride.
• 14:32
  I wish it was open more because I really do enjoy going on it,
• 14:35
  but a lot of times it is closed. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:38
  I think the one thing that I'm always interested in because I
• 14:41
  haven't been to SeaWorld, but is that Penguin, that Penguin Trek
• 14:45
  ride I think looks like, because where else do you get to
• 14:49
  literally experience animals on a ride?
• 14:53
  Not very many places. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:55
  So the way that Penguin Trek works is we're boarding a rescue
• 14:59
  unit that sees like an ice floe and ice breaking off in this
• 15:04
  Penguin habitat. So we have to go and save the
• 15:06
  Penguins. So we go out, we save the
• 15:08
  Penguins, and then when you exit the experience, you enter into a
• 15:11
  Penguin exhibit, which I think is so cool.
• 15:14
  Yeah, it's cold, but it's very cool seeing all of the the
• 15:18
  Penguins. Now, if you don't want to ride,
• 15:19
  you can just visit that exhibit as well.
• 15:23
  But yeah, Yeah. And then you can you can
• 15:25
  upcharge and pay for other experiences.
• 15:27
  You want to touch a Penguin, feed a Penguin, touch a walrus,
• 15:31
  feed a walrus, touch a dolphin, feed a dolphin.
• 15:35
  You know, stuff that you wouldn't be able to do in most
• 15:37
  parks. It has that here as well.
• 15:41
  Yeah, that's so cool. So it sounds like at SeaWorld,
• 15:45
  there's something kind of for everybody, right?
• 15:47
  Like, yeah, I. Think what they're building out.
• 15:50
  Yeah, there's enough for littles to kind of get a feel with all
• 15:53
  the Sesame Place stuff, like we were saying, and all the
• 15:56
  animals, obviously. But then there's enough of also
• 16:00
  for older kiddos and teens too. Yeah.
• 16:03
  And then, you know, come Halloween time, this is one of
• 16:06
  my favorite Halloween events. They do a Halloween parade.
• 16:10
  They do trick or treating for the kids, which is completely
• 16:12
  free. This is like different.
• 16:14
  You got to get out of the Disney mindset that you got to pay a
• 16:17
  special price or a ticket to go to a Halloween party that has
• 16:20
  free candy. They get sponsors and they give
• 16:23
  out a ton of free candy. And my kids absolutely adore and
• 16:26
  love that. Oh, one thing to know about
• 16:29
  kiddos, if you need to bring in a wagon or food and stuff like
• 16:34
  that for like specific needs, they're very good about that as
• 16:38
  well. We always bring in food to
• 16:40
  SeaWorld and Busch Gardens every time.
• 16:43
  Yeah, that's helpful to know because I feel like you never
• 16:46
  know. Some places allow you to bring
• 16:47
  food in and are totally fine with that.
• 16:49
  Other places have more rules and regulations.
• 16:52
  So well, so let's talk about food.
• 16:55
  That was a nice little unintentional Segway here.
• 16:58
  What is the food like at SeaWorld if we were to purchase
• 17:01
  food there? So one thing about, and this is
• 17:04
  going to be a blanket statement for both SeaWorld and Busch
• 17:07
  Gardens. If you were going to SeaWorld or
• 17:09
  Busch Gardens, you need to purchase a dining plan.
• 17:11
  Now you wouldn't normally say that at Disney, but here's the
• 17:14
  God's honest truth. It is expensive to eat at
• 17:18
  SeaWorld. It's very expensive.
• 17:20
  Your average meal price per person is about 2499, which is
• 17:26
  is not that affordable in my opinion.
• 17:29
  But what we would do is we would get an add on to your ticket and
• 17:33
  that would be dine all day. Now there are times where
• 17:37
  they'll do dine all day discounts that are good for an
• 17:40
  entire 12 months. So you can purchase them for
• 17:42
  Black Friday. They always do this Black Friday
• 17:45
  sale and it's it's $30. It's.
• 17:47
  Dine all day and then we use an. Insane deal.
• 17:49
  Use it any. Use it anytime.
• 17:51
  That's so nice. And but even if you were to buy
• 17:54
  just one, this is what we would do if we were staying in the
• 17:57
  park all day, which is very easy to do.
• 18:00
  It's it's very easy to stay in there.
• 18:03
  You get one adult plan, right? And then you get 1 entree, one
• 18:07
  side or dessert and one soft drink every 90 minutes.
• 18:12
  And there's lots of places, the BBQ place Expedition has Asian
• 18:16
  pizza, burgers, chicken tenders. They've got a hot dog joint.
• 18:22
  They've got another place that has really good tacos and
• 18:25
  shrimp. There's another burger joint.
• 18:27
  There's a really good flatbread place called Panini Shores.
• 18:31
  And then Waterway Grill has like a lots of like Chirasco beef
• 18:35
  with like chimichurri sauce. The food is actually pretty good
• 18:39
  at Seaworlds, but for the price point, just eat every 90
• 18:45
  minutes, try a bunch of new places and for $60.00, I don't
• 18:49
  know anybody who could feed a family of four off of 60 bucks
• 18:52
  an entire day in a park. And again, like if you have to
• 18:55
  throw things out or you need another drink or you just want
• 18:58
  to get a dessert or whatever, like keep that clock going like
• 19:01
  every 90 minutes get something else and just like snack
• 19:05
  throughout the day. The BBQ place is by far the best
• 19:08
  use of your box there though because the you could spend $50
• 19:12
  on a BBQ meal. Right.
• 19:14
  Well, and honestly, that's probably a better way to eat at
• 19:16
  the theme parks anyway, because then you're not sitting down,
• 19:19
  especially when it's hot in Florida.
• 19:20
  You're not sitting down and trying to have a giant BBQ lunch
• 19:24
  and then running off to go ride a bunch of roller coasters.
• 19:26
  Like that doesn't sound like a good idea anyway, so.
• 19:29
  Yeah, I mean, the the only place that allows you to do a table
• 19:34
  service would be they have a. It's like a whale watching an
• 19:40
  experience where you you sit right next to the like the whale
• 19:44
  paddock and they they hook you up there.
• 19:46
  But that's it. That's the only thing that I can
• 19:47
  think of that that is similar to that.
• 19:50
  Right. So yeah, well, it's so it sounds
• 19:52
  like, you know, like you said, you can take food in, but it
• 19:55
  sounds like if you can find a good deal for that all day
• 19:58
  dining. Yeah, I mean, even at 60 I think
• 20:00
  it's a good deal because you eat 2 * 2 1/2 times.
• 20:04
  It's more than paid for it. Oh yeah, and easily the average
• 20:07
  family of four like. Adults you could get like
• 20:10
  chicken tenders and fries and that's enough for your two
• 20:13
  kiddos. And then they split dessert and
• 20:15
  then in 90 minutes you grab a burger and you split that with
• 20:18
  your partner or whatever, you know, like that is the way to do
• 20:21
  it. I, I mean, I had a video a long
• 20:24
  time ago on YouTube where I know I spent $30.00 at Bush and I'm
• 20:28
  pretty sure I got almost $300 worth of food.
• 20:30
  All I did was eat that day. I remember it was like every
• 20:33
  night you have like a a timer going that every 90 minutes you
• 20:36
  were going back to wherever was. Eating everywhere and what was
• 20:40
  crazy is Busch Gardens back in the day used to include
• 20:42
  Chick-fil-A. Now Chick-fil-A is not included
• 20:44
  in SeaWorld even though they have a Chick-fil-A.
• 20:46
  OK, but it's not like your Chick-fil-A, when you go outside
• 20:49
  the parks where you spend $12.00, you get a whole meal.
• 20:51
  You eat at Chick-fil-A, everything's Ala carte.
• 20:54
  You're probably spending $22.00 on just one meal at Chick-fil-A.
• 20:58
  So that's why I'm trying to really impress upon you to get
• 21:01
  the dining plan. You don't need one for everybody
• 21:04
  because that's just an insane amount of food.
• 21:06
  You know, if you had to, you could buy an adult and a kiddo
• 21:08
  one, especially on a Black Friday sale.
• 21:10
  I mean, you're going to spend 50 bucks to get 2 dining plans.
• 21:14
  I think that's a crazy good deal.
• 21:16
  Yeah, I agree for sure. So let's think about now, what
• 21:20
  is it that you feel like, And I feel like we talked about this a
• 21:22
  little bit, but like what makes this park unique compared to
• 21:26
  like a Disney or a Universal that makes it worth, you know,
• 21:30
  spending a day or whatever to go to SeaWorld?
• 21:34
  Animals and world class coasters, I mean, hands down, I
• 21:37
  would go there and see there's been times where we haven't even
• 21:40
  ridden an attraction and we were there for six hours like that is
• 21:44
  that is very common for us to do as a family because there's so
• 21:47
  much to see and do they have a whole entire shark tunnel.
• 21:51
  There's manatees, they have a manatee rescue center.
• 21:54
  So there's there's just so much to explore in terms of animal
• 21:58
  experiences and then and then world class rides.
• 22:02
  I mean it's got more Bulgur and Mavi yard for all your coaster
• 22:05
  fans out there, like the world class manufacturer of coasters
• 22:09
  and it has seven in the park. So it's just it really is
• 22:12
  fantastic. And then the entertainment is
• 22:15
  really, really solid. So it's the price point and the
• 22:18
  value that you get and it's easy enough to to tackle young kiddo
• 22:24
  needs and teenager kiddo needs that everyone's happy and it's
• 22:30
  it's safe and it's affordable for families and it's so damn
• 22:33
  close. It's this is going to be the
• 22:35
  closest option out of all the parks that we talk out outside
• 22:39
  of fun spot. But this one definitely to me if
• 22:42
  I was going to tag on or or suggest to anybody who has like
• 22:48
  any age group, this is the easiest and best one by far.
• 22:53
  Yeah. So then kind of wrapping up
• 22:55
  this, how long or how many days do you think, like if you want
• 22:58
  to do SeaWorld and see as much as you can, do you think one day
• 23:03
  is enough? Do you think people need 2 days
• 23:04
  if they're really focused on seeing everything at SeaWorld?
• 23:08
  I think I think one day is probably fair for most people.
• 23:11
  I think that's perfect however, because the price point on that
• 23:15
  two day ticket to tag on the water park and I will tell you
• 23:18
  we haven't really added water parks into this mix, but
• 23:22
  Aquatica is world class and really fun.
• 23:25
  I love Aquatica. Nobody talks about it zero 0.0%
• 23:29
  of the population, but yet it is probably one of the most popular
• 23:33
  ones, especially with locals, because it has one of the best
• 23:37
  lazy rivers. They have two, but one is
• 23:39
  really, really fast and really fun and it's got the best water
• 23:43
  effects. It blows away even volcano Bay,
• 23:45
  which is insane or any of the trash lazy rivers that Disney
• 23:49
  has. I love Disney, but they're
• 23:51
  they're lazy rivers used to be. Do you remember when typhoon
• 23:54
  lagoon used to have like giant sunscreen bottles crates and
• 23:58
  like that was fun. That was.
• 23:59
  The larger than life theming and.
• 24:02
  And because people would hang on to them and they would gum up
• 24:05
  the word, they took out all the fun.
• 24:07
  And it's so boring in those lazy rivers.
• 24:09
  Now I go to Volcano Bay or Aquatica to really enjoy a good
• 24:15
  lazy river. And in fact, one of the, so
• 24:17
  Aquatica has the same exact thing with SeaWorld where they
• 24:20
  integrate a lot of animals. So there's, there's a slide that
• 24:23
  actually goes through a commercial dolphin exhibit.
• 24:26
  So you could see the dolphins while you're going through a
• 24:29
  tube. It's kind of like, yeah, if
• 24:31
  you've ever seen the Bahamas with Alanis, you know, it's it's
• 24:34
  similar to that. There's even a lazy river that
• 24:35
  goes by African stichlet, which are these like really colorful
• 24:41
  fish. So you can see them too.
• 24:42
  It's just neat that they integrate the rides next to
• 24:46
  these aquatic exhibits with actual animals.
• 24:49
  It's just really cool. Plus plus Aquatic has a really
• 24:51
  good night scene. They do a really good it's
• 24:53
  called Aqua. Glove, that's what I was just
• 24:55
  going to ask you about if that was the one that they have in
• 24:57
  you because they like they do a bunch of like projections and
• 25:00
  stuff in some of the water slides, right?
• 25:02
  Yes, there's nothing. So all the time they have, it's
• 25:06
  called Tassie's Underwater Twist, and it used projection
• 25:09
  system and it looks like you're in an aquarium or like in water
• 25:12
  in this raft ride. It's the only one of its kind
• 25:15
  that I've ever seen in Florida, which is super unique to it.
• 25:19
  And then every single one of their like ticketed events,
• 25:21
  which by the way, if you're a past member, they almost always
• 25:24
  will give you a free ticketed event as long as you go to
• 25:27
  Aquatica 4 times and we'll give you an Aqua Glow ticket for
• 25:29
  free. It's insane.
• 25:30
  It's like the greatest perk ever.
• 25:32
  Like they want you there in that park.
• 25:35
  So it's to me that's, that's like the huge, huge benefits.
• 25:39
  Although I will, I will state this, Aquatica is particular
• 25:42
  about food. No outside food or just wrap it
• 25:46
  up in a towel and if your bag doesn't go off.
• 25:50
  Don't tell. Yeah, I've never gotten that or
• 25:53
  nor do I endorse that. You should totally do that.
• 25:56
  You'd put no metal in that bag. Oh, and a good note from Rhonda
• 26:00
  here in our chat, she's saying that if you buy a day at
• 26:03
  Discovery Cove, which is a whole nother experience that we're not
• 26:07
  going to talk about, we'll probably have to do a whole
• 26:08
  episode on all the water park type places, but that'd be fun.
• 26:12
  Yeah, she says that you can get a free day to either SeaWorld or
• 26:16
  Aquatica if you do Discovery Coast.
• 26:19
  That's a cool perk to look at too, if you're interested in
• 26:22
  more of those animal experiences.
• 26:25
  And there's times where you can get Discovery Cove, which is a
• 26:28
  much more expensive, but again, like all of your food, all of
• 26:31
  your drinks, including beer and wine are included.
• 26:34
  There are times where they run deals.
• 26:35
  Again, Black Fridays bring break sales.
• 26:37
  They always are running deals. You could sometimes get that
• 26:40
  ticket for 129. So imagine getting $129 ticket
• 26:44
  to that, which is an all inclusive day in of itself.
• 26:47
  And then you get a free SeaWorld ticket, which is like 80 bucks
• 26:51
  on discount. That's a, that's a really good
• 26:54
  deal. You know, between the two days
• 26:56
  to to only have to pay, you know, 70 ish bucks with tax per
• 27:00
  day. That's really good.
• 27:01
  Yeah, no way, nowhere else, you know, think about like that,
• 27:04
  that that was Disney prices 40 years ago like.
• 27:08
  Yeah, I mean, even even Discovery.
• 27:10
  Yeah. Discovery Cove at 1:29.
• 27:12
  Yeah, is an insane deal for all of the food, for all of the
• 27:16
  experiences you get, and then you get a free SeaWorld ticket
• 27:19
  is crazy. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 27:22
  Nice. Well, we've been talking a lot
• 27:23
  about SeaWorld. I also heard you mention Busch
• 27:25
  Gardens kind of in tandem with some of the stuff.
• 27:28
  So let's hop over to Busch Gardens.
• 27:32
  Now I will mention as Kirk kind of gets his screen situated that
• 27:36
  Busch Gardens I believe of all of these is the furthest away
• 27:39
  from like Orlando because it's more over towards the Tampa side
• 27:43
  of Florida. So this is more of a haul.
• 27:46
  If you are planning to head over this direction, I would
• 27:48
  definitely recommend that you've got a rental car.
• 27:50
  I would not try to Uber from the Disney Universal area because
• 27:55
  that's going to be that's going to be quite an expense.
• 27:59
  So even if you just do a day rental car to get over there,
• 28:02
  that would be my suggestion for this.
• 28:04
  But Kirk, what can you tell us, just generally speaking, about
• 28:07
  Busch Gardens? Yeah, so to mirror off of what
• 28:11
  Jackie just said, it's about an hour, it's about an hour there
• 28:14
  could be traffic I4 I mean the answer for everything in Florida
• 28:17
  is well how far away is it? Well, the bundle of traffic,
• 28:20
  that's literally the answer for everything because I four could
• 28:23
  either be it might take you an hour and a half or two hours or
• 28:27
  an hour, just depends on how early or how late you leave.
• 28:31
  So that's respective. But yeah, this is 1 where you're
• 28:33
  going to want to have a vehicle to be able to get out here.
• 28:37
  Now, why should you even take the travel?
• 28:41
  Well, we've covered off a lot of things that are very similar
• 28:44
  because this is owned by the same exact company that operates
• 28:48
  SeaWorld. Same rules apply for a dining
• 28:51
  plan, same rules apply for tickets, same rules apply for
• 28:55
  they have their own water park. It's called Adventure Island.
• 28:58
  They also do food festivals, like right now it is their food
• 29:01
  and wine, which they do have concerts.
• 29:02
  So if you want to go see POD, you can go see POD Live for
• 29:06
  free. Love that.
• 29:09
  So so again, we're like mirroring a lot of things here.
• 29:12
  It's all about animals experiences and it's all about
• 29:15
  world class coasters. It's the exact same formula as
• 29:19
  SeaWorld Orlando. So they have probably, I would
• 29:22
  argue top five best coaster in the world.
• 29:26
  I think most coaster enthusiasts would probably put it in their
• 29:28
  top ten at least with Iron Gwazi.
• 29:31
  It's a Rocky Mountain coaster that's unbelievably they they
• 29:35
  took like an old wooden coaster that was called Quasi and they
• 29:37
  turned it into iron Quasi and it is the tallest, the fastest, the
• 29:41
  steepest in Florida, and it's just outrageously fun and very,
• 29:46
  very thrilling. This this has much more
• 29:48
  thrilling coasters than SeaWorld Orlando does, even though
• 29:53
  they're they have similar options.
• 29:56
  Everything here seems to be stepped up in terms of size,
• 29:59
  scope. Got to remember Busch Gardens
• 30:01
  started out as this kind of like just random Busch Gardens.
• 30:04
  Fun fact, this was Augustus Bush's present to one of his
• 30:09
  wives. He's had several, but
• 30:11
  interesting. So it was a garden.
• 30:14
  It was literally it was like a ski chalet that had a restaurant
• 30:17
  and it was a giant garden. And that's what Busch Gardens
• 30:20
  was originally. And then it turned into a an
• 30:23
  experience for people to actually visit.
• 30:26
  And then they started adding outside of the brewery 'cause
• 30:29
  there was a brewery tour that was attached.
• 30:30
  They started adding little tiny attractions.
• 30:33
  So if you look at it, we also have a Sesame Street area.
• 30:36
  It is smaller than Seaworld's and does not have a parade.
• 30:40
  Where SeaWorld does have that, they also have, it's called the
• 30:45
  Wild Oasis. It is a very large playground
• 30:48
  space for kids to explore. So here, let me pull up some of
• 30:52
  these things that I can show you.
• 30:54
  So Wild Oasis is think like ropes and climbing.
• 30:57
  But then there's capybaras too, which I think is fun.
• 31:01
  They also have a splash pad. There's ropes to climb through.
• 31:05
  There's the capybaras, and then they have a small little tiny
• 31:08
  drop tower. So this kind of like expands the
• 31:12
  Sesame Place of this area to a little bit larger because, you
• 31:17
  know, there's there's just not as much.
• 31:18
  They have a coaster that's called Air Grover.
• 31:21
  They have a carnival ride, they have bumper cards.
• 31:24
  They also have like a bunch of flat rides.
• 31:25
  There's like a log plume. There's like a driving, there's
• 31:28
  a swing. There's an even smaller carousel
• 31:31
  style attraction and then they always have like crafts for
• 31:34
  kids, so it might be coloring or a scavenger hunt.
• 31:37
  They do a Sesame show as well. It's just arguably a lot smaller
• 31:41
  than the SeaWorld version. And then they have crazy
• 31:45
  coasters outside of Iron Gwazi of an inverted coaster called
• 31:48
  Montu. You've got Cobra's Curse, which
• 31:51
  is a kids coaster. It's made by mock rides.
• 31:53
  It actually is a spinning coaster and it overlooks into
• 31:56
  the Serengeti, which has a wide array of animals.
• 31:58
  They also have a train that goes by the Serengeti, so you're
• 32:01
  looking at lions, giraffe, zebra, gazelles, rhino,
• 32:07
  ostriches is very, very cool. And then all of their like
• 32:13
  visual experiences with animals too are very, very close.
• 32:17
  They also have Serengeti Flyer, Cheetah Hunt, Phoenix Rising,
• 32:20
  which is more smaller kids coaster.
• 32:22
  Another big, big kids coasters are Kumba, which is aging, but
• 32:26
  it's great. Tigris, which is a launch style
• 32:28
  coaster in Chicara, which was at the time the 1st and steepest
• 32:32
  and tallest dive coaster ever in the world.
• 32:36
  They also have gorillas. They have Kangaroos.
• 32:38
  You can feed the Kangaroos. You can see tigers, they have
• 32:41
  orangutan like is all over the place when it comes to animals.
• 32:45
  So again, same thing kind of applies here.
• 32:48
  It's world class coasters and really good animal experiences.
• 32:52
  Although I I would argue that this park has a little less to
• 32:56
  offer for kids and it certainly has less to offer when it comes
• 33:00
  to weather because if there is crappy weather on the horizon do
• 33:05
  not come to Busch Gardens because they will either close
• 33:08
  early. They do rain checks.
• 33:10
  All these parks do rain checks because a lot of them have too
• 33:14
  few out indoor experiences. This one has zero indoor
• 33:17
  experience outside of shows. So you are stuck.
• 33:21
  If it rains in Busch Gardens, you're done.
• 33:24
  Now, I'm not talking about the like 3:00 PM shower.
• 33:27
  I'm talking about all out lightning.
• 33:29
  If it's in there, don't bother coming out here.
• 33:32
  So it sounds like this. Like you said, it does have some
• 33:35
  for all ages, but not quite as much if we're comparing directly
• 33:39
  to SeaWorld that we were just. Yeah.
• 33:40
  This this one is definitely more.
• 33:42
  I have teenagers who want to just absolutely RIP crazy rides.
• 33:46
  You know, it's like, that's how I always felt at some point,
• 33:49
  teenagers are too cool for Disney and they're like, I'm not
• 33:52
  going to go to a kid family park.
• 33:53
  It's like, dude, it's these for all ages, but if they need to
• 33:57
  age out and and they're used to maybe their local Six Flags
• 34:01
  Cedar Fair style park, then this is the place for them to
• 34:05
  absolutely have a blast because there's so much to offer in
• 34:09
  terms of big, large, impactful, thrilling coasters.
• 34:13
  When it sounds like they've got more coasters and less kind of
• 34:17
  other attractions in that way as well.
• 34:21
  Yeah, they have. They have one water ride.
• 34:24
  They just got rid of their other log flumes, so it's like one of
• 34:26
  those big water raft rides. They have one screaming swing
• 34:29
  style attraction and they have one of the tallest drop towers
• 34:33
  with Falcon Fury. So most of the things that they
• 34:36
  have here, 90% are going to be roller coasters.
• 34:39
  Yeah, that makes sense. So they do have a sky ride which
• 34:42
  is really cool. I love their sky ride, it's very
• 34:44
  fun. But that's just like the sky
• 34:45
  tower where they charge 6 bucks unless you're a bass member to
• 34:48
  go on it. Right.
• 34:49
  And that's like, think sky liner, but like across the park
• 34:52
  basically. Yeah.
• 34:54
  However, I would admit, again, seasonality here, they do have
• 34:58
  seasonal food experiences and it's exactly the same.
• 35:02
  It's the exact same eateries, just different names as
• 35:05
  SeaWorld. So we don't need to go over like
• 35:07
  individuals there. Get the dining plan, eat every
• 35:10
  90 minutes, chick-fil-A's included, And think about this
• 35:15
  park, especially if you're around during Halloween or
• 35:18
  Christmas. This is, in my personal opinion,
• 35:22
  the best Christmas park. They use more lights.
• 35:25
  It's millions and millions and miles and miles of lights.
• 35:30
  You can ride the sky, ride and see all the lights around.
• 35:33
  They also have one thing I I forgot to admit is this is year
• 35:38
  round. They have an ice skating show.
• 35:40
  Fantastic, unbelievable like think better than Disney on Ice.
• 35:46
  That level of talent and they did their own.
• 35:50
  They have like an animal one and then they also do a Christmas
• 35:54
  one depending on the time that you go there.
• 35:56
  And then SeaWorld, I forgot to mention, actually does have a
• 35:59
  nice show, but only during Christmas.
• 36:01
  But that's another like can't miss.
• 36:03
  And they put some lights up. It ain't as good as Busch
• 36:06
  Gardens. Now, you talked some about some
• 36:10
  of the other stuff that you can do at SeaWorld, like the feeding
• 36:13
  of the animals and stuff. Busch Gardens has some of that
• 36:15
  also if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, they do.
• 36:18
  Like you can go on. This is actually one of the
• 36:20
  coolest experiences and by far the best giraffe experience I've
• 36:23
  ever had. They sit you on a Serengeti like
• 36:26
  truck and they'll take you around to be able to explore the
• 36:30
  giraffes. And so when you do this, you'll
• 36:35
  be up close to rhino, you'll be up close to zebra, but then they
• 36:38
  literally give you lettuce to feed giraffe.
• 36:40
  And I've never been in an experience like that when the a
• 36:43
  bus gets swarmed, if I draft a point where you'll have like 6
• 36:48
  and their heads are like swooped down, they'll be like just
• 36:51
  whacking around and you got to like duck from giraffe heads.
• 36:54
  It's crazy. It's it's so immersive.
• 36:56
  And if you're going to go to this park and you love giraffe,
• 37:01
  it's a non negotiable to do this as an add on because it's it's
• 37:04
  pretty Dang affordable. Most of the time.
• 37:06
  It's, I mean, right now it's saying starting at 40 bucks, but
• 37:09
  a lot of times when you buy your ticket, you can put this as an
• 37:12
  add on too. Like you, you can do Penguin
• 37:15
  stuff. There's stuff with tortoises,
• 37:16
  there's stuff with sloth, but the Giraffe Serengeti Tour is
• 37:21
  the tour to do. Yeah, and if you want to learn
• 37:23
  more about that, head over to Kirk's YouTube, because I know
• 37:26
  he's got a YouTube video from when he did it a few years back
• 37:30
  that was pretty incredible to watch, how literally they're
• 37:34
  right on top of you. It's pretty cool as a as a past
• 37:37
  member too. I get a free Serengeti tour
• 37:41
  every year. Is that?
• 37:42
  Really. Yeah, I didn't even use it last
• 37:44
  year because I forgot I had that as a perk.
• 37:46
  That's so crazy. You guys get it on the schedule
• 37:48
  for this year so you don't miss out.
• 37:50
  I know I just need to use it like just a random day.
• 37:52
  Go and feed your app and have a blast.
• 37:54
  Right. That's so fun.
• 37:56
  So we talked about this with SeaWorld.
• 37:57
  What is it about this park that makes it unique compared to
• 38:01
  Disney or Universal? OK, so it's, it's a completely,
• 38:06
  you know, it reminds me of animal Kingdom, if animal
• 38:09
  Kingdom had better animal experiences.
• 38:11
  And I, I don't mean that to like shade Disney, but like a lot of
• 38:15
  times my biggest problem with the safari over there is you go
• 38:18
  so Dang fast. That and I get it, they have to
• 38:21
  put throughput, but like I don't want to enjoy the lions for 30
• 38:24
  seconds. I'd love to be there for a long
• 38:26
  time and you you can't unless you go through either the
• 38:30
  gorilla or the Maharaja tracks. There's just not as many places
• 38:36
  where you can take your time here.
• 38:39
  You're like 4 feet away from a lion and you could sit there all
• 38:42
  day. Like some of the photos I've
• 38:44
  gotten are bananas, like insane lion, gorilla, tiger, kangaroo.
• 38:53
  Those ones are all unreal. And then how close you get to
• 38:56
  the draft if you end up paying for them, like, but those are
• 38:59
  just the free ones where you get so close to them.
• 39:01
  Like I've had tigers up like against the window.
• 39:04
  And you're like, they actually have this box.
• 39:06
  It's called the tiger box. And you climb into it.
• 39:09
  Kiddos can climb into it and they heat it.
• 39:11
  And you know how cats are, They love to be on, like, warm heated
• 39:14
  pads. They'll sit right on top.
• 39:16
  And then you just go and it's all made out of plexiglass, so
• 39:18
  you can see the see them right there, which is really funny.
• 39:23
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:24
  And I think that that's what makes it feel more like a
• 39:27
  traditional zoo. And I don't mean that as a
• 39:30
  negative, I mean that as a positive where you get to really
• 39:32
  experience the animals where like you said, at Animal
• 39:35
  Kingdom, most of the really fun animals that you can experience,
• 39:39
  you have to go on the safari to be able to see them.
• 39:43
  Yeah, and the safari, again, is like a limited viewing option
• 39:46
  where you can spend, like, I sit there and you'll hear the female
• 39:50
  tigers roar a lot, and you can just sit there and listen to
• 39:53
  them. And it's like there's no rush.
• 39:56
  Take your time, set your pace. That's why to me, a lot of times
• 39:59
  with our kiddos, if it's a really busy day, we go look at
• 40:03
  animals, we go ride the train. We go ride the sky ride.
• 40:07
  They do. They love the wild Oasis.
• 40:10
  They're a little bit older than the Sesame stuff.
• 40:12
  So there is like climbing playing.
• 40:14
  They also have like this really fun, like bouncy pad mat thing
• 40:18
  that's really cool. But they'll go to wild Oasis and
• 40:21
  be happy just climbing for 45 minutes And I sit there and just
• 40:26
  chit chat and catch up and it's great.
• 40:29
  So it's so I mean, to me, it's if you want really close, really
• 40:34
  enjoyable animal experiences that aren't like slapdash.
• 40:38
  This place is an Aza accredited zoo, so is SeaWorld.
• 40:43
  It's just think like you're going to an aquarium or a zoo
• 40:46
  that have world class attractions.
• 40:48
  Right, right. Well, it's kind of nice.
• 40:50
  It's like a 2 for one when you think about.
• 40:52
  It that way, yeah. And and I mean, there's some
• 40:55
  kids who only want to see animals like but then you're
• 40:58
  also taking care of the needs of others who need to have big
• 41:02
  crazy rides. Now theming in all these places
• 41:05
  think like you're Six Flags theming.
• 41:07
  It's like slightly elevated from Six Flags, but they're all
• 41:10
  themed towards some sort of geographical area.
• 41:14
  It's not intellectually property driven outside of Sesame.
• 41:18
  Right, right. That makes sense.
• 41:19
  So with all of that for Busch Gardens, about what time frame
• 41:24
  do you think you need at that park?
• 41:26
  Do you think it's a one day park?
• 41:27
  Do you think the lines get longer for those coasters that
• 41:29
  you need an extra day? I mean, I, I really think one
• 41:33
  day, if you're using rope job to close, the, the biggest thing
• 41:37
  here you would want to focus on is iron Gwazi because it just
• 41:39
  gets so cramped. But Iron Gwazi and Cheetah Hunt
• 41:42
  are the only ones especially, you know, here's here's a tip.
• 41:45
  The weekends get a lot more busy because these are locals parks.
• 41:49
  So the weekends are smashed. And in fact, I could say that
• 41:52
  true of every single park we're talking about here is the
• 41:55
  weekends are absolutely gassed where it could be a 10 out of 10
• 42:00
  day at Disney on a Tuesday. This will be a 2 out of 10
• 42:05
  almost every Monday through Thursday.
• 42:08
  Now, sometimes they don't open up, especially in the offseason,
• 42:11
  every single eatery because there's less people.
• 42:13
  Sometimes they have lesser hours because of the people.
• 42:16
  So that that is one thing to just be aware of.
• 42:19
  But yeah, I mean, you can you can do really well in these
• 42:23
  parks. And if you're a coaster fiend,
• 42:26
  you could just ride Iron Gwazi like 6 times in a row on a
• 42:29
  Tuesday in the middle of, you know, the fall or whatever,
• 42:33
  because nobody's there, right? Literally no one.
• 42:35
  And again, at that price point that we talked about because
• 42:38
  like you said it owned by the same company that owns SeaWorld,
• 42:41
  they have a lot of those same kind of ticket offers where
• 42:44
  it's, it's not nearly as expensive as a day at Disney or
• 42:48
  Universal. Yeah, and if you're if you're
• 42:50
  exploring, like a lot of these places are packaged in with
• 42:53
  things. So you know, if you get the
• 42:55
  visit Orlando Pass, City Pass or whatever, it's like, well, of
• 42:59
  course SeaWorld and Quantico are on like the a lot of these are
• 43:02
  the parts that are included in that where Universal and Disney
• 43:05
  are like, we don't need that nonsense.
• 43:07
  Like these are the guys who will do cross promotion with a lot of
• 43:10
  things. AAA gets discounts, all that
• 43:12
  stuff like they just want to get you in there and then spending
• 43:15
  money somehow on other stuff. So for them the the price of
• 43:20
  admission is not as important as the add-ons and things that you
• 43:23
  can buy in there. That's why I like the dining
• 43:25
  plan is so so huge at a place like this because they will bop
• 43:30
  you on the head for food. Right, yeah.
• 43:33
  And I definitely suggest, you know those of you that are
• 43:35
  listening, if you want to experience some of these.
• 43:37
  Again, that's where travel agents come into play because
• 43:40
  they know all the deals and how to get you the cheap tickets and
• 43:43
  all that good stuff. So always highly suggest
• 43:45
  reaching out to a travel agent for those types of things to
• 43:48
  help with figuring all that out. Because if you're already
• 43:51
  coordinating Disney or Universal or both, and then you're trying
• 43:54
  to add on a day at Sea World or Aquatica or Busch Gardens or
• 43:57
  wherever it may be, it's a lot to coordinate.
• 43:59
  So that's their job. Let them let them help you with
• 44:02
  that. Yeah, look, I got, I got to save
• 44:05
  3% would be frugal. I just noticed my little pig is
• 44:08
  over here. That's it.
• 44:09
  I'm going to save 3%. I love that.
• 44:13
  Perfect. OK.
• 44:14
  Let's head kind of back towards Orlando a little bit and let's
• 44:19
  talk about Legoland. What can you tell us, generally
• 44:23
  speaking, about Legoland? OK, so Legoland is awesome, I
• 44:28
  will just say that, but this one is going to be really polarizing
• 44:32
  depending on the age of your kids because your kids will age
• 44:36
  out of Legoland. I'm a big kid.
• 44:37
  I still find lots of enjoyable things to do at Legoland, but I
• 44:41
  wouldn't go personally without my family and without my kids
• 44:45
  more than once. You know, like if you're a big
• 44:47
  Lego fan and you you go solo without a family, you would
• 44:50
  never go back here again. You did it.
• 44:53
  You did it once you're good right where if you got kiddos,
• 44:56
  kiddos love Legoland. It's awesome and they there's
• 45:00
  like Lego is so interesting because it has its own identity,
• 45:06
  right. So everything is crazy thematic.
• 45:10
  It looks brilliant. This is this is more on par with
• 45:14
  a Universal or Disney in terms of thematics because it's
• 45:18
  everything is Lego and it just they brilliantly do that.
• 45:22
  They also they have lots of experiences and a lot are
• 45:26
  indoors now in terms of proximity.
• 45:28
  This is another probably rent a car situation, although breaking
• 45:33
  news, if you go to Icon park, they're probably going to have a
• 45:36
  shuttle because they're owned by Merlin and they probably will
• 45:40
  shuttle you out there for free. So I, I think there's some, some
• 45:43
  options. Icon park is really close to
• 45:45
  where SeaWorld is. It's like equidistant between
• 45:47
  Universal and Disney. And because they're, they're
• 45:49
  operating, they're trying to get more people out to Legoland.
• 45:52
  So I think they're going to be doing a free shuttle service
• 45:54
  like you park at Icon and then they'll ship you out there,
• 45:57
  which I think is really smart on their their behalf.
• 46:00
  That's really nice, icon Parker. It's.
• 46:01
  Been announced, but it's definitely.
• 46:03
  The big giant Ferris wheel is in Orlando, correct?
• 46:06
  Yeah, big giant Ferris wheel. They also have a Sea Life, which
• 46:09
  is an aquarium and they have a Madame Tussauds there.
• 46:11
  And then there's like some sort of screaming sky swing and a
• 46:14
  slingshot. But it's like think of like a a
• 46:18
  different Disney Springs. It's like restaurants and outlet
• 46:22
  stores. That's kind of what Icon Park is
• 46:25
  outside of the big, which is their Ferris wheel.
• 46:28
  So price point very similar $74 to like a SeaWorld.
• 46:34
  It's it's very affordable. You do have to pay parking in
• 46:38
  all these places. I didn't talk about that with
• 46:40
  SeaWorld. It's not included in your your
• 46:44
  ticket and it's always somewhere between 30 and 50 depending on
• 46:47
  how busy it is. So it's yeah, it's it's almost
• 46:51
  like ideal to have somebody be an annual pass holder because
• 46:53
  it's only like 30 bucks more to be a pass holder.
• 46:55
  But in pays for parking at all these places.
• 46:58
  Like we always had to have somebody at the, at the like the
• 47:02
  whatever got free parking and then everybody else was on the
• 47:05
  lower tiers. But the they do have one thing
• 47:09
  that's unique. SeaWorld and Busch Gardens do
• 47:12
  not have their own hotels. However, there are two hotels at
• 47:17
  on. Technically there's three, but
• 47:19
  there's two that are attached to the theme park.
• 47:21
  They had the Legoland Hotel, which is really, really fun.
• 47:25
  They do different themed rooms, like for nights and for dreams
• 47:31
  and for pirates and for, I can't remember the one.
• 47:36
  I think it's Parkland is maybe one of the ones where they have
• 47:39
  like different characters. Like it's, they're not Lego
• 47:41
  minifigs. They're like, they're like
• 47:44
  bigger, taller. Oh, here we go.
• 47:47
  Duplo Ninjago friends. They call it I.
• 47:50
  Got friends? Well, I think that's a whole
• 47:52
  line of Lego. Like the there's like the
• 47:54
  Friends line of Lego that's got all those characters and stuff
• 47:57
  too. Yeah, I mean, it's and, and our
• 48:00
  I will tell you this, hands down, my kids would rather stay
• 48:04
  at a Lego property than any other property.
• 48:08
  No Disney Resort, no Universal Resort.
• 48:12
  Trump's when we stay at the pirate hotel, which is the other
• 48:16
  one, but this this hotel is good too.
• 48:17
  The reason why is because they're all set up like suites.
• 48:20
  So when you think about families, there is a kids room
• 48:23
  area and that has bunk beds and their own TV and it also has
• 48:27
  like brick builds so they can like build a bunch of stuff.
• 48:30
  There's also a scavenger hunt in your room and then that opens up
• 48:33
  into a safe and the safe has like snacks for kidnos and a
• 48:38
  brick build for free. That's so cool, Oh my gosh.
• 48:41
  You could see why my kids absolutely hate staying anywhere
• 48:44
  else besides this place. It also includes breakfast on
• 48:49
  your check in and check out day. Which is or your check out.
• 48:54
  Yeah, it would be. It would be your check in day.
• 48:56
  It would be all of your days through check out because you
• 49:01
  would get it on your check you, but you don't get it on check in
• 49:03
  because check in's at three. They do have restaurants on the
• 49:07
  hotel properties, which is cool. Let me pop over to the pirate
• 49:10
  island. The pirate island one is they
• 49:13
  love this. I mean it looks so cool.
• 49:15
  It's so fun. You have treasure maps and the
• 49:18
  parrot. The parrot actually talks if you
• 49:21
  want, you can like, kind of turn them on, but so you can see how
• 49:24
  they have like actual bricks and plates so they can build stuff
• 49:27
  on the side. The kiddos argue about who's
• 49:29
  going to be on the top. Yeah.
• 49:32
  And then the TV, they have a a station.
• 49:35
  It just plays like the Lego Movie and Ninjago, which is
• 49:39
  cool. The bathrooms are really
• 49:41
  spacious. They, the amenities are good,
• 49:44
  like the all of the, you know, shampoos and stuff like that.
• 49:48
  And then again, like it looks out right onto Legoland Florida.
• 49:52
  Both of them have pools, but the Legoland hotel pool has a slide.
• 49:58
  So that's just something to think about.
• 50:00
  And then they also have this other one.
• 50:01
  I've never stayed at it. It's called the Beach Retreat.
• 50:04
  And it's like individual bungalows, but they do have bunk
• 50:08
  beds and stuff like this. But this one is about a 4 minute
• 50:12
  drive away from the park. So it's if you're going to stay
• 50:16
  at the hotels, you stay at Legoland or you stay at the
• 50:20
  pirate islands. Don't stay at the other one
• 50:23
  because it's too much of A hassle to get over.
• 50:25
  I think they do a shuttle but who cares, don't do it.
• 50:27
  Right. Well, and you know, it's so
• 50:28
  crazy because like seeing those rooms, like that's what I wish
• 50:32
  we got more of from Disney. Like I understand that.
• 50:35
  Oh. My God, yes.
• 50:36
  Like and I understand that Disney has multiple different
• 50:39
  types of socioeconomic status to to cater to, but like why don't
• 50:45
  we have theming like that at the All Stars even more like we have
• 50:49
  it outside, why is it not inside the roof?
• 50:51
  I want you to throw up all of your IP on all the walls like I
• 50:56
  am here at Disney. I don't want it to be some like,
• 50:59
  you know, like I think about the Magnolia Suites over at which we
• 51:04
  call it at Riverside Porter. Lanes.
• 51:08
  And it just has like it is so great that they have the genie
• 51:13
  from the lamp as your sink faucet.
• 51:15
  And. It's got Princess and the frog
• 51:17
  on your backsplash of your like that's what I want.
• 51:20
  I don't I that's the the one thing that bothers me the most
• 51:24
  is that most of the resorts on Disney property don't scream
• 51:29
  Disney. And they really should.
• 51:30
  Now they're they're integrating things and they're trying to be
• 51:33
  tasteful. I don't want taste, I want art
• 51:36
  of animation suites. Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 51:39
  And that's like one of the only rooms that you really get it is
• 51:41
  in those suites at Art of Animation.
• 51:44
  Otherwise, you get like a picture on the wall.
• 51:46
  It's like, y'all come on you, you've been renovating these
• 51:50
  rooms. You know, all of these rooms at
• 51:52
  the value resorts at Disney have been renovated in the last,
• 51:55
  what, five years? Six years?
• 51:57
  Like why didn't we get more when they did the renovations?
• 51:59
  I don't want just a curtain that's got The Little Mermaid on
• 52:02
  it. I want the walls to feel like
• 52:04
  I'm under the sea, like. That's yes, please and thank
• 52:08
  you. Yeah.
• 52:09
  And and then like I said. Get that experience I Lego.
• 52:11
  Right. And again, like I said, you
• 52:13
  don't have to do it for all of your resorts at Disney, but at
• 52:15
  least do it to the ones that you know your families are most
• 52:17
  likely to book, which are those value resort properties.
• 52:21
  Totally true. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 52:23
  OK, off our soapbox. Let's go back to Lego.
• 52:26
  I mean, you're, you're preaching to the choir about exactly what
• 52:29
  I would love to see from Disney, and I think most people would
• 52:32
  feel the same way about it. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:34
  But I love that Lego Land has their own their own resorts
• 52:37
  because it makes it easy, an easy decision, especially if
• 52:40
  you're somebody that like you're doing, you can make it a split
• 52:43
  stay. You can do a few days at Disney
• 52:45
  and then go and stay a night or two over at Legoland to have
• 52:48
  that immersive experience over there too.
• 52:52
  Yeah, I mean, really, one one night at the Legoland Hotel is
• 52:56
  your kids will think you're an absolute rock star because trust
• 52:59
  me, every time we've stayed twice.
• 53:01
  Yeah. And thank you so much for
• 53:03
  Legoland Florida for having us. It was awesome.
• 53:05
  And they will never shut up about how awesome the Legoland
• 53:09
  Hotel is and how every other hotel is not as good.
• 53:11
  My kids, they're not, they're not like that.
• 53:13
  Like we stay in some really not so great places off property
• 53:17
  because it's affordable for families and we're we're there
• 53:20
  literally for a shower, sleep, grab coffee, we out that's it.
• 53:26
  So like we stay in places that are safe, but they are a box.
• 53:30
  They are not great. They are.
• 53:32
  I would never recommend them for anybody else to stay because
• 53:35
  it's not what you would want on vacation.
• 53:37
  But as a local, what do we care, right?
• 53:40
  You know, right, You're just doing it for the convenience of
• 53:42
  not having to drive to the parks in the morning or at the end of
• 53:45
  the night. Exactly.
• 53:46
  So like we'll do, we'll do a rope drop and then check into
• 53:51
  the hotel middle of the day, then finish somewhere close,
• 53:55
  take a shower, go to bed, rope drop the next day, right?
• 53:58
  It's just so much more easy to do that.
• 54:00
  But we don't need something like fantastic or huge, right?
• 54:04
  I will tell you if you're going to Legoland and you can price it
• 54:07
  out and it makes sense to you. The hotels there are
• 54:11
  outrageously good. Yeah, love that.
• 54:13
  All right, let's jump into the park now.
• 54:15
  What can you tell us about the Park of Legoland?
• 54:19
  The park. So what's interesting about
• 54:20
  Legoland is Legoland used to be Cypress Gardens and then it
• 54:24
  changed to something else. So they have this like really
• 54:26
  beautiful Botanical Garden that's all the way in the back.
• 54:29
  They also have a water park. Now granted not all of this
• 54:32
  stuff is included in your price point.
• 54:35
  They also have a sea life here, so there is an aquarium, but it
• 54:39
  has a lot of attractions and they are good for a lot of
• 54:44
  different heights. Now, the one thing that is
• 54:45
  probably the best world class is the sensory guides for Legoland
• 54:51
  and Peppa. The Merlin folks have really
• 54:54
  prioritized that. And if that's important, you
• 54:57
  have a kid with some neurodivergence or there's some
• 55:00
  sort of accessibility needs. They are incredible at like if
• 55:07
  you look at the level of detail, they're very particular and you
• 55:10
  know your kids needs. They write every single
• 55:13
  attraction and they rate them based on sensory levels of
• 55:15
  touch, taste, sound, sight and smell.
• 55:18
  Again, I love looking at taste, which they consider the Battle
• 55:23
  of Bricksburg, which is funny because that's a water ride.
• 55:26
  So I guess if you get. Water in your mouth?
• 55:28
  Yeah. They would consider that a taste
• 55:30
  thing, which is very funny. That's.
• 55:33
  That's kind of valid though, because you got to think that's
• 55:35
  like that water has been treated with something so it's going to
• 55:37
  taste a little funky. You never.
• 55:39
  I mean, they do it for the splash pad and the rescue
• 55:42
  Academy, which also has water. So all the water things are the
• 55:45
  only ones that have that. But again, they will do it for
• 55:48
  every single experience that is here, you know, like touch.
• 55:52
  And then I mean, they, they show you all the rides, which is so
• 55:56
  cool. And it'll it'll tell you the
• 55:58
  ride heights and then the sensory levels.
• 56:01
  This has, and I have gone on the record saying this multiple
• 56:05
  times, The Lego Movie Masters of Flight attraction is the best
• 56:11
  soaring we have. This is a horrible picture.
• 56:13
  I thought it was going to be way more impressive.
• 56:15
  It is awful. Don't look at that, No.
• 56:17
  Their website doesn't do it justice.
• 56:19
  No, it does not, but it has the best smells I've ever had on a
• 56:25
  foreign experience. And it basically takes you in
• 56:28
  through your hangout with Emmett and you're becoming a master
• 56:33
  builder and you fly on a triple Decker couch and that's what the
• 56:37
  experience is. And you go and explore all of
• 56:40
  the lands that are in the Lego movie, the original Lego movie.
• 56:42
  They have a whole entire land dedicated to the Lego Movie,
• 56:45
  which is really cool. But there's this Evergreen scent
• 56:49
  that Mel and I, if we could bask in it forever, we would.
• 56:53
  It's so good. But then they have like sweet
• 56:55
  cotton candy ish smell. There's also like a Fiji during
• 56:59
  the sea. And then they use Mr. Sprays
• 57:02
  like things that used to work at Soren in in Epcot, which I
• 57:06
  imagine will get fixed as America comes in.
• 57:09
  I sure hope so, goodness gracious.
• 57:11
  I imagine they're going to take the time to actually fix those
• 57:14
  things so people can have a really unique experience again.
• 57:16
  But Masters of Flight is outrageously good.
• 57:19
  They have a really good roller coaster called The Great Lego
• 57:22
  Race. They also just built a $9
• 57:26
  million attraction, which is called Galacticoaster.
• 57:30
  And Galacticoaster is if you could take Guardians of the
• 57:35
  Galaxy and test tracks building and mash them together you would
• 57:40
  get galactic coaster. It has an epic pre show with a
• 57:44
  really good animatronic. And then you build your
• 57:47
  spaceship as a group and then you board the attraction and the
• 57:52
  spaceship will show up on ride in the beginning and at the end
• 57:57
  and and you have this really fun.
• 58:00
  And it's almost all practical effects, very little screens.
• 58:04
  So in that essence, it's a little bit better than Guardian.
• 58:08
  It's very short because it's again, we're at Legoland.
• 58:10
  So it's about a 60 minute or 62nd ride, but it's fantastic.
• 58:15
  It is so high level. That's the rope drop galactic
• 58:19
  coaster is the IT used to be. You know, you go up, you you
• 58:23
  just start on the right side of the park.
• 58:24
  You go to masters of flight, then to the dragon, then to
• 58:27
  Ninjago, then to the water boat driving and then to the car
• 58:33
  driving. And then you've pretty much done
• 58:35
  everything that's like major and everything else doesn't have a
• 58:37
  line, but that is spectacular. And it's all the way at the back
• 58:42
  of the park almost to where their included water park is.
• 58:45
  But yeah, Galactic Coasters, the noise and the funk.
• 58:49
  Baby Guardians with test track. It's wonderful.
• 58:51
  I love it. Yeah.
• 58:53
  So it sounds like Legoland while they have a some various
• 58:56
  different experiences, this is kind of what we alluded to
• 58:59
  earlier. Age range wise, not as much for
• 59:02
  your tweens and teens. Yeah, I mean, they're going to,
• 59:06
  they're going to want to do the wooden coaster, coaster hours.
• 59:08
  They're going to want to do Masters of Flight because that's
• 59:10
  Soren. They'll do.
• 59:12
  There's this, it's Mia's driving school, which is, or Mia's
• 59:18
  riding adventure. And you sit on a horse and it's
• 59:21
  it goes up this really pretty tall steep thing while it spins.
• 59:25
  That's that's probably their most thrilling attraction
• 59:28
  outside of Galacticoaster. And then, you know, they have a
• 59:31
  shooting dark ride that's called lost Kingdom Adventure, which is
• 59:35
  really fun. And it it kind of has like an
• 59:38
  Indiana Jones feel to it. It's it's and the dragon roller
• 59:42
  coaster is part dark ride because you go through like a
• 59:46
  whole entire brick build of a medieval castle and then you go
• 59:51
  out and and then have like a coaster experience at the end.
• 59:54
  But when it comes to ages, this really is, you know, once you
• 59:59
  get to 10, you're probably not going here a whole lot.
• 1:00:03
  You know your your kids are going to age out of this park
• 1:00:06
  faster than any of the other parks.
• 1:00:08
  Yeah, yeah. And we we dropped our season
• 1:00:11
  passes for this and then just go do media events.
• 1:00:14
  But if we did it, we would probably just buy like a one day
• 1:00:18
  a year and be happy with that. Right, right, just to get a
• 1:00:21
  little taste so that the kiddos can go back again.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, they, they, I mean, they'll, they'll shove me in the
• 1:00:26
  coaster building area and we'll be there for an hour and a half
• 1:00:29
  building roller coasters. Like that is a thing that they,
• 1:00:32
  they're like, can we do that? And we will just sit in there
• 1:00:35
  for an hour and a half building coasters, which is very fun.
• 1:00:38
  But it's, it's more about the build than necessarily just like
• 1:00:42
  rides and stuff. Like, I mean, they, they have
• 1:00:44
  some cool attractions. Like Pirate River Quest is
• 1:00:47
  really fun. It goes through.
• 1:00:48
  It's like integrating the Cypress garden on a boat.
• 1:00:52
  It's actually like a chartered boat, which smashes around the
• 1:00:55
  sides quite a bit because they it's, it's tight channelling and
• 1:00:59
  it's not on rails. But then they RIP it on this,
• 1:01:02
  this lagoon, which they they still do a water skiing show,
• 1:01:07
  which is very unique. That's like old school Florida.
• 1:01:10
  They used to do a water show in SeaWorld, but they've since
• 1:01:13
  dumped that. But you can still see a water
• 1:01:16
  show here, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's unique.
• 1:01:18
  You don't see that very, very many places, I'm sure.
• 1:01:22
  So let's talk about food at Legoland.
• 1:01:24
  What can we expect from the food offerings here?
• 1:01:28
  OK. So food wise, it's kind of
• 1:01:31
  there's, there's some places that are great and there's some
• 1:01:33
  places that are absolutely horrendous.
• 1:01:35
  So you know that your typical places like your burgers and
• 1:01:38
  your pizzas, they're fine. They're acceptable.
• 1:01:40
  They're, you know, your theme park standard thoroughfare.
• 1:01:43
  And then there's the standouts like, whoa, this is really good.
• 1:01:48
  And those would be #1 Granny's apple fries.
• 1:01:52
  Granny's apple fries are all they are are slices of apples
• 1:01:56
  that get hit with cornstarch and then they fry them and then they
• 1:01:59
  hit them with cinnamon and sugar.
• 1:02:01
  Outrageously good. Like unique only to this park.
• 1:02:05
  You have to get Granny's apple fries if you're going to
• 1:02:08
  Legoland. I like to get them in a sundae,
• 1:02:11
  but you could also get them just with a caramel and a whipped
• 1:02:15
  cream dipping sauce if you want. That's like have to do and then
• 1:02:20
  the other one that is a must do for me is kicking chicken.
• 1:02:24
  They have chicken tenders and stuff for kids, but they're
• 1:02:27
  chicken sandwiches, especially their seasonal ones are
• 1:02:29
  outrageously good. Now I don't know if they do
• 1:02:33
  dining plans here. I've never used one and a la
• 1:02:37
  carte everything is again very, very pricey.
• 1:02:40
  And they do have some stuff for adults, like there's there's a
• 1:02:43
  place called The Grove that sells local beers.
• 1:02:46
  And if they have like 30 different craft beer options,
• 1:02:48
  which are pretty neat. And then they have ice cream
• 1:02:50
  places and funnel cakes and, you know, sweets.
• 1:02:53
  And then again, if you're an adult, they have like their fake
• 1:02:55
  Starbucks, which is called the Legoland Coffee Co, which when
• 1:02:58
  Mel and I walk in there, we have problems because we have to buy
• 1:03:02
  coffee because it smells so insanely good.
• 1:03:04
  But they're also similar to Seaworld's and Busch Gardens,
• 1:03:11
  where if it's an off day, off peak offseason, there may be
• 1:03:16
  less eateries open. So like the Burger Kitchen,
• 1:03:21
  Kicking Chicken and Dragon's Den will probably be just about it.
• 1:03:24
  And then everything else. Oh and Granny's fries.
• 1:03:26
  Everything else will be closed. But you would be fine even if
• 1:03:28
  you did that. They do have some food festivals
• 1:03:32
  and overlay events. They do a Halloween which does
• 1:03:35
  include trick or treating. They have a Christmas event
• 1:03:39
  which has their own Christmas shows.
• 1:03:40
  Same with the Halloween has their own Halloween shows.
• 1:03:43
  They also do Ninjago weekends which you get to do some
• 1:03:46
  spinjitsu and they have all these like scavenger hunt things
• 1:03:49
  and they give out prizes. They also do instead of pin
• 1:03:52
  trading it's mini fig trading. I am bringing mini figs and you
• 1:03:55
  can there's trading boards and you can trade off of the model
• 1:03:59
  citizens. That's what they call their
• 1:04:01
  their workers there off their lanyards as well.
• 1:04:05
  And then they do something instead of doing like buttons.
• 1:04:07
  They have pop badges which you can get for free, which is super
• 1:04:09
  fun. But this place, Seaworlds and
• 1:04:15
  Bush, I never talked about. You can bring in wagons and
• 1:04:18
  stuff, and it's not like Disney. So if you have a wagon for your
• 1:04:22
  kiddos, you can do that. Pack all your stuff in there,
• 1:04:24
  leave it wherever. It's totally cool.
• 1:04:26
  These places are awesome about that stuff.
• 1:04:28
  Perfect. Love that.
• 1:04:29
  And then as far as again, what is it that makes this park
• 1:04:33
  unique in comparison to Disney and Universal as we kind of
• 1:04:37
  continue that comparison? It's Lego.
• 1:04:39
  I mean, everything looks Lego. There's things that you can
• 1:04:43
  build within the park which does not exist at any of the other
• 1:04:46
  places. And and they do have really
• 1:04:49
  great rides and a good portion of them are indoors now where
• 1:04:53
  before they had the same issue as SeaWorld and Bush.
• 1:04:57
  They have combated that like galactic coaster is the number
• 1:05:00
  one ride and that's indoors. You have lost Kingdom, you have
• 1:05:03
  Masters of Flight Dragons, like half and half.
• 1:05:06
  And they do have like a 40 theater, which you can see some
• 1:05:08
  really fun Lego experiences. You'll get drenched though.
• 1:05:11
  They like dump buckets of water in this 40 theater.
• 1:05:14
  So that taste sensor has got to be a nine on that one.
• 1:05:19
  Oh my gosh, that's crazy. OK.
• 1:05:21
  And then as far as how long you need at Legoland, is one day
• 1:05:26
  enough to get through everything?
• 1:05:28
  Yeah, 100%. One day.
• 1:05:30
  If you were to do 2 because you wanted to stay at the hotel,
• 1:05:34
  like personally what I would do is I would stay at the hotel.
• 1:05:39
  You don't need tickets for that night necessarily.
• 1:05:41
  I mean you could, but realistically I would just stay
• 1:05:45
  on any of the Monday through Thursday and then it'll be dead
• 1:05:50
  during the week. No lines for anything.
• 1:05:53
  Even Galacticoaster probably would at most have like a 2530
• 1:05:56
  which for a world class attraction like that, that is
• 1:05:59
  insane. And because it's so far at the
• 1:06:02
  end of the park most people start in the front.
• 1:06:04
  So if you rope drop and ran all the way to the back, you
• 1:06:06
  probably get laps on that before people even realize that it
• 1:06:10
  exists, right? That makes.
• 1:06:12
  Sense. So yeah, one day is perfect, but
• 1:06:14
  I would do an overnight prior at one of the Legoland hotels.
• 1:06:18
  They do these fun lobby parties too.
• 1:06:21
  So there's like all these different experiences that are
• 1:06:23
  not necessarily akin to having to be in the park for that.
• 1:06:27
  Plus there's a, you know, if you don't want to eat at those
• 1:06:29
  hotels for dinner, which is a little pricey in my opinion.
• 1:06:33
  They have tons of chain restaurants in.
• 1:06:36
  I think it's Winter Haven is where this is.
• 1:06:38
  Gotcha. Nice, like I think we hated it
• 1:06:39
  at least. Dude, it's cheap.
• 1:06:42
  I think we hit everything for Legoland.
• 1:06:45
  Are we ready to venture over to Peppa Pig Theme park?
• 1:06:51
  Yeah. All right, so Peppa Pig, I'm
• 1:06:54
  going to just tell you straight up, unless your kids are under
• 1:06:57
  4, do not bother with this park unless you get like a really,
• 1:07:01
  really cheap add on. There is nothing for a kid over
• 1:07:05
  678 here because everything is really really young kiddo geared
• 1:07:11
  and the size of the park itself is tiny.
• 1:07:15
  Like we're Legoland Florida you can easily spend a day.
• 1:07:19
  Peppa Pig theme park. You can spend maybe 3 hours.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah, but that makes sense because it's literally themed
• 1:07:25
  for Peppa Pig, which that's the age range that you're looking at
• 1:07:28
  with Peppa Pig anyway. So like totally makes sense.
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, if you look at the attractions, it's all slow,
• 1:07:34
  small, tiny. They have a little micro
• 1:07:37
  coaster. They have lots of like physical
• 1:07:39
  things, like they have these little tricycles out.
• 1:07:41
  There's like a boat ride that's a flat ride like anything else.
• 1:07:44
  They do have a splash pad. There is some shows.
• 1:07:47
  There's a small little balloon tower that's similar to like the
• 1:07:53
  Cookie Drop in Sesame Place in SeaWorld.
• 1:07:55
  The the one ride here that I actually really like and it's
• 1:07:58
  not the Daddy Pigs roller coaster, which is OK.
• 1:08:03
  The best one is Grampy Rabbit's Dinosaur Adventure.
• 1:08:07
  Let me see if I can find a picture.
• 1:08:09
  I know they're not the best with pictures here, but the it's kind
• 1:08:14
  of like a dark ride if it was outside.
• 1:08:16
  So obviously that's why I'm a fan.
• 1:08:17
  But look, you would get to ride this little dinosaur thing.
• 1:08:20
  That's cute. It's fun and you go around it's
• 1:08:23
  outside. It's very hot in this park
• 1:08:25
  because there's no shade so you can look at George's Fort.
• 1:08:29
  You are you are roasting in George's Fort.
• 1:08:32
  Be aware sunscreen. There's like 2 canopied areas
• 1:08:37
  but everything else is outside. 0 shade in Peppa Pig Park.
• 1:08:41
  Which that's like, come on. I mean, look at it.
• 1:08:44
  Look at the fun. Fun like it.
• 1:08:45
  Doesn't look fun to me the summer of Florida.
• 1:08:48
  I just can't fathom how these theme park designers don't think
• 1:08:52
  about that. They didn't think about it over
• 1:08:54
  at Hollywood Studios with Toy Story Land.
• 1:08:56
  Even Epic Universe has issues with shade and it's a brand new
• 1:08:59
  theme park like it is Florida, you know?
• 1:09:04
  What I I would say the only argument I would say to epic is
• 1:09:07
  they planted trees and they didn't transplant ones that were
• 1:09:10
  huge and Guren already. So like coming at 9 years from
• 1:09:14
  now will probably be OK. However they do have their
• 1:09:18
  eateries are very large and almost all of them outside of
• 1:09:23
  like the eating times are dead. So like you can seek refuge
• 1:09:27
  indoors with AC somewhere that is such a hot park like epic.
• 1:09:33
  You need a fan, you need to wear sunscreen, you need to reapply.
• 1:09:37
  Getting roasted this park. My kiddos and me got super
• 1:09:41
  overheated in it and we were there for about 2 1/2 hours.
• 1:09:45
  Yeah, that's not a good combo. No now they do have a sensory
• 1:09:50
  guide for this as well which again I love about these Merlin
• 1:09:53
  experiences. They will tell you any of the
• 1:09:57
  locations like this is really, really great to make informed
• 1:10:01
  decisions if you have very particular needs for your kiddo
• 1:10:04
  In terms of food, there's only one place to eat.
• 1:10:08
  And then like I think maybe like a snack place, it's called
• 1:10:11
  Missus Rabbit's Diner. They've got shakes and salads
• 1:10:14
  and pizzas. It is not out.
• 1:10:16
  It's very fun themed inside, but it is not a great menu and
• 1:10:21
  there's no dining plans or deals or the only, the only time that
• 1:10:25
  I would ever add this to Legoland is if you're kids, you
• 1:10:29
  got somebody who is under 4 and you got somebody that's under 7.
• 1:10:34
  I'm probably thinking about adding Peppa for them.
• 1:10:37
  But yeah, honestly, honestly, you could just go to Legoland
• 1:10:42
  and find plenty to do. They have a whole entire Duplo
• 1:10:45
  area that's got more rides than Peppa Pig, so right.
• 1:10:49
  And I don't think we mentioned Kirk where it is in proximity to
• 1:10:53
  everything else we've been talking about.
• 1:10:56
  Oh, and oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, hang on, let me.
• 1:10:58
  I'm going to pull up Google Maps because it'll be easier to see.
• 1:11:03
  Just give me a second. Google Maps.
• 1:11:05
  Here we go. All right, so if we look, here's
• 1:11:08
  Peppa Pig in the center of Winter Haven.
• 1:11:11
  So we go all the way out and we're about 45 minutes away from
• 1:11:15
  Disney, which is up here. So now that's with traffic.
• 1:11:18
  You go down I4, you go down 27, and then you loop right across.
• 1:11:21
  Busch Gardens are over here in the Tampa area.
• 1:11:23
  That's why it's like an hour to two hours depending on the
• 1:11:26
  traffic on I-4. But then, you know, since we
• 1:11:30
  have this visual up, here's Disney, here's SeaWorld, and
• 1:11:35
  here's Universal. So SeaWorld is right in between.
• 1:11:39
  Like that's why like, Seaworld's probably the easiest one to add
• 1:11:42
  on, especially if you have slightly older kids, like 7 and
• 1:11:45
  older, plus 48 inches in height, then SeaWorld is Primo for that.
• 1:11:52
  Where Legoland's. Yeah, it's a little bit of a
• 1:11:53
  haul. And you're going to need a Oh my
• 1:11:56
  God, I forgot we have a Medieval Times.
• 1:11:59
  Right. And then as far as Legoland and
• 1:12:01
  Peppa Pig. Yeah.
• 1:12:04
  They're literally like right next to each other, aren't they?
• 1:12:07
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Like Legoland and Peppa Pig are
• 1:12:10
  on top of each other. It's in the parking lot
• 1:12:12
  essentially of Legoland. So when we let me get out of my
• 1:12:15
  medieval times, here's here's Legoland Florida, the entirety
• 1:12:19
  of year. So I mean, this, this whole
• 1:12:22
  entire page is Legoland Florida. And then here's Cypress Gardens,
• 1:12:26
  here's the water park, right. So look at the size of this.
• 1:12:29
  That's Peppa Pig Park. Oh my gosh, do you see what
• 1:12:32
  you're like? You got to zoom way in to see
• 1:12:34
  it. The the Peppa Pig park yeah is
• 1:12:38
  smaller than their hotel parking.
• 1:12:42
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's all parking in the
• 1:12:45
  parking lot. It's if you were to take up the
• 1:12:48
  footprint space, Lego Movie World and Duplo are 1 1/2 the
• 1:12:54
  size of Peppa Pig. It's just that that's why I say
• 1:12:57
  like if you get a really good price, like 10-15 dollars more
• 1:13:01
  and you have a really young little who's into Peppa because
• 1:13:04
  they do a meet and greet. I think they do a character
• 1:13:06
  dining occasionally at times, then fair.
• 1:13:09
  But other than that, this is a total skip for me.
• 1:13:12
  Just going to like the land. It's more fun.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, that make that. I mean, that makes sense.
• 1:13:16
  Again, if you've got the kiddos that this is their jam, you
• 1:13:19
  know, then it's worth maybe considering.
• 1:13:21
  But yeah, I would definitely pair it with a trip to Legoland.
• 1:13:24
  Like don't go out there just for Peppa Pig.
• 1:13:28
  No like you like you can see right here the multi park is 99
• 1:13:31
  where the regular park for oh and includes sea life too, which
• 1:13:35
  is their aquarium which is located inside of Legoland which
• 1:13:39
  you do have a separate. I mean 100 bucks is not horrible
• 1:13:43
  to get Peppa Lego and sea life. Could you do all of that in a
• 1:13:47
  day? Probably.
• 1:13:49
  But you're going to be running through Sea Life and you're
• 1:13:51
  going to be running through Peppa and Lego.
• 1:13:54
  I mean, if you did that, maybe you could do a day and a half.
• 1:13:57
  Like if you could do a split day.
• 1:13:59
  I don't know how that works. But yeah, I mean, at $34, Peppa
• 1:14:04
  Pig Land is fine, but I would not go all the way out there for
• 1:14:10
  34, even 30. I mean, if, if I think that when
• 1:14:12
  I went there it was $50.00, I got ripped off.
• 1:14:17
  Yeah, I don't know that $50 is. Yeah, I don't know it.
• 1:14:22
  I mean, look, it's hard to. Justify when you when you, when
• 1:14:25
  we look at these really good deals that you get at SeaWorld
• 1:14:27
  and Busch Gardens and even Legoland and how much you get
• 1:14:29
  for the price of admission. Thinking about paying $50.00 for
• 1:14:32
  that is like. Probably not this.
• 1:14:35
  This one actually intrigues me though.
• 1:14:37
  This 7 Florida attractions, one because remember Merlin owns a
• 1:14:40
  bunch of these places. You've got Legoland Florida,
• 1:14:43
  Legoland Water Park, Peppa Pig, Sea Life, Madame Tussauds, the
• 1:14:48
  Orlando Inc Life Orlando because there's two, there's one in
• 1:14:52
  Orlando and then one at Peppa Pig, which is called or one at
• 1:14:55
  Legoland which is called Sea Life Florida.
• 1:14:57
  I don't know, 114 for all those places is actually like now
• 1:15:02
  you're talking, now you're talking like, OK, I can kind of
• 1:15:06
  do 2 days for 1/14 and hit everything and not feel rushed.
• 1:15:11
  Like, yeah, that sounds like a much better.
• 1:15:13
  Really good way to do it right. 114 for like 2 days of full
• 1:15:18
  entertainment. I think that's pretty good.
• 1:15:20
  Yeah, as long as you're able to spread it out accordingly, I
• 1:15:23
  think that's that's a good look to see if it works.
• 1:15:26
  Yeah. I mean, I would probably, I
• 1:15:27
  would probably what I would do is I would, you know, if I'm
• 1:15:32
  trying to split up a Disney trip or bring it in the beginning or
• 1:15:35
  the end you start or ends in Winter Haven with or, or start
• 1:15:40
  in. Like if you're at Orlando, you
• 1:15:43
  go and you do icon park for like half a day because you don't
• 1:15:46
  need more than that to do the I sea life Orlando and Madame
• 1:15:50
  Tussauds. That's like 1/2 day.
• 1:15:51
  Then go down, check into your Legoland hotel.
• 1:15:54
  Just chill, keep it easy. And then the next day, you can
• 1:15:57
  crank Peppa, Lego and the water park and, you know.
• 1:16:02
  Yeah. Or maybe they'd even let you
• 1:16:03
  into the water park. I don't know how this works,
• 1:16:06
  like. Right.
• 1:16:07
  I think it's valid for one visit per attraction.
• 1:16:09
  Like, how do you get into the water park at Legoland?
• 1:16:12
  It's all the way in the back. Like, you can't go into the
• 1:16:14
  water park. Yeah, you check into.
• 1:16:16
  Your so you definitely have to do that together probably and
• 1:16:19
  that would that's it. It would just take a little bit
• 1:16:20
  of coordinating, but that's definitely a better deal.
• 1:16:23
  That's two days for 114, two days with all that stuff, right?
• 1:16:28
  That's great because it's like what, 79 to go to Legoland like
• 1:16:31
  do the 1:14? Right, right.
• 1:16:33
  For sure. What can you tell us about food
• 1:16:35
  at Peppa Pig? I can't imagine there's a ton to
• 1:16:38
  talk about, but. No, we talked about it already.
• 1:16:40
  We did. We said it was like Mama rabbits
• 1:16:44
  something. It's I don't know, it's trash.
• 1:16:46
  It's like you've got it's a look at PB and J grilled cheeses, Mac
• 1:16:51
  and cheese, pizza. They've got some sandwiches and
• 1:16:55
  salads and I don't know, I mean, what it's they're known for
• 1:16:59
  their muddy puddle milkshakes and mud cups.
• 1:17:02
  That's like, they're like signature snack there.
• 1:17:04
  But everything else is like, who cares if you're normal standard
• 1:17:08
  Kare, PB and J grilled cheese, Mac and cheese salads, like
• 1:17:11
  whatever, right? Because I'm not writing home
• 1:17:13
  about Peppa Pig. No, and it's probably
• 1:17:15
  outrageously priced for what you're getting and. 1000.
• 1:17:19
  Percent right, right. Exactly.
• 1:17:21
  So I think that kind of covers everything that we need to talk
• 1:17:24
  about with Peppa Pig Theme Park. As much as it's adorable, very,
• 1:17:30
  very, it's not. Really like a big.
• 1:17:31
  Part No. Very small percentage of people.
• 1:17:34
  It's like, yeah, it's like if you had a carnival, Yeah, that
• 1:17:38
  was Peppa Pig themed and it just happened to be there.
• 1:17:40
  Right. You know they they almost were
• 1:17:43
  better off if they had just like added it as a land into Lego
• 1:17:46
  land instead of that's what I'm saying.
• 1:17:48
  But it makes sense because now they can add on a price.
• 1:17:51
  Right. Oh, for sure.
• 1:17:53
  You know, if, if they can, I don't know how many people are
• 1:17:55
  going to Peppa Pig per day, but that is a sizable chunk.
• 1:17:59
  Like even if it's 30 bucks per person that they tag on.
• 1:18:02
  I mean, that's why they added sea life.
• 1:18:04
  They added sea life. So now you're adding on like I
• 1:18:06
  think on a leg Atlantic it's like 10 or 15, like whatever,
• 1:18:09
  it's 10 bucks. Like let's, it's just like an
• 1:18:11
  extra thing, you know? Right.
• 1:18:13
  Yeah, for sure. All right, well, let's pivot
• 1:18:16
  away here from Peppa Pig. I think we have exhausted Kirk's
• 1:18:20
  opinions on this park. At this dude I have opinions bro
• 1:18:24
  it stinks don't go go to Legoland it's way more fun.
• 1:18:28
  I got burned dude I was so mad I went to Peppa Pig for 50 bucks.
• 1:18:32
  Well, and you only spent a brief amount of time because wasn't it
• 1:18:35
  a challenge day that you went there?
• 1:18:36
  So you were going for a very specific purpose and.
• 1:18:39
  It actually wasted 60 minutes because I had to go on a ride
• 1:18:42
  and do a snack and I waited like 40 minutes for food.
• 1:18:46
  I was so and I couldn't even go on the coaster.
• 1:18:48
  I was really annoyed that day. Yeah, yeah, well, I don't care,
• 1:18:51
  man. I'm so I'm still holding true to
• 1:18:53
  have the pig land stinks. OK, you heard it here first.
• 1:18:58
  Not first. Probably you heard it here.
• 1:19:00
  Now you know, let's talk about Fun Spot.
• 1:19:04
  What can you tell us? Because I feel like this is a
• 1:19:07
  like not known theme park spot at all.
• 1:19:12
  So what can you tell us? No, nobody knows about Fun Spot.
• 1:19:15
  So what can you tell us about Fun Spot?
• 1:19:18
  Let's hear those opinions now. OK.
• 1:19:22
  Fun spot is go karts with a couple of coasters.
• 1:19:26
  That's basically free. All right, That's what it is
• 1:19:31
  because they have to compete with the largest parks in the
• 1:19:36
  world that are world class. And this is like a park that
• 1:19:40
  should exist in rural Georgia or Alabama and it would smash it
• 1:19:47
  would absolutely be a huge hit. But the fact that it's in
• 1:19:51
  Orlando and Kissimmee, they have two, there's actually one in
• 1:19:54
  Georgia too, which has like a world class coast, which is
• 1:19:56
  absolutely insane. But these these places don't
• 1:20:00
  charge for parking, they don't charge for admission.
• 1:20:02
  Everything is in a ticketed system or wristband system.
• 1:20:05
  So think like a carnival but very heavy on go karts.
• 1:20:10
  So if you have kiddos and they can't do they usually have a
• 1:20:14
  tandem 1 and then they have solo ones and then a slick track if
• 1:20:18
  they can't do go karts. This is a skip for me for for
• 1:20:22
  most credits. If you're in the need to to tick
• 1:20:26
  off coasters though, they do have some fun coasters.
• 1:20:29
  The one in Orlando has a wooden coaster called White Lightning,
• 1:20:33
  which is fine, but this is an interesting one for Disney
• 1:20:36
  folks. They have the Freedom Flyer and
• 1:20:38
  you go, well, why is this two person roller coaster so
• 1:20:43
  important or significant to you, Kirk?
• 1:20:45
  Well, thank you for asking. Said nobody ever.
• 1:20:49
  It's because this is Monsters Inc.
• 1:20:52
  If you don't know, this is the ride system and the exact roller
• 1:20:56
  coaster that Monsters Inc is. So you want to get a, a preview
• 1:21:01
  of what the Monsters Inc roller coaster is, You can ride Freedom
• 1:21:05
  Flyer now. I think they're going to have
• 1:21:06
  some like, I think the chairs might pivot and move on that
• 1:21:10
  like the doors, like I think you actually, if they're, if
• 1:21:13
  Disney's really smart, they'll come up with a very slow moving
• 1:21:16
  ride system that they'll allow you to control the motion of the
• 1:21:19
  doors. So and and this is this one uses
• 1:21:23
  the lift hill system, but the one in Disney is going to use a
• 1:21:27
  like an elevator lift system so that they can keep it in a
• 1:21:30
  smaller footprint. But that's kind of cool that you
• 1:21:34
  can go ride the monsters Inc roller coaster ahead of time
• 1:21:37
  with Freedom Flyer. Now one thing that is amazing is
• 1:21:40
  the price point here is set in the 90s like most of their
• 1:21:44
  ticket costs for everything. Like when you buy tickets and
• 1:21:47
  packages you can buy a single day park ticket for 5995 or you
• 1:21:54
  can do like just ride 4 rides for 36 bucks which I think is
• 1:22:00
  the move because I don't know how much you really want to ride
• 1:22:03
  multiples of but that's really affordable and they run lots of
• 1:22:07
  discounts. They also have this is bonkers
• 1:22:10
  if you for food like the food stuff is insane their their food
• 1:22:14
  deals. It's $24.00 for their meal plan.
• 1:22:16
  It gives you 2 meals and a snack.
• 1:22:19
  Even if you are at like universal you just pop over here
• 1:22:22
  and eat for dirt cheap. Like I mean you're eating for
• 1:22:26
  $11.00 per meal plus a snack for free.
• 1:22:29
  The the other one is if you're a soda person.
• 1:22:33
  Like a real soda hound 1199 gets you unlimited refills for the
• 1:22:38
  entire year. Wait, you pay 1199?
• 1:22:43
  Year, not day, year. Yes, yes.
• 1:22:46
  What? 1199 for a souvenir cup to get
• 1:22:49
  free soda for a year. That's insane.
• 1:22:53
  So I know a lot of locals that are like soda themes and they
• 1:22:58
  just will drive to fun spot, fill up 3 cups and then go home.
• 1:23:01
  And then you just get soda because it's cheap, it's free.
• 1:23:04
  That's so, well, especially because, like, you don't have to
• 1:23:06
  pay for parking. It's pretty easy to get in and
• 1:23:09
  out of. It's not like a Magic Kingdom
• 1:23:11
  where you have to take, you know, a monorail or a ferry to
• 1:23:13
  get to. It's like the easiest thing to
• 1:23:15
  navigate. That's crazy though.
• 1:23:17
  Literally the parking lots here. You walk in, you grab your soda,
• 1:23:20
  you dip, it's right there. You can even get ices too for
• 1:23:23
  free, which is that's. Like a hidden a hidden hack
• 1:23:28
  right there. Dude, you know what else is a
• 1:23:30
  hidden gem? Do you like Annie Anne's
• 1:23:32
  pretzels by any chance and don't want to spend 9 bucks?
• 1:23:35
  Love you can get. Pretzel for like 350 there
• 1:23:38
  that's. Crazy.
• 1:23:40
  It's so you're giving them away because again, this ain't
• 1:23:44
  Universal, right? This ain't Disney.
• 1:23:46
  They know that. So they have to have incentives.
• 1:23:49
  But the soda 1 is just bonkers crazy to me.
• 1:23:52
  Yeah. Now do they have other food
• 1:23:54
  other than like the little stands with like pretzels and
• 1:23:57
  stuff like that? Or is it pretty much just all
• 1:23:59
  like stands with pretzels and popcorn and that kind of vibe?
• 1:24:03
  Yeah, I mean, most of the places are, you know, they have a
• 1:24:08
  Johnny Rockets, they have a Sabar, think 90s mall where
• 1:24:12
  we're. Eating.
• 1:24:12
  I love this. Johnny Rockets, Sabarro Pizza,
• 1:24:17
  The Refueling Station Spuds, which are just French fries
• 1:24:20
  loaded with stuff. They got Dole Whips.
• 1:24:24
  They have Plucky's Chicken Coop, which are chicken wings and
• 1:24:27
  tenders and sandwiches. They got a funnel cake, Factory
• 1:24:30
  confectionery, and then my favorite Annie Ants.
• 1:24:35
  Interesting. OK, Yeah, it's totally different
• 1:24:37
  from anything we've talked about, which is so interesting
• 1:24:41
  to hear, which is part of the reason why I wanted to include
• 1:24:43
  it in this episode because I feel like, again, no one talks
• 1:24:46
  about it, no one knows it's there, and it's just so such a
• 1:24:48
  unique experience. How does the one day OK the
• 1:24:53
  dining plan which is 2499 gives you the two meals, an entree
• 1:24:58
  wait 2 meals include an entree, a side and a dessert and then
• 1:25:04
  one snack. So no soda with that.
• 1:25:05
  But at 1199 you just buy the soda thing and.
• 1:25:08
  Yeah, you pay 1199 for one soda at Universal half the time, so.
• 1:25:14
  Oh look, they actually show you what your entree and snack
• 1:25:17
  options are. Chicken tenders, French fries,
• 1:25:19
  cookie, chicken wings, French fries, cookie, chicken sandwich,
• 1:25:23
  French fries, cookie, pizza, breadsticks, Caesar salad,
• 1:25:28
  double slice and cookie. Stromboli, Stromboli,
• 1:25:34
  breadsticks, Caesar salad cooked.
• 1:25:36
  Yo, bro, I might be going. Yeah, we got to go hit fun.
• 1:25:39
  Spot on. Dude, this is there's some stuff
• 1:25:42
  they got. Here, yeah.
• 1:25:44
  That's nice that they lay it out for you though, because so many
• 1:25:46
  places don't. And then you get there and you
• 1:25:48
  go, what am I like with those passes for like dining?
• 1:25:51
  It's like, what am, what am I good to have?
• 1:25:53
  What am I allowed to have? Yeah, they, I mean, they've got
• 1:25:56
  some options on here. I am.
• 1:25:58
  I am thoroughly impressed with the how cheap that is.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, that's crazy cheap. Yeah.
• 1:26:06
  That is, that is funny. Hey, that's good.
• 1:26:07
  All right. Now there are two.
• 1:26:09
  And the other thing that's kind of unique about these places,
• 1:26:12
  they're open mad late. They're open until midnight.
• 1:26:14
  Oh wow. OK.
• 1:26:16
  So if you you want to do a late nights but they also do sell a
• 1:26:20
  ticket that's for late nights only.
• 1:26:23
  So if you wanted to ride everything, it's $44.00 to ride
• 1:26:28
  everything, but it only starts at 9:00 PM.
• 1:26:32
  Oh my gosh. Dude, you're a crazy late
• 1:26:36
  person. Maybe you went to Citywalk and
• 1:26:38
  you ripped it until 9:00 and you you get an Uber over here and
• 1:26:42
  then you just RIP rides like a fiend.
• 1:26:45
  You could totally do that and drink all the soda you want.
• 1:26:48
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:26:48
  Now location wise, we where exactly are we looking for
• 1:26:52
  'cause you said there's 2. So where are where are two
• 1:26:56
  locations as far as in proximity to everything else we've been
• 1:26:59
  talking about? Let me go back to Google Maps,
• 1:27:01
  'cause we need to, I'm a visual person.
• 1:27:03
  So for fun Spot America, which this is the Orlando one, this
• 1:27:09
  little red dot is fun spot Orlando or and then this is
• 1:27:13
  universal. So literally when I said you
• 1:27:16
  just have fun in city walk and then get over to fun spot, it's,
• 1:27:20
  I mean, I wouldn't walk it, but you could walk it if you wanted
• 1:27:23
  to. You could go up Universal Blvd.
• 1:27:25
  and be here in 15 minutes if you really wanted to.
• 1:27:28
  So it's that's kind of interesting.
• 1:27:31
  It's very, very close to Universal and the Universal
• 1:27:33
  stuff. The other one though, we got to
• 1:27:36
  go all the way down over by where for you Disney folks like
• 1:27:43
  where ESPN and Art of Animation and Hollywood Studios is we're
• 1:27:51
  going to find it's like closest to Art of Animation in ESPN in
• 1:27:57
  Old Town. Now Old Town's kind of
• 1:27:59
  interesting because Old Town's kind of a legacy thing on of
• 1:28:03
  itself. They actually have a haunted
• 1:28:06
  house that operates year round called Mortem Manor, which is
• 1:28:10
  interesting. But then they also have like old
• 1:28:12
  car shows and they also have like their own roller coasters
• 1:28:16
  and small little attractions too.
• 1:28:18
  But then you get so again, this is like 5 minutes away from ESPN
• 1:28:24
  and Art of animation parking is free.
• 1:28:26
  They have a huge large lot as well.
• 1:28:29
  Although parking here can be worse on the weekends,
• 1:28:31
  especially when they have a really good car show because the
• 1:28:34
  cars go up and down this Main Street right here in front of
• 1:28:37
  all the guests, which is kind of cool.
• 1:28:39
  But then you have and similar hours here tend to midnight
• 1:28:44
  every single night. They have the only wooden
• 1:28:46
  coaster that I know of called Mind Blower that actually does a
• 1:28:49
  barrel roll or Corkscrew, which is unique and they have a wild
• 1:28:54
  mouse. And then they have go karts.
• 1:28:56
  This one is not as good ride wise as the one in Orlando.
• 1:29:02
  It's also not as nice. Old Town's a little sketchy.
• 1:29:05
  I'll be honest with you, it's a little sketchy over there
• 1:29:09
  because there's it's very cheap to drink in Old Town, like $3
• 1:29:13
  beers, which in Orlando by a theme park is they're giving it
• 1:29:18
  away. So so just heads up there.
• 1:29:22
  You also get that crowd there too.
• 1:29:24
  So keep that in mind. But mind blower is a world class
• 1:29:28
  coaster. Pay 10 bucks, ride that but go
• 1:29:31
  to the Orlando one with your family.
• 1:29:32
  Yeah, that makes sense, unless you're.
• 1:29:34
  Staying over here, if you're staying over here, this could be
• 1:29:36
  walkable if you're staying at some of the Kissimmee hotels,
• 1:29:39
  like there's a Holiday Inn that I've stayed at.
• 1:29:42
  I actually stayed there with Dean before, which is really
• 1:29:45
  cool. And it's super close, like
• 1:29:47
  easily walkable. I think it's like, yeah, it's
• 1:29:49
  right. It's right over here.
• 1:29:50
  It's it's, it's across the street.
• 1:29:52
  There's a Holiday Inn which is really, really cheap a lot of
• 1:29:55
  times to stay and you could walk right over to Fun Spot.
• 1:29:59
  Well, that that would be the way to do it I would think if you're
• 1:30:01
  already going to be over there. Now we talked about age groups
• 1:30:04
  that the other ones, this one seems to be much more like older
• 1:30:09
  elementary, tween, teen kind of age range for these.
• 1:30:14
  Yes, I think all of these are are teens, not young kids.
• 1:30:18
  There just ain't much to do for them.
• 1:30:20
  Like they have your typical carnival style little rides, you
• 1:30:24
  know, like swings and little planes.
• 1:30:28
  You know those little planes where they get to choose if they
• 1:30:29
  go up or down? You know frog Hopper, the sea
• 1:30:32
  serpent boats like this is as. Old.
• 1:30:35
  School carnival as it. Gets.
• 1:30:39
  Minus the coasters and minus the go karts.
• 1:30:42
  I wish mind blower was over in the Orlando one.
• 1:30:45
  Then I would just say go to that one and find but it but for
• 1:30:48
  people looking to take off a really unique coaster, I don't
• 1:30:51
  know hardly any wooden coasters that have inversions.
• 1:30:55
  So for me, that's for coaster people, but for families, I'm a
• 1:31:00
  brain. I brought my family to Old Town.
• 1:31:02
  We don't really go to Old Town anymore.
• 1:31:04
  Because it's just one and done. We just, I mean, it wasn't one
• 1:31:08
  and done. We've been there probably like 3
• 1:31:09
  or 4 times. I just don't like the options
• 1:31:14
  that they have for kids. Like they the the coolest place
• 1:31:17
  they have there is like a gem store and they it's actually
• 1:31:21
  really cheap to do the sifting. You know where you buy like a
• 1:31:23
  bunch of dirt and they they have like the the sluice and you sift
• 1:31:27
  it out and you find the pay dirt and the gems and all that stuff.
• 1:31:30
  Like that's actually pretty good for kids.
• 1:31:32
  But there's a lot of stuff that it's more drinking and eating at
• 1:31:36
  this location or the other one I think is, hey man, we don't want
• 1:31:41
  to spend a lot of money, but we want to like extend and do some
• 1:31:44
  stuff. Their go karts are Wilds.
• 1:31:47
  Like the go karts, even at this one, the vortex track, it's like
• 1:31:50
  a 45° angle. Like it's downright dangerous.
• 1:31:54
  Like they don't care, which is why Fun spot in Old Town are
• 1:31:58
  like that. It's the Wild West.
• 1:31:59
  Right, it makes sense now. It sounds like this is
• 1:32:02
  definitely like 1/2 day experience when it comes to
• 1:32:05
  either one of them from just the amount that they have.
• 1:32:09
  You could do a full day there at the Orlando 1 for sure.
• 1:32:13
  Yeah. Although you know what?
• 1:32:14
  I wonder if there's synergy between the two.
• 1:32:16
  I was wondering if you can park hop so to speak between the two
• 1:32:20
  of them or not depending. But it probably depends on what
• 1:32:23
  kind of pass you have because they have like where you can
• 1:32:25
  just buy the certain attractions or whatever.
• 1:32:28
  Yeah, I'm looking at it. I mean, there's a 2 day for 70,
• 1:32:33
  but the single day is only valid at one location.
• 1:32:38
  You have to buy it for Orlando or Kissimmee.
• 1:32:40
  That's kind of silly. They should really have an
• 1:32:42
  option that allows you to go to both, you know, I mean they have
• 1:32:47
  again, they the four ride sampler.
• 1:32:50
  Like that's, that's what I would do honestly, is I would just get
• 1:32:54
  that. I mean, they do have, which is
• 1:32:57
  insane to me. They do have season passes and
• 1:33:00
  the season passes, they're giving those away.
• 1:33:02
  That's, you know, Oh my God, they well, this is the ultimate
• 1:33:05
  one. What's the ultimate one?
• 1:33:06
  That's insane. That's who's paying.
• 1:33:08
  That's three, $289 is like the price of universal ticket or
• 1:33:16
  universal season pass. That's insane.
• 1:33:18
  Yeah. I, I would not, I would not
• 1:33:20
  invest in any of that. Yeah, yeah, not worth it.
• 1:33:23
  So yeah, pick one or the other, decide which one looks better
• 1:33:27
  for. How many rides you want to do?
• 1:33:29
  You know, cuz you probably rightfully so, you probably are
• 1:33:32
  good with just buying your kids the 236 dollars things them go
• 1:33:37
  ham on four things and then you're like, all right, this is
• 1:33:40
  let's get out of here. Right, right, exactly.
• 1:33:43
  Yeah, for sure. All right.
• 1:33:45
  I think that kind of wraps up our talk about each park before
• 1:33:50
  we move on to chat about this new theme park app that you have
• 1:33:54
  created. Just a couple other things I
• 1:33:56
  just want to kind of give is like an overview.
• 1:33:59
  So thinking about we've talked about SeaWorld, Busch Gardens,
• 1:34:02
  Legoland, Peppa Pig and fun spot.
• 1:34:05
  If a family has one extra day in the Orlando area, what is like
• 1:34:09
  priority for of those parks that you would say to hit?
• 1:34:13
  It's based on your kids and your kids needs.
• 1:34:17
  If I am slightly older or like a mixture of old and young, you
• 1:34:24
  know, like a teenager and young kids, I'm going SeaWorld all
• 1:34:28
  day, every day. Seaworld's the spot because it's
• 1:34:30
  it's got everything for everybody.
• 1:34:32
  If I have younger kids, like 10 and under, I'm going Legoland
• 1:34:37
  all day every day. Those are the two spots that I
• 1:34:39
  would prioritize. Most people that go out to Bush
• 1:34:42
  are crazy. Theme park or they're from
• 1:34:44
  Europe. Europe folks love, but they love
• 1:34:47
  roller coasters so much. Like that's the jam.
• 1:34:49
  So Busch Gardens usually gets prioritized by thrill thrill
• 1:34:52
  seekers only. You're good enough just going to
• 1:34:56
  SeaWorld if you want to keep it Easy peasy those that would be
• 1:35:01
  my recommendation. Yeah, that makes sense based on
• 1:35:03
  what we've talked about, I think.
• 1:35:05
  So then kind of looking at that also, I feel like similar
• 1:35:09
  answer, but which of these parks do you feel like offers the best
• 1:35:12
  value for the price? Because we've talked about the
• 1:35:14
  prices and kind of what you've got going on at each park for
• 1:35:17
  the price. Because like SeaWorld and
• 1:35:22
  Legoland are are kind of similar, right, in terms of the
• 1:35:25
  price points. Like maybe the best bang for
• 1:35:28
  your buck would be if you did that package that included all
• 1:35:31
  the Icon park stuff. Yeah, Pepa and Legoland, right?
• 1:35:35
  It's probably your best like bundled deal.
• 1:35:38
  I would not say that fun Spot is the cheapest, even though it
• 1:35:42
  looks like it appears that you can.
• 1:35:43
  I mean, you can buy a roller coaster.
• 1:35:45
  Like you can go in there and spend 10 bucks and ride mind
• 1:35:48
  blower and be done with it and that.
• 1:35:51
  So in that aspect, yeah, it's cheap if you just want to do
• 1:35:54
  like one or two things. But I, I don't know, I mean, I
• 1:35:59
  think SeaWorld offers still the best bang for your buck,
• 1:36:03
  especially if you buy stuff on big discounts like Black Friday,
• 1:36:08
  you know, because if you got the dining plan for a family of
• 1:36:12
  four, you could all eat on the dining plan.
• 1:36:14
  You don't need more than one. There's just so much food there.
• 1:36:17
  And every 90 minutes, if you eat every 90 minutes, you will all
• 1:36:20
  be sick to your stomachs how full you are, right, You know,
• 1:36:24
  but I would also say if you have a wagon, you can also bring in a
• 1:36:28
  soft cooler. So start packing up that food
• 1:36:30
  you got food for you know, you could you could load in a lot of
• 1:36:33
  lunches that. It you're not wrong, you're not
• 1:36:36
  wrong that and that makes sense because I think again, they've
• 1:36:39
  got the most to do for the most age groups and you're paying
• 1:36:42
  less for all of that than you would for a day at Disney or
• 1:36:45
  Universal. Plus it's just easy to get
• 1:36:47
  there, like Legolands, you probably need a car because it's
• 1:36:50
  like really far to Uber there and you're probably going to
• 1:36:53
  want to be there if you're going to utilize the hotel.
• 1:36:55
  So to me, I think SeaWorld is the easiest, best, most
• 1:37:01
  affordable for the most amount of demographics because again,
• 1:37:05
  you could do stuff with preschoolers and they're free.
• 1:37:07
  They're free. Go get a preschool pass.
• 1:37:09
  Yeah. Right now, do you think there
• 1:37:12
  are certain times of year that are better to visit these parks
• 1:37:15
  or does it pretty much follow the same schedule as what we
• 1:37:19
  typically see at Disney and Universal?
• 1:37:21
  No, you can go any time of the year.
• 1:37:24
  Just go Monday through Thursday. Yeah, right.
• 1:37:27
  Like the weekends will have the free concerts and they'll also
• 1:37:31
  have like Holla Scream is only on the weekend.
• 1:37:35
  So in those instances, for those specific needs and events, or
• 1:37:38
  like the Christmas stuff only happens on the weekends, just go
• 1:37:44
  Monday through Thursday, it's dead.
• 1:37:46
  It can be the summer and there ain't nobody there.
• 1:37:48
  Which is nice because I think one of the other points that I
• 1:37:51
  was going to ask about was like, if you want a break day, but you
• 1:37:55
  still want things to do, but you're not trying to run around
• 1:37:58
  Disney, you know, are are any of these do the do you feel like
• 1:38:03
  these theme parks fit into that where you're not having to run
• 1:38:06
  from attraction to attraction to Lightning Lane to to show to all
• 1:38:10
  of that? Do you feel like things like
• 1:38:12
  SeaWorld and Legoland kind of give you a more relaxed vibe
• 1:38:14
  when you visit? Yeah, again, if you're there on
• 1:38:17
  a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, yeah, you have a theme park to
• 1:38:21
  yourself. You're like Richie Rich.
• 1:38:23
  You're just like, oh, I'll go on this now and I'll go on this
• 1:38:25
  now. Yeah, I'll go on that.
• 1:38:28
  The only, the only negative again is that eateries can be
• 1:38:32
  closed. So if you end up buying the all
• 1:38:34
  day dining, you might not be able to eat at all the places.
• 1:38:40
  What? They'll always have a barbecue
• 1:38:41
  joint open. They'll always have a pizza
• 1:38:43
  place open. They'll always have a pretzel
• 1:38:46
  place open. Which, by the way, the SeaWorld
• 1:38:47
  pretzels are outrageously good. Now I have to go to SeaWorld to
• 1:38:52
  go try them because I'm a pretzel person so.
• 1:38:55
  Dude, the pretzels there are insane.
• 1:38:58
  I forget what the name of the The thing is, but I'll send it
• 1:39:01
  to you later. The pretzels are just they have,
• 1:39:03
  they have sweet ones and they have savory ones, they have
• 1:39:05
  pizza ones, they've got cinnamon sugar ones.
• 1:39:07
  They're all the flavors and like literally the whole place is
• 1:39:10
  pretzels and it's and they're all done in house.
• 1:39:13
  So good. See that?
• 1:39:14
  That sounds like my kind of place.
• 1:39:16
  I love it. Yeah, me too.
• 1:39:17
  Me. Too.
• 1:39:18
  I love it Well, since we've been talking about all of these
• 1:39:21
  different theme parks, let's shift now to let's talk about
• 1:39:26
  mode. So for those of you who don't
• 1:39:30
  know or don't follow Kirk over at Walrus Carp, he has had a
• 1:39:34
  quite a busy last couple years working on this new theme park
• 1:39:39
  app. And I feel like it's fitting to
• 1:39:42
  kind of chat about that here as we close out since we've been
• 1:39:44
  talking about all these other locations and some of these
• 1:39:46
  already exist on mode. So what can you tell us about
• 1:39:51
  this, this new venture in this new theme park app that you've
• 1:39:56
  got? Yeah, so I started a project.
• 1:40:00
  About four years ago, that was just for dining search in Disney
• 1:40:04
  because I was like so frustrated trying to find food whenever I
• 1:40:07
  wanted it because I'm like, this is not that big of a deal.
• 1:40:09
  It should just be a database of all the stuff that they have and
• 1:40:12
  then a search functionality to find it.
• 1:40:14
  And I was like, this would be so great for me doing challenges
• 1:40:16
  and all this other stuff and like just be able to find what
• 1:40:18
  you want. So Long story short, that turned
• 1:40:23
  into a full blown theme park planning app that is available
• 1:40:28
  on iPhone and soon to be Android.
• 1:40:32
  So it'll be cross-platform on everything and it it is soup to
• 1:40:37
  nuts. If you're going to Orlando,
• 1:40:40
  which we are going to add California in the future, Every
• 1:40:44
  single park we talked about outside of fun spot will be on
• 1:40:47
  this app by the end of this year.
• 1:40:49
  Currently we do all the Disney parks, so Magic Kingdom, Epcot,
• 1:40:52
  Hollywood Studios, as well as Disney's Animal Kingdom and then
• 1:40:58
  Universal Studios, Florida Islands of Adventure, Epic
• 1:41:02
  Universe, and SeaWorld Orlando. So the big major ones are
• 1:41:07
  already included in the app right now.
• 1:41:09
  You can download it for free. All you got to do is head on
• 1:41:12
  over to the Apple App Store to get started.
• 1:41:16
  Finds the burger with the coaster and the 143 five star
• 1:41:22
  reviews. And that is us now.
• 1:41:24
  What does it do? Well, it'll tell you like
• 1:41:26
  certain things are annoying. Like we just kept on stacking
• 1:41:28
  things that I needed, that my partner Dean needed and what we
• 1:41:33
  thought other guests would want. And we took a lot of feedback
• 1:41:36
  from our community to create this product.
• 1:41:38
  And essentially we had, we want all the wait times.
• 1:41:42
  We want to know what crowds look like.
• 1:41:44
  We want to be able to tell if a ride goes down, when is it
• 1:41:48
  possibly coming back up. We want to be able to look at
• 1:41:50
  every single food menu. We want to be able to search
• 1:41:53
  every single food menu. We want to be able to put in an
• 1:41:56
  allergy that we have and only get.
• 1:41:58
  If I type in pizza, it'll pull back every single pizza.
• 1:42:02
  If I take an avocado, it'll pull back every single food item that
• 1:42:05
  has avocado in it. And if you put on an allergy,
• 1:42:08
  like a gluten allergy, you type in burger or pizza, you will
• 1:42:10
  find all the gluten free buns and gluten free crusts, anything
• 1:42:14
  that you're looking for that you cannot do, that functionality
• 1:42:18
  does not exist unless you go menu by menu in each one of the
• 1:42:23
  apps. It's an impossibility.
• 1:42:25
  It does not exist. Plus, there is not a single app
• 1:42:29
  on the market that covers Disney and Universal at the same time.
• 1:42:34
  Every single one is in its own silo.
• 1:42:36
  And we hate that. It's annoying.
• 1:42:38
  You'd like, but I don't want it. I don't even want to have all
• 1:42:41
  the apps from all the theme parks.
• 1:42:42
  And I have to have them, you know, for mobile orders or
• 1:42:45
  reservations or to see, you know, whatever's going on in the
• 1:42:49
  parks at the times or entertainment.
• 1:42:51
  So that's another thing we did include not only dining
• 1:42:55
  attractions, there is also entertainment in there.
• 1:42:59
  And then the big one for people like Jackie and probably a lot
• 1:43:02
  of the audience here on Mom St. USA is planning.
• 1:43:06
  You can now put a plan together that is dynamically updated with
• 1:43:11
  all of the things that you want to do in the parks to explore.
• 1:43:14
  So that is what mode is in an in a very long, annoying nutshell.
• 1:43:20
  But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's so great.
• 1:43:22
  First of all, just to have it in one place, like you said, so
• 1:43:25
  many. Now that we've been, you know,
• 1:43:27
  branching out more people in our comment section and our live
• 1:43:30
  chats as we're recording, you're talking about wanting to go to
• 1:43:33
  more than one park. They're wanting to visit, you
• 1:43:35
  know, Universal and Epic Universe and all of that.
• 1:43:37
  So to be able to have your plans all in one spot to me is like an
• 1:43:43
  absolute game changer because not only that, but it like you
• 1:43:46
  can reorganize it. You can move plans around, then
• 1:43:49
  you get the satisfaction of checking things off as you
• 1:43:52
  complete them. You can enter lightning lane
• 1:43:54
  times. There's so many little things
• 1:43:56
  that are annoyances without mode that when you start using it,
• 1:44:00
  because I've been I've been using this app for gosh, it
• 1:44:03
  feels like probably a year now almost.
• 1:44:05
  Yeah, it's. Probably been longer than a.
• 1:44:07
  Year, yeah. And it's, it's an absolute,
• 1:44:10
  absolute game changer to have that list just right available.
• 1:44:14
  You know, I visited Epic Universe a couple months ago and
• 1:44:17
  used it there too. And it was just so nice to have
• 1:44:19
  my whole week's plans all entered into the app all in one
• 1:44:22
  spot. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:25
  I mean, that's the the goal is real simple with mode.
• 1:44:28
  We want you spending less time on your phone, enjoying the
• 1:44:31
  things that you enjoy as quickly and most efficiently with the
• 1:44:35
  most amount of information. So it's like my kids having a
• 1:44:38
  meltdown. I need chicken fingers or Dole
• 1:44:40
  Whip stat boom. Type it in.
• 1:44:42
  There it is. Where's the closest one now?
• 1:44:45
  I know. Let me find it on the map.
• 1:44:47
  Done. So those are like the instances
• 1:44:50
  or, you know, like, Oh my God, this line is so long.
• 1:44:53
  Oh crap, the ride went down. What do we do?
• 1:44:55
  Should we stay or should we go now?
• 1:44:58
  Like we give you information that's that's about 70% accurate
• 1:45:02
  as to when a ride's gonna reopen.
• 1:45:04
  So then you can make a decision that's more informed than just,
• 1:45:07
  well, I don't know what do you know, 'cause like cast members,
• 1:45:11
  team members, model citizens, all these people will not tell
• 1:45:14
  you a single thing because they don't know either you know it,
• 1:45:17
  it only gets the OK when it's cleared for weather or if it's
• 1:45:23
  cleared by a mechanic or a tech or a sensor gets so they, they
• 1:45:28
  can't tell you anyway because they don't even know.
• 1:45:30
  So we, we look at some mathematical behind the scenes
• 1:45:35
  to make really educated guesses to get to about 70% accuracy.
• 1:45:39
  It's impossible to be 100%. And we're not trying to be
• 1:45:43
  perfect because if we wanted to be perfect, we would just change
• 1:45:45
  our ranges and make them super, super big.
• 1:45:47
  But then that's not actionable to say we got a 5 hour time
• 1:45:51
  range. Right, That's not exactly
• 1:45:53
  helpful in the moment when you're still being.
• 1:45:55
  There's the part. There's some rights that go down
• 1:45:57
  for like 15 minutes is their normal breakdown period.
• 1:46:00
  So you're like, well, OK, well obviously we're going to stay
• 1:46:03
  for that. That's nothing, you know, or
• 1:46:05
  it's going to be an hour and a half.
• 1:46:06
  Most likely it'll open in 40. So do we make that decision to
• 1:46:11
  stay or not? Right.
• 1:46:12
  And I think the other thing that I love about what mode does is
• 1:46:16
  the way that the maps function because I am someone who was
• 1:46:20
  used to, you know, like like the back of my hand.
• 1:46:23
  I was used to my Disney experience and navigating
• 1:46:26
  things. But the way that you guys have
• 1:46:27
  set up, being able to jump between parks, you can see all
• 1:46:31
  of the wait times without having to zoom in and navigate crazy.
• 1:46:34
  Like it's just so much more user friendly when it comes to the
• 1:46:38
  maps for you to be able to jump between locations.
• 1:46:41
  I think that is another aspect that I have really, really
• 1:46:44
  liked. Yeah, Yeah, you don't.
• 1:46:49
  I love when I'm at my hotel. It's 4:00.
• 1:46:53
  We're like, just like the puttering period where the kids
• 1:46:57
  are taking a brain break on iPads or TV.
• 1:47:00
  Mom and dad are on our phones just sitting there, like just
• 1:47:02
  trying to not be as stimulated as you get in the parks.
• 1:47:06
  And we go, well, where do we want to go?
• 1:47:09
  Well, I don't know. Let's check mode.
• 1:47:10
  And we check mode and we just hop from park to park to park.
• 1:47:14
  Yeah, you know, I think that's really cool.
• 1:47:16
  Speaking of which, I think now is the time, Jackie, that we
• 1:47:19
  show mode off. So what we're looking at right
• 1:47:22
  now is mode and you'll see it, it'll show like crowd calendars
• 1:47:27
  and whatnot. So if I look at.
• 1:47:29
  Yeah, and the crowd calendars are about to get a a major
• 1:47:32
  update, which is going to be really exciting.
• 1:47:35
  Yeah, so, so right now, currently if you click any park,
• 1:47:38
  it'll show you a 7 day forecast. And this completely for free.
• 1:47:42
  This is for every single user, you get a 7 day forecast.
• 1:47:46
  As to what Jackie's alluding to in this more section, we're
• 1:47:50
  going to have a new tab that says crowd calendars and you'll
• 1:47:53
  be able to look at essentially a heat map of 12 months.
• 1:47:57
  So you'll be able to see an entirety of a year on what park
• 1:48:01
  looks like. And then in the planning
• 1:48:03
  portion, as you're planning and picking your days, it'll
• 1:48:07
  actually show you the crowd calendar within the planning
• 1:48:10
  portion, which I think is really cool.
• 1:48:11
  So I'll show you that in a second.
• 1:48:13
  But while you're in the individual park page, it has
• 1:48:17
  enter entertainment, attraction, and dining.
• 1:48:19
  You can sort it by distance, wait time and name.
• 1:48:25
  And then you can also look at entertainment.
• 1:48:28
  Entertainment is great because it's not just things like like
• 1:48:31
  even an MD. It gets really annoying my DC
• 1:48:33
  experience to find when things are going on like Casey's
• 1:48:37
  Corner, pianist times. I I I didn't even know they had
• 1:48:40
  listed times, but they do right? Or the Cavalcades.
• 1:48:45
  And obviously most people are just looking for Starlight and
• 1:48:48
  happily ever after. But the character meet and
• 1:48:50
  greets are listed in here too. Like when can I meet Mirabelle?
• 1:48:54
  Which I think all are very actionable, especially if you
• 1:48:56
  have a kiddo with very specific needs or an adult who has very
• 1:49:00
  specific needs for for a location.
• 1:49:02
  And then dining's in here. Now, if you click any of the
• 1:49:05
  dining locations, it'll pull back the entire menu with
• 1:49:08
  pricing on everything. And this is the entirety of the
• 1:49:12
  menu. Nothing is blocked out.
• 1:49:14
  So everything that they list. And if you click show on map,
• 1:49:18
  it'll then jump to our map functionality.
• 1:49:20
  And you can see where that is versus where I'm located, which
• 1:49:24
  I can't remember where I put myself right now.
• 1:49:25
  Where am I? I'm located in Epcot right now.
• 1:49:28
  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not really. But but if you ever needed to
• 1:49:31
  jump to another park, this scrolls on the emulator.
• 1:49:35
  I have to click because I can't touch screen my computer screen.
• 1:49:38
  But you can you can siphon through wait times, through
• 1:49:43
  dining, through entertainment, and then it'll recenter back to
• 1:49:48
  where you're at geographically speaking.
• 1:49:51
  I, this is the part that again, is so fast.
• 1:49:54
  And even in Universal's app, they don't even list wait times
• 1:49:58
  on a map, right? So that's a negative about I, I
• 1:50:02
  mean, eventually I think they're going to have to change that up,
• 1:50:05
  but I don't know why they haven't.
• 1:50:06
  I'm looking right now trying to desperately find an attraction
• 1:50:09
  that's closed. I finally found one to showcase
• 1:50:12
  this. This is Pirates of the
• 1:50:14
  Caribbean. So Pirates of the Caribbean
• 1:50:17
  closed down at 11:39 AM and our time range for how long Pirates
• 1:50:24
  usually goes down for is about an hour and a half roughly.
• 1:50:31
  We are now out of spec from the normal smaller closure.
• 1:50:35
  It's now two O 6. That means Pirates is having a
• 1:50:40
  bigger problem than its normal problems.
• 1:50:43
  So that means we don't wait around for this.
• 1:50:46
  This thing is broke as a joke. No one, not even God knows when
• 1:50:50
  this thing is going to reopen. So don't bother.
• 1:50:53
  Get away. Yeah, the the ones that I like
• 1:50:55
  to utilize and honestly, there's not really a lot of downed
• 1:50:58
  attractions right now, I don't think outside of that one.
• 1:51:01
  I think that's the only attraction that's down.
• 1:51:03
  It's crazy that like almost never happens.
• 1:51:05
  Yeah, yeah, that's the only attraction that's down.
• 1:51:09
  That's so funny. Anyway, usually like attractions
• 1:51:15
  will give you a time range of like an hour to an hour and a
• 1:51:18
  half. And when you're within that
• 1:51:19
  range, that's the decision of like, OK, we've been in this
• 1:51:23
  line for X amount of time. Then you can make an A decision
• 1:51:26
  of do I wait or do I not wait? If I was in the instance of
• 1:51:30
  pirates, right? And I was in line and we went
• 1:51:34
  past this 12 like it was 1139 when it went down and it got to
• 1:51:38
  12/19, which is when we think it'll open.
• 1:51:41
  And I'm like, let's wait, let's wait an extra like 20-30
• 1:51:45
  minutes, try to see if it opens back up.
• 1:51:47
  Although right now MK is not crazy busy, but I, I mean,
• 1:51:51
  pivoting, you're probably not saving a ton of time because
• 1:51:55
  everything else is 203040. You're probably better off just
• 1:51:58
  waiting on that one, right? But then once it hits 12/19,
• 1:52:01
  you're like, yeah, this thing is a joke.
• 1:52:03
  We got we're not going to spend another hour.
• 1:52:05
  It gives you the ability to make a more informed decision, which
• 1:52:08
  ultimately is what is saving you the time of again, the do I stay
• 1:52:12
  or do I go? Do I wait it out or not?
• 1:52:15
  While looking at the range, it looks like it's going to come
• 1:52:17
  back in the next 25 minutes most likely.
• 1:52:19
  So OK, we either do something quick nearby or we wait it out
• 1:52:22
  and see. Yeah, 100 percent, 100%.
• 1:52:26
  But again, you're not doing it just based on emotion or feel or
• 1:52:30
  what's in the air tonight. You're using it based on this is
• 1:52:34
  like we track the downage of every single attraction across
• 1:52:38
  all the parks. So we have a physical log of
• 1:52:41
  every single attraction and then we make a decision based on that
• 1:52:45
  to route it together to come up with our time ranges.
• 1:52:48
  And then that allows us to formulate what is 70% accurate
• 1:52:52
  for us. That's the the simple and short
• 1:52:54
  of how we do the behind the scenes magic right now dining
• 1:52:59
  wise, because I am currently in Epcot, which is funny the IT
• 1:53:05
  shows every single restaurant that's in here.
• 1:53:08
  It does one thing that people have asked us for and we do have
• 1:53:11
  is all of the food festivals, all of their dining.
• 1:53:16
  So whether it's Epcot's flower and garden or Universal
• 1:53:21
  currently has Mardi Gras. So if I type in the Mardi Gras
• 1:53:28
  beer garden, bourbons beer garden, this shows up places at
• 1:53:32
  Universal and you can again Click to the map and it'll bring
• 1:53:35
  you exactly to where that is. But everything right now in the
• 1:53:40
  future, we'll have a sort and filter for this, but
• 1:53:42
  everything's done based on geography.
• 1:53:44
  So in the instance of kiddo meltdown type in pizza, we know
• 1:53:49
  that connections, which connections by the way, has some
• 1:53:51
  of the best pizza and the best kids offering of pizza.
• 1:53:55
  It's so cheap, this one as an adult.
• 1:53:57
  And it's a huge portion 2. Slides like that's enough for
• 1:54:00
  both my kids. I'll slice that pizza in half.
• 1:54:03
  We just paid $4.00 for each kids lunch, you know, But then Tutto
• 1:54:08
  Italia, pizza a la Taglio and pizza via Napoli and you can
• 1:54:12
  just go through and keep sorting.
• 1:54:14
  But again, this, this does everything.
• 1:54:17
  So you'll notice this is Loews Royal Pacific.
• 1:54:19
  It does all the Disney resorts, does all the UNI resorts, does
• 1:54:22
  every single one of their respective parks as well.
• 1:54:26
  I do like that that feature pulls what's closest to you
• 1:54:29
  first because like you said, if you're, if you're, wherever you
• 1:54:32
  are standing, it's going to give you the closest option 1st and
• 1:54:35
  then you can scroll and decide after that.
• 1:54:37
  But it's helpful to know like so you're because the My Disney
• 1:54:41
  Experience app doesn't do that. You're just left to your own
• 1:54:44
  devices trying to search and click through menus.
• 1:54:47
  And it's it's not easy to do. Right.
• 1:54:50
  Yeah. So for example, everything will
• 1:54:54
  always start out as default based on your geography and
• 1:54:59
  difference, right, Because that just makes the most logical
• 1:55:01
  sense because you're in a park and you need it now.
• 1:55:03
  But there are times where I'm at the hotel or I'm at home and I
• 1:55:06
  just want to search like Epic Universe.
• 1:55:08
  Do they have any of these? We will have a filter in a sort
• 1:55:12
  to be able to negate certain areas and locations.
• 1:55:15
  And like I had said, right now we're only focused on Florida,
• 1:55:19
  but we are adding California because we don't have Lego lands
• 1:55:23
  and we don't have Busch Gardens. I took photos and we're
• 1:55:26
  importing data to on board those ones.
• 1:55:29
  So by the end of the year, you'll have the entirety of the
• 1:55:32
  majors covered for for Florida. Also, I want to state we don't
• 1:55:36
  put Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon or Volcano Bay as a
• 1:55:41
  listed park because they don't have entertainment or wait
• 1:55:45
  times, but they do have dining. All the dining is in dining when
• 1:55:49
  you're searching, so you can find any, like I think it's
• 1:55:53
  called the Warming Hut. There we go.
• 1:55:55
  Warming Hut is the one at Blizzard Beach.
• 1:55:58
  So you can pull up all the options, the food options that
• 1:56:02
  they do have. Even though this is at Blizzard
• 1:56:04
  Beach and it's not on, it'll show up on the map.
• 1:56:07
  Yeah, has like a dining location, but if I click
• 1:56:10
  attractions or entertainment, there is it's only food, but
• 1:56:14
  it's searchable. And when you're in the parks,
• 1:56:16
  you'll be able to see all the food options very easily as
• 1:56:18
  well. Right.
• 1:56:19
  And again, that's where that location, you know, tracker
• 1:56:23
  comes in, because if you're standing in the middle of that
• 1:56:25
  park and you're searching, it's going to pull you what's closest
• 1:56:28
  to Blizzard Beach at the moment anyway.
• 1:56:30
  OK, we this just in breaking news, we found out from Jules
• 1:56:34
  that Figment and test track are down.
• 1:56:36
  So this is in real time just occurred because they were not
• 1:56:39
  down a second ago. So Figment went down.
• 1:56:43
  Right now we're thinking it could reopen sometime between
• 1:56:47
  2:17 and 3:13, most likely around 2:46.
• 1:56:52
  So the question is, it is now 212.
• 1:56:55
  Do we think it's worth it to wait 30 minutes for Figment to
• 1:56:58
  possibly open? When I look around, I see, I see
• 1:57:04
  30 minutes for Soaring, 20 minutes for Living with the
• 1:57:06
  Land, 25 for Nemo, 15 for Crush, 20 for Mission Space, 10 for
• 1:57:14
  Grand, or what do you call it, Grand Fiesta.
• 1:57:17
  I'm not waiting for that. I'm not waiting 30 minutes for
• 1:57:20
  this to come back, possibly because there's enough things
• 1:57:24
  that are close by that I can just go jump on and wait those
• 1:57:28
  30 minutes and wait for Figment to reopen and have no line test
• 1:57:32
  track. On the other hand, this is an
• 1:57:34
  interesting one because it gets much longer waits.
• 1:57:38
  So this went down at 2:10. We're saying it possibly could
• 1:57:42
  reopen at 312 as the time range. Again, this is 70% accurate, but
• 1:57:47
  it is a guess it's not 100%. Two 19 is when we think it'll
• 1:57:51
  come back. Here's the quandary of test
• 1:57:55
  track, because test track didn't close for long enough.
• 1:57:58
  If you're not already waiting for the line, it's not worth it
• 1:58:02
  to wait for it to reopen to try to get it with a cleared queue.
• 1:58:07
  You almost need a ride to be down for 45 minutes before
• 1:58:11
  people have had enough and they dip, right?
• 1:58:14
  So this one is only really helpful if you're already in the
• 1:58:17
  test track line and you're like, well, I don't know if we should
• 1:58:21
  stay, right? That's where this comes in line
• 1:58:23
  where you're like, oh, it's going to open in like probably
• 1:58:25
  10 to 30 minutes, right? Like we should just stay.
• 1:58:29
  We've already invested because this is like usually like a 2
• 1:58:32
  hour wait, so. You know what's the inside queue
• 1:58:35
  for most of it, so you're hanging out inside.
• 1:58:39
  Yeah, so that would be really useful in that instance.
• 1:58:42
  But again, that information is important because otherwise you
• 1:58:46
  have no information to be able to make an informed decision.
• 1:58:50
  But my favorite, my bread and butter of mode, is when there's
• 1:58:55
  an attraction we really want to go on, for example, Gringotts.
• 1:58:58
  Kids love going on Gringotts. It's one of the top attractions
• 1:59:02
  at USF. So if I go over to Universal
• 1:59:04
  Studios Florida right now, Gringotts has 125.
• 1:59:08
  What I am praying for is that Gringotts breaks at some point
• 1:59:12
  in the day or shuts down and it's shut down for 45 minutes
• 1:59:17
  and the reopening time perspective on mode is somewhere
• 1:59:21
  around there. And then you will Mosey and sit
• 1:59:24
  for 10 to 20 minutes outside the attraction hoping for it to open
• 1:59:29
  within that time range with a cleared out queue.
• 1:59:32
  That's the sweet spot of using mode to get onto an attraction
• 1:59:38
  with the lowest amount of weight.
• 1:59:40
  So and we do that for E tickets. Majority it because like most of
• 1:59:44
  the other small ones, they're easy to get on anytime.
• 1:59:47
  Right, right. For sure.
• 1:59:48
  Now some of the stuff that and the features that you've been
• 1:59:50
  talking to us about are included in the free version.
• 1:59:52
  Most of it is, but talk to us about what it what is the free
• 1:59:57
  version versus the premium version of mode?
• 2:00:00
  So you get about 80% of the functionality of mode and you
• 2:00:04
  don't even have to create an account.
• 2:00:05
  You can just browse around, search all the stuff.
• 2:00:07
  All the map stuff is completely free.
• 2:00:10
  But for example, Epcot with the oh look test tracks up.
• 2:00:14
  Remember we said it was going to come up at 2:19, It's up at
• 2:00:18
  2:16. So that smashed and was correct,
• 2:00:22
  but it wasn't enough to clear the queue.
• 2:00:25
  So it's it would be perfect if you were waiting in line.
• 2:00:28
  You need to know should I dip or not?
• 2:00:30
  That would tell you stay. It's not going to be that long.
• 2:00:33
  We were 3 minutes off on that one.
• 2:00:35
  Right, that's perfect. Yeah, perfect.
• 2:00:38
  So but the the reopen times are not included with the free
• 2:00:45
  version, but you have two different options for locals or
• 2:00:48
  people who take more than two trips.
• 2:00:50
  You get the annual pass, it's 5999 for the year or you do a
• 2:00:57
  monthly. The monthly is 799, so it's 799
• 2:01:01
  to get access for an entire month.
• 2:01:02
  What most people do is if they have a trip coming up, they'll
• 2:01:06
  buy the month ahead of time and have it the month that they are
• 2:01:09
  there. And then they cancel their
• 2:01:11
  subscription and they they paid $16.00.
• 2:01:14
  But even if you just used it for the month or just your trip, you
• 2:01:18
  get an entire month. You get a full 30 days from it
• 2:01:20
  from when you activate. It's less than the cost of most
• 2:01:25
  of these snacks and that information will save you so
• 2:01:28
  much time. So in my head I go, well, what
• 2:01:31
  is it like? All right, ready.
• 2:01:32
  This is in real time. We just had living with the land
• 2:01:35
  go down. Living with the land just went
• 2:01:38
  down now and it's saying it could come up between 2:19 and
• 2:01:42
  three O 9231 is the most likely time, but that's only a 20
• 2:01:47
  minute ride. Sorens 25.
• 2:01:49
  I bet what you're going to see happen living with the land
• 2:01:52
  clears and people rush Soren and Soren pops to a 40.
• 2:01:56
  But again, this is like all information that's happening in
• 2:01:59
  real time that you can utilize now.
• 2:02:00
  The other big one, big 1 outside of allergies is so we have re
• 2:02:07
  estimated opening time searchable dining menus.
• 2:02:10
  You can look up any restaurant and find any food, find any
• 2:02:13
  menu. But if you're looking up by
• 2:02:14
  ingredient or by a specific food product, that is a paid portion.
• 2:02:20
  Same with the allergy search. But the planning, and I can't
• 2:02:24
  stress enough the how the planning is insanely good.
• 2:02:29
  Jackie, because you are a planner, I would like for you to
• 2:02:33
  plan us a trip. We're just going to do it for
• 2:02:35
  today and pretends that we're doing it today so I can show how
• 2:02:38
  it updates in real time. So what are we doing?
• 2:02:41
  I'm going to create the trip. This is the Mom St. trip.
• 2:02:47
  OK, I love it. Are we doing, let's say let's do
• 2:02:51
  Magic Kingdom and Epcot all? Right.
• 2:02:54
  So we're going to do Magic Kingdom and Epcot.
• 2:02:57
  So like I said, in the future, by next week for paid
• 2:03:01
  subscription people, because they're the only ones who get
• 2:03:02
  access to this planning portion, you are going to have crowd
• 2:03:06
  calendars show up for the day now.
• 2:03:08
  So those that little heat signature that's here that shows
• 2:03:13
  you the crowd level, this will be located right in the planning
• 2:03:16
  feature. As you're planning your day,
• 2:03:18
  you'll be able to scroll through and see what every single park
• 2:03:21
  looks like in per part of day. So all right, Magic Kingdom,
• 2:03:24
  Epcot, got it. Are we hitting any resorts?
• 2:03:27
  No. OK, what do we want to go on?
• 2:03:32
  It's small on my screen. Epcot first.
• 2:03:34
  I wanna go on Nemo. I wanna go on Sauron.
• 2:03:38
  It's. Called the seas, isn't it?
• 2:03:43
  Yeah, it's funny. Because I was Nemo.
• 2:03:45
  What I want. Yeah.
• 2:03:46
  Sauron. Let's see.
• 2:03:49
  I wanna go on, what is it? Grand Fiesta Tour with the three
• 2:03:53
  Caballeros? How to use the official
• 2:03:56
  terminology for? It no, it's so funny because
• 2:03:58
  like I call it Nemo and I'm like, wait, is it funny anime?
• 2:04:01
  No, it's called that it's. Right, right.
• 2:04:03
  No, I'm the same way and I've done that on my planning also
• 2:04:05
  with that. And let's see, let's do test
• 2:04:09
  track, OK and Spaceship Earth. OK, and I'm going to throw a
• 2:04:15
  figment on here just to showcase what happens when an attraction
• 2:04:18
  is down. Perfect.
• 2:04:20
  Now, if you have lightning lanes, you can set lightning
• 2:04:24
  lane times in here if you want. We're not using lightning lanes
• 2:04:27
  today, but you could do that. And then what are we going to do
• 2:04:31
  at the old Magic Kingdom? Let's see, we are going to do,
• 2:04:36
  it's a good question. We're going to do Pooh.
• 2:04:40
  Bear, Buzz Lightyear. Someday soon, yeah, my next
• 2:04:46
  trip, Buzz Lightyear, will be reopened, which I'm excited
• 2:04:49
  about, so that'll be good. So yes, many adventures of
• 2:04:52
  Winnie the Pooh. We're going to do Haunted
• 2:04:54
  Mansion. OK.
• 2:04:57
  We're going to do pirates. OK.
• 2:05:01
  We're going to do, Let's see, under the sea journey of The
• 2:05:05
  Little Mermaid. Oh yeah, not, not, not to be
• 2:05:09
  confused with what I call it aerial.
• 2:05:12
  Right, which is completely. Which, by the way, is mildly
• 2:05:16
  inappropriate. We're going to go right aerial
• 2:05:18
  and then we're going to head out.
• 2:05:22
  Yeah, No, you can't. No, no, that's that's not it.
• 2:05:24
  That's not it. Let's see, we're going to do the
• 2:05:27
  teacups. OK.
• 2:05:30
  And the people mover? OK, All right.
• 2:05:34
  That's, that's a nice full day. I like it.
• 2:05:37
  And then do we have any entertainment at either Epcot or
• 2:05:41
  MK? I'm going to finish with.
• 2:05:43
  I don't know what part we're starting with.
• 2:05:46
  That's a good question. I probably would do a little
• 2:05:49
  back and forth because I would want to do Magic Kingdom in the
• 2:05:51
  morning, Epcot in the afternoon, but then I want to see
• 2:05:54
  Starlight, so I would probably start.
• 2:05:57
  To put Starlight. On there back to Magic Kingdom.
• 2:05:59
  So Starlight for sure I would put on there.
• 2:06:03
  Let's see, let's throw in at Epcot the, I don't even know
• 2:06:10
  what it's called, the Encanto show.
• 2:06:12
  I don't even know what the official name of that one is.
• 2:06:16
  I have no idea. You know I'm the worst with.
• 2:06:18
  These I know. I don't even know if we have the
• 2:06:21
  Encanto show on here. This is a good one if we don't.
• 2:06:25
  No, no, no, no. Would it be entertainment at the
• 2:06:27
  Communicore Plaza? I bet you that's it.
• 2:06:31
  Yeah, yeah. Yep.
• 2:06:32
  Perfect those two. I wonder now that one doesn't
• 2:06:36
  kick back wait times. I don't I hear I this is this is
• 2:06:39
  behind. The scene stuff.
• 2:06:40
  I'll be really curious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:06:41
  That'll be an interesting one. I'll just check it.
• 2:06:43
  Are we eating anywhere? We are.
• 2:06:47
  Let's see, you've got Epcot up first.
• 2:06:51
  Yeah, let's just do connections. We'll make it easy, of course.
• 2:06:55
  And then at the Magic Kingdom, let's do Pecos.
• 2:07:00
  OK. And we're probably going to get
• 2:07:05
  a pretzel somewhere, so. Launching.
• 2:07:08
  Pad perfect. OK, All right.
• 2:07:12
  And we're doing like double park hopping, but we're starting at
• 2:07:17
  MK first, so it'll be a then Epcot, and then we'll do MK
• 2:07:21
  again to finish out perfect. So like for example, the
• 2:07:24
  Starlight stuff has got to go. Starlight's got to go all the
• 2:07:28
  way down to the bottom. Yep.
• 2:07:29
  So that's the, and that's the thing I love about this planning
• 2:07:31
  is just the ability to click and drag things around and move them
• 2:07:34
  into the order you want them to be in, which is awesome.
• 2:07:39
  Yeah, I mean, in my dumb head I'm probably hitting oh God, I
• 2:07:46
  almost like, this is so crazy. You're going to probably think
• 2:07:48
  I'm wild for this, but I'm definitely hitting Winnie Pooh
• 2:07:55
  first using early entry because it's crazy packed, then I'm
• 2:07:59
  hitting Haunted Mansion. I actually might do Winnie the
• 2:08:05
  Pooh, then Mad Tea Party, then Haunted Mansion opens.
• 2:08:08
  You know because in 1/2 an hour we could probably pop both
• 2:08:11
  those. Then it's off to Haunted
• 2:08:13
  Mansion, then I'm going pirates. I don't know if we need a break
• 2:08:18
  for food yet, probably. Not yet.
• 2:08:21
  Probably not yet. So we're going to do people
• 2:08:25
  mover, then Ariel, then our Pecos bill launching pad is
• 2:08:30
  going to get switched. We're going to eat this during
• 2:08:32
  Starlight. So we're going to put that right
• 2:08:34
  before Starlight. Perfect.
• 2:08:35
  Love it. Pretzel for Starlight and then
• 2:08:40
  connections. We just ate at Pecos, so you're
• 2:08:44
  probably you're coming in to the park.
• 2:08:49
  At that point, Spaceship Earth should be dead and Grand Fiesta
• 2:08:56
  will be dead. Figment will be dead.
• 2:08:58
  You want to push Soren later on Epcot later, Seize will be dead
• 2:09:03
  too. Then we can see the show, which
• 2:09:07
  will place us right by. We don't have living with the
• 2:09:10
  land. All right, I'm going to switch
• 2:09:12
  these around because this makes more sense.
• 2:09:14
  Yeah. So he's moving things around
• 2:09:16
  based on like where things are at in the park, but also you
• 2:09:19
  ought to like. Jump around like a crazy person.
• 2:09:22
  So yeah, so like in my head, I'm sorting this and planning it out
• 2:09:25
  based on what attractions are most popular.
• 2:09:28
  Also, knowing that we're coming from Magic Kingdom, we're taking
• 2:09:30
  the monorail. By this time it's probably 3:00
• 2:09:33
  in the afternoon, which means Spaceship Earth is will be
• 2:09:36
  empty. It'll be like a 20 minute wait
• 2:09:38
  and then we RIP it right over to the seas, then Sauron, then
• 2:09:41
  Figment, then Grand Fiesta. We could even put the
• 2:09:44
  entertainment before then, then Grand Fiesta, then more food,
• 2:09:48
  and then we decide when we're doing test track or how we're
• 2:09:51
  getting on that and then the Launchpad, and that's probably
• 2:09:54
  good. Beautiful.
• 2:09:56
  So now when we get to the planning home page, we actually
• 2:09:59
  have a countdown timer to your trip.
• 2:10:02
  And you can actually preview days ahead of time if you want,
• 2:10:06
  so you can see what they look like.
• 2:10:07
  You can edit the plan. You can also just edit the store
• 2:10:09
  if you're like, oh, you know what, we'd rather do this a
• 2:10:11
  different time. And then when it's the actual
• 2:10:14
  day of an individual plan that you created, because you can,
• 2:10:19
  you can create as many trips as you want with as many days as
• 2:10:22
  you want and plan out as many days or not as many days.
• 2:10:26
  You just keep adding days or day plans to your individual trip.
• 2:10:32
  So now it gets updated with this awesome checklist.
• 2:10:36
  So remember we saw pirates was down, O figment came back up.
• 2:10:39
  So that 20 minutes seem to be about appropriate for how long
• 2:10:42
  it was down. But every time you complete an
• 2:10:45
  attraction, you can just check mark it off, which my kids have
• 2:10:49
  to go in between. I have to hand the phone to the
• 2:10:51
  next one because. They got to take turns the.
• 2:10:53
  Next person has to check it off and then Yep, that is 100%.
• 2:10:58
  True. I love that.
• 2:11:00
  But then like for example, if you're like, oh crap, Pirates is
• 2:11:03
  down now it's out of spec because it's two 26117 is when
• 2:11:07
  it should have opened. So this is way out.
• 2:11:10
  I'm going to take Pirates now and I'm going to dump this
• 2:11:13
  actually after Starlight because I don't know when it's going to
• 2:11:17
  open, but it it more than likely will open up by the end of the
• 2:11:22
  night. So I might as well just add it
• 2:11:26
  to the end of the night. This will save the plan and you
• 2:11:32
  get back right into here and now Pirates is all the way down here
• 2:11:36
  on the bottom, and then you just tick through all your stuff as
• 2:11:39
  you do them. And you can again put Lightning
• 2:11:41
  Lanes if you want on here. Or times.
• 2:11:44
  We do want to eventually put in entertainment rather than you
• 2:11:48
  having to put in the specific time.
• 2:11:50
  I'd love for it to pull the times for that day.
• 2:11:52
  Yeah, that would just make things easier, right?
• 2:11:55
  So eventually I'd like to do stuff like.
• 2:11:57
  Drop down and select which Showtime it is that you're
• 2:11:59
  planning to go to. Yep, exactly.
• 2:12:02
  Yeah. And then if you're like me,
• 2:12:05
  after a day is done, you want to go back.
• 2:12:08
  Well, you can, you'll be able to actually go into the preview
• 2:12:11
  days and this is what it'll look like.
• 2:12:13
  It'll show you all the things that you got done in a row and
• 2:12:16
  it and they're numbered. So you can be like, Oh my God,
• 2:12:18
  we got through 12 things or 17 things by the end of your day or
• 2:12:22
  your trip for your plan. That's always the fun part
• 2:12:24
  because I feel like I like in the afternoon, I'm like, what
• 2:12:26
  did I do? When did I, what order did I go
• 2:12:29
  in things. So like when you have a plan,
• 2:12:31
  it's funny, you can look back and go like, oh, right, that's
• 2:12:32
  what I did or that's what you know, that's what we were doing
• 2:12:35
  and all of that. So.
• 2:12:37
  We love that too and we love the feeling of pre trip and post
• 2:12:41
  trip. So I think we have a really fun
• 2:12:45
  feature that'll that'll showcase those in yeah, by the end of the
• 2:12:49
  year, by the end of the year, we'll have that.
• 2:12:51
  Right. No, that's really nice.
• 2:12:52
  Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that.
• 2:12:55
  I think it is a huge asset to any theme park trip that you are
• 2:12:59
  taking to Florida. And like you said, you you guys
• 2:13:02
  are it's only up from here with the different locations you can
• 2:13:05
  add and expand and everything from from that.
• 2:13:08
  For those of you listening, I will be sure to put the
• 2:13:10
  information for mode in our show notes from our YouTube and
• 2:13:14
  Spotify or wherever you're listening to us.
• 2:13:15
  So that way you guys can take a look and check it out.
• 2:13:18
  Like Kirk said, the a huge portion of that is available for
• 2:13:21
  free without even having to create an account.
• 2:13:23
  You can just, you know, download it and and hop on and and take
• 2:13:27
  take a look and see what you think.
• 2:13:29
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, for the cost of a
• 2:13:34
  snack at the theme parks that you regret, I think it's worth
• 2:13:38
  knowing exactly where all the food is.
• 2:13:41
  Yeah, take care of all your allergens, know when rides come
• 2:13:45
  back up and plan the entirety of your trip.
• 2:13:48
  And it encompasses all of the Disney, Universal and SeaWorld
• 2:13:52
  and more like we're just going to add parks.
• 2:13:55
  Like mode doesn't get smaller, it just expands parks.
• 2:13:59
  The biggest thing that people ask is when are you adding dot,
• 2:14:02
  dot, dot and and our goal is to have mode all your parks.
• 2:14:08
  One plan is our thesis. We want you to take control of
• 2:14:12
  your parks and mode will just keep on adding more.
• 2:14:16
  Yeah, I love it. And if you want to keep up with
• 2:14:18
  what is going on with mode, you can actually follow mode on
• 2:14:22
  TikTok. Here they are.
• 2:14:23
  It's just AT mode isn't it on your TikTok for that one?
• 2:14:26
  It's mode IO. Is it mode IO just because
• 2:14:30
  that's our, that's what our URL is and we couldn't get like just
• 2:14:33
  the other one. So Yep, Yep.
• 2:14:34
  And that's if you type in mode and you find a burger with a
• 2:14:37
  coaster. It's us.
• 2:14:38
  Yeah, so feel free to follow them on TikTok.
• 2:14:40
  You can also follow Kirk at Walrus Carp on your favorite
• 2:14:43
  social media platform as well to keep up with with what he is
• 2:14:47
  doing. And also all of these theme
• 2:14:49
  parks that we've talked about, Kirk has gone to all of them and
• 2:14:51
  has likely covered them in a YouTube or somewhere on his
• 2:14:55
  account. So feel free to take a look over
• 2:14:57
  there. If you want more information.
• 2:14:59
  As always, you can always reach out if you need additional
• 2:15:02
  information or need help finding it.
• 2:15:03
  You can find me mom St. usa@gmail.com as well.
• 2:15:07
  Kirk, thank you so much for spending your time with us this
• 2:15:09
  afternoon. I really appreciate all the
• 2:15:11
  insight to the theme parks that you were able to give us.
• 2:15:14
  Oh, my gosh, dude, are you kidding me?
• 2:15:15
  This I can. I talk theme parks all day,
• 2:15:17
  every day. It's my jam.
• 2:15:18
  So this was an absolute pleasure.
• 2:15:20
  Thank you, Jackie. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:15:21
  And if you are listening and you've got more input or
• 2:15:24
  questions, like I said, please feel free to reach out.
• 2:15:27
  Coming up next on Mom St. USA, we are going back to the
• 2:15:30
  hub with Duck and Jess. So we will have an episode with
• 2:15:32
  them coming up next. I'm not sure what our topic will
• 2:15:34
  be to be determined, so catch us next week for that.
• 2:15:39
  But for today, that is all we've got for Mom St.
• 2:15:41
  USA. Thank you guys so much for
• 2:15:42
  joining us and I will see you on the next episode.
• 2:15:45
  Bye everyone.