From '50s drive in to 80's soft rock - a day at Disney.

So, I have moved on to sunny Florida. At first I was grateful to be warm for the first time in months, but three days in I am close to heat exhaustion and cursing the Canberra winter for making me soft.
First two days were at Universal studios.

I learned an important lesson here. Universal rides are for big kids, Disney rides are for little kids. Belinda is not a big kid. Looking at the small kiddies and grannies in the cue for the Harry Potter ride, and having had Anna tell me she thought the ride was cruisy I decided it sounded like my kind of thing. No, no, no, no, no. It was six minutes of terror. I've never had my eyes so firmly shut in all my life. Never been so terrified I was about to throw up on another human. I spent the next hour after the ride trying to stop shaking (spent the first 15 minutes sitting down because my legs were too wobbly to walk!). I thankfully found a few rides more my speed, but let's just say there isn't much point in me going to Universal studios again.

The food at the Hard Rock hotel was very much themed towards Halloween. My fav of the things I tried was the "crime scene cheesecake".

The highlight was well and truly having lunch at Krusty Burger. So awesome to step inside The Simpsons.

This morning I was up early to transfer over to Disney World. This time around I am staying at the Beach Club resort near Epcot.

The view back over the boardwalk isn't that bad...

For lunch today I went to the Sci-Fi drive in. The concept is awesome. It is done up as a '50's drive in. You sit in cars. You are seated by a parking attendant, and your bill is a parking ticket. Throughout the meal you are watching a loop of old black and white pictures. I scored and a fav of mine in terms of bad '50's Sci-Fi movies, "Robot Monster" was playing on the screen whilst I was there today. It is quite dark, so pics are not great, but hopefully you get the idea.

This week sees the start of the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. There are 30 "international marketplaces" to visit, and each has a number of options. Initially, I was a little outraged when I wandered past the Australian marketplace. What the hell is a shrimp? If this food is Australian, it's a prawn. No discussion. I will not try this dish on the principal that I will not say the word shrimp. Add to that the fact that pavlova is actually Kiwi by origin and the Australia booth is just plain confusing...

Tonight I made it to a few of the booths. I hit up Canada for (wait for it) cheese soup! It was awesome and smokey and a little spicy.

Next up I hit the cheese booth (there is a CHEESE BOOTH!!!!) and had the blue cheese souffle with fig jam. Yummy.

I decided to visit Japan and try the Youki Tofu. Please note there are actual vegetables in that plate and I ate them.

For dessert I hit Belgium. For waffles. Of course. With berries. Yes people, fruit.

They also have the Eat to the Beat concert series. Tonight was Starship! STARSHIP! We had all the hits. We built this city, Sara and Nothings gonna stop us now.

Tomorrow I have breakfast with Cinderella and lunch with Belle and the Beast. Gonna be awesome (and pincessey).

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Pumpkins and Baby Daddies

I like pumpkin. Having lived in countries where it was one if the few veggies you could purchase consistently this is a lucky coincidence. I like roasted pumpkin, pumpkin pizza, pumpkin in risotto, even the odd pumpkin scone (which is a birth right being a QLDer). What I don't understand is what the North Americans have done to this tasty, and versatile vegetable. Pumpkin ale at the pub? Wrong. Pumpkin spiced latte at Starbucks? Wrong. Pumpkin spiced Hershey's kisses?

Wrong.

Pumpkin cheesecake croissants?

Wrong.

Plain old pumpkin cheesecake?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. What is even more wrong is that everything I have tried that is "pumpkin spiced" - tastes like cinnamon! It is cinnamon cheesecake with orange food colouring people! And the Hershey's kisses are just orange coloured white chocolate with cinnamon (and sickly sweet - I actually tried one).

I'll let you have the McDonalds pumpkin pie, but then I draw the line.

Okay, pumpkin vent over. Have been to a few more shows at the theater. There was the awesome Kinky Boots (though my shoes left me feeling thoroughly under dressed next to the fabulous drag queens gracing the stage), the amusing Matilda and the fairly ordinary Motown the musical (though it is worth the price of admission for nothing else than to hear the kid that plays a young Michael Jackson sing - people were crying at the sounds of this kids voice, it was astounding). There was also Pippin. Whilst brilliant, it gave me the same panic that cirque shows do - I am terrified the stunts will go wrong (thankfully they were spot on).

Today however was a highlight. I was up early to catch a bus to Stamford, CT, to be an audience member at The Maury Show. For those who have not seen Maury Povich in action, it is a Jerry Springer-esque show that primarily does paternity tests. He is most known for the phase "(insert name), you ARE/ARE NOT the father" and the crowd goes wild. There are sometimes fights, yelling, tears, swearing, interfering family members, the whole shebang. He does some other shows (lie detector tests, setting bad kids on the straight and narrow and the transvestite shows) but everyone on the bus (me included) was hoping for a paternity show, and we were not disappointed.

Once we got into the studio (which by the way is the exact same set for three other shows, including Jerry Springer) the warm up guy came out to make sure we stayed on message. He wanted to rehearse our reactions. What do we do when we see a pic of a cute baby in the monitors? Ahhhhhhhhhhh. What we do when we hear something shocking (eg. I am also sleeping with your mama) - cue gasps and shocked expressions. What do we do when we hear the woman say the baby daddy hasn't even bought a diaper? BOOOOOOO!!!!! (With the thumbs down signal). When the dead beat Dad has his paternity confirmed by the DNA test? Scream and yell and jump to your feet and scream a chant of "man up, man up". I had lost my voice by the end if the warm up.

They recorded a whole heap of reactions in advance to cut into the show later, but we were told to react to EVERYTHING. Be loud. Get involved. If you don't, we will show you the door. Participate or perish in the foyer.

The best of the day was the couple (both white) where the guy was denying the baby (also white) because "he knew his girlfriends best friend was hooking her up with black gigolos". When she pointed out the baby was white his response was "I watch Maury all the time, that means nuthin!". Oh dear. He was the father. He got booed off the stage. I heard the words "black gigolo" more today than in my 35 years combined. Even Maury was shocked. He came back out and looked at us and was laughing and asking if we could believe that guy.

The final couple was actually horribly sad. The wife cheated, she confessed, and the poor husband found out the daughter the raised for the last four years was not his. He was devastated. Thankfully the audience were respectful. At that point though you do question how much these shows mess with people's lives for the entertainment of the rest of us. Then they gave us pizza. Pizza makes it better.
I will leave you with two happy food thoughts. I finally braved the line at Shake Shack and it was totally worth it.

This was dessert - and no truer words have been spoken. They make me happy at least.

Tomorrow, I have to be up at some stupid hour that is still technically tonight to head south to Florida and it's 30 degree days!

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Three days and 64,850 steps later.

Have only been in NYC for three days and yet the pedometer (which I bought because I was fascinated by the idea of how far I could walk in one day at a Disney park) tells me I have walked 64,850 steps (which it tells me equates to 44.13 kilometers). So, it is no surprise that my feet are a teeny little bit sore.

As usual, I am here for the the shows. Saturday afternoon I saw the Rogers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella. That was followed on Saturday night with The Glass Menagerie starring Zachary Quinto and Cherry Jones. Once you get past the fact that on 24 one of them was President and the other the bad guy, you could move on to their mother/son relationship.

Sunday was a struggle to drag my sorry butt out of bed. Nope, not jet lag. Rather a room full of middle aged women from Houston in the room across the hall who decided to come home at 2am and raise hell in the hotel. Once I did drag my sleep deprived self out of bed I went to see The Trip to Bountiful. Vanessa Williams and Cicely Tyson. The evil woman from Ugly Betty and the woman we all loved in Fried Green Tomatoes. It was crazy good. I really thought that was as good as it would get, but then on Sunday night I saw a new show called First Date. Krysta Rodriguez from Smash and Zachary Levi from Chuck. I'm officially in love with the latter. It was so nice to see something that was original and not based on a movie. Helped that it was also hysterically funny. Still have four more shows to go - given what I have seen so far, I have high hopes.

Given all that walking, I have had free range on the food (that's called Belinda logic). There have been copious cupcakes (thank you Sprinkles and Magnolia bakeries). Then there was the cronut. Half croissant, half donut. They are all the rage at the moment, so I hate to say it, but after trying one, I don't understand the attraction. But I can now at least say I have tried one.

Next up I ventured to Carlo's Bake Shop. All that watching of Cake Boss made me reallllly want to try one of Buddy's cannoli. Whilst the plain one was awesome, the choc one left a little to be desired. Far too sweet.

There has also been shopping. Had a bit of fun at the NHL store. I won't disclose what I purchased for fear of inciting a riot (as the merch may have been from the Flyers rivals from the great state of PA...) but they did have an awesome chandelier made from hockey sticks!

Today I had a lot of fun in the candy store. The Halloween candy leaves a little to be desired. Like this one... (It REALLY looked like minced meat in the store!).

After eating that, do you feel the need to floss? Maybe with bacon? (Ewwww).

You'd need gum after that, right? (Hotdog, peanut and beer gum perhaps?).

If that gum is not to your liking there is another type...

Maybe just chocolate?

Okay, okay - maybe just a lollipop...

There has also been constant crazy roadblocks from UNGA leaders motorcades (though having Obama drive past me was pretty cool). I also managed to get caught in some filming for The Carrie Diaries on the street. The early '80s clothes and hair on the cast were giggle worthy.

Well, time to rest the tired feet so they can get back up and do it all over again tomorrow. To where I don't yet know, but the cupcake people did tell me that if I bought today's receipt back tomorrow I would get 2 for 1 - that's worth walking 15 blocks for :)

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