Feel the warmth

We had a very nice stretch of weather with only that brief 2 hour rain and temps in the 80's during our entire week in FLA.  We all enjoyed wearing shorts and hope the weather is finally turning up North.

We really enjoyed our stay at the Cabana Beach resort.  The pools and grounds were great.  It had the usual problems that everything is exobitantly priced but not any different than Disney or any other resort property we have stayed at... The only other downside was that it was hosting about a billion high school students from across the country that were down competing in a DECA competition.  Not the quietest crowd at night....

We had hit almost all of the rides at both Universal Parks at this point - so it was now a case of going back and doing our favorites a few more times before we wrapped up the vacation.  There is some debate in the order but the consensus top three rides were...

1. Simpsons
2. Revenge of the Mummy
3. Escape from Gringotts

Ride designers at Universal seem to have an obsession with spraying you in the face with water as a way to startle you on rides as it seemed like every other ride involved getting water in the face.

We also completed the ButterBeer trifecta by polishing off the frozen variety (previously sampling the regular and hot varieties).

As we had an early flight out of Tampa - I made the self-sacrifice of skipping the Sammy Hagar concert at the Hard Rock that night and heading back to Tampa around 6pm.  It is about an hour and 15 minute drive to Tampa and we ended up getting dinner in the historic Ybor City section of Tampa - which was an interesting part of the city.

We then hit our last hotel of the trip - a  souless Homewood Suites next to the airport that featured a piece of cloth covering springs that masqueraded as a sleeper sofa mattress.  I think everybody is going to be happy sleeping in their own beds !  

Overall a great vacation !