Halloween Horror Nights

After a long, joyous, Halloweeny, fun-filled weekend, I am finally back to thrill and delight you all with my wonderful stories....(um yeah, ok Claudia). I've done so much in the past 7 days, that I couldn't possible get it all in one blog post (well, I could, but it would be very very long), so I'm going to post a little bit each day. That way, I can pace myself, and it gives you more time to digest each exciting event. How's that sound? Great? Great.

Ok, so let's get started my fuzzy peeps:

Last Thursday, Jenny, Amber (her niece), my brother and I piled into my CRV around noon and headed out to Orlando, destination: Halloween Horror Nights 2006!!! Added note: This was my first time driving to central FL. I've gone many many times, but I've never actually been behind the wheel, so that was my first long car ride(remember this tidbit for later...). Fortunately for all of those in the car, I was able to "maintain my decorum" and managed to not freak out about possibly getting lost.

We arrived around 4ish and I had the foresight to document where my car was parked in case I forgot due to inebriation or faulty memory later on. HHN at Universal Studios didn't open until 7:30pm or so, but we had bought special 3 hour tickets for Islands of Adventure, so we went there first and got to ride the Hulk and Spiderman. We probably would have been able to go on more rides (the lines were very short), but they were closing the park early that day (6pm), so there went that. I wish they would've told me this before selling me the "3 hour" tickets (which that day became "2 hour" tickets). But that's OK cause:

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh no, I've got to keep on moving
Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh no, I've got to keep on moving

Yes, I was in a fabulous mood, so nothing was going to get me down, and yes, I often break into song when telling people my adventures. We headed over to HHN at 6:30pm (the "2 hour" tickets also included early entry into HHN from Islands of Adventure). They had us go in through a special back entry and it kind of lost the magic of HHN because:
a) it was too early, it wasn't even dark yet and
b) it was the back entrance, so you miss all the pomp and circumstance of going through the main entrance with fog and lights and people jumping out at you at every turn.

Note to self: Next year, just go at 7:30pm through the main entrance.

So anyway, since we also splurged on the express pass, we got to go to all the haunted houses and we even got to repeat three of them. We also rode the Mummy and Jaws rides. Later, we met up with some other friends (Claude, Meg and Laurie) and watched the Bill and Ted show. I had never seen that show before since I'm not one to waste time watching shows (I'd rather ride the rides!), but they convinced us to go. I'm glad they did though because the show was very funny (they do spoofs on the past year's movies, TV shows and celebrities); I'm definitely sold on it for future visits. We bought lots of yummy drinks in a nifty souvenir cup and had a marvelous time. I got to take a picture with my friend Jack and also the devil dude (don't know his name...Satan? Lucifer?). They had lots of creepy scare zones and zombies roaming about. We left the park at around 1:30am. Good thing I had taken the picture of the parking spot when I got there, becuase by that time, I was so tired and wired at the same time that I didn't remember where the heck I had parked.

A fun time was had by all, stay tuned for part 2.