4th of July, Gatorland, 4 Rivers Smokehouse, & Luminous: The Symphony of Us

My apologies for doing one of these later than expected. Once again, in less than a week I'll do a separate one of these to talk about the films I've seen theatrically. For now, there aren't any new restaurant experiences to mention, although at least new experiences were had. Honestly, there's only one major detail to note: for 6 days, a sister (the one who lives in Illinois) was down here w/ her beau, a young boy, and an even younger girl. It was a treat having them as guests; hopefully they realized how swell a time I had with them.

I picked them up from the airport in Sanford; before doing so, I stopped at the nearby Daytona Beach to visit their Buc-ee's for the first time in about a year. One drizzle-filled afternoon was spent at Gatorland, the local attraction in Kissimmee which somehow had never been visited by me. I'm glad that was changed; while some of their attractions featured an upcharge, there was still plenty to do without that. Hundreds of gators were present, along with other animals like snakes, tortoises, birds, and even a few capybara. Afterwards, dinner was had at a 4 Rivers Smokehouse, a nice Florida chain that was only visited by me once before.

The longest day was when we went to Epcot-what a LONG day that was where the heat and humidity took a toll on me at one point—after a bit I was fine, don't worry. Everyone had a blast there visiting all those attractions. Is it a surprise that the little girl loved the Frozen ride located in the Norway pavilion? The 9PM lights/fireworks show Luminous: The Symphony of Us was viewed before leaving the park. The children were a big fan of that; it was nice, and I was amused that it constantly lit up my MagicBand+.

Otherwise, not too much else to mention. A few different restaurants were visited for the first time in a while or a long while, a trend that probably will continue this month. As nothing was done on the 4^th of July aside from the yearly tradition of viewing fireworks on TV and people probably don't want to hear about my purchasing of new Nike shoes at an outlet mall in Orlando...