Orlando Science Center

For the first time on this holiday we had a plan for today!  Our daily dip in the pool then a trip to Mall at Millennia followed by an evening at the Orlando Science Center.  Originally, we were going to do the day in reverse as the museum usually closes at 5pm but tonight there's a special Walmart Foundation sponsored evening from 6pm until 10pm. We've decided to do this instead because admission is just $5 per person instead of $27!

After another lovely laze about in the pool I concocted a lunch out of some of the food that we still have in the fridge and freezer.  Breaded fish sticks, coleslaw mixed with blue cheese dressing and a cold hot dog sausage in a roll.  Harrison and Bernard are so fortunate to have such a talented chef on holiday with them! ;-)

We left the villa at 3pm and arrived at the mall about 40 minutes later.  Why had we not found this place before?  The building was stunning!

I  didn't realise that there are at least five malls around here.  Last year we only found two.  I could quite happily spend a couple of weeks wandering around them all.  If only I was here with somebody who enjoyed shopping...... On second thoughts, not a good idea!

The inside of the building was just as impressive as the outside but we soon realised why.  It was full of high end designer shops and was not a discount / outlet mall:

We still enjoyed looking around, although I did feel a bit underdressed in my shorts!  I managed to while away over an hour in Abercrombie and Fitch :-) which left just enough time for a trip to the Apple store.  By the time we came out of the mall, the sky was black again and we were hearing reports on the radio of heavy storms along the I4, just where we were heading!  It was 5:30pm and once again we'd managed to find ourselves tangled up in the rush hour traffic (will we never learn?!) so a 15 minute journey to the science center took us nearly an hour.

Orlando Science Center is located in downtown Orlando in the middle of the medical district.  The children's hospital is right next door and there were several cardiology buildings to the south (obviously we were going to notice these ;-)).  The multi-storey car park was already virtually full and we could see streams of people heading for the science center's entrance bridge.  To manage the queue there was a system for credit card payments on the left and cash on the right, leaving a clear walkway down the centre of the bridge.  The two solid queues of visitors started in the car park and stretched the whole length of the bridge, which spanned the highway, and then curled around inside the building to the tills.   It was actually well managed and didn't take as long as I thought it would to get through.  We could see that the building was absolutely heaving though, and our first experience of just how busy was when we waited around 25 minutes for the one lift that could take us up to the 4th floor!  Apart from a set of stairs, there were no other lifts or escalators.

It was a lovely modern building, well laid out with plenty of space around the exhibits and activities but just not sufficient means of accessibility to each floor for all types of visitor.  As the evening wore on, I saw more and more families using their older, young children (if that makes sense) to help them carry their pushchairs up and down the stairs.  Despite this frustration, Harrison enjoyed himself in the universe exhibition and the science park.  

We  also took him through the dinosaur area and he was glad when we were out the other side!

The science park was full of hands on activities demonstrating various scientific theories in a practical way.  It also had a flight simulator and some kind of driving game.

I'm glad we visited the science center and I'm glad we only paid $5 each.  $27 per person seems rather expensive considering the size of the building and its contents.  It's a fraction of the size of the science museum in London and all of Orlando's exhibits and activities would easily fit into one floor.  Having said that, it's a good place to take younger children as there was plenty for them to do accompanied by enough information to give them a basic understanding of the world.  According to the map we were given on our way in, the center's exhibits cater for young people up to the age of 18.  I would have thought that its maximum suitability would be for a typically developing 12 or 13 year old. Overall, it was an enjoyable evening.

On exiting the car park, Bernard took us on another of his mystery tours.  We've not been to downtown Orlando before and he wanted to avoid the congested I4, so decided to take the back roads.  We ended up in a residential area which looked very smart.  Every single house was of a different design and colour.  We still find it strange how none of them have any kind of fencing or shrubbery to mark their boundaries.  Even the really big houses are completely accessible all round.  Eventually we meandered back to the I4, which we joined a few junctions further towards our exit where the traffic had eased.