Megan Paravato Come On Down!

As many of you know, I was able to be a contestant on The Price is Right last summer. Being on the show was tons of fun! I won luggage to get on stage and then won a trip to Orlando, Florida which I went on this summer. Here are the details of my wonderful trip to the east coast:

After an early morning and a long day of flying we finally arrived at our hotel! We were quite a few stories up which was cool because you can see how close we were to Sea World and Aquatica (the water park). We just had to walk down the street. I just love staying in hotels :)

  

 

The first day we decided to sleep in then go to the water park. My mom was nice enough to let me sleep in and decide when to do things. The water park had the usual water rides but also had an intense lazy river. You wear life jackets and it pushes you super hard around the park. We went on that a couple times and right when we were about to leave we noticed it was starting to sprinkle. We figured that it was perfect timing since we only had to walk about 10 minutes back to the hotel...little did we know that it only takes about one minute in Florida to go from sprinkling to absolutely pouring! Luckily we were in swimsuits, but we did have our camera and phone in the bag. Mom decided to wait for a bit under a bus stop, but it only got worse so we decided to wrap up the electronics in our towels and get back as quickly as possible. I took one step into the gutter when crossing the street and my flip flops came off because the water was around a foot deep. Remember, it had only been raining a few minutes! Luckily we made it back without ruining the electronics but looked slightly ridiculous walking back into the hotel. We then realized why we didn't have terrible lines going to Disney World and Sea World in August...it rains...a LOT!

We got a quick picture on the way out of the park before it started raining:

The next day our adventure was to Disney World! The Magic Kingdom was pretty much the same as Disneyland, but it was still cool to say that we have been there. Besides, who doesn't love Disneyland!?

One thing we learned about Florida is that everything is very spread out! Coming from LA we were very surprised. Disney World has it's own exit off of the freeway that you drive on about five miles until you reach the parking lot. Then you take the tram to the entrance to the ferry boat which then takes you across the lake and to the entrance of the Magic Kingdom.

Here I am about to get on the ferry. You can see the castle in the background. It did take quite a while to get in and out, which isn't so fun when you are tired at the end of the night, but I will admit that is was so pretty and definitely made it feel more magical! haha But really...

Isn't that cool to see the castle overlooking the lake? I thought so:)

As soon as we got inside the park it started sprinkling. You can never predict when the rain will come! Before putting on our ponchos (which were life savers) we got a couple pictures:

Aren't we cute!? haha I love my mom! As you can see, the sky was not bright and clear like it normally would be at noon during the summer. Not wanting to get soaked we hurried to the closest ride we wanted to go on. Right when we got in line for Buzz Lightyear it started pouring! It ended up being perfect timing because the lines are all covered and by the time we got out of the ride it had stopped raining and was beautiful the rest of the day.

 Here we are on some rides:

Disney rides make me happy :)



Once it got dark we made sure to get good seats for the light parade and firework show. The castle lights up different colors which looked so pretty!

Check out the view from the ferry on our way back...magical, just like the rest of our day at Disney World.

Thursday we decided to take a break from the parks in the morning and do something we don't do in California...airboat swamp tours. We wanted to see some alligators and figured this would be a cool way to do it. If you don't know what an airboat is, think of huge fan on the boat that lets you glide over all the plants growing in the lake. It was all around a fun experience.

It was just us so we had the boat to ourselves and our captain was nice enough to take a picture. It was land on our side of the boat and water on the other. Crazy to think how well those boats work. Below are the pictures of the awesome alligators we saw. It ended up being a good time to go because the mama gators are protecting their eggs and waiting for them to hatch. Since they never leave their eggs our captain knew just where to find them. We saw two mama gators. The one below was not very happy to see us because her babies had just hatched! Worked out well for us because we got a nice view of her teeth and a nice view of her babies. haha

There probably at least thirty or forty baby alligators swimming around her. They started crawling back on the land to hide but I got a pretty good picture. You can see their black and gold stripes. They made me realize that everything really is cuter as a baby.

After our ride, they had a couple baby alligators that we got to hold! Still kinda scary because of their teeth but very cool. They felt weird because they were pretty soft underneath and really hard on top. They posed well for our pictures:

After seeing the alligators we figured we would see some shows at Sea World since we had passes and could go any time all week. I had never been to Sea World before and was very impress by how great the shows were! The first one we went to was Clyde and Seamore the sea lion show. That was silly of course, but still fun. Here they are in action:

Then they brought out this huge walrus! haha

 The next show was the dolphin and whale show. Dolphins are such performers! That was an awesome show. They not only had lots of dolphins, but also a whale (which looked like a big dolphin), professional divers, acrobats, and birds.

 

We had some time before the killer whale show so went around to all of the animal exhibits. First, we saw the sea lions, who posed perfectly for my picture:

Then we went to their aquarium. We saw sea horses, Nemo and Dory, tons of other weird fish, and sting rays which we got to pet. I love aquariums.

I love the colors of this one ^ 

I was a little nervous about touching the slimy stingrays though.

 

 

I also got to pet the dolphins as they swam by in their little pool!

Then it was finally time for the whale show. It hadn't rained yet that day, so of course it was coming. We only saw the first ten minutes before they closed down the park and we busted out the ponchos. Can you tell it's raining? Check out that dark sky!

Once we got to the hotel we figured we needed a picture with the ponchos that helped us out so many times!

The next day was our trip to Busch Gardens, a zoo and theme park. We saw many different animals, but one of my favorites was this ape because he gets to be large and sleep all day. He seemed happy about life.

They also have this huge area of land so the animals can roam freely. We took a gondola ride over the area and a train and a jeep through the land. I liked the set up of going through a more natural environment. Plus the animals were so close to our jeep!

 

The elephants were fun to watch because when we saw them the trainers had just put out a bunch of treats. It was fun to see which treat the elephants went after. Some of their treats were also put into toys like the ball in the picture so they had to figure out how to get the food out. They were fun to watch.

It was very hot and humid so after walking around all day we were ready for a break. We decided to see some shows. After being at Sea World I had these high expectations but the show we went to was some weird contortionist and juggling act. Mom thought it would be cool. I thought she was crazy. When we got outside again we notice it was pouring! Why were we even surprised? Rather than trying to wait it out we decided to leave since you don't know how long it will last. Out came the ponchos but of course our feet were still soaked. Their drains were full so any time there was a downward slope the water was pooling. It was lovely. Good thing I brought lots of shoes because we realized things don't dry when the air is so humid. Coming from the desert it was hard to grasp that things don't dry when you set them out for days. That night we enjoyed our comfy beds, rented a movie, and ate cheesecake! Yum!

For our last full day we decided to go to downtown Orlando. We went to this darling farmers market but realized we had just eaten a large breakfast so weren't hungry and didn't live there so had no need for fruits, veggies, or flowers. It was cute though. We then went shopping along the same cute street and realized that even the ugly furry shirts with chains are about $300. Luckily we found a GAP and a chocolate shop. What more could we need? I got some cute shirts. Then we got truffles, a chocolate covered strawberry, and gelato. Here we are eating our gelato in a darling park. The gelato was so good! Chocolate with all kinds of chocolate chunks! I would have taken a picture of the strawberry too but it was so delicious I couldn't even think about anything else! I have never seen so much chocolate on one strawberry.

We went to Sea World again that night so we could see the whole whale show. I thought we had seen quite a bit in the rain, but there was so much more! It was a long and great show! The mama and baby were cute of course! Especially because you could see the baby learning and following the mom. It did a great job. The most entertaining was probably when they brought out this HUGE whale just for the soak zone! Its tail was so big it could scoop tons of water and dump in on not just the first few rows, but the entire section! Mom and I could not stop laughing at how wet everybody was getting! We were smart enough to sit just above the soak zone so for one day we could go home dry. :)

We saw a couple more exhibits and bought some fish for the sea lions. It was fun getting to feed them because they can smell it and will all climb the rocks to get close to you. You can see the fish I am tossing to the sea lion by the rocks.

 

Before we left we had to take a picture with the drink machine. We were able to get meals before or after we went to the parks, but there was one thing we couldn't live without: water. The humidity made it so easy to get dehydrated and I already need tons of water so the most popular question was "Do you need water?"

Before our flight Sunday night we were able to go to church. It was awesome knowing that where ever we are we can find our church and know that they are being taught the same things and believe the same things we do. Plus it was so easy looking it up online! The building we went to just happened to be right across the street from the Orlando Temple. It was so beautiful! What a great way to end the trip!

Thanks to The Price is Right for picking me as a contestant so I could win this sweet trip! It was great to get away from school and work to have some fun and do new things. Definitely a trip I will remember. Thanks to my mom for coming with me and making it a blast! Couldn't have been happier that I got to spend so much time with her! Love you mom!