Martin Family Vacation 2023: Savannah to Orlando and Aquatica

When we last left off, it was Christmas day and we were driving from Savannah, GA to Orlando, FL. 

Our car air freshener got us in the mood!

 Back when I was planning this vacation* I was trying to find a restaurant that was open on Christmas Day for dinner because the grocery stores were closed and we would need to eat.  I found a few, but some were too expensive (think special Christmas menus) and some couldn't accommodate our large party and many others near Disney were booked already.  We even made reservations at a place only to have them call a week later saying that they would actually be closed and their online reservation was incorrect to have accepted reservations.  I finally found a Sugar Factory in Orlando which I thought would be super fun for the kids - a candy shop! huge ice cream shakes! crazy cool menu! - so we booked it there.  

Guys, it was terrible.

The atmosphere was horrible, with dirty bathrooms and lots of empty tables but not enough servers.  Our waitress took about 15-20 minutes to come to our table, after Phil asked the hostess twice.  There was a wall with huge tv screens that just repeatedly showed promos of famous people eating at other Sugar Factory restaurants, and it was loud and obnoxious.  The menu items were crazy expensive and then they were out of three main choices, including french fries.  We were all about to get burgers and fries or chicken tenders and fries so that was very sad to hear.  To replace the fries, they offered onion rings or mac n cheese.  Honestly if it was any other day, we would have left or complained, but I felt bad for the poor servers and cooks who had to work on Christmas Day and I didn't know where else to go anyway.  Never again.

Eamon loves mac n cheese so he was happy.

Brendan and his "bib".  Is he about to order lobster?

The restaurant was in a shopping/entertainment plaza so we walked around for a little after eating...

Looking at the huge ferris wheel.  They all obey the Baby Boss.

We checked into our VRBO home away from home and it was lovely! The little kids immediately went swimming in our pool, as they did every morning and evening while we were there:

 

And Phil and the bigs joined me in the hot tub:

At the community clubhouse, where the kids played beach volleyball and basketball.

We just couldn't believe we made it to Florida, and kept saying it aloud!  We decided to hit one of our planned parks the next day, as we wanted some action after three days of driving.  Phil picked up our Walmart order at 7am that next day so that we had groceries for the week and we headed to Aquatica:

This was a really great waterpark, and we've been to quite a few!  This one was my favorite because there was LOTS to do, it was very clean and had areas to relax too.  The wave pool was a lot of fun and the "lazy" river was the least lazy river I've been in, it moved so fast and was so deep that we all wore lifejackets in it, as did the other guests.  It was awesome!  Some scenes from the day, but not that many because we kept leaving our phones behind in order to go on the wet rides:

We packed our own lunch in a cooler and went out to the parking lot to eat it.

Enough slides for everyone at once!

The next day we slept in (teens) swam (littles) walked (mom & dad) and then headed to the outlets.  They were sooooo busy!  Some stores had lines outside of people waiting to get in, and the others had register lines that were so long you pondered 25 times whether what you were about to buy was really worth it.  The cute tops I bought were definitely worth it.  People even came with rolling suitcases to store their purchases in, it was insane - and clever!  Phil occupied the little kids so the big kids and I could shop for awhile (he's the best) and the only picture I have of the whole day was this one of Brendan holding a Steve Urkel figure whom he thinks is the funniest as we have been working our way through the Family Matters shows:

"Did I do that?"

Next up...Seaworld and a Disney Adventure Day!

*note to future Colleen: a Christmas vacation requires just as much thought and planning as buying Christmas gifts, so there's no getting-out-of-anything in the end, but it was still worth it :)