Visitors From Virginia

As alluded to earlier, Air Canada did start our trip out on a sour note. The flight to Calgary was fine, we had the on-demand video thing going on. Great for the kids. But the Toronto Airport hotel was small, and Pearson airport is all about business. Not really a place to frolic and kill time like Calgary International.

Once we got to our Condo, things were great! We're feeling the love from our condo. I snapped off some pics...

Our condo complex turned out to be really really cool. When we approached the check in area, our two boys were intercepted by a couple of Kids Coordinators. They promptly whipped them up some balloon animals, they played Nintendo, and they were invited to a kid's pool party. We were blown away. Everyone's so friendly.

So we settled in. Monday was Universal Studios Islands of Adventure day....

There was a huge chunk of the park dedicated to Jurassic Park. We went on the River Ride, some dinosaurs roared at us. It was a good time in the Jurassic Park area.
A pleasant surprise was the Dr Seuss area. The four year-old got all the rides he could handle. So the rest of us tagged along and really enjoyed it too. We thought that this area would be a couple of rides, and that was it. But noooooooo. She's a serious part of the park. A really cool thing is that it was set up with Christmas decorations. Nice touch.
So, one thing that surprised us was the crowds, or lack thereof. Above is a picture of Islands of Adventure's most prominent eatery. No one was there. The time was 11:45am. Pretty much lunch time. Very quiet. The park was pretty empty, so we had our run of the place. We walked on to the Hulk roller coaster, the Dueling Dragons roller coaster, Spiderman, and all the rest of the rides. No waits!!

There was one casualty. On the van-ride home, the one fallen little soldier....

We need to go back to Universal Studios to go to the movie studios part. That's next. But we may have to hang out at the pool tomorrow for a break. You have to pace yourself, right?

Plus, the heat's a killer. 27 degrees with monster humidity today.

Our rental minivan has Virginia plates for some reason. So, I guess we're Virginians for a week. Its a useful way to identify our white minivan in a sea of white minivans in the parking lots around here.