International Drive

International Drive in Orlando is the tourist strip. All the major theme parks are right on this street, so it has also drawn many other tourist attractions. Jack and I spent the better part of Friday visiting some tourist spots on International Drive.

First, we went to Ripley's Believe it or Not. The building is really neat-looking-- it is made to look like it has been part of an upheaval and half the building is uprooted from the ground. The exhibits were a mix-- some of them were corny, others were interesting, and some were disgusting (think headhunters or head shrinking).

This car was pretty neat. It is a Model T Ford life-sized replica made completely of match sticks. Jack and I were fascinated by this. You can't read the sign, but basically it says that since medical knowledge didn't used to be as advanced as it is now, occasionally people were buried alive. To enable the person to get out of the grave, there was a bell attached to the top of the burial spot with a string inside the casket, so if you woke up, you could ring the bell and get out... Makes me grateful for living today!

This is the Throne of Love. You are supposed to put quarters in and it will tell you what category you fall into. We just took pictures.

This was an optical illusion that felt like you were spinning while you were in the tunnel. Not fun.

Here are some black lights. Kinda cool.

Our next stop was Wonder Works. It was similar to Ripley's in some ways-- same spinning hallway and odd facts. But it was much better, with lots of interactive educational displays.

We both got on the bed of nails. I realized this is probably less painful for someone with more body fat than me.

This was a really cool game. So you strap on a brain wave monitor and then try to be calm and clear your mind. This will decrease your brain activity. The ball on the table will go away from the person with the lowest brain activity. Jack won, but we both had very low brain activity. We took the longest out of all the people we watched to finish the game. I am laughing as I write this-- does this say something about us?

A little space walk...

Of course, Jack found the flight simulator game. He landed the space shuttle successfully after crashing it only once! I crashed it once and gave up.

We also went to the Titanic Museum. When you enter the museum, you are given a boarding pass with the name of one of the passengers on it. The tour is guided by two different members of the Titanic crew, accents and all. I was quite impressed with this museum. They did a great job of making the experience realistic. Then at the end of the tour, there were displays with the names of those on board and you got to see if you survived or not.

The grand staircase.

I'm the captain! Maybe that was the problem...