Congo River Golf is situated on the 192 close to mile marker 12. Like many of these fun or crazy golf courses its situated on a small hill with waterfalls and other features. There are two courses apptly named ‘Stanley’ and ‘Livingston’.

Whilst playing the course there are a number of object to find and mark on your score card such as a shield, hat and canoe.  If you find them all you can win a prize.

In the past we have played both courses, both of which are fun and have there own unique challanges.

Once you have finished your game you can feed the alligators for $2.99 which is great fun for the kids.

Some tips for Livingston

Hole 3, If you aim for the stream you will soon find your ball is by the hole.

Hole 6. This is situated on the deck of the Congo Queen.  I hit it go to the right of the funnel, bounced off side of boat then of rock behind hole to ricksha into hole. Hole in One!!!

Hole 7, Look carefully to find one of the missing explorers hat, did it belong to Livingston?

Hole 11, On a hot day your ready for the drinks machine which is accessible from both courses.  At only $1 per can and $2 per bottle of water its a welcome sight.  The machine takes bill as well as coins so you do not need to worry about having enough coins.

Hole 13, lucky for some aim for the river 8 players, 4 hole in ones!!!

During our 2 day visit here we went on this ride 4 times at the request of our 9 year old daughter.

Today we visited Seaworld florida, thou we have been before this is our first trip in a few years.  Traveling to Seaworld is fairly straight forward as detailed at the end of this blog.  On arrival to SeaWorld you have to first pay for parking which for us was $12 which is always disappointing after paying for the park tickets.  Running on a budget we decided to take a pack lunch only to discover security do not allow you to take your own food into the park!!!

Manta at SeaWorld Florida

This is the first time we have been on this ride, whilst very similar to ‘Air’ at Alton Towers, its much better!!.  The first loop you come down on your back and you can feel the G’s.  Its a great ride and worth the queue.  We hit this ride first and had to wait about 20 minutes.

Kracken at SeaWorld Florida

This is a full on adrenaline ride with 7 loops & twists its got to be one of the longest roller coasters I have been on.  We had a storm in the afternoon which meant the ride closed for a short while.  During this time some of the guests appeared to leave the park and on reopening the queues were really short, which meant we got several goes very quickly. In my opinion this is the best ride at Seaworld florida.

Atlantis at SeaWorld Florida

This ride is situated near Kracken and unfortunately was out of order for much of the time due to technical difficulties.  However we did get to ride it once and its a great ride for the hot weather.  With 2 drops your just about guaranteed to get wet.  In addition the public can pay a few quarters to squirt you from the edge of the ride with water guns

Shamu at SeaWorld Florida

entry coming soon….

Pets Ahoy

entry coming soon….

Clyde & Seamore take pirate island

entry coming soon….

Getting to Seaworld Florida from our Villa

On leaving crescent lakes you head North on Ponciana Boulevard crossing the Orange Blossom Trail and the 192.  Shortly after crossing the 192 you turn left on to the 535.  Follow this for around 3 miles then take the I4 towards Orlando, watch out for the 90° bend when coming off the slip road.

Follow the I4 for 5 miles taking junction 71 where Seaworld florida is clearly signposted from.

View Larger Map

Our 2010 summer holiday has begun . This year we opted for an indirect service for our villa flights.  Previous years we have used Virgin and British Airways mainly from Gatwick direct to Orlando International Airport.  But this year we shopped around and and as the kids were older we chose a an indirect flight with Delta via Atlanta,

With 9am flight and a 5am check in at, we decided to travel down Friday and stop over in the Europa Hotel near Gatwick.  The hotel was fine for an over night stop and we ate out at the Blue Nights Indian resturant in Crawley.  With an early morning call the shuttle bus picked us up at 5am and took us to the north terminal.

Delta Villa Flights

The checkin for our was painless with no long queues and only took around 20 minutes.  With the bags all checked in we cleared security and went for breakfast at Cafe Rouge.  The food was good with the usual cooked breakfast options you would expect, I had my favourite, eggs benidict The boarding again was painless and we left on time, but…… after being pushed back from the gate the little truck broke down leaving us stranded and our path blocked.  It took around 30 minuites for the airport staff to sort things out and we were on our way by 9:30am.

Using delta for our villa flights was a good choice, the entertainment was the best we have seen so far (though it does improve with all airlines year on year).  This year the TV’s were all touch screen and there were around 12 movies to watch.  However there was only 1 film for kids which was Alice in Wonderland, having said that there were loads of TV choice’s including Sponge Bob and many computer games.  One new feature that was fun was a trivial pursuit type quiz where you and your fellow passages answer 20 questions.  Scores were kept and a leader board showed the seat numbers of the players .  Our friends got quite competitive and play none stop for 8 hours and said the questions we not repeated!!!

Villa Flights to Atlanta

The flight arrived in Atlanta 1:20pm, 25 minutes late due to the issues at Gatwick, leaving less than 90 minutes to clear immigration, customs, security and reach the gate before closing.  Being a major hub the service ran like clockwork, we cleared imigration in probably 10 mins!!!! Previous visits with Virgin direct to Orlando this has taken an hour.  Thou this would have been help as you no longer need to fill in as many forms now the ESTA online system is fully working.  As the flight is international we had to pickup our checked in luggage clear customs  and re check in, again this was quick taking around 20 mins.  Once we clear security we used the mono rail to transfer from Terminal D to A arriving at our gate with 15 minuites to spare!!!!

The villa flights from Atlanta was not quiet as smooth the aircraft left the gate a few minutes late which meant we missed our ‘slot’ we then sat on the tarmac for around 20 mins waiting for a slot before joining a queue of 12 other aircraft and took off around 35 mins late.  There was a bit of turbulence on this last leg and cabin crew were unable to due a full service, but they did manage to dash round with water.  Also they had the same entertainment as the previous flights but you had to pay for the movies and some of the games, the trivial pursuit and TV programs were free. As the flight time was only 75 minutes this was not a major problem.

As we had already cleared customs and immigration at Atlanta all that was left to do at Orlando was pickup our bags.

So in summary our villa flights this year were excellent and we would choose Delta again.

Thank you for your email and I m sorry we missed your call at the villa. We are back home now (unfortunately) and just wanted to let you know how much we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in your villa. It was absolutely perfect for us, in a lovely quiet location and the facilities couldn t have been better. As you may know from your management company, we did decide to have the pool heated for the second week as it would have been such a shame not to have used it. This proved to be a really good decision and we had a couple of very relaxing days in the jacuzzi and pool on our days off from the parks. We were really sad to leave the villa as it really made our whole holiday, having such a lovely place to go back to everyday. This was our first visit to Orlando (although we have been planning it for the last 10 years or so, when we thought the children would be at the right age) and it was a little daunting leaving the airport in the dark to try to find the villa on strange roads etc but it was lovely to arrive and find everything in the villa so welcoming. I don t know whether we will ever be able to return to Orlando but if we did, we would certainly like to stay in your villa again and would recommend it to anybody. Unfortunately, we did have a little mishap with a tall drinking glass, which got broken but we did buy another set of 4 as a replacement – sorry about that.

Thank you again, very much – I had better get some sleep now as we have been awake since 7am Saturday morning.

Teresa Wren and family

Thank you again.

The Leman Family

we really had a very pleasant stay in Florida. I am very happy we chose your villa for our time in Orlando, as everything was just as described or even better. Our girls absolutely loved the kids room and all the toys provided. Everything was in great condition and actually the only thing we did not like were the pool alarms and the terrible noise they made. But this was only a minor factor and I guess one has to accept such things as part of the American culture. We d like to thank you for the truthful description of the estate, the mindful equipment of the house with all things necessary and the professional handling of the whole rental.

Thanks again and kind regards from frosty Vienna

Armin & family

Thank you.

Keith Hellyar

The Wooleys

Alison Treadwell