Wednesday dawned bright and clear but still cold after temperatures dropped to below freezing again on Tuesday night. After our extremely cold visit to Islands of Adventure on Tuesday, we decided to give the theme parks a day off and played adventure golf instead - we bought an all day ticket and after 6 games the score stood at 3 all!!! A rematch is planned for later in the week!! We also spent several hours at DisneyQuest - a massive 5 floor arcade with virtual reality games and arcade games.

The weather was back to normal today (Thursday) so we paid a visit to our favourite theme park - Universal Studios where you can ride the movies. Rides are based on movies such as Back to the Future, ET, Earthquake, Men in Black, Simpsons and is the first park Ant and I visited on our first trip to Florida almost 19 years ago!!!!!

One of the special events here at Christmas is the Macy's Holiday Parade - the original Macy's Parade started in the mid 1920s in New York as a way of promoting the store and now takes to the streets of New York on Thanksgiving. After the New York parade, the massive helium filled balloons are deflated, packed up and shipped to Orlando where every night at dusk, you can watch the authentic balloons and floats along with marching bands, street performers, and the star of the parade, Santa Claus! Ant and I have always wanted to be one of the balloon handlers and today we tried to find out how to take part - (unsucessfully). As we were heading towards the park exit wondering what to do next and where to eat, we were stopped by a park employee and asked if we wanted to take part in the parade as balloon handlers!!!!! How spooky was that.

After being kitted out in very attractive black jump suits and given an short training session we were let loose with our balloon - Arrtie the Pirate. Ours was the biggest balloon on the parade and quite difficult to manouver and the 45 minute route went very quickly - we even managed to avoid the power lines, trees and guests who lined the route!!! We even got him to do a spin (3 times) and a drunken sailor routine - our pilot was very impressed with us.

It was another dream come true for us - we now just need to go back to the park and actually watch the parade!!!