And this time I actually got the vlogging camera out and did some vlogging! I had been talking about doing it for ages and finally last year I DID IT! And the Covid-19 pandemic gave me time to sit down and edit the vlogs and get them posted on my YouTube channel Lifestyle Lisa

First vlog, pre travel & travel day! Hope you enjoy!

The post Florida Vlog 2019 – Pre travel & travel day appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

It’s a crazy notion to think that you can go full on at a Disney park everyday of your vacation, it may seem like a good idea whilst your Florida planning, but when reality hits you’ll be thankful that you pencilled in that day away from the Disney magic.

It’s okay to have a break from the Disney parks whilst you are on vacation, seriously even the most dedicated Disney fans need a break sometimes! In my experience avoiding all WDW parks on a weekend is a good bit of advice (trust me weekends are notoriously busy) I mean if I was a Florida resident where else would I want to hang out on my weekends! At a Disney park for sure!!

So on our first Saturday in Florida we decided to head on over to Gatorland. Now I really don’t want to go over old ground too much as I have covered this park in a previous blog which you can find here https://lifestylelisa.com/2017/05/14/gatorland-my-florida-adventures/ 

I can tell you that this park is on my list of places to go every time I head to Florida. It’s a great fun and very informative place to visit, and I especially find it fascinating learning about Florida’s oldest native resident the alligator!

You can very easily spend a whole day here watching the shows and seeing all the many different animals, and if you are extra brave I suggest the alligator feeding or maybe the zip wire! One things for sure you cannot get bored here, it’s a good family fun day out!

Luke and I have now been to Gatorland a total of 8 times between us, so there are things we now skip while we are here. But always on my list is the jumparoo show, the close encounters show, and the gator wrestling. The last two visits I think we spent around 3 hours which was plenty of time for us, it all depends on how much of the park you want to do.

Jumparoo!!

I will continue to visit gatorland every vacation! I love how all the staff care for there animals, and I genuinely find it an interesting place to go to.

It’s the obligatory photo!!

Waiting for the show to start!

Finishing up here at around midday we decided to head on over to the Florida outlets and Mall for an afternoon of shopping and bargain hunting!!

As you can see we certainly shopped!!!!……

Please stick around and check out my next blog post (coming soon) when I will be sharing my thought’s on dinning at California Grill.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE!!!!!

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I’m back again with more things you should definitely include on your Florida vacation!!! This week it’s Kennedy Space Centre.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and visitor center is situated at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It features exhibits and displays, historic spacecrafts and memorabilia, shows, two IMAX theaters, a range of bus tours of the spaceport, and the Shuttle Launch Experience where you get to feel what it’s like to be blasted off into space!! It also has the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame which is amazing to walk around.

A little bit of background history.

The complex had its beginning in the 1960s in a small trailer containing simple displays on card tables. When nearby Walt Disney World opened in 1971, visitors center attendance increased by 30 percent, but the public was often disappointed by the comparative lack of polish at KSC’s tourist facilities. Existing displays were largely made up of trade show exhibits donated by NASA contractors. Later that year, a $2.3 million upgrade of the visitor complex begun with added focus on the benefits of space exploration along with the existing focus on human space exploration.

Last year (2016) marked my 4th visit to KSC, I cannot help but to be in complete awe of this place. I find it absolutely breathtaking and so Interesting. I could walk round here for hours and hours, there’s so much to see and do! We tend to spend a whole day here, usually arriving at around 10am and leave when the park closes at 5pm

The visitors complex is organised into mission zones where attractions and tours are grouped to chronological era (which makes it better for you to plan where your going) From the dawn of space exploration to current and ongoing missions, you can get an up-close, hands-on feel for the story of humans in space. Below I have listed the zones and what you can expect.

Heroes and Legends

This is where you see the pioneers of NASA’s early space programs which inspired a nation to reach for the stars.

BEHIND THE GATES 

Go behind the gates and get access to historic launch sites and working spaceflight facilities on Kennedy Space Center Bus Tours including the iconic vehicle assembly building (VAB), which is the largest single-story building in the world. I have done this tour and highly recommend it. 

Launch Site

VAB

RACE TO THE MOON

Here is where you can  witness the size and scale of the Saturn V moon rocket, and feel the emotion of the Apollo era with a captivating collection of experiences.

SHUTTLE ATLANTIS: A SHIP LIKE NO OTHER 

Literally stand in awe of an American icon at the permanent home of the actual space shuttle Atlantis. It’s absolutely breathtaking to see, and to know that she actually did 33 missions into space!!! Blows my mind every time. After seeing the Atlantis you can then feel what’s it’s like to journey into space! Thirty years of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program comes to life in this Mission Zone.

NASA NOW & NEXT 

Here is your opportunity to learn about NASA missions, from where we are now to where we’re going next!

KSC is especially good to visit on a rainy day as most of it (with the exception of rocket garden) is inside. There is plenty of interactional things to do which will occupy both big and small kids! (by big I totally mean adults)

The surroundings of Kennedy space centre are also extremely beautiful and home to many different species of wildlife, you are bound to see an alligator or two whilst out on your tour bus. We were lucky enough to also see an American Eagle nest which was the size of a double bed (I kid you not!!!)

I can’t recommend heading to Kennedy space centre enough, I guarantee you will walk away feeling far more knowledgeable and inspired, and probably eating some astronaut ice cream!!

The post Kennedy space centre (My Florida Adventures)? appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

A little bit of background history.

The complex had its beginning in the 1960s in a small trailer containing simple displays on card tables. When nearby Walt Disney World opened in 1971, visitors center attendance increased by 30 percent, but the public was often disappointed by the comparative lack of polish at KSC’s tourist facilities. Existing displays were largely made up of trade show exhibits donated by NASA contractors. Later that year, a $2.3 million upgrade of the visitor complex begun with added focus on the benefits of space exploration along with the existing focus on human space exploration.

Last year (2016) marked my 4th visit to KSC, I cannot help but to be in complete awe of this place. I find it absolutely breathtaking and so Interesting. I could walk round here for hours and hours, there’s so much to see and do! We tend to spend a whole day here, usually arriving at around 10am and leave when the park closes at 5pm

The visitors complex is organised into mission zones where attractions and tours are grouped to chronological era (which makes it better for you to plan where your going) From the dawn of space exploration to current and ongoing missions, you can get an up-close, hands-on feel for the story of humans in space. Below I have listed the zones and what you can expect.

Heroes and Legends

This is where you see the pioneers of NASA’s early space programs which inspired a nation to reach for the stars.

BEHIND THE GATES 

Go behind the gates and get access to historic launch sites and working spaceflight facilities on Kennedy Space Center Bus Tours including the iconic vehicle assembly building (VAB), which is the largest single-story building in the world. I have done this tour and highly recommend it. 

Launch Site

VAB

RACE TO THE MOON

Here is where you can  witness the size and scale of the Saturn V moon rocket, and feel the emotion of the Apollo era with a captivating collection of experiences.

SHUTTLE ATLANTIS: A SHIP LIKE NO OTHER 

Literally stand in awe of an American icon at the permanent home of the actual space shuttle Atlantis. It’s absolutely breathtaking to see, and to know that she actually did 33 missions into space!!! Blows my mind every time. After seeing the Atlantis you can then feel what’s it’s like to journey into space! Thirty years of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program comes to life in this Mission Zone.

NASA NOW & NEXT 

Here is your opportunity to learn about NASA missions, from where we are now to where we’re going next!

KSC is especially good to visit on a rainy day as most of it (with the exception of rocket garden) is inside. There is plenty of interactional things to do which will occupy both big and small kids! (by big I totally mean adults)

The surroundings of Kennedy space centre are also extremely beautiful and home to many different species of wildlife, you are bound to see an alligator or two whilst out on your tour bus. We were lucky enough to also see an American Eagle nest which was the size of a double bed (I kid you not!!!)

I can’t recommend heading to Kennedy space centre enough, I guarantee you will walk away feeling far more knowledgeable and inspired, and probably eating some astronaut ice cream!!

The post Kennedy space centre (My Florida Adventures)? appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

My first blog is somewhat of a controversial one and I understand will have a divided opinion. I wanted to do this blog as I do have quite a strong opinion on the subject. I post things in Facebook and I’m sure some people do get annoyed at this. So now I felt it was my time to voice MY reasons why I have such a strong opinion on this.

So here we go.

Okay so you book a Florida vacation, whenever I speak to someone and tell them where I’m going I usually get asked these 3 questions:

1) Are you going to Disney world?

2) Are you doing universal studios?

3) How about SeaWorld?

While I answer yes to the first two questions the third is a definite NO!!I am very anti Seaworld, and not just because of the documentary Blackfish. I admit that watching Blackfish (which if you haven’t seen I highly recommend) sparked my interest  and curiosity into the park, but the research I have done since has forever changed the way I view marine parks.

There are currently a total of 61 orcas held in captivity (28 wild-captured plus 33 captive-born) in at least 14 marine parks in 8 different countries.

So let’s go way back to 1997 and my first ever visit to Florida. My mum and dad had previously visited SeaWorld in California back in 1980, and I was so excited to finally be going to visit the real shamu after seeing all of their pictures.

Below are some pictures from mum and dads California vacation and S back in 1980. It’s sad to see how close to the ocean they are, yet they are stuck swimming around their tiny tanks.

When I first visited Seaworld I was blown away by the park, and couldn’t believe I was seeing an actual killer whale up close! I even got to feed the dolphins!! Literally the luckiest girl in the world. When it come to watching the Shamu show I was completely blown away! In fact I wanted to be a SeaWorld trainer after seeing them at work!!

Below I have inserted some of my Seaworld pictures from my trip back in 1997!!

Of course in hindsight I was a naive young girl, and the whale I was so excited to see whilst taking a million pictures, was in fact miserable and living an inhumane life in captivity. When I returned to Florida back in 2005 we didn’t do SeaWorld purely because we ran out of time! (There was definitely no planning done on that trip) but planning for our next trip we had decided that SeaWorld would be top of the list!

One day back in 2013 I saw an advert pop up on Facebook about Blackfish I watched the trailer and scheduled to watch it that evening with my mum. We both sat there and watched it with tears in eyes and in utter shock, like how could we be so stupid as to not think that keeping captive orcas and dolphins was not truly barbaric, how did we even find this acceptable. It was a huge eye opener for us both and at the end of the documentary we both agreed that we never wanted to go back to SeaWorld again.

So I started to do some research into when and how and even why orcas started to be captured and introduced into a life of captivity. I discovered that a killer whale named Wanda was the first to be captured in 1961 by Marineland off the Pacific in California. They captured a sick, disoriented mature female in Newport Harbour, California. Two days after the introduction into her tank, she smashed her rostrum head-on into the tanks’ wall and died.

The next captive killer whale was in 1964. This did not start out as a live capture, but eventually ended up as the first whale to be kept in captivity for a period of time. A sculptor by the name of Samuel Burich was commissioned in 1964 by the Vancouver Aquarium to go out and “kill” a killer whale and fashion a life-sized model of it for the aquariums’ new British Columbia hall. Burich harpooned a 15-foot long, 1-ton whale near East Point, Saturna Island in British Columbia. When the whale did not die immediately, even after being shot, the aquarium director, Murray Newman, decided to keep the killer whale alive and tow the whale back to Vancouver, British Columbia – a 20-mile journey. He used the harpoon line attached to the base of the whales dorsal fin as the tow line. The harpooned whale that was towed to Vancouver was named Moby Doll (although later they found out it was male). People were surprised by Moby Dolls docility. Moby Doll was kept in captivity for 87 days until he died from a skin disease caused by the harbours’ low salinity water.

This information shocked me! to see how far back capturing orcas actually went. SeaWorld took on their first orca back in the 1960’s. Shamu was the name of the first female Orca brought to SeaWorld San Diego in the 1960s from the Seattle Aquarium where she was previously housed with the young male named Namu. ‘”Shamu” (so-named as the “she” version of Namu) is now used as a stage name for adult Orcas in performances at SeaWorld parks.

Still I was keen to dig a little further to find out how seaworld come about their orcas. Here’s what I found….

Five orcas currently at SeaWorld were kidnapped from their ocean homes, as were others who have since died. For example, Tilikum, a 32-year-old orca, was captured at the age of 2, he wasn’t taken from his natural environment because he was injured—instead, he was torn away from his family against his will and confined to a small concrete tank for a hefty profit. In 1965, the first-ever orca show at SeaWorld was performed by a female orca named Shamu at SeaWorld San Diego. During Shamu’s capture, her mother was shot with a harpoon and killed by a guy named Ted Griffin. His partner, Don Goldsberry, later worked for SeaWorld and was assigned to bring orcas into the park. He continued kidnapping and slaughtering orcas, and at one point, he hired divers to slit open the stomachs of four orcas, fill them with rocks, put anchors around their tails, and sink them to the bottom of the ocean so that their deaths would not be discovered (this is spoken about on Blackfish).

One of the most infamous capture incidents saw over 80 whales from the Southern Resident population of orcas in Washington State rounded-up at Penn Cove in 1970. Seven were taken into captivity while as many as five whales died. Today this population is recognised as endangered. Only one captured whale, Lolita, is still alive, held at Miami Seaquarium.

Orcas in the wild have an average life expectancy of 30 to 50 years—their estimated maximum life span is 60 to 70 years for males and 80 to more than 100 for females. The median age of orcas in captivity is only 9.

In captivity, all male orcas have collapsed dorsal fins as adults, which is a sign of an unhealthy orca. SeaWorld claims that this condition is common and natural for all orcas. However, collapsed dorsal fins are caused by the unnatural environment of captivity and are rarely seen in the wild. Only 1 to 5 percent of male orcas in some populations (and none in others) have fully collapsed dorsal fins.

SeaWorld confines whales and dolphins—who often swim up to 100 miles a day in the wild—to tanks that, to them, are the size of a bathtub. The car park at Seaworld is BIGGER than the orca tanks!!

Swimming with captive dolphins

The next thing I’m keen to talk about is swimming with captive dolphins….. A massive bug bare of mine is seeing photos of people swimming with dolphins! Most people have good intentions when they go on excursions or visit parks that allow you to swim with dolphins. But if they knew the truth behind the deceptive dolphin smile, they’d be horrified to know what they were actually supporting.

While interacting with captive dolphins at a marine park (and I’m keen to point out this is ANY marine park) may seem like fun the harsh reality is kept hidden. Many people don’t realize that dolphins are living a stressful and often dramatically shortened life in captivity. Many have been captured and taken from their families in the wild and are now used for your entertainment. These intelligent, social and wide-ranging creatures are forced to live in artificial, confined conditions, away from their natural family groups. Many die very young during capture, transport or in their tanks or enclosures. Dolphins continue to be taken from the wild to supply the growing demand for swimming with dolphins and dolphin encounters.

Methods used to capture and transport dolphins can be shockingly cruel and many animals die during capture operations or in transit.

Very often, dolphins are captured from populations that are already under threat from other human activities. In captivity, dolphins cannot escape from human swimmers when they do not want to interact with them.

Interactions with swimmers can lead to heightened stress and anxiety, which is often managed through medication in captivity.

Dolphins are at risk of collisions with swimmers and other dolphins; and fingernails and jewelry can damage their delicate skin.

Swim with the dolphins” (SWTD) is a general term for a variety of dolphin-themed itineraries. Besides swimming with a dolphin (or two), you can be photographed with a dolphin, pulled through the water by a dolphin (the “dorsal tow”), smooched by a dolphin or pushed by the beak of a dolphin. You can even pay to be a dolphin “trainer,” complete with a whistle and training manual.

As a child I was desperate to swim with a dolphin! I’m so thankful now that I never got to do it. Last year I was luckily enough to head over to Fort Myers and went on a dolphin trip down the Estero Bay, my god I will never forget the site of seeing pods of dolphins playing in the bay, some with the baby’s. it was a breath taking site and I feel so lucky to have had the chance to see it.

There are MANY MANY Marine parks all over the world, it’s not just seaworld although because of blackfish they have come under the most scrutiny. But there are so many captive orcas and dolphins and other marine animals that belong in the wild living in such dire captivity for your entertainment.

SeaWorld presents itself as a family establishment full of fun “educational” activities. However, these activities harm animals physically and emotionally. SeaWorld has the financial means and ability to create coastal sanctuaries, where the orcas would have a more natural and less stressful life and where they could feel the tides and waves; see, sense, and communicate with their wild relatives and other ocean animals; and engage in other natural behaviors that they are now denied. However, the park instead chooses to stick with the same inhumane business model that it has used for 50 years, despite all the violent and deadly incidents and evidence of harm.

Please say NO to SeaWorld and its enslavement of animals by refusing to buy a ticket to this abusement park, and ask the marine park to release these animals to sanctuaries.

Please watch Blackfish before you go to Seaworld or even think of booking your seaworld tickets. I guarantee you will change your mind. There are interviews with ex employees on the documentary who are now anti seaworld. It’s really sad and hard to watch as I have no doubt that the trainers and employees are utterly devoted to all the animals in the park. Unfortunately it’s the bosses higher up and it all comes down to one thing only $$$$$$$$$$. 

I know I can’t change the world or the way people view it and I can’t save every animal in the world, but if I can change just one persons mind about visiting Seaworld or ANY marine park after reading this blog then it’s a start, a small one but still a start.

This is my own opinion based on the reserch i have done, if you don’t agree or would like to share your views then please comment or contact me.

So this my first non Disney related non tough mudder blog. Thank you so much for reading. Of course I’ll be back next week with another blog all about Florida!

Thanks for reading and subscribing

Little miss keeping it real?

The post Seaworld, and the reason I will never visit the park ?again (my Florida Adventures) appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.