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We didn’t do alot in the morning except packing, sleeping and getting breakfast from Publix. In the afternoon Torey joined us, and in the evening we went to Outback (I wasn’t being pushy at all to go there ) with Chris, Marc, Zeke, John and Torey. Soooo good!

Zeke, John and Chris.

After drawing alot, we headed back to Chris’ place where Lisa and Spain joined us. We watched “We’re back!” on Laserdisc first, which was hilarious! That movie is so completely random and pointless, and watching it with these guys made it even better.
To top that, we watched “Cartoon Allstars to the rescue”, a 30 minute long trippy anti-drug cartoon from the 80s. Definitely a must-see for everyone! Some YouTube videos later, everyone had to leave and it was time to say goodbye to most of the people.

At about 11 Chris, Henrieke, me, Torey and Chris went to Cocoa beach and enjoyed a fresh breeze.

Seeing a pelican from that close was cool!

Also a dolphin!

We also got Tyler and Trigger out for some photos and of course got funny reactions from people.

Tyler sure was excited about that beach!

It’s cooler in the shade!

Kids were excited about both of them!

After a quick lunch at Subway we made our was to Kennedy Space Center, and before we even entered we saw the most awesome Armadillo. He didn’t mind people at all.

That day was full of wildlife!

The Space Center itself was awesome aswell, we saw rockets from all decades and lots of other spacecraft.

Sovjet Spacecraft looks stylish. Photo by Chris.

Since I’m mostly excited about space shuttles, I was excited about seeing the replica of a shuttle in lifesize where we could even walk in.

Shuttle with Tank and Boosters.

The shuttle launch experience ride wasn’t bad either, and the gift shop was surprisingly awesome. I got a big plush space shuttle.

Way after the official park closing time we went to FPS to hang out a bit more with Mark. After the show we heard the really loud sonic boom from the shuttle, which was landing in Cape Canaveral at 10:20pm.
Back at Chris’ place we watched “The fox and the hound” with Marc and Torey.

We went to Epcot with Lisa, Chris and John and met up with Richard, Randy, Lon, Zack and Mark.

The Spaceship Earth reflected in Chris’ sunglasses.

Until lunch we walked around at the world showcase. The first thing to do was of course seeing the fabulous 3 Caballeros ride in the mexican pavillon, which was animated by Eric Goldberg! We ended up having lunch at the German Biergarten. It was truly amazing, the whole staff was german, and the food was amazingly authentic. It felt weird eating german food in the US, but at the same time it was really cool. They even had a live band playing cheesy german songs!

German Biergarten restaurant.

Zack, Mark, Lon, Henrieke, John and Lisa enjoying good german food.

Being stuffed, we walked around in the stores and enjoyed the well-done theming. The japanese pavillon was nice as always and the other ones too of course.

This was – of course – taken by Henrieke!

It was a wonderful day for a polarizer.

Well okay the polarizer overdid the contrast a bit. These are obviously Thylacine stripes in the sky.

Duck!

Other rides we did were Journey into your imagination and Spaceship earth. They had a cool new ride in the Innoventions center where you could design your own rollercoaster and ride it in the simulator.

That was so cool!

I skipped Mission Space this time since it was a pretty awful experience last year and ended up making fun of the so-called art in the “Art of Disney” Store with Lisa while they others took the ride.
For Dinner we went to Chevys, a nearby mexcican restaurant where Moon and Torey joined. The food was really good, but I’m just not used to having such heavy food in the evening. We had a little artjam there which we continued at Lons place.

Lisa picked us up around noon and we had a really nice breakfast/lunch at 5&Diner, a 50s themed diner with perfect theming (except the plasma TV).
Then we spent quite some time looking around at Barnes&Noble and went to Lisas place afterwards to draw cartoons. Lon invited us to go to the Osceola County Fair, so we went to Johns place first and saw a wild raccoon!

The fair was pretty crowded and everything was deep fried. We ended up having typical fair food like a corn dog (sausage dipped in several layers of corn dough and deep fried), mini-donuts (deep fried), and funnel cake (deep fried batter).

Mark went to have some fried gator on a stick but they were out of it.

When all people arrived it was Henrieke, Lon, Marc, Lisa, Randy, John, Zeke, Jordan, Chris and me there.

In order to pick up some screws from Home Depot, we took Chris’ and Gerrets bikes and went to the Waterford Lakes center. We didn’t find the Home Depot though, but ended up looking at other stores. Chris joined us later and we got some art supplies from Joanns.
For dinner we met up with Adam, Val, Arito, Trigger, Moon, Chris and Marc (mostly Artists/Costume Builders). It was a nice ethiopean restaurant, and a new experience since I never had ethiopean food before. We got to draw at least a bit and both Henrieke and me got to trade with Val.
Later that night we went to Independent Bar in downtown Orlando, Henrieke stayed at Chris’ place though. Trigger and Val had their costumes with them, which people there obviously enjoyed. It was moderately crowded there, the music wasn’t too much my taste though. Still it was a nice evening, despite the Bud light.

We made some pasta for lunch and roasted some marshmallows later.

Chris and Gerret introduced us to the american tradition of roasting marshmallows.

Also we drew and watched Star Wars on Laserdisc using Chris’ amazing FullHD Beamer in the evening.

Spain picked us up around noon and drove us to SeaWorld, where we met up with Lisa. While watching a cute kangaroo on a stage we had lunch, and Spain had to leave for work again. We had some good times there and got to ride the new rollercoaster, Manta. It was pretty awesome, since you face the ground and it makes the ride feel completely different. The pet show was a must-see again aswell. Here are photos from our day:

Awesome octopus.

Feeding stingrays was fun as always

Dolphins!

Manta, the new rollercoaster.

The themed part of SeaWorld from across the pond.

Henrieke and Lisa feeding ducks.

Afterwards Lisa took us to a Lowe’s (hardware store) where we picked up some costume supplies, then she took us back to Chris’ place, who made some amazing Crepes. Matt also joined the Crepe madness!

Went to publix, then Erin picked us up and we went to see the Ripleys museum, then minigolfing at “Pirates Cove”. It was located on International Drive, where alot of other attractions are located including alot more themed minigolf courses.

Ripleys museum. Note that the whole building is tilted, but the wide-angle lens compensated that on the right side of the image which makes it look even weirder.

Henrieke, showing how it has to be done.

A truly piratish minigolf course.

Aaron in the front, Henrieke in the back.

We spent he evening with Spain, Lisa, Gerret and Sly. Lisa made some wonderful pizza and we watched emperors new groove
had an artjam after that.

Got up at about 1, then at some point we went to publix to buy some groceries and to an Italian where I got a Pepperoni roll. Henrieke got to try out Katamari Damacy, and we finally got some work done. We did some orders for stuff we wanted to take back to europe, and I tried playing Portal. Since I didn’t feel like buying the Game, Chris showed us the ending which finally made me get alot of Internet jokes.
We had some Frenchbread with Brie for dinner, Chris showed us his torch and both Henrieke and me tried out his Kangaroo jumping boots (fun).
Watched some more Looney Tunes on his enormous wall and went to bed at 2.

14.02.

Chris took us to the mall, where we looked around in cool stores. Also we saw a 3D-HDTV! It was pretty amazing.
We had lunch at Firehouse-Subs and John picked us up for FPS, where we spent the rest of the day. Randy made some really good food and we had alot of fun there!

In the morning we went to 2 thrift stores with Chris, I got some neat Hawaii Shirts! Then to Jeffs Place, we also met Robin there. Jeff showed us his workroom and costumes (he builds costumes for a living), then we went off for another thrift store, then to Big!Lots, then to a nice italian restaurant for lunch.

Jeff browsing through an amazing selection of weird shirts.

Back at Jeffs place we hung out, watched stupid YouTube videos, then went back to Chris’ place and played some pop’n'music.
I finally got my Camera repaired before Lisa arrived! Watched some videos from the Convention while Chris was preparing Fruity Pebbles Treats, Scott and Tim (from Australia) also came over and we watched the Goofy movie! A really good movie, you need to be into american pop culture though to get it at all.

Slept really long, then we went to get some cheesesteak sub with Mark and Gerret. Watched Trainspotting which was really weird. Henrieke worked on a commission in the meanwhile.
Watched Gerret playing some Mass Effect 2 (amazing game).
In the evening we went over to Johns place, sketched a bit and then went to the same texmex place we’ve been to last year with John and Michael.

Got up at 5, had the first normal breakfast (for me that is baguette with nutella and a cup of milk). Tobi gave us a ride to the airport with his awesome Pontiac Firebird. We didn’t have to wait long at all, the flight was really short and nice. We took 2 commissions before we departed and sketched them on the plane.
At the Orlando airport Chris picked us up, we didn’t do much in the evening though since we were super tired.

We had a quick breakfast and left Chris’ place around 1pm, our initial plan was to go to pick up some fur and then to Cartoon Colour Company. After the fur shop however some belt in the car slipped off due to extreme rain and everything stopped working. Luckily I managed to get the car off the freeway and park it next to the LA convention center. Luckily Steve came to help, which took about 1.5 hours due to rush hour. Tobi also arrived and AAA towed away the piece of junk.

Steve, Tobi and me. Crysler being towed away in the back. The yellow car is Tobis new Pontiac Firebird.

Since it rained heavily before, we got to see a Rainbow and a nice sunset. Here are photos Henrieke took while we were waiting:

Rainbow over downtown LA.

A true california sunset.

Since it was too late to do anything, we went to Trader Joe’s in order to pick up some supplies for pancakes.

This is what Trader Joe’s looks like inside. Lots and lots of signs, each drawn by the stores own artist. Awesome!

Our pancakes were fabulous! We also invited Rob Klein and had a nice evening with lots of chat about cartoons.
After they left, we spent the rest of the evening packing until about 3am.

The San Diego Zoo was our destination for today. We arrived there at about 11.
Henrieke was obviously excited, here are a few photos from our day:

I’ll start with the cutest. Yellow-footed rock wallabys!

Hyacinth macaw

Rare birds. Cablecar is in the background.

American river otter. Do I have to mention that he was cute?

Obvious.

View from the cablecar. The airport was pretty near.

Henrieke was freaking out over these. (Pronghorns)

After the Zoo we went to a Whole Foods market, which was super awesome, finally a store that sells healthy food! After that we went to Trader Joe’s which was even more awesome, since they hire an Artist to draw signs for each store.
we made some pancakes in the evening for ourselves and Chris’ housemates in the evening.