USA Trip: 5.02.
AAh, almost freezing here already. Definately untypical for this time of the year in Florida.
We went to Sanford Zoo instead which was also really cool (literally).
Saw some Kangaroos:
Birds that stole our fries:
And the best thing, we got into a talk with a keeper and she got out the Virginia possum which is normally not on display. We got to pet it and see it from really close up, so I'm spamming this post with photos:
AWESOME!
Saw some other cool animals too and went back to Johns place, where we hung out a bit with Chorca and then went to the Outback Steakhouse.
Chorca and John making the most hilarious expression ever
Finally some gooooood steak, good that I only took the small one.
USA Trip: 4.02.
Wow, it's getting really cold here!
There was no way getting to the parks today, so we just went to a huge Mall instead. Had probably the healthiest food yet (a subway sandwich) and browsed through tons of Stores whith Henrieke and Mike.
Comic stores are huge there but have way too few not-superhero comics.
Also, sunsets are really pretty here!
Hung out with some locals in the evening and watched movies.
Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow.
USA Trip: 3.02.
Slept long again, went to the grocery store with Steve and Henrieke and made some "Berner Würstel". They tasted kind of different from the ones I can make in austria since pretty much all ingredients were different, but it worked 
American style Berner Würstel
Went to meet up for a coffee with some people later, I tried to not eat too much this day because all that american food makes my stomach go nuts.
Finally watched Bolt after that. The whole point of the movie can be explained very shortly: Bolt is cute.
Personally I liked Ratatouille better, storywise, but still it was a good movie.
Not many photos because I forgot taking them 
Said goodbye to Steve as he's going to leave at 5am tomorrow.
USA Trip: 2.02.
Duco picked Steve (who also stayed at Johns place for a bit), Henrieke and me up early in the morning and drove us to the Disney Hollywood studios where Randy (who runs FPS) got us in for free.
First ride was the Tower of terror.. Not terrifying, but still cool and entertaining 
Then we went on the Rock'n'Rollercoaster. Kind of short, but awesome theming! Even though I'm not a fan of Aerosmith.
Ate some extra-fatty pizza in Pizza Planet (the one from Toy Story), saw Muppet Vision 3D, went on some Starwars Ride and to the "Wonderful world of Disney animation", which was nice. Got to see some neat Bolt concept art and Bolt himself (who looked rather evil)
Bolt & me
Bolt concept art
After that we went to Epcot, went on that Astronaut training ride which was.. not fun for me at least
I have no problem with any rollercoasters, but after that one I felt completely dizzy.
Duco had to leave already after the ride as he was flying back to the Netherlands in the evening.
Steve, Duco, me
Anyway, after a bit of recovering we went on the ride I waited to see for a long time. The last page of the Eric Goldberg book says he did animation for a "three caballeros" ride in Epcot, so we went to see that.
Watch it here.
AWESOME! The animation was really really good
We're Erics biggest fans now.
The mexican Pavillon was definately the best of all, it was completely inside and had a great atmosphere.
It started raining really badly when we got out, which sucked since they closed down the GM Test Track ride..
So we just went to see all the Pavillons.
The german one was quite fun, americans have a very twisted view of how germany looks like. We had some Bratwurst with Sauerkraut there, which tasted authentic at least.
Japanese Pavillon was also nice, they had lots of familar food and we ended up buying stuff live Glicos and Pockys.
Also nice: french pavillon, UK pavillon.
Also been on the Spaceship Earth ride, which was also fun.
Spaceship Earth ride
John picked us up after work and we went to a place called Chilis where we met up with Lon and had some really good Tacos.
USA Trip: 1.02.
Got up late and John made us some true southern american breakfast, yummy!
Sausage, Bacon, frenchbread, scrambled eggs with cheese, biscuits with gravy (not on picture)
Approx. calories: 58340
Went to a live puppeteering show that airs every sunday for 9 years. It was alot of fun and I'll post videos of it later if I can get them somehow.
We also met Duco and Steve there, Duco being from the Netherlands and Steve from the UK. Steve is about to become an airline pilot and will move to Washington next year.
Here's a pic of me and poink, one of the characters of the show.
USA Trip: 31.01.
Went to Seaworld with Chorca (another local), Lisa, Spain, Henrieke and Matt (who lives with Sophie & Lisa).
Since Lisa works there, we could get in for free, awesome! (if you read this, thanks again)
I didn't really know what the expect from Seaworld, it was a kind of weird combination between a Zoo and a Themepark, but it works, lots of fun things to do.
First thing was the Killer Whale show, which was awesome!
After 10 minutes of really cheesy intro movie we got to see some fat whales:
Went to the rollercoaster they had there (the Kraken) and luckily had almost no waiting time and got to seat in the first row.
(cc) flickr user Travelin' Librarian
Also saw the most awesome pet show, saw sealions, fed stingrays:
you're doing it wrong!
Leafy Seadragon
Had dinner in a restaurant that has some wildlife show, and pretty unexpected I saw a..
..wallaby in seaworld
Went back to Johns place later, got some pizza and spent some time with Sophie, Chorca, Lisa and Matt later watching movies.
USA Trip: 30.01.
Met with Spain and Lisa at some Burger place, forgot the name. Spain is an animation student, her drawings are amazing! Check them out here. Lisa shares her Flat and works at Seaworld. Anyway, as assumed, even the smallest Burger was enough for us europeans, and it was really good too. Only the free refill is dangerous, because everytime I finished my coke, I would get a new one, thus I ended up drinking 3 times as much as usual.
Anyway, here's us with tasty Burgers:
Henrieke, me, Lisa, Sophie
After that we were hanging out at Sophies place and went to Lons place later.
Lon is the guy who we'll be staying with the last few days, he worked on alot of Disney movies and currently does designs for Disneyworld while also working on the newest Disney movie as a sidejob. Check his IMDB page.
Anyway, there were white a few people at his place, we went to some chinese place at first which was.. okay, later we just hung out, drew and watched Horton hears a who. And some extreme Rollercoaster stuff too. Can't wait to ride some REAL rollercoasters!
USA Trip: 29.01.
In the morning Mike who lives in the same House took us to have some authentic american Hotdogs, which were fantastic. Also clouds always look really awesome in Florida:
Later a colleague of John gave us a ride to Downtown Disney, which was nice but a bit rainy. Henrieke and me mostly complained about bad character design on products, but we also found some really cool stuff.
John later joined and we had Dinner at "Wolfgang Puck's", went inside the Planet Hollywood and browsed through some random shops.
Placeholder Maquette from "Who framed Roger Rabbit"
USA Trip: 28.01.
Slept loooong, had some pancakes in the morning and finally got to relax a bit.
We went to get some really good Hot Dogs later, went to Wal-Mart (wow, huge) and were hanging around with some local people.
USA Trip: 27.01.
Got up at 5:30, packed out stuff and went to the airport. The trip was okay, I had my first burgers in the U.S. in Chicago and we were drawing barks stuff at the airport to kill time.
Aerial View of the Doubletree from out plane
Our flight got delayed so we had to wait even longer and we eventually arrived in Orlando at about 8pm. John picked us up and we went to some really awesome Tex-Mex restaurant. It was soooo good and not even expensive. And the store manager made fresh guacamole (in case it's spelled that way) at the Table.
Also I had fried Ice cream for the first time in my life. It was delicious!
Didn't do much that evening and went to bed early.
USA Trip: 26.01
Finally adjusted to the timezone, hence I missed the breakfast.
We went to a Store called Chipotle instead which mainly sells Burritos. They're just 3 times as big as the Burritos you can get in Vienna. Really.. MASSIVE. Even though I was really hungry I just had to give up.
We exchanged some more sketches, as most of the people we were hanging out with were leaving on early afternoon.
As we had quite some time left, we just spent it in the Lobby, saying goodbye to all the people leaving and watching boring Businessman checking in.
Some business people tried their best to ignore the costumes, some were totally excited, it was fun to watch
In the evening there were only about 70 people left and there was a small party in a conference room which was fun. We originally planned to stay up since we had to head out for the airport at 5:30am anyway, but we decided to get at least a few hours of sleep.
USA Trip: 25.01
The breakfast was so goooood!
After It we went to Jeff Pidgeons panel about Storyboard drawing which was really interesting! I knew some of the stuff from books, but its much different hearing it from an industry professional and listening to his experiences.
Jeff Pidgeon holding a panel about storyboarding
We met up with some other artists at his Table and did some Happy Beaver art jam, horray.
Henrieke and me trying to draw happy beavers
At the marketplace they also had a few copies of the Eric Goldberg book. I already got that one for christmas so I didn't look through, but as Henrieke did she discovered that the seller was a relative of Eric, and Eric signed them and drew a Sketch in each of them. Also the books were normal-priced, of course I couldn't resist buying it, it's worth gold!
In the lobby there were also funny things going on:
Photo by Henrieke, watch out for Sarah Palin in the background
Awesome Weasel with a mini-me.
helpdesk
We went to a really nice restaurant with Brian Reynolds in the evening. Restaurants are really different there, most are themed, the portions are huge and the best thing - you get free refills for drinks!
There are so much differences you only notice when you're there, but overall people are totally nice in the U.S. so far.
USA Trip: 24.01
Woke up at 7, again not being able to sleep anymore.
Had another massive breakfast and finally we found Jeff Pidgeon there (Guest of Honor and Pixar Storyboard Artist.
He's a really awesome guy and gave us great sketches of his awesome Character, Happy Beaver.
Jeff Pidgeon drawing stuff
The Cover of the Conbook also features artwork by Jeff:
Too bad I had to try to not spend too much money, because the happy beaver figurines he sold were awesome, but at least I got a nice T-shirt.
We also met Brian Reynolds who is also really cool, he was just a bit busy doing sketches.
For dinner we went to the first and biggest Chuck-E-Cheese Restaurant. We were 7 people in one car, with 5 people on the backseats. It was a *bit* tight, but the other 4 were girls so I didn't mind.
The restaurant was kind of... creepy, and you definately won't find anything like that in Europe.
me + some girls in front of Chuck-E-Cheese (note the CREEPY animatronic thing in the back, that was version 1.0)
We had some more or less good pizza, did some drawings and had alot of fun there.
When we came back there were already alot of parties going on at the Hotel, I think about 20 on one floor with a balcony connecting all the rooms. I thought the music taste of U.S. people was bad but I was proven wrong.
Time passed by way too fast, but I was still a bit jetlagged, so sleep was necessary.
Nighttime at the Hotel