Even from our nosebleed section at the top and off to the side of Varekai we could see that this was a quality performance. Varekai tells the story of Icarus who falls from the sky and into this strange world of insects and coloured creatures to find love. “Varekai” means “wherever” in the Romany language of the gypsies apparently and so the show is a tribute to the wanderer in us.
Although still applying the tried and tested Cirque Du Soleil formula “Varekai” still somehow finds new and innovative ways to deliver it. It was an enigmatic, passionate, colourful and wonderful mix of circus, theatre, drama and spectacle.
Tonight we saw some pretty neat tricks – including the leading lady who balanced normally one-handed on canes while contorting her body like she had no bones, the juggling artis who was awesome (including a very tricky boomerang-straw-hat juggle), four ladies on a triple trapeze if you can imagine (marks for innovation here), the three small people (I’m yet to work out whether they were kids or midgets) working with whirling ropes in the air whilst performing gymnastics on the ground, one man who performed amazingly in crutches (not sure if he was disabled in real life) and the finale with the tumblers who torpedoed each other off these gangplanks into giant sails. There were a few other acts as well but these stand out the most.
The music was pretty amazing for a very small ensemble band and the styles ranged from French to Hawaiin, and Armenian to gospel music. Quite the variety and perfectly timed to the acts on stage. The set was also amazing – with giant bamboo trees in the background and a funky catwalk swinging up above. If there is one thing you can never fault in a Cirque Du Soleil performance (apart from the talent of the acts on stage, the impeccable timing of artists, musicians and lighting, um … you get my drift) it is the show’s ability to use every bit of space available (above and below the stage) to them and the extreme attention to detail (the fireflies were very cool.) I can imagine just how much engineering goes into the mechanics on and off the stage. And then the costumes – just brilliant.
So, it probably sounds like I’m giving a rave review right? Well, no doubt about it this is another slick Cirque Du Soleil performance and for sure I enjoyed the talents on display tremendously. But I was slightly disappointed. However amazing the individual aspects of the show were (the music, the set design, the costumes, the talent of the acts) when taken together it was … well a tad boring. The story was confusing and to be honest I really could have done less with all that clowning. These clowning fill-ins seemed to take longer than the other acts themselves and to me at times interrupted the flow of the show. One person said sometimes you just have to suffer to get to the cream – I felt we “suffered” more than we needed to. The fact that the climax or finale (one of the highlights) came right at the end seemingly after some of the acts had started bowing was strange timing indeed. And up until then I was thinking – when is the big wow act going to come on?
For those who have never seen a Cirque show this will probably stun and amaze. For those who have – well, although a nice entertaining night, there are definitely better ones out there (such as Dralion which toured here a few years ago.)
(Oh and as I was walking home from the Royal Albert, as if the work out during the show wasn’t enough, I saw a whole troupe running by me I guess warming down. Kind of puts me to shame as I can’t even get out of bed to go for a run let alone after a 2.5 hour performance!)
We had five days of theme parks in Orlando ahead of us and with three of those days in the World of Mickey I wasn’t sure we’d come out whole at the end of our stay especially when I saw the size of the plane we had to fly in to get from Miami to Orlando! To my surprise we did and this is how our journey went …
Maybe you’re slightly insane? Seriously, if you like theme parks and don’t absolutely hate Mickey then this is definitely the place for you.
Weather
Perfect for the first few days overcast the last couple.
Hints
At WDW look out for Extra Magic Hours if you’re staying at a WDW Hotel as you are offered extra hours in the park not otherwise open to the public.
At WDW use your FASTPASSES where you can but plan carefully as you can generally only hold one fastpass at a time. The fastpasses are ESPECIALLY effective on Soarin’ at Epcot where the wait time can can be very very long. Soarin’ is definitely a big ticket item you don’t want to miss.
The Experience
The World of Mickey is … just so out there. With not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 theme parks not to mention the water parks, golf courses, sports complex, TWENTY resort hotels and Downtown Disney you could easily spend at least two weeks in Walt Disney World Resort alone. Aside from this you have all the other attractions in Orlando including the neighbouring Universal Studios and its side-kick theme park Islands of Adventure.
Because we were short on days in Orlando we decided to dedicate it to visiting the following six theme parks:
Magic Kingdom
Epcot
Disney-MGM Studios
Animal Kingdom
Universal Studios
Islands of Adventure
As we didn’t have a car my brother made the very smart decision of booking us into a Disney hotel for WDW theme parks before moving us closer to the Universal for the final couple of days. This turned out to be a perfect decision and saved us from some logistical headaches. Both our hotels offered complimentary buses to all the theme parks. The WDW ones worked well but tended to be very crowded early in the morning and of course later on returning to the hotel. The Universal buses were less crowded, but only because the theme parks there were quieter, but also less frequent.
As a side note WDW resort hotels offer a Magical Express service which basically gives you free transfers to and from the airport but also delivers the luggage to your hotel room (so no having to hang around at the luggage belt). This all sounds good in theory but in practice wasn’t the most efficient. We decided to do Magical Express from the airport. It meant that we had to wait for the bus to fill up (probably a good 30-40 minutes) before leaving the airport and then we didn’t get our luggage until later that night (which in fairness they do warn you about.) I don’t think I’d be too confident with the Magical Express going back to the airport because who knows if your luggage will actually make it with you in time!
Just a note on our hotel. We stayed at the Pop Century. One of the cheaper options out of the WDW resort hotels I thought it actually provided great value for money. It wasn’t too badly positioned, provided a food court for food (so you weren’t always forced to eat in higher priced restaurants), had a number of pools and the best thing had a really cool theme. Even though I didn’t get the chance to swim in it our Bowling Pin pool was very cool.
So, on to the theme parks. I’ve rabbited on about the Disney theme parks before (such as the ones in California (the first), Paris and in Hong Kong) so I won’t go in to too much detail here. Sort of.
The Magic Kingdom was the first theme park to be constructed as part of the WDW Resort. We actually left this park to the last because we knew it wouldn’t be too much different to Disneyland in California, Euro Disney in Paris and Disneyland in Hong Kong and in all reality it wasn’t. The main differences were really in the rides for example Space Mountain had a slightly different seating arrangement (log ride style rather than roller coaster) which actually made the ride pretty cool but in contrast Buzz Lightyear had a gun which you could remove from its holster so it wasn’t as much fun as higher version ride in Paris and Hong Kong.
Next to be built at Walt Disney World was Epcot. Epcot was a strange one. Kind of two theme parks in one with cool rides in one section and then the World Showcase in another section. Due to our time limits we really didn’t give the World Showcase a chance as we only really did a walk by without going in to investigate the individual pavilions. I guess we justified it by saying we’d seen the real thing already! I’m hoping that doesn’t sound a bit uppity. These are some of the highlights from Epcot:
– Soarin’. This ride was built initially at Disneyland or more correctly California Adventure Park and was obviously such a success they brought it over to WDW. A breathtaking ride you are taken on a simulated hang glider tour of the Golden States. You really will feel like you’re flying.
– Mission: SPACE. Points to this ride for being fairly original and actually being quite a ride. It’s a simulation ride that is surprisingly nauseating but will have you laughing when you get off it.
– Test Track. You ride a “test car” and basically put it through its paces – like testing its brakes, testing how it does over very rough roads etc. and the finale is a speed trial at breakneck speed (well 65 mph.) Exhilaration and worth doing at least once and more if the lines aren’t long.
– The Universe of Energy. I would leave this for when you want a break from the sun but overall I found that Ellen’s Energy Adventure was fairly entertaining. It was probably a touch long but I found it funny in the bits when I wasn’t sleeping anyway.
– Any of the pavilions were we got to interact were a lot of fun as well.
Third theme park off the rank was Disney-MGM Studios with attractions such as Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror this park kind of combined bits of California Adventure Park and Euro Disney’s Walt Disney Studios. These two rides are definitely the big ticket items at Disney-MGM Studios. They actually say that your experience on the Tower of Terror is never the same as the last and I was surprised to find that was true! Definitely a lot of fun this ride will guarantee that you lose your breath. The Backlot Tour, Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!, Muppet Vision 3-D, Sounds Dangerous – Starring Drew Carey and the newly imported from Paris Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show are also worth visiting.
Finally, and actually the first theme park we visited, is the Animal Kingdom. Just under 10 years old it is the largest in the world of all the Disney theme parks but being themed entirely around animal conservation you don’t blame Walt Disney for dedicated more than 500 acres to the little critters. Although we have an appreciation for animals we were a little zoo-ed-out by this stage and really we’d seen all the animals before (though that didn’t stop me looking in at the gorillas. I couldn’t resist!) We were sure all the animal oriented attractions such as Kilimanjaro Safaris and Maharajah Jungle Trek were at the usual Disney high quality standard so instead we headed for the man-made attractions such as the awesome Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain roller coaster (very tricky), DINOSAUR which frightened the heck out of me (I always seemed to be the nearest to the dinosaurs and their scary teeth) and Primeval Whirl (not scary but a little thrilling.) We also took in a couple of the shows including Finding Nemo The Musical and Pocahontas and Her Forest Friends. Finding Nemo had great puppetry and even though we didn’t see it here the Festival of the Lion King is a must if you’ve never seen it. Unfortunately we had to sacrifice it this time around.
In amongst all this running around the theme parks we also managed to fit in an NBA game (my first – yay!) and the Cirque du Soleil show La Nouba at Disneyland Village. The NBA game unfortunately for Orlando saw the Magic lose to the Detroit Pistons by 5. It wasn’t the cleanest game I’ve seen with both teams turning over the ball a number of times but the atmosphere was a lot of fun and there was some good entertainment (the cheerleaders were funny!):
The formula for La Nouba is like most other Cirque du Soleil shows that I’ve seen in the past and was again basically a circus for the new age without the animals. Apparently the title means something about partying or living it up. I actually found the show a little sub-par compared to the usual standards. The best acts for me were the four little girls and their Diablos and the very original trampoline act. With the trampoline act had the performers all over the place including walking up walls and bouncing off walls and into windows. The timing involved was magnificent.
After Walt Disney World it was on to Universal Studios. You know you would have expected that having a holiday based around theme parks would be relaxing and stress free when in fact we were waking up every day at the crack of dawn and not getting back to the hotel until very late in the evening. Thankfully when we moved to our hotel closer to Universal Studios the pressure eased somewhat. We were fairly surprised that both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure were fairly quiet. For example at Universal Studios we were able to ride the MIB ride about 3 times before any other person even turned up in the line ride.
As you can imagine most of the rides at Universal Studios were show-based with all rides themed on a movie or animation. Lots of highlights at Universal but because of the smaller crowd sizes we were actually able to do all that we wanted and still had a couple of hours left at the end of the day to hop over to the Islands of Adventure but more on that later.
Not in any order these are the definite must rides at Universal: – Revenge of the Mummy Ride. This is an indoor roller coaster that will have you screaming. This one deserved at least two rides in a row.
– MIB – Alien Attack. Kind of like Buzz Lightyear you get to blast aliens away and score points. You’ll ride this a few times trying to beat your own score.
– Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon Blast was a surprisingly violent ride.
And these are the must sees
– Shrek 4-D. Not really a ride but more of a show this engages all your senses. – Fear Factor Live. If you know the show you’ll love to see it live with real audience members. You can audition to be part of the show and this is generally the thrills part – as part of the general audience you may get selected to do the gross parts like having your head enclosed in box filled with lots of grubs/spiders and scorpions, or you may get selected to drink a blended drink of really really awful stuff. Good fun.
– Terminator 2-3D. No one can really be sick of the Terminator. He will always be back. This show is pretty brilliant actually combining 3D effects with live actors.
If you have time Twister and Earthquake can be fun. Both have very long build ups and stories but the finales could be classified as slightly exhilarating. And the ET Adventure is sweet and if you listen carefully ET will say your name when you get off the “bike”.
If you want thrill rides then Islands of Adventure is the place for you. The park is comprised of “islands” each with its own distinctive and very effective theming.
Marvel Super Hero Island has two of the best rides I’ve been on. The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man is truly an Amazing ride. It combines 3D effects and a simulation ride – you will not have ridden anything even close to it before. The Incredible Hulk Coaster is also named well also and it felt like one of the longer roller coast rides I’ve been on. Dr Doom’s Freefall is also here on the Island but the thrills on this one pales in comparing to the other rides at the park.On this “island” you can also get your photos taken with many of the Marvel Super Heroes walking the streets or have a go at Grid Iron:
Toon Lagoon is host to a couple of the wetter attractions. We rode Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls which will absolutely soak you. It felt like you were practically going straight down on this log ride.
Jurassic Park holds a final wet attraction Jurassic Park River Adventure which whilst very entertaining in its story line (yet again I was the one closest to the scary dinosaurs) has an even more entertaining story when you just managed to escape the jaws of the creepy T-Rex to plunge down an 85 foot drop. Once again you will get absolutely soaked.
The Lost Continent is the location of the innovative Dueling Dragons – Fire and Ice. This is currently the only duelling inverted roller coaster in the world and was a heck of a lot of fun. Both the roller coasters set off at the same time though one is slower than the other by 5 miles and several times you have just “miss” the other roller coaster – at one stage it seemed like the other coaster was only a few centimetres away! Whilst here we saw part of The Eight Voyage of Sinbad show and Poseidon’s Fury which, though interesting, I didn’t feel really justified the overly long wait.
My favourite themed island was Seuss Landing and though admittedly geared towards the little kiddies was the most colourful and pleasant to the eye. Who doesn’t love Cat in the Hat?
Every Cirque Du Soleil show I’ve had the pleasure of attending has involved me shaking my head in both wonder and amazement. Wonder at trying to interpret exactly what on earth the show was trying to tell me; Amazement at the outstanding talents of the performers. This show was no different.
The show’s name, Dralion, is a combination of the East’s dragon and the West’s lion. According to the website the show derives much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophy with its perpetual quest for harmony between humankind and nature … Okaaaaaaay.
Most travelling Cirque Du Soleil shows are housed in the traditional big top so to our surprise (and extreme comfort) we found ourselves making our way to the Royal Albert Hall. To my amusement I found that my seat swiveled to allow a more comfortable view of the sage.
In typical Cirque formula “clowns” mingle with the crowd prior to the show, pick out a “victim” and proceed to open the show. Typical also to Cirque formula these clowns, and their acts, are amazingly bizarre. Its just a shame that their jokes failed to appeal to me. Though their often frequent appearances were slight dampeners on the show, they did redeem themselves slightly with an extremely entertaining segment which was a send-up of all the acts in the show – definitely worth a laugh or two!
But on to the acts which are the main reason for the show. These were simply stunning. The acts were based on four elements: air, water, fire and earth. My favourite was the very first act – a small young girl balancing on one hand for an unbelievably long time whilst contorting her body into impossible postures. Following closely behind were the Skipping Ropes, the Teeterboard, the Hoop Diving and of course the Ballet on Lights (seven young women, wearing pointe shoes, perform amazing acrobatics on light bulbs.) My sentimental favourite was the Juggler – probably an underrated segment when compared with the acrobatics of the other acts but entertaining nevertheless.
The music was fantastic and choreographed well with the performers. Considering there were apparently only seven members in the band and three singers, the power of the music was extremely passionate and moving.
I could go on about everyone’s incredible skill (with many performers doubling up for certain acts) but words really fail to capture how astonishing their performances are. You must see it for yourself!
this strange world of insects and coloured creatures to find love. “Varekai” means “wherever” in the Romany language of the gypsies apparently and so the show is a tribute to the wanderer in us. 
funky catwalk swinging up above. If there is one thing you can never fault in a Cirque Du Soleil performance (apart from the talent of the acts on stage, the impeccable timing of artists, musicians and lighting, um … you get my drift) it is the show’s ability to use every bit of space available (above and below the stage) to them and the extreme attention to detail (the fireflies were very cool.) I can imagine just how much engineering goes into the mechanics on and off the stage. And then the costumes – just brilliant. 
