Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, which was a bit of a disappointment, ok-but-not-great bagels and lousy service. We arrived at Seaworld early enough to catch the National Anthem as they opened. Between the two of us (one maths graduate, one physics) we managed to work out the logistics of the show timetable and schedule to see everything and fit in the other attractions between events.

We started off at the dolphin cove before the hordes descended. I dutifully petted a dolphin - strange feeling all rubbery and avoided getting splashed. Jane I think could have cheerfully spent the entire day there and gleefully purchased smelly dead fish to feed them. I took photos.

The different shows were interestingly done, all pretty impressive, only really suffering from a lack of explanation and an over-abundance of plot sometimes. The sea lion show was aimed more at kids with a pirate theme, but with the sun shining and giant sea lions and walruses splashing about it was hard not to join in. The various whale and dolphin shows were pretty amazing, as they jumped and spun and splashed anyone foolish enough to sit in the 'splash zones'. The small circus was a kind of cut-down cirque du soleil, strange without any animals, but still very good. The fountain show in the evening was a bit naff, particularly as it was hard to see and a bit repetitive after the initial 'ooo' of prettily lit fountains.

The centrepiece of the park is definitely the Killer Whales and their huge stadium. The two Shamu shows were breathtaking, although the Christmas one was distressingly cheesy at times. Getting to see a killer whale and her baby swimming in formation in an underwater tank was pretty amazing. For some reason the mother kept turning herself upside down all the time, baby didn't seem to mind though.

My favourite attraction of all however was the penguin enclosure. They have lots of different penguins and an enclosure with a glass panel all along one wall allowing you to see them under-water as well. And best of all - there was snow! They had snow machines dropping snow and keepers spreading it around the enclosure, I've never seen penguins in snow before and they were so funny slipping and sliding about. . I could have spent all day there!

I felt we actually ran out of things to do and I was disappointed at the lack of an aquarium, my guidebook was right when it said the gift shops out-numbered the attractions. Mind you we didn't go on either of the rides as they featured a long wet drop and a nasty looping roller coaster. I did however manage to avoid purchasing a stuffed whale, so I'm quite proud of myself.

We headed to International Drive for dinner finally settling on Chilli's which was very very good and included a giant deep fried chrysanthemum like onion. I-Drive is interesting, it's a bit like Oxford Street or Champs Elysees, but spread out over miles and with nothing above the second storey. Back home and bed by 10.30 - we're really lighting up the town!

Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast again - the croissant was good and I skipped the tea. We started the long, straight drive to Kennedy which was only interrupted by repeated tolls at varying ridiculously low prices.

The area around Kennedy felt more like Florida - islands, swamps, streams and alligators. The Space Centre is a sprawling affair and without many people around it felt quite desolate. We took the full tour and following a hugely disappointing iced mocha (it took her an instruction manual and two attempts to make it) we boarded our bus.

The first stop was out to an observation platform where we could (apparently) see the rocket launch pads on Cape Canaveral and the retrieval ships. Frankly I couldn't see anything but a distant haze, but the tour guide was very interesting. It was a little disconcerting that on leaving the bus we were told that if the guide or driver told us to get on the bus fast, we should do so with enthusiasm as there was an alligator just off-shore.

Next stop was the space station construction facility where thanks to a nice glass viewing area allowed us to get quite close to the next parts to go up to the International Space Station including the transport pods. The small museum had some interesting walk through sections which showed the size of the elements bolted together to form the station.

We then took a drive out past the Vehicle Assembly Building over to the launch pads. It was disappointing not to get closer to any of them or to stop so we could at least take decent photos or peer into the buildings from the road or just catch things that are on the other side of the bus from you. But for all that it was still very cool and gave a much better idea of the huge scale of things like the crawler vehicles just from the size of their roads.

The final stop was the Apollo/Saturn V Center which was spectacular and all the information boards were very well written and interesting. We stopped here for a rather lovely lunch and I think Jane didn't quite understand how geekily excited I was by the whole thing.

The visitor area was a little less exciting, and although I felt a little guilty we actually skipped a few of the exhibits. The information boards just weren't as good as the ones in the Saturn V center and the lack of people made it all a bit cold and clinical. Magnificent Desolation in the I-Max was very good - both funny and moving and using the 3D to give a very immerse view of life on the moon. Then I spent a fortune in the gift shops. Oh well.

We took a quick drive down to Cocoa beach to see the ocean. I came, I got wet, I got sandy, I left. The sunset was absolutely amazing, but inconveniently located for finding a nice place to watch and take photos. Back to I-Drive for Pizza Hut which was good, plentiful and pretty much like home, including the ability to take leftovers home and eat them for breakfast the next day.

Day 6 is a little blurry as it was our 'day-off' and I seem to have failed to take notes. I know from my credit card bill though that it involved a lot of shopping. We breakfasted at an International House of Pancakes aka IHOP - I can't decide which name is cooler! We got delivered an absolute mountain of food although I can't say I was particularly overwhelmed by any of it.

The first and longest stop of the day was to Downtown Disney, a wonderful idea which involves putting all the Disney merchandise available in the parks in one tidy location which you don't have to pay to enter. We spent hours going in all the shops and walking around the area, all of which were colourfully decorated with characters. I could have spent a fortune here and almost did. The most dangerous shop was the art gallery and I would have spent a fortune if there hadn't been the extra consideration of how to get stuff home.

We had some monumental ice cream sodas at the soda fountain and lunched at McDonalds, ticking off another couple of American clichés. We drove down the road a couple of hundred meters where I spent another small fortune on dvds and computer games. I was saving money really! Bah. Next up were the outlet stores, which I wondered around in a bit of a daze, only coming out of it to get excited by a drinks machine which included chocolate Nesquick. To me this is exciting.

We passed a couple of hours playing miniature golf on the most elaborate theme courses I've ever seen - there were waterfalls and planes and all manner of stuff. Oh and one of them had a duck that would eat out of your hand. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur to be honest, I'm not sure what we did for dinner and I suspect there was some tv watching and collapsing in there too.

Breakfast consisted of leftover pizza and a Starbucks picked up from downstairs. We drove across the road to Disney and after a bit of 'exploring' found our way to Epcot, with it's epic car park and rather nifty monorail.

We went on every single ride in the park and I wish we'd had time to do a couple of them a second time. We arrived at the park nice and early and did our usual trick of heading straight for the popular rides so that we didn't have to queue. First stop was Test-Track which featured a hilarious collection of "car driving over surfaces" and accelerating and braking followed by a face pulling acceleration round through an outside track hitting 65miles per hour in the little cars. It actually had me screaming and laughing at the same time.

Next we wandered over the The Land, we queued up for Living with the Land which was an interesting tour through the hydroponic greenhouses that provide for some of the restaurants. There was a lot of information on this ride and it was very well presented and an interesting look at some real research into food production. On the flip side The Circle of Life film was rather green-hippy dogma.

The highpoint (ha) of the day was Soarin' the newest attraction at Epcot and a breath-taking flight over some amazing scenary. You ride sitting in something supposedly like a handglider with your feet dangling down and the rig tilts you from side to side to mimic motion. The rig is positioned so you're in the middle of a panoramic screen so you really feel like you're flying. The final touch is the addition of fans to create a breeze and add scents. It's absolutely amazing and easily the best attraction from the whole week.

After that we continued to tour the smaller attractions, taking in the impressively large aquarium while surrounded by small children going "look mummy it's a nemo!" and slightly weary adults trying to explain that it's actually a clown fish, to no avail. The Imagination section was a bit cheesy and the 3D Honey, I Shrunk the Audience looked very dated compared to Mickey's Philharmagic.

We went back over to Mission: SPACE which was an impressive simulator of a mission to Mars. Gary Sinese looked a little embarrassed by some of the lines he was performing as we 'pretended' to be astronauts, but the ride itself was quite fun. Jane unfortunately didn't think so and I left her having a lie down to recover while I took in the rather slow moving and unexciting Universe of Energy. Ellen DeGeneres didn't seem the least bit embarrassed by her cheesy lines, but the seats were at least comfortable for the 45 minute show.

The Spaceship Earth attraction in the centre of the Dome describing the history of communications was looking fairly badly dated towards the end but had some cool light effects. The Innoventions section was aimed more at kids and we didn't really linger at any of the small exhibitions except when we got caught by something rather like a real-time informercial for home cinema.

A lot of the day had already gone by the time we got started on the outer ring of the World Showcase. Luckily first stop was France where we picked up some very tasty pastries to sustain us. We didn't really have time to linger anywhere and had to hustle a bit, only just managing to catch each of the rides. We skipped every "educational" film we could as we were approaching sap overload at this point. Each little village was very cutely done with recreations of sites and average streets - the English section really did feel like a small English village. Jane had cleverly booked us for dinner at the Chinese restaurant which was extremely good and we were sad to have to abandon some of it. Maybe next time we should skip the pastries.

We found ourselves a good spot on the edge of the lagoon for the fireworks and settled in. Unfortunately by the time the fireworks started the temperature had dropped and I was really regretting opting not to carry a jumper around with me all day. The fireworks made up for it though and were pretty spectacular, nicely making use of the dome and sailing things out into the lagoon. The walk back to the car seemed to take forever thanks to the cold and I shivered my way home and into bed horribly early again.

Our glorious weather finally gave up on us today and the heavens opened. Tour guides were heard to remark that they couldn't actually remember a day that had such prolonged heavy rain. We got absolutely soaked to the skin. On the plus side it meant everywhere was pretty quiet, the downside was that they cancelled the parade and light show. Fortunately the weather cleared up for the Fantasmic display in the evening.

We started the day with the Studios Backlot Tour, the most spectacular part of which was the Catastrophic Canyon with explosions and deluges. I was already pretty damp at this point, but when they dumped the water tanks on us the water ran straight over the top of the carriage and down my back. At that point I gave up on ever being dry again. The tour was quite cool and the guide was good when we could hear him.

Next up was the car stunt show, which was even more impressive given the rain. It was a nice mix of exciting stunts and technical explanations for how they did them. The cheesy production elements and recruiting children from the audience I could have done without though.

I got overly excited at the appearance of a full mock-up of the Muppet theatre and loved every minute of it. Even the pre-show while we were queuing was funny and I forgot all about being wet when we filed into the actual Muppet theatre with Statler and Waldorf's balcony and everything. The mix of 3-D, puppets, animatronics and costumes was absolutely perfect and I loved it to bits. So I like the Muppets, what's wrong with that? This was followed by an equally exciting trip to Pizza Planet for lunch which had giant green aliens hanging from the ceiling. The pizza was also really good.

Star Tours was next which was satisfying in a geeky way, but not nearly as good as I'd hoped. I think I actually found the queuing area which was mocked up with animatronic druids and vehicles and the giant At-At outside more interesting. The Indiana Jones stunt spectacular was fun, although again suffered from cheesy audience participation.

I'm not sure which order we did the rest of the rides in, it blurs into one long soggy episode. Beauty and the Beast Live on stage was fun, the dancing crockery and furniture was very well done. The Animation tour and Walt Disney: One Man's Dream were quite interesting and exactly what you'd expect. Voyage of the Little Mermaid was cleverly done using simple effects to recreate the film. The Great Movie Ride involved a horribly long queue I remember and was a kinda adult It's A Small World, I honestly can't remember whether I liked it or not.

After a considerable amount of uncertainty they decided that Fantasmic would be shown and we perused the shops on Sunset Boulevard on the way to the giant stadium. The show wasn't anywhere near as good as the fireworks at the other parks, but it was interestingly done with images projected onto a fountain of water. Just about every Disney character ever was waving at you from a barge on the lake and the giant dragon that appeared was pretty amazing. We slithered off home to warm showers and an early night.