Boxing Day and more...

It was nice to have a few days off work after Christmas without too much to do for a change:). We went over to Celebration to see the houses that had won the best Holiday decorations town contest. They were incredible!

 

And we played at being tourists for a morning and went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not! which was fun too - I started to wish that I had a collection of curiosities...I love curiosities...

Like this picture made out of old computer keys...

Or this chunk of the Berlin Wall...

We had heard that the old abandoned theme park, Splendid China, was being demolished, so we went over one afternoon to see what was going on...You may remember from our trip a couple of years ago that Splendid China was once an active $100M theme park which opened in 1993 on 76 acres just West of the main entrance to Disney World. It was filled with accurate scale models of China's landmarks, and also offered acrobatic, culinary and dance entertainment. The miniatures included replicas of The Great Wall of China (this version was half of a mile long and built brick by brick), and The Leshan Grand Buddha Statue (in 1/8th scale), and more than 50 others representing the diversity of cultures within the region.

The park ran into trouble when protestors claimed that Florida's Splendid China was a tool for propaganda rather than entertainment and they ultmately closed due to low attendance as a result of the controversy in 2003. For several years vandals and trespassers ran rampant, many of whom posted videos of their exploits online. Last year it was purchased by a condo developer and now that it's just a construction site we were able to walk right in!

There are tons of piles of rubble and the miniatures have all been removed...

It was fascinating and we couldn't get enough. Maddy and I got online the next day and found where the miniatures are now. Evidently they were purchased at auction by a garden ornament supply company up in Apopka - so that kept us busy the next day too! He has them displayed in his parking lot...

With a random 50s style space ship for no apparent reason...:)

We found the owner and he sold us our very own terracotta warrior replica - my first genuine artifact from an abandoned theme park!!! I love him!!

So the collection has officially begun - I'll let you know when we have the official opening of Early's Believe It Or Not! :)