Christmas in Florida

Written by: Julie Hart
Authors Website

We have spent 2 Christmas holidays in Florida, both of which were memorable. On the first occasion we spent 4 nights on a Bahamas cruise with Royal Caribbean. The ship was beautifully decorated for the season with Christmas trees in various themes on each deck. After that we returned to spend Christmas in our villa, we bought a tree with all the lights already in place to make it easy for future guests to use, we also had an 8′ inflatable snowman on the front lawn! This was very subtle compared to some of the neighbouring houses and we drove round the community at night so that the kids could see all the fabulouus lights on peoples houses. Sometimes the decorations and Christmas carols playing in the theme parks seemed a little incongruous with the warm weather and sunshine but we got used to it, we were the only people in shorts & T-shirts in Universal Studios one bright sunny day, the locals were all wearing coats & hats! The parks really go to town with the trimmings and Christmas trees. On both occasions we had Christmas lunch at the Renaissance hotel opposite Seaworld. This was recommended by friends and was a really good choice. We went for the lunchtime option which started with brunch and carried on into the afternoon with a wonderful buffet. There were 13 of us one year and there was something for everyone, Christmas lunch with all the trimmings or pizzas and burgers, puddings desserts, ice creams, soups and as much sparkling wine as you wanted. It was really good value at that time, $40 for adults and $20 for children. It was then back to the villa to relax around the pool, too full to do anything else! How wonderful it was to be sitting outside by the pool deck on Christmas Day. The weather was really good to us, the only time it rained on our 2nd visit was Christmas Eve & New Years Eve. On both occasions we were in Magic Kingdom and Epcot respectively hoping to see the fireworks when instead we were drowned by torrential rain and ended up sloshing back to the car in ankle deep water. Frosty the Snowman is now in the loft until our next Christmas visit.