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Orlando: America's Playground

Florida’s famous fantasyland is also a magic kingdom for adults--when you know where to look. You can fill long, sunny days not only with great golf, but also with adventure and offbeat activities. 

            My breath whooshes out, sending a cascade of bubbles toward the water’s surface.  One of the passing sharks turns and cruises toward me, mouth agape in an exceedingly toothy grin. He’s so close I could touch him—if it weren’t for the mesh barrier. When he loses interest I swim over  to a window, where my next exhalation draws the attention of a family dining at a table six inches from the thick glass. The kids point and wave, and the father raises his glass of wine to toast me.  At the sight of food, my stomach gives a hungry rumble, so I head for the surface and shed the scuba gear. 

In minutes I’m back in my street clothes and feeling a bit like a character in a James Bond movie as I stroll among the visitors at Epcot’s six-million-gallon indoor aquarium.  It’s a forgivable fantasy. For $140, any certified diver can go “backstage” to spend bottom time in the tank with more than 65 species of marine life, including protected species of sharks, sea turtles and eagle rays. For $100, non-divers can have a similar experience on the Living Seas Aqua Tour, using scuba-assisted snorkeling gear.  As a well-traveled diver, I did this as a lark and was impressed at the quality of the marine environment and the expert handling of the concession by the aquarium staff.

Epcot’s DiveQuest is just one of the activities that appeal to grown-up visitors. Once you’ve seen some of the other choices, you may never look at Orlando the same way again.

            Established in the 1800s and named for a U.S. soldier felled by a Seminole arrow, Orlando has gone through boom times spurred by railroads, real estate, citrus, and the Space Age in the 1950s, when Cape Canaveral/Cape Kennedy was created.  The 1970s ushered in Walt Disney World, the first step toward the city’s becoming the world’s most popular theme park destination. Today it ranks fourth among U.S. cities for foreign visitors and is number one for American vacationers.

Like almost every other aspect of life in the U.S., Orlando has been influenced by Baby Boomers who enjoyed the theme parks as children and have returned again and again with their offspring and grandkids.  Orlando has matured with them, and continues to develop incentives for adults to visit—with or without youngsters.

Golf Till You Drop

There are more than 168 courses in the 100-square-mile Greater Orlando area and many more in the outskirts.  All of them offer warm weather year-round and lush tropical foliage, and most have an abundance of wetlands, water, and sand—lots of sand. 

The Ultimate Golf Experience at The Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center is a good place to begin an Orlando odyssey, especially after a winter hiatus when your home course is snowbound. The extraordinary Florida-themed hotel has 1,406 guestrooms ringing a 4 ˝-acre glass-domed atrium. Many rooms have balconies overlooking the climate-controlled interior. Shops and restaurants are set among tropical gardens with waterfalls, streams, grottos and even an alligator lagoon.  

            The Experience begins in the resort’s Canyon Ranch Spa Club with a private stretching session led by Shishir Inocalla, a renowned martial artist in the sport of Arnis (stick fighting) as well as Tai Chi, Yoga and meditation.  Shishir was, incidentally, the character Michelangelo in the “Ninja Turtles” movies. 

The next stop is the Falcon’s Fire Golf Club, where one of the PGA instructors does a performance evaluation and dispenses tips on the practice range and over lunch, followed by coaching under fire, literally, during nine holes of play on the Falcon’s Fire course.

The Rees Jones layout flows over the landscape like the sea on a balmy day, with mounds swelling on the perimeter and subsiding in gentle fairway rolls. There are several water carries (some with resident gators) to slick greens.

            After golf, the Experience continues with a massage in the resort’s Canyon Ranch Spa by specialists in golf muscles.  From the spa, it’s a few steps to the Old Hickory Steakhouse, an Everglades-themed restaurant with sublime beef and buffalo steaks, an extensive wine list, and flawless service.  

The Reunion Resort & Club of Orlando, host of the 2006 LPGA Ginn Open, is a rapidly growing community with a savvy plan for fine living. A lot of dirt was moved to create the parkland Independence and Legacy courses (to  be joined this year by the Jack Nicklaus-designed Tradition Course). Both have lofty tees and greens separated by chasms, wetlands and waste areas.  Both have a Zen Garden feel, with flowering shrubs and flowers cascading over banks and rock gardens. Indigenous plants flourish in the wetland areas.  

            The more aggressive design is Tom Watson’s Independence Course, where rampant bunkering can punish even good shots. Craters of white sand and khaki-colored waste areas punctuate the kelly green fairways.  The greens are huge and multi-tiered. Holes 11 through 17 border the Davenport Creek Preserve’s thicket of pine, live oak and cypress. Watson likes a mix of beauty, variety and strategy, and it’s all here—except water.

            In contrast, Arnold Palmer’s Legacy Course is rife with lakes and streams. The designer doesn’t hold back on sand and waste bunkers, either, but he is forgiving, with frequent escape routes. Elevated tees and open fairways invite players to enjoy the view, pull out the driver and hit away.

            A high-rise hotel next to the golf clubhouse is scheduled to open in 2007, but it’s more fun to rent a villa or house in one of the diverse neighborhoods. All of the homes are artfully and comfortably furnished and have decks or balconies overlooking fairways or gardens.   The resort development is stunning in scope, with a spa and fitness center, pools, stables, a water park, and a tennis complex, as well as miles of trails.  It can only get better with age.

            Bob Cupp, Jr. redesigned Joe Lee’s 1986 layout for the Hawk’s Landing Golf Club.  Forming a horseshoe around the 2,000-room Orlando World Center Marriott and Convention Center, the 6,800-yard track runs through 200 acres of flowering foliage and tall grasses. Fairways dogleg frequently and are armed with deep bunkers. Water comes into consideration on all but three holes, and the entire back nine is riddled with it. It’s an intense but pleasurable gauntlet with a memorable flourish at the end. The eighteenth hole is a 565-yard, par 5 with a drive over water, a second shot threatened by sand and water, and a green positioned among mounds, palms and more water.

            Having just played Royal Melbourne, I can see echoes of Australia’s famous Sandbelt layouts in the International Course at ChampionsGate. That’s no surprise, with Aussie Greg Norman at the drawing board.  The 7,363-yard, links-style course is open and somewhat stark. Dune-like mounds rising to 40 feet provide views of fairways looping back and forth, with flags snapping in a brisk wind unobstructed by large trees. You almost expect to see golfers in plus fours pulling trolleys. The fairways are hard and fast and studded with 225 pot bunkers—conditions that would make any Aussie—or Brit--feel at home. 

            The National Course is so different that it’s hard to believe the two came from the same designer and opened the same year, 2000. The National is a traditional American–style layout set in woods, wetlands and orange groves. Its springy fairways are shaded by mature trees, and its calculated greens are guarded by 100 rambling bunkers.

            The golf complex includes the headquarters of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy and a multi-faceted golf clubhouse with an extensive pro shop, fine restaurant and 250-person function space.  But the piece de resistance of the 1,500-acre, four-diamond resort is the 750-room Omni Orlando at ChampionsGate, which opened in late 2004. It’s a stunner, with spacious, elegantly appointed common areas;  a 10,000-square-foot European spa; five unique restaurants;  tennis, volleyball and basketball courts; a nine-hole par-three course; and a watersports park with a quiet pool, an active pool with waterslides, and an 850-foot-long lazy river.     

            Like ChampionsGate, the pros play a lot at Grande Lakes Orlando,  a 500-acre resort with two hotels—the 584-room Ritz-Carlton and the 1,000-room JY Marriott. The Grande Lakes layout is also the work of Greg Norman,  who tiptoed through the fragile ecosystem of cypress and native oaks on the front nine and used aggressive mounding on the back nine, which lay in a flood plain.

            Caddies are de rigueur here. The luck of the draw gave us John Bigelow III, who may very well be the father of the next Tiger Woods.  His four-year-old son,  John Bigelow IV (nicknamed “Four”), is a self-taught natural who has appeared on Oprah, the Today Show, and the pages of major golf magazines.  His growing cadre of fans, including Tiger, follow his career via his website, www.jbfour.com.

            According to Bigelow III, Tiger has said that Grande Lakes has the best greens in the state.  They were stimping about 11 for us, so we had trouble keeping balls on the often small or shallow putting surfaces.

            The course is tough, with lots of water and cagey bunkering. It’s also very natural. The layout borders the Everglades, so native plants and birds abound—along with a few alligators.  Elevated wooden bridges wind through wetlands and trees draped with Spanish moss.      

            The Shingle Creek Golf Club is located on the fringe of the Orange County Convention Center complex, within earshot of the frenetic traffic artery, International Drive, and construction on the 1,500-room Rosen Shingle Creek Resort hotel, which is scheduled to open before year’s end.  Last year, Golfweek included the course in its top 40 list of new venues.

            The David Harman design gets a lot of traffic from convention attendees. It lends itself to speedy play, with spacious fairways and mounding that can bounce balls back into line if you don’t stray too far.  The interconnecting waterways of Shingle Creek--once used to float cypress trees to a shingle-producing mill--are a threat on almost every hole.  

            Like the International at ChampionsGate, the Grand Cypress Resort’s New Course is a horse of a different color.  Picture a leopard-spotted Appaloosa running in the Kentucky Derby. In 1988, Jack Nicklaus paid homage to St. Andrews Old Course with a layout set in an open meadow among citrus groves.  It’s all there—the double greens, the stone walls and bridges, the severe swales, the burn (creek) coiling like a snake around greens.  The hidden pot bunkers are so deep (up to 12 feet) they have steps into them. There’s even wind sweeping across the open, virtually treeless expanse. 

            Having been on the real Old Course, I had fun identifying the features, but I confess that I’d rather play Florida-style courses in Florida.  I love all the water and woods Nicklaus incorporated into the resort’s lush trio of nines--South, North and East.  Lodging is in the 146-unit Villas of Grand Cypress and the 750-room Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress.  The resort is home to fine sporting facilities other than golf, such as the tennis club and world-class equestrian center.

            It’s impossible to discuss Orlando golf without including the Walt Disney World Resort, but it’s also nearly impossible to choose among the five 18-hole courses.  PGA pros say the Palm Course is the toughest of the tournament venues, and have ranked the finishing hole as the fourth hardest on the PGA Tour. The Magnolia is the longest and arguably the prettiest, with more than 1,500 namesake trees and more wildlife than the other four.  The Palm and Magnolia are Joe Lee designs with many elevated tees and greens. Eagle Pines, a low-lying venue with water defining the targets on 16 holes, is Pete Dye’s work. Tom Fazio crafted the hilly Osprey Ridge layout, a player-friendly track through wetlands frequented by the namesake birds. Lake Buena Vista is a timeless Joe Lee creation opened in 1972. It’s short (6,749 yards) and seemingly  straightforward, but carries a slope of 133 from the back tees.

Adventures—and Ventures Behind the Scenes

            SeaWorld takes critter encounters to a new level in its new Discovery Cove,  a tropical sanctuary across the road from the main park.  It’s a family attraction, but decidedly adult-friendly. Visitors are limited to 1,000 a day—by reservation--and pay an all-inclusive price that includes all meals, beverages and gear. You can leave your wallet, street clothes and shoes in a locker and spend the day swimming with dolphins, snorkeling with stingrays, hand-feeding free-flying exotic birds, and other unique animal interactions.  One package includes camping overnight on the beach next to the dolphin lagoon, and helping with feeding and other behind-the-scenes activities.  SeaWorld also offers an all-day Marine Mammal Keeper program in which participants interact with sea lions, beluga whales, dolphins and walruses.

            On terra firma, special programs at Disney’s Epcot Center reveal the art, architecture and costumes of each country’s pavilion in the Hidden Treasures of the World Showcase; and share the secrets of the park’s gardeners in the Gardens of the World tour.  Backstage at Future World you can learn how Walt Disney’s desire to improve the world led to the creation of the park.

            During the Backstage Safari (a three-hour walking tour) in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, animal specialists show how they care for the  park’s exotic animals.  Take it a step future and book a room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, where your balcony will overlook a savannah where 200 African mammals, including giraffes, zebras and gazelles, roam freely.  The furnishings and art in the lodge rooms, lobbies, restaurants and shops are all imported from Africa.  

            Less exotic, but also less attainable than an African safari is doing laps behind the wheel of a NASCAR race car.  Not so fast! It happens every day at the Walt Disney World Speedway’s Richard Petty Driving Experience.  First you don a jumpsuit and ride around the track in a van to learn the key points of negotiating the oval in a real NASCAR vehicle.  Then it’s time to put on your helmet, climb through the window into the driver’s seat and wait for the steering wheel and safety harness to be secured by your pit crew. When your engine fires, you follow the pace car onto the track. Every time you catch up with the pace car, the driver will accelerate. If going solo is too much for you, ride along with an experienced driver on a tour at 145 mph-plus.

            Not edgy enough? An unforgettable adrenalin high lies an hour’s drive east of Orlando at the Kennedy Space Center. Most Baby Boomers grew up with glimpses of this top secret facility on television during the shuttle launches that became milestones of America’s space exploration. Now visitors can indulge their fantasies in the Astronaut Training Experience, which includes time on a gravity trainer chair and at the controls of a full-scale shuttle mock-up—under the guidance of an actual NASA astronaut.  More timid souls can take tours of restricted areas, visit the space museum and have a lunch-time briefing with an astronaut.

             If you have always yearned to skip to the head of the line or go through doors marked “restricted,” here’s your chance. Universal Orlando Resort  offers VIP tours at its two parks, Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios, with front-of-the-line access.  Semi-private (limited to 12 persons) tours are five hours. Private Exclusive VIP tours feature eight hours of break-in-line fun, plus insider secrets behind the creation and operation of rides. The Ultimate Escape tour involves two days, two parks.

            If you’re not an adrenalin junkie, Orlando has many activities with no fear factors—movies and concerts in the park; opera and ballet performances; and serene gardens, galleries and museums, The city’s 24-page “Undiscovered Orlando” brochure (www.orlandoinfo.com) lists visual and performing arts; history and heritage; parks, zoos and gardens; and recreation venues.

Duck on the Menu? Never!

            After our round at Shingle Creek, we hustled back to the nearby Peabody Orlando Hotel. We were booked for two nights in rooms with what may be the world’s most comfortable beds (called Peabody Dream Beds) and access to the private Peabody Club for quick breakfasts, hors doeuvres and cocktails. But our apres’ golf attention was focused on lunch in the hotel’s unique B-Line Diner. The 50s-era eatery is a stunningly accurate time-warp, right down to the chrome-trimmed counter and booths, apron-clad cooks and waitresses, and be-bop classics pouring from a jukebox. The burgers and sandwiches are much better than any I had in the diners of old.

            At cocktail time we joined other guests near the lobby fountain for the afternoon march of the famous Peabody ducks.  Shortly before 5 p.m. the red-jacketed duck master unfurled a long red carpet across the marble floor to the elevator. When John Phillip Sousa’s “King Cotton March” began, five mallards waddled down steps from the fountain where they’d spent the day, and strode calmly along the spectator-lined carpet and onto the elevator that took them to their  well-appointed pen near the fourth-floor tennis courts.  The 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ritual has taken place in Peabody Hotels since the 1930s.

            That evening, as we settled into our seats at the hotel’s Capriccio Grill, we anxiously checked the menu. No duck, not ever, our waitress assured us. The elegant Italian steakhouse does have melt-in-your mouth prime steaks and chops, and seafood delivered fresh daily.  After a heaping mussel appetizer, I hardly had room for the perfectly done beef filet and wine from the award-winning wine cellar.

            Orlando is perhaps as well know for its dining choices as for its theme parks.  Every conceivable type of cuisine and setting can be found here.  The buffalo steak at the Gaylord Palms Hotel’s Hickory Steakhouse was a memorable meal.  Unforgettable, too, were the African-spiced meals and fine South African wines at Jiko, the upscale restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.   

            I have to admit that I also loved sipping a beer and gnawing on a smoked turkey leg from a concession stand during the nightly fireworks show over Disney’s Cinderella Castle.  It’s quintessential Orlando.

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