Wont be on for a week.

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Fri Sep 19, 2014 7:23 am

I'm leaving for Daytona this Sun and wont be back till the following Sun.I'm going with my mother, sister and her boyfriend so my brother and his wife will be staying at the house to watch the animals and take care of them for us while We're gone.

jenok · Post by **jenok** » Sat Sep 20, 2014 11:20 am

Hope you have fun and enjoy yourself.I had to re read your post though at first I thought your mom had a new boyfriend, but then I realized it was your sister's boyfriend.

crazycrabber · Post by **crazycrabber** » Sat Sep 20, 2014 12:25 pm

will miss your experience!

jenok · Post by **jenok** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 2:46 am

Yeah, your back! Did you have fun? What all did you get to do?

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 3:37 am

Yeah we came back late Sunday evening but we had a blast, we went to the Dolphin Rescue Center or Marineland, The Marine Science Center or Sea Turtle Rescue Center, The Ponce Inlet Light House and My mom and I got a VIP Ghost Tour of the hotel we were staying in thanks to a friend of ours who works there as security.The Ghost Tour was the best part of my vacation by far because we got to investigate parts of the building that are normally off limits to the public and we got a lot of activity.Kathy was our tour guide and her partner Ting came to meet us later on as she had a larger group to take on the tour and we were getting the VIP package.Because of our friend at the hotel Kathy and Ting gave us the tour for 25$ a person instead of 50$ so we got a discount on top of getting the VIP experience.We also got to watch a Junior League Surfing competition right down from where we were staying and that was also really cool because there were some big sponsors there like Hurley and Silver Curl....All in all we had a really great time and the food was amazing..

jenok · Post by **jenok** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:56 am

Sooo jealous right now! I've been wanting to take some kind of trip, vacation, whatever all year and I haven't even been able to do so. (Sigh) Maybe next year. I think the dolphin encounter thing would've been my fav.

Crabber85 · Post by **Crabber85** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 9:14 am

@jenok, yeah this is the second year I've been to Marineland to see the dolphins, they lost their oldest girl who was in her thirties and the oldest living captive dolphin back in March she'd had several pups and her age was getting the best of her so she passed exactly three months before my dad and he got to see her last year when we went so there was a bit a of bitter sweet connection there with the dolphins so mom decided to by a painting done by Sunny who was the last pup that the old gal had had as a reminder of her and my dad.They have done some major upgrades to the grounds around the facility, they were still working on these upgrades last year and finally got them done earlier this year and they included four new tanks that side outside two contain sea turtles two different species in fact and then the other two tanks are home to two different species of rays which was really cool to see.Like I said my favortie part of the whole vacation was the ghost tour, in fact we are supposed to meeting up with Kathy, Ting and Craig when they come to Savannah sometime either this month or next to do some paranormal investigating down there.The hotel we have been staying at for the last four years The Plaza Resort and Spa in Daytona Beach has been put up for sale by the bank that owns it because it just isn't generating the revenue needed to keep it running so one of two things will happen this year either another company will come in and buy it which means a definite room rate increase or Vallousia county will step in and purchase the land and demo the existing building and put in a public parking lot like they have been doing with so many other empty lots and hotels that have been for sale.The county is doing this because several hotels have decided to privatize their beach front for hotel guests only which means the public can't access those sections which also cuts down on the length of the driveable section of becah there which is now only about a quarter mile if that due to this rampant privatization, one of the biggest offenders is the company that has bought the old Desert Inn the old hotel is in the process of being demolished and the plans are to build an even bigger and better modern age hotel in its place, the new building will have 20 floors and will have approximately 2000 rooms the regular nightly rate of which will be somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six hundred dollars a night which is a far cry of the meer ninety-eight dollars a night the old hotel had been charging.This new hotel will eat up about quadruple the beach front that its old predicessor did and all of that will be made private use to hotel guests only, the big problem here is the beach front has been driveable up till this point and now suddenly its not going to be anymore and because of the location of the new hotel it will be effectively making that whole strip for six hotels in either direction non-drivable which will then in effect make the whole stretch of beach inaccessible to vehicles so what was once the only beach in the world where you could drive you car on it wont be anymore that tradition has essentially died as of the end of this year.This is why the county has stepped in, in a last ditch effort to keep some of the beach open for free public use by turning the empty lots and old vacant for sale hotels into parking lots so at least the locals will still be able to get out on the beach even if no one is able to drive on it.The tourist industry is drying up down there thanks to a dwindling economy and the privatization of the beach, Valousia county is the most bankrupt county in the entire US and the crime rate especially for violent crime has skyrocketed over the last ten years in fact Daytona has the highest crime rate of any city its size and has nearly double the crime rate of larger cities like Atlanta and New York so going out at night or after dark to walk the beach or grab a bite to eat is now out of the question because of the gangs and crack heads they look for tourists and then pick the weakest one of the bunch and rob them and gang stomp them so if you want to do anything family oriented you have to do it early in the day or you just don't get to do it.I've been vacationing in Daytona since I was about eleven years old and it looks nothing like it used to down there now the negative changes that have taken place with the crime rate and the ramapnt bankruptcies which have left lots of homes and business either abandoned or foreclosed.You can ride down the main drag and nearly every store out of hundreds have closed their doors and moved south to Coacoa Beach thats where the tourists started flocking to when the crime rate got so bad and because of that the stores have picked up and moved with them which has left the city and county cash strapped an dieing.My advice is go for Coacoa don't stay in Daytona if you ever get the chance its not safe anymore and theres not really much to do so you have to ride for thrity minutes to an hour north or south to find suitable entertainment.Next year We're planning on either staying in Coacoa or going to the gulf coast and going to Panama City Beach we've never been either place so I'm kind of looking forward to it.lol