Observations about Orlando

1. There're a lot of chain restaurants - many I've never heard of and some I would never want to eat at. I think every chain known to man is in this area: Waffle House, Golden Corral, Cracker Barrel, Friendly's, Sonic, TGIFriday's, Tony Roma's, Hooters, IHOP, Denny's, Bennigans, Boston Market, McDonald's, and more.
2. There're actually some pretty good restaurants in Orlando as well. On Monday night, some of my co-workers and I had really yummy South Indian food. I know, I don't usually eat Indian food. But we had some vegetarians in our group and the Thai place we wanted to go to was closed for the MLK holiday. I thought it was a bit peculiar...maybe they were just closed on Mondays.
   
3. There're a lot of retired, elderly people working as van/bus drivers or hotel/conference support staff. My shuttle driver from the airport to the hotel was a retired gentleman who moved here from the northeastern US. He was fiesty and would say stuff like, "Come on, now. Let's get a move on." at traffic lights or other cars/drivers. I guess retirement hasn't mellowed him out.
4. There are a ton of hotels in the Orlando area. I think there were like 4 Hilton hotels in the area so when I'd get into a cab to get back to my first hotel, I had to be really specific on the name. And many of the hotels are over-done and border on tacky. They kinda remind me of the hotels on the Vegas strip, which are over-done...but in a slightly different way.
   
5. The water out of the tap tastes and smells a bit funny. No, I'm not drinking the water, but you can taste it when you brush your teeth.
6. The hotel rooms smell funny. In both hotels, I was in a non-smoking room, but they smelled like smoke or Febreeze covering up the smoke smell.