Things To Do In SW Florida

SeaWorld Orlando’s next big ride will have an arctic theme, flying sensations, no artificial intelligence and go by the name Expedition Odyssey when it opens this spring.

The attraction’s name was revealed during a hard-hat tour of the construction site for members of the media Wednesday.

Expedition Odyssey will be a “flying theater” type of ride with seated passengers dangling in front of a curved screen that’s 50 feet in diameter. The images they’ll see will feature animals from the Arctic that were filmed during three two-week excursions spread over a year.

“We wanted to make sure that we truly captured everything that this incredible atmosphere has to offer,” said Conner Carr, corporate manager of rides and engineering for United Parks & Resorts, SeaWorld’s parent company.

It won’t be a computer-generated experience.

“Everything that guests will see during the ride experience is 100% real,” Carr said. “All of the animals, all of the landscapes, all of the adventure is truly real.” read more

TALLAHASSEE — In a new TV ad for his congressional campaign, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis touts that he’s “the one person fighting for homeowners.”

In fact, the ad states, “he oversaw the largest fine in history against an insurance company.” The video included a Tampa Bay Times headline from last year about state regulators fining Tampa-based Heritage Insurance $1 million for how it treated homeowners after Hurricane Ian.

Except, Patronis never explicitly came out in support of that fine when it was issued (and it wasn’t the largest).

The ad, “Fighting for Homeowners‚” was for Patronis’ race for Congressional District 1 in the western Panhandle. He faces a Democrat in the April 1 special election, which he’s expected to easily win.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, not Patronis’ Department of Financial Services, levied the fine against Heritage Insurance. The office found that the company was slow to respond to claims, slow to pay claims, used improperly licensed adjusters and kept poor records. read more

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street got some relief Wednesday after an encouraging report said inflation slowed last month by more than expected, and the U.S. stock market is scraping back a chunk of its sharp losses from recent weeks.

The S&P 500 was 1.2% higher in early trading, a day after it briefly fell more than 10% below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 145 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2% higher.

Companies in the artificial-intelligence industry were leading the way, after recently getting crushed by worries their prices had gone too stratospheric in the market’s run to record after record in recent years. Nvidia climbed 6.4% to trim its loss for the year so far to 13.8%. Server-maker Super Micro Computer rallied 6.8%, and GE Vernova, which is helping to power AI data centers, rose 5.8%.

Elon Musk’s Tesla, whose price had more than halved since mid-December, was heading toward its first back-to-back gain in a month. It added 7.8%. read more

Walt Disney World again has shared updates on the nighttime parade slated to debut this summer at Magic Kingdom, so it may be a good time to recap what we know – and don’t know yet – about “Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away.”

The parade was announced at a gathering of D23, Disney’s official fan club, last summer. “Starlight” will be the first nighttime parade in the theme park since October 2016, when the Main Street Electrical Parade wrapped its WDW run.

“There’s something so special about a nighttime show inside a Disney park. It’s a tradition that goes back more than 50 years to the Main Street Electrical Parade,” Michael Hundgen, Walt Disney World portfolio executive producer with Walt Disney Imagineering, said at a D23 session in Brazil last year.

“This new show, ‘Disney Starlight,’ will add to that legacy,” he said. “It uses the latest technology to tell all new stories with the characters that everybody absolutely loves.”

Judging from the illustrations of the ‘Starlight’ floats from Disney provided, the parade appears to be populated by old-school princesses and modern animated-movie characters. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. inflation slowed last month for the first time since September and a measure of underlying inflation fell to a four-year low, even as widespread tariffs threaten to send prices higher.

The consumer price index increased 2.8% in February from a year ago, Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed, down from 3% the previous month. Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, rose 3.1% from a year earlier, down from 3.3% in January. The core figure is the lowest since April 2021.

The declines were larger than economists expected, according to a survey by data provider FactSet. Yet they remain higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. And most economists still expect inflation will remain elevated this year as Trump’s tariffs kick in.

“Today’s cooler-than-expected reading was a breath of fresh air,” Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said. Yet she cautioned that the Fed is likely to keep its key rate unchanged for now until it sees further evidence of how the White House’s trade and immigration policies affect the economy. read more