Things To Do In SW Florida

Cruisers will be able to party like it’s 1999 at sea next year as a stage show themed to musical icon Prince is coming to the new Norwegian Aqua when it begins sailing from Port Canaveral.

Norwegian Cruise Line announced “Revolution: A Celebration of Prince” would be one of two new productions headed to the ship’s main stage developed by NCL’s in-house production team. The second, “Elements: The World Expanded,” is a sequel to a popular existing show.

Norwegian Aqua is the first of what the line is calling its Prima Plus class, 10% larger than 2021’s Prima and 2023’s Viva. Aqua will begin seven-night sailings of Caribbean itineraries from Port Canaveral beginning in April 2025 before migrating to New York in August and then back to Florida, but sailing out of Miami from October 2025-April 2026.

The Prince tribute show was done in partnership with Prince Legacy, LLC and Primary Wave Music, and will lean into the hits of late musician who died in 2016, including “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Delirious” and “Purple Rain.” during a concert-like experience. read more

An ownership group recently repurposed a vacant movie theater in Sanford into a singular shooting attraction that offers state-of-the-art training facilities for law enforcement as well as immersive shooting experiences for the public.

Decision Tactical, located in a nearly 42,000-square-foot building at 430 Towne Center Cir., opened in January in a former 10-room United Artists Theater and offers an example of how to repurpose obsolete movie venues. Decision Tactical first began operations in 2018 in a 3,000-square-foot facility in Longwood but moved into the new building as it grew the concept. The owners purchased the current building in 2022 for $4.1 million.

The facility doesn’t use live ammunition. Instead, employees use a proprietary method on-site to modify Glock handguns that shoot bursts of air from a CO2 cartridge, simulating real bullets. This allows law enforcement and members of the public to improve shooting skills and acumen in a realistic yet safe setting.

Many local law enforcement agencies — including Sanford, Seminole County, Altamonte Springs, and Orlando use the training facility, as do federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration. In its current configuration, Decision Tactical offers a target shooting range, an obstacle course with targets, and three interactive scenarios. read more

DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I booked three nonrefundable airline tickets for my wife and me on United Airlines to fly from Orlando to Rome. United resold the middle seat between us on three of the five flights. I asked for a refund, but United is telling me that I can’t get my money back, since I purchased nonrefundable tickets.

But how can they resell the seats I paid for? I’ve sent emails to the executive contacts for United on your website, but United won’t even give me a travel credit.Can you help me get the $660 back I spent for the extra seat?

— Leigh Roberts, Winter Garden, Florida

ANSWER: United Airlines should have kept the middle seat (that you paid for) empty. United offers the option of buying an extra seat for the same price as your original ticket, if you need more room. This obligates United to keep the seat empty; it can’t resell the seat halfway through the flight.

Your case brings up a long-standing grievance among air travelers. When you have a nonrefundable ticket and can’t make your flight, your airline can resell the ticket, collecting money for the same seat twice. This strikes many air travelers as unfair. In the past, lawmakers have suggested legislating this unfairness and mandating that an airline should refund a nonrefundable ticket if it can resell the seat. But so far, nothing has passed. read more

A 35-acre Osceola County park on the southern shore of Lake Toho is set to get a $19.5 million “glamping” upgrade — with dozens of new lodging units, an amphitheater and an upgraded restaurant — but the proposal is stirring controversy amid statewide debate about the appropriate amount of development in parks.

Environmental advocates are objecting to the plans for Southport Regional Park, which sits just east of the Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve and is home to wildlife including protected bald eagles, endangered Everglades snail kites and threatened sandhill cranes.

“It sets a bad precedent of selling public land for private ownership and private development,” said Marjorie Holt, Central Florida Sierra Club’s conservation chair. “It now shows Osceola is not committed to maintaining a wildlife-friendly habitat.”

The developer — Boggy Creek Adventures, which operates an airboat concession at the park — insists the project will be sensitively done. But it also comes at a touchy time, in the wake of the August rollout of a controversial plan by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to install recreational amenities including golf courses, pickleball courts and lodges with up to 350 rooms at nine state parks. read more

SpaceX is bringing the four crew members of Polaris Dawn with a planned splashdown landing off the coast of Florida early Sunday.

The Crew Dragon Resilience which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday is slated to land at 3:36 a.m. off the coast of the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico.

It will mark the completion of the five-day orbital trip taken by billionaire Jared Isaacman and his crewmates Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. The quartet launched from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday on the first of up to three missions as part of the Polaris Program, a partnership between SpaceX and Isaacman, who was making his second trip to space after 2021’s Inspiration4 mission.

As part of the partnership, Isaacman’s trips are designed to test out innovations for SpaceX, and both Gillis and Menon became the first SpaceX employees to fly to space.

Billionaire, SpaceX employee crewmate make history with 1st commercial spacewalk

The highlight of the trip has been the first commercial spacewalk, which Isaacman and Gillis performed on Thursday with each venturing outside the Crew Dragon Resilience for a little more than 10 minutes each while connected with a 12-foot-long tether. read more