Vans Skatepark - Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

When you finally get through the paperwork, and $14 dollars later, the clock starts for a very short 2 hour session. I took that as a cue to snake as many of the slow-Florida locals as possible. Hey, time is money.

The park has all of the standard Vans skatelite street obstacles, a 4 foot mini spine ramp, and giant a 6 to 10 foot mini ramp, with everything in between in heights. The vert ramp is the standard set up, 40ish feet wide, 12 feet tall, an extension, metal coping, fast, nets around it. All well done skate terrain.

The biggest disappointment of the park though is the bowl. It starts out right, with a double deepend at about 8 feet and pool coping. But then about two thirds of the rest of the bowl is about 5 to 3 feet deep with really mellow transitions and way-way-way too much flat bottom. Not much flow in the bowl. Way too much flat bottom for any real speed lines. The temptation for the young ones to push across the flat bottom should tell it all. Bad use of cement. But we still sessioned it for a good hour of the two hour time limit, and had a good time. If you are in Orlando, you should at least go there for the novelty of it all, but it is nothing compared to the public parks in the rest of the country, and the $0 admission fees. We have about 8 minutes of Vans Orlando video playing on my site at: http://www.tonymisiano.com