TODAY Show & Get Up And Go Kayaking
Can you believe it?! The TODAY Show came out to paddle with us at Rock Springs at Kings Landing! We had less than 1 week to prepare for the big event, but the energy was at an all time high! Our CEO & Founder, Justin Buzzi, got the call to paddle with TODAY Show host, Dylan Dreyer. We quickly worked to find a few of our tour guides to help paddle some of the crew that was needed for the shoot. Justin’s mom, Karen, also got to come on the adventure and paddle with us on the water.
We wanted to paddle out first thing in the morning to have as much peaceful time on the water as possible. We started our adventure right at 8am. We had camera guys, a sound guy, staff, and of course Dylan out for the experience. Right as Dylan arrived she met with Justin and off they want to start their adventure! What better way to show off the “real” Orlando, beyond the theme parks?!
Our Rock Springs location at Kings Landing is where we started the entire business in 2016 and it felt like a true full circle moment! The National TV recognition is amazing, and we have been fortunate enough that several of our locations have also hit some amazing press like our Shell Key Preserve location being named ‘best activity in the USA‘, or our Weeki Wachee location getting acknowledged by Forbes for their sustainability efforts, or even our Winter Park location being featured on MTV’s Teen Mom 2!
We were so excited to be able to share this experience with some of our staff members as well, even though they’d be in for quite the workout! Here’s a fun shot of Jacob paddling the sound guy!
As Dylan and Justin discussed the business and the waterway, she couldnt help but notice the serenity and feeling completely “secluded” from Orlando, despite only being about a 40 minute drive. As we started our way up the crystal clear run Justin joked, “Welcome to Jurassic Park” and Dylan immediately felt like she was in a hidden jungle. After about 20 minutes of paddling we entered a part of the waterway that is known as “Emerald Cut”. Emerald Cut is the perfect name for this part of the paddle as the water is a bright greenish blue and the trees are vibrant green everywhere you look. We used this stop as our midway point before heading back and sharing more stories about our conservation efforts and also our mission. Get Up And Go Kayaking is built around 3 core principles: Impact, Experience, and Sustainability. Dylan got to hear about different ways that we strive to make meaningful impact with our tours while being experience driven and focused on our sustainability efforts.
DID YOU KNOW: A portion of every Rock Springs tour is given back to conservation efforts!
We soon made it back to our launch point at Kings Landing but before we said our goodbyes, we had to give a little surprise-and-delight (as we love to do here at Get Up And Go Kayaking)! Justin grabbed a custom gift box for Dylan and Phoebe (who was so gracious in helping with logistics/planning) filled with some goodies. We end each tour by giving guests a custom sticker of the location that they just paddled with us, so of course they all got stickers as well! As guests collect more stickers they can unlock some seriously awesome prizes from our loyalty program! Karen got to handle one of the big rigs as we cleaned up the kayaks and sent Dylan off to her next Orlando adventure!
WE ARE SO THANKFUL. Seriously, what an honor to be featured on the TODAY Show. Something that many of us grew up watching and loving and still tuning into all these years later – a staple in many households. We can’t say ‘thank you’ enough to the staff and team at Kings Landing as well as the Get Up And Go Kayaking Staff that traveled to help make the experience as smooth as possible. A huge shoutout to Jeremy, Jacob, Zach, Bry, Karen, the team at TODAY Show and everyone at Visit Orlando that made this happen!
BONUS:
IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE READING THIS ON MAY 22ND, USE CODE “TODAY” AT ANY LOCATION TO RECEIVE 15% OFF YOUR NEXT TOUR WITH US.
**Only applicable to public tours**
