After 18 straight days of rain, soggy Central Florida wonders when it will end.(The Orlando Sentinel)

ORLANDO, Fla. _ The gray clouds at Orlando's Wet `N Wild on Monday morning didn't deter Sylvia Smith and her 14-year-old son, Samuel, from going about the day's mission: fun in the sun _ or the rain.

"We're going to swim whether it's raining or not," the Kissimmee resident said. "We have been planning this for three to four weeks. If there's thunder and lightning, then I'll get out of the water. But why not swim in the rain?"

After 18 straight days of rain across much of Central Florida, a region that thrives on sunshine is instead a soggy mess.

Tourists have had their vacations rained out. Construction crews have been sent home early. Troopers are responding to more traffic-accident calls. Roads are flooding; sinkholes are forming. And everyone wants to know when the daily monsoons are going to end.

"I would like to see it stop," said Doug Ross, president of Doug Ross Construction Services Inc. in Orlando. "I know how bad we need the rain, but as far as the construction industry, it bites really hard."

Lt. Chuck Williams of the Florida Highway Patrol said the wet weather is causing so many accidents that it's taking troopers 53 minutes on average to respond. The normal time is 35 minutes, he said.

In Maitland on Monday, at least five small sinkholes, some large enough to swallow a car, opened in an office-complex parking lot at 2301 Maitland Center Parkway. A section of the lot has been barricaded while workers fill some of the holes, Maitland Fire Department Lt. Rich Hamill said. On nearby Winderly Place, a 15-foot by 15-foot depression in the street formed, and the area was blocked off.