Surprise Vacation

On Monday, May 25, we woke the kids up around 5am.  We quietly told them to grab their pillow & a stuffed animal, and head out to the car – no need to even get dressed…pajamas are fine.  Zachary quickly guessed that we might be going on vacation, and then asked if we were going to Universal.  Oh boy – this was going to be harder to pull off than we thought!  We told him to just get in the car, and we’d tell him when we got closer.  Once they realized we were heading towards Florida, they pretty much settled on Universal as our destination.  But we didn’t confirm it until we were getting off the highway at the Universal exit.  Lol!  We arrived a little before 1:00, and were able to get checked in to our hotel room.  Then surprise #2 – we were heading into the parks RIGHT THEN!

We decided to go to Universal Orlando first.  Let me just tell you how awesome the Express Pass is!  We got it for free, since we stayed on Universal property, and we didn’t wait long at all for most rides.  Liam loved the simulator rides, and Zachary was excited about the roller coasters.  We rode a few rides in the front of the park before heading back into the new Diagon Alley.  Oh.My.Goodnes.  That place was AMAZING!!  I could have stayed in there all day, even though there was really only one ride – it was just so authentic, and it made you feel like you were in the movie.  We ate dinner at the Leaky Cauldron, and then noticed that the line for the Gringotts ride wasn’t that long.  So we decided to go ahead and get in line.  That was probably our longest wait (no express pass on that ride), but it was so worth it!  Liam wasn’t a fan, but the rest of us enjoyed it.  I couldn’t believe how much we got done just in that first day.  We were probably there for about 7 hours, and we rode just about everything!  I had been so worried about how we were going to get it all in during our short trip, but express passes for the win!  We also had our first butter beers (YUM!) and even had some butter beer ice cream for dessert!  The boys also picked out wands from Ollivanders.  Liam picked out Sirius Black’s wand, and Zachary picked out one that was supposedly based off of his birthday.

 

The next morning, we decided to head over to Islands of Adventure first.  We were able to get in an hour early (because of staying on property), so of course we headed straight back to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, to ride the original HP ride.  This was another long-ish wait, but doing it first thing, when the park opened, was really the only way to do this ride.  They have really done the Harry Potter worlds up right – every single detail was spot on!  I loved going into the shops – Zonko’s, Ollivanders, The Three Broomsticks…all the places from the books are brought to life.  We spent a little more than half the day in Islands of Adventure, before taking the Hogwarts Express back over to Universal Orlando.  We spent the rest of the day over there.  We had dinner, and then left around 6-ish maybe?  We’d been on the go since 8am, and we were tired.  So we went back to the hotel and went to the pool for a little bit to cool off and relax.  It was a nice way to end the day.

On Wednesday, our last day, we started off at Universal again.  At this point, we had pretty much ridden everything we wanted to at least once.  So we spent the day re-riding our favorites.  Then we took the Hogwarts Express back over to Islands of Adventure (we had heard it was different in both directions, so we wanted to make sure we did it both ways).  We spent a little more time there, re-riding some favorite rides, but then decided to head back over to Universal one last time.  Back to the Hogwarts Express.  We found ourselves tired by around 4:00.  We had ridden everything we wanted to at least 2, sometimes 3, times – we felt like we had conquered the parks!  So we went back to the hotel to drop off some stuff, then took the boat back to CityWalk for dinner.  We decided on the Hard Rock Café.  After dinner, we went back to the pool for a bit, before calling it a day on our trip.

For a little bit, I kind of felt like we were cheating on Disney World.  We love Disney – always will.  But Universal is amazing too!  I think our kids were at the perfect age for it right now too!  With Liam being scared of big rides, he sat out on a lot more, but he didn’t seem to mind – I think he enjoyed sitting down and resting.  The details in each of the “lands” was just amazing.  One of the days we ate in the Simpsons land.  They had a Moe’s, and a Krusty Burger.  Josh got a Duff Beer, and I had a Buzz Cola with my lunch.  Then the butter beer in the Harry Potter world.  We had it cold and frozen – it was delicious both ways, but I preferred it cold.  Zachary also begged for the giant donut from Simpsons land – we gave in and bought it, and then shared it for dessert after we swam on our last night.  It was surprisingly good!

You could tell a lot of the rides were newer, or updated (as opposed to many of the rides at Disney that have been the same since I was a kid).  They have done a really nice job!  I was so worried we wouldn’t be able to do everything in our short trip, but this turned out to be the perfect amount of time!  I’m not sure what we would have done with another day.  One less day would have been tough, but we would have made it work – we would have just ridden everything only once, probably.  The 3^rd day allowed us to pick our favorites and ride them again.  Liam loved the Spiderman ride, and the Simpsons ride.  Zachary loved the big roller coasters.  Josh loved the Transformers ride and the roller coasters.  I loved the Minion ride and the roller coasters and the Gringotts ride.  It was so much fun, and I can’t wait to go back!!