Okay, first let me say that I didn't write this trip report out and I didn't take notes on my vacation either, so this will probably be a mishmash of things, but I hope it will be helpful to people who have planned a vacation to Universal. Also, there will be no pictures, sorry about that, but we didn't bother taking many and since I have no high speed access, downloading and uploading pictures takes WAY too much time for me. Also, the title to this report says, I'll tell you what we loved and what we didn't, so for most things I'll rate it as 'the great, the good, the bad or the ugly'!
First the cast,
Myself, age 47, wife, Mom and bank teller. I'm the obessive planner who has been on these boards since January asking a million questions about Univeral. Myself, DH and DS went to Univeral and IAO in May 2000, we didn't stay on site then, but in May the lines weren't bad. This time around we decided to stay on site at RPR, and we got the deal of 'stay five nights for the price of three'.
DH, age 47, great guy who loves to travel and loves amusement parks and will ride ANYthing!
DS, 15 year old son who is a great kid, he is a lot of fun and he makes us all laugh!
DS (okay, that is supposed to be dear sister, but DS is the same as dear son so I guess I'll just call her sister! ) She is 40, and is like my DH and will ride ANYthing! She had never been to Universal.
Last, but not least my two nieces, ages 13 and 10! Again, like their uncle (my DH) and their Mom they will ride ANYthing.
Okay, onto the good part now! The actual trip report!
We live WV, and so we leave on Saturday morning June 13 at 6:30am, the trip was going pretty good until we happened on a car wreck on Interstate 26 in SC and got stuck in traffic for 1 1/2 hours!!!! Although we hated the delay, what can you do? We couldn't actually see the wreck, but knew it was bad from the amount of emergency vehicles we saw going there. We all waited patiently and said a prayer for the people involved in the wreck. After the delay, we drove until we hit Bunswick GA and spent the night, on Sunday we countined on and we arrived at Royal Pacific Resort around 12:30. Check-in went very smoothly, I asked for tower 2 (later wish we'd asked for tower 1, as tower 2 was the farthest away from the boat tranportation). We got two rooms, one for my family and one for my sister and my nieces. We asked for adjoining rooms, they checked us in and sent us immediately to our rooms!!! As I've already stated we were in tower two, on the sixth level almost at the end of the hall, it was very quiet and we loved that. We checked out our rooms, very nice, very clean, and yes kind of small, but for three people it was fine. The only thing I had trouble with was the sink area is so small for women with make-up, hair dryers, a curling iron and a flat iron! But still it wasn't that big of a deal, we give RPR 'the Great'
Okay, it was around 1:30 and we decided to eat lunch at the Island's dining room, I just got an appetizer, egg rolls which was very good. DH got some sort of a chicken dish with pasta, I can't remember the name---sorry, but he loved it! Sister got the turkey club which was huge and piled high with turkey she really enjoyed it. I can't remember what the kids got, but we all enjoyed our meals. Islands dining room on our first time there, we'll give it 'the great'
We bought the tickets separately, so we headed to redeem ours at the will call ticket kiosk, oh I must add that my sister won one of the super bowl tickets so she headed off to guest services to redeem hers. The Kisok printed out our paper tickets and we went right in....well, everyone else did, me on the other hand had trouble with my finger prints and it took about 10 tries to finally get me in, it was kind of embarrassing! But the guy at the booth was very nice about it.
Now onto the parks, we chose IOA and decided to start with Suess Landing, we rode one fish, two fish, the train trolley ride and Cat and the Hat, they were all fun (especially Cat and the Hat!), but we decided we were really ready for some of the big rides! We give Suess landing 'the good' Next, we headed for DD, and although I'm usually not much of a loopy, go upside down kind of roller coaster girl, a few years ago in Disney I rode Rock N' Roller coaster and LOVED it, so I decided 'what the heck, I'm going to ride it, we got on ice and I thought before the ride was over, I'd DIE!!! Okay, stupid, stupid, stupid idea, I will never ride it again! My sister (who remember will ride anything) was even very dizzy when she got off, wasn't sure she loved it or not. My DS said he loved it though! That was good, because it used to be he wasn't very brave on rides (guess he takes after me in that catagory!). Anyway, we didn't rate DD yet, the rest of the family decided they would try it another day and ride Fire before they rated it. Next onto Spiderman (my family rode that back in 2000 when it was new and loved it then), we all LOVE, LOVE, LOVE spiderman! What a great ride, we rode that many, many times on the four and a half days we were there. We also rode Jurassic river ride, (another ride that was new in 2000) and we love that too! What fun, especially when you get to the top and just as you start down the big drop, look up at the t-rex and watch him bend his head to try to get a bite of you. Luckily, he missed everytime! So we all give Spiderman and Jurassic park 'the great'!
By now it's around 5:30 and we all all starving, so we decide to eat at Thunder Falls, I've read good things about this place on the boards, but when we got there it was closed! The parks stays open until 8:00 and the restaurant closes before 5:30, we'll call that 'the bad'! So we decide on Bubba gumps at Citywalk, mostly because my son loves the movie, we get there about 6:00ish and got a table quickly. We order the garlic bread YUM (the great), sister got the fried fish sandwich, it was huge and really good, DS got the shrimp po boy, it was just okay, too much bread, not enough sauce, the fried fish sandwich was better. DH had some kind of cajun type Maui-Maui and shrimp over garlic mashed potatoes (can't really remember the name of it ), it was really good though, he really liked it. I can't remember what I had, I know it was another type of Maui-Maui dish, but mine was served over rice, I really liked mine too! We gave Bubba Gump's 'the good, very close to 'the great'. The service was very good and several of the servers stopped by to see if we needed anything. And when my DS dropped his fork and asked for another one, our server said he'd have to answer some questions about the movie first, she asked him about 10 questions and he only missed one!
After that we headed back to our rooms, we were very tired, but had a 'great first day'!
I'll post day two tomorrow.
First the cast,
Myself, age 47, wife, Mom and bank teller. I'm the obessive planner who has been on these boards since January asking a million questions about Univeral. Myself, DH and DS went to Univeral and IAO in May 2000, we didn't stay on site then, but in May the lines weren't bad. This time around we decided to stay on site at RPR, and we got the deal of 'stay five nights for the price of three'.
DH, age 47, great guy who loves to travel and loves amusement parks and will ride ANYthing!
DS, 15 year old son who is a great kid, he is a lot of fun and he makes us all laugh!
DS (okay, that is supposed to be dear sister, but DS is the same as dear son so I guess I'll just call her sister! ) She is 40, and is like my DH and will ride ANYthing! She had never been to Universal.
Last, but not least my two nieces, ages 13 and 10! Again, like their uncle (my DH) and their Mom they will ride ANYthing.
Okay, onto the good part now! The actual trip report!
We live WV, and so we leave on Saturday morning June 13 at 6:30am, the trip was going pretty good until we happened on a car wreck on Interstate 26 in SC and got stuck in traffic for 1 1/2 hours!!!! Although we hated the delay, what can you do? We couldn't actually see the wreck, but knew it was bad from the amount of emergency vehicles we saw going there. We all waited patiently and said a prayer for the people involved in the wreck. After the delay, we drove until we hit Bunswick GA and spent the night, on Sunday we countined on and we arrived at Royal Pacific Resort around 12:30. Check-in went very smoothly, I asked for tower 2 (later wish we'd asked for tower 1, as tower 2 was the farthest away from the boat tranportation). We got two rooms, one for my family and one for my sister and my nieces. We asked for adjoining rooms, they checked us in and sent us immediately to our rooms!!! As I've already stated we were in tower two, on the sixth level almost at the end of the hall, it was very quiet and we loved that. We checked out our rooms, very nice, very clean, and yes kind of small, but for three people it was fine. The only thing I had trouble with was the sink area is so small for women with make-up, hair dryers, a curling iron and a flat iron! But still it wasn't that big of a deal, we give RPR 'the Great'
Okay, it was around 1:30 and we decided to eat lunch at the Island's dining room, I just got an appetizer, egg rolls which was very good. DH got some sort of a chicken dish with pasta, I can't remember the name---sorry, but he loved it! Sister got the turkey club which was huge and piled high with turkey she really enjoyed it. I can't remember what the kids got, but we all enjoyed our meals. Islands dining room on our first time there, we'll give it 'the great'
We bought the tickets separately, so we headed to redeem ours at the will call ticket kiosk, oh I must add that my sister won one of the super bowl tickets so she headed off to guest services to redeem hers. The Kisok printed out our paper tickets and we went right in....well, everyone else did, me on the other hand had trouble with my finger prints and it took about 10 tries to finally get me in, it was kind of embarrassing! But the guy at the booth was very nice about it.
Now onto the parks, we chose IOA and decided to start with Suess Landing, we rode one fish, two fish, the train trolley ride and Cat and the Hat, they were all fun (especially Cat and the Hat!), but we decided we were really ready for some of the big rides! We give Suess landing 'the good' Next, we headed for DD, and although I'm usually not much of a loopy, go upside down kind of roller coaster girl, a few years ago in Disney I rode Rock N' Roller coaster and LOVED it, so I decided 'what the heck, I'm going to ride it, we got on ice and I thought before the ride was over, I'd DIE!!! Okay, stupid, stupid, stupid idea, I will never ride it again! My sister (who remember will ride anything) was even very dizzy when she got off, wasn't sure she loved it or not. My DS said he loved it though! That was good, because it used to be he wasn't very brave on rides (guess he takes after me in that catagory!). Anyway, we didn't rate DD yet, the rest of the family decided they would try it another day and ride Fire before they rated it. Next onto Spiderman (my family rode that back in 2000 when it was new and loved it then), we all LOVE, LOVE, LOVE spiderman! What a great ride, we rode that many, many times on the four and a half days we were there. We also rode Jurassic river ride, (another ride that was new in 2000) and we love that too! What fun, especially when you get to the top and just as you start down the big drop, look up at the t-rex and watch him bend his head to try to get a bite of you. Luckily, he missed everytime! So we all give Spiderman and Jurassic park 'the great'!
By now it's around 5:30 and we all all starving, so we decide to eat at Thunder Falls, I've read good things about this place on the boards, but when we got there it was closed! The parks stays open until 8:00 and the restaurant closes before 5:30, we'll call that 'the bad'! So we decide on Bubba gumps at Citywalk, mostly because my son loves the movie, we get there about 6:00ish and got a table quickly. We order the garlic bread YUM (the great), sister got the fried fish sandwich, it was huge and really good, DS got the shrimp po boy, it was just okay, too much bread, not enough sauce, the fried fish sandwich was better. DH had some kind of cajun type Maui-Maui and shrimp over garlic mashed potatoes (can't really remember the name of it ), it was really good though, he really liked it. I can't remember what I had, I know it was another type of Maui-Maui dish, but mine was served over rice, I really liked mine too! We gave Bubba Gump's 'the good, very close to 'the great'. The service was very good and several of the servers stopped by to see if we needed anything. And when my DS dropped his fork and asked for another one, our server said he'd have to answer some questions about the movie first, she asked him about 10 questions and he only missed one!
After that we headed back to our rooms, we were very tired, but had a 'great first day'!
I'll post day two tomorrow.