Escaping Snowy New England for Freezing Florida, Feb 2015 Universal at Dusk and Dark 3/30

[tink1957]

Joining in on the fun. We just got back from our trip and hoping your report will help with the post vacation blues. We stayed offsite this time and our hotel is in the pic of your view from the HRH.

The Mummy is also my favorite ride...thanks for the pics.

Did plan B involve nexttable by any chance?

 

[natebenma]

Yes that one!! Yum! We couldn't even finish our goodies

I was impressed with that bakery- prices were really good and portions were huge!!! This is from our 2013 trip:

Joining in on the fun. We just got back from our trip and hoping your report will help with the post vacation blues. We stayed offsite this time and our hotel is in the pic of your view from the HRH.

The Mummy is also my favorite ride...thanks for the pics.

Did plan B involve nexttable by any chance?

, back to reality and to my report

What was the offsite resort? Is it one of the good neighbors?

Mummy rocks! I wish I could take pictures inside.

Oh, are you suggesting logging on to nexttable and making a reservation for Lombards? Oh I wish I had though of that- then marched right in and tell them "Yes, we DO have a reservation"

No, that's not what we did, but we didn't have to go far for Plan B.

 

[tink1957]

We were at the Doubletree and yes it's a partner hotel (the mirrored twin towers in the background of your pic) only a 10 minute walk to the parks.

We dined at Lombards for the first time this trip and I agree it's nothing special although the aquarium is nice...just your run of the mill seafood place. We did enjoy our food but don't feel like it's a must do like Mythos.

 

[natebenma]

We were at the Doubletree and yes it's a partner hotel (the mirrored twin towers in the background of your pic) only a 10 minute walk to the parks.

We dined at Lombards for the first time this trip and I agree it's nothing special although the aquarium is nice...just your run of the mill seafood place. We did enjoy our food but don't feel like it's a must do like Mythos.

Sounds great! My brother is going to US this studio and is staying at a partner hotel (not sure which one).

*spoiler alert* We do actually make it Lombard's later in the trip...

 

[natebenma]

Plan B: Leaky Cauldron


In my last installment, we had just been turned away from an empty Lombard’s Landing because we didn’t have a reservation.


Whatever!!!


We were right across the street from Diagon Alley. I wanted to eat at Leaky Cauldron and this was secretly my first choice for a meal on our arrival day. I explained to my family that it was the same set up as The Three Broomsticks. You order at a counter, and after you have your food, a house elf will help you find an open table.


Miraculously, my family agreed with my suggestion!


I love it when a plan comes together!!!



We ordered our meals-


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We were seated near the restaurant’s namesake:



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Ben and I shared the Ploughman’s Dinner- English Cheese, Crusty Bread, Field Green Salad, Roasted Tomatoes, Cornichon Pickles, Apple and Beet Salad, Branston Pickle and Scotch Eggs


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Mark got the Bangers and Mash


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Nate ordered the Fish and Chips


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We had 2 Frozen Butterbeers and 1 Hot Butterbeer, and two cups of water.



The total for the meal, after applying a 10% AAA discount, was $60.34. I thought this was totally reasonable for a delicious and filling meal. We shared everything and it was all great. My favorites were the Scotch egg and the bangers and mash. The hot butterbeer was a BIG hit with Nate and me, but Mark and Ben still prefer the frozen.



Continued in Next Post- First Look at “Diagon-al” Alley[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]

 

[natebenma]

"Diagon-al" Alley


With a delicious dinner under our belts, the boys were itching to shoot some aliens over at Men In Black.


But first, let’s do a very quick tour of the newest land at Universal Studios.


“Diagon-al” Alley (get it???)


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Here is a quick overview of pictures from the area.


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Back in “London”


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We will be back- maybe even later tonight!


Next Up: Universal at Dusk[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]

 

[natebenma]

Sorry for the absence!!!

I haven't had time to post here, but I will remedy that by posting a mega-update of the rest of our arrival day, in several installments.

 

[natebenma]

Universal at Dusk and Dark


We walked over to Men In Black and found that the ride was closed. The Team Members at the entrance told us exactly when the ride would be back up but then they flashed us with some sort of pen-light thingy. I think.







We glanced back towards London/Diagon Alley which looked gorgeous in the setting sun.







First stop was The Simpsons ride- Swoop, soar and smash your way through in this Adventure starring the world’s favorite animated family.

This is a great simulator ride, in one of those vehicles you sometimes see at shopping malls or Jordan’s Furniture Store. There are some neat 4-D effects. This one can induce motion-sickness. On our first visit to US we rode it twice in the same afternoon. I was the only one in the family who took Bonine that day and I was the only one who didn’t feel queasy after our second time.

Lockers are not necessary because you can put your personal items on the floor next to the ride vehicle. No single rider line on this attraction.










Here are a couple of pictures from the carnival-themed preshow to the preshow room









Continued

 

[natebenma]

Continued from Previous Post

After exiting the line, we walked through the rest of Springfield to see what was new in the ‘hood since our last visit.

















This is Kang & Kodos’ Twirl ‘n’ Hurl.







"Foolish humans!" Aliens Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons' take you into orbit on an all-new ride designed to make your head spin, your stomach tumble and your Glorb blow out. Say hello to many of your favorite Springfield citizens as you try to fry them with lasers. It’s good ol’ family fun!


We took the warning on this ride seriously and never opted to take an Intergalactic Spin


We walked by Mel's Diner. We have been advised that walking by is more advisable than actually stopping for food (although, Rob, did you have an ok meal here?)



We decided to try Transformers next. We visited a couple of months after the ride opened and we found that it went down a lot. I think Ben and Mark had only been on this once during our last trip. Nate and I rode twice then.



Transformers: The Ride-3D

Fight alongside Optimus Prime and the Autobots in an epic, 3-D battle against Megatron and the Decepticons.

This is another simulator-type ride and if you have been on Spiderman at Islands of Adventure, you have been on the same ride, but better. The queue for Transformers is loud, repetitive and boring. Blah, Blah, Blah “All Spark”, Blah, Blah, Blah. The ride is well done, but well, Transformers don’t do it for me. Maybe if I watched the movies.

Continued

 

[natebenma]

Continued

Next up was something on our wish list. On our last visit in 2013, Nate, Mark and I tried Rip Ride Rockit for the first time. Ben did not ride, but this year he was ready. Nate and I had the opportunity to ride again after dark and it was fantastic seeing the parks and City Walk all lit up while whipping along the tracks (listening to “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog)*. Since Mark didn’t join us on that ride, he really wanted to experience RRR at night.









Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit- Get ready to take your music for a ride on this outdoor roller coaster.


On this attraction, each rider gets to choose the music they will listen to during the ride. There is a menu of music genres, with a number of choices in each category.


However, there is also a way to listen to some hidden tracks…

Once the ride is underway, you press down on the ride logo (HRRR) for 10 seconds and a keypad will come up. Then you can program in a 3 digit code for the following songs:




Although I have tried to do this every time I ride, I have only successfully executed this move once- the aforementioned Rainbow Connection (#902) at night. If you fail to punch in the code in time, you end up with the default, so my normal soundtrack for this ride has been Gimme All Your Lovin’ by ZZ Top.

Does anyone know if you can still do this??? I have read mixed reports that this option may have been removed.


Ben loved his first ride on RRR:




When were done, although we were near the exit of US, we decided to go back and check on Men In Black, which is pretty much at the very back of the park.

We walked through Springfield and arrived at the attraction, which was fortunately open.



Men in Black Alien Attack- Test your alien-zapping skills in this amazing ride through MIB agent training. It’s never the same ride twice!

This ride requires that you store your loose articles in a locker (WHY???) and it does have Single Rider Line.

The Express Line (almost) always takes you to the vehicles on the left track.

This is a lot like Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin at Magic Kingdom. Of course with 3 guys in the family their is always a fierce competition to score the most points. At the end of the ride Will Smith (I mean agent J) tells you to "Push the red button" The person who does this gets an extra bonus, 100,000 I think.

Who won this round?

Who cares?!?

Continued in Next Post

 

[natebenma]

Continued

We headed back to Diagon Alley on our way out.






The line time for Escape from Gringott's said 30 minutes so that seemed pretty reasonable. I think it was actually 45 minutes for us to get through the line and ride, but it was good that we did because this ride is notorious for going down, as we experienced.



Escape from Gringott’s- Enter Gringotts™ bank and find yourself at the center of the action in this breathtaking new ride. Enjoy a multidimensional adventure alongside Harry and his friends.

Steel rollercoaster and motion-based dark ride with 3D-projections.

Here’s how the (shortened) version of the line queue goes:

We thankfully did not have to walk through the room with all of the line corrals (this time). That area adds about 40 minutes to the wait.

The line started for us right before you enter the amazing bank lobby where goblins are hard at work tallying up gold.






When you get through the lobby, you then go by some open vaults, then you walk by the office doors of some of the goblins.



At some point you get your family’s photo taken for a security badge.



Then you spend the next 10 minutes or so with giant white spots in your vision from the flash. Seriously!

I think the elevator is next that takes you below the bank. Then you go into a preshow room to get some instruction from Bill Weasley.



But you are not through waiting in line yet. There are stairs in the cavern that lead you up to where you get into your mine cart. Now, I’m not sure why we “descended’ so far in the elevator but then had to walk up the stairs to get to the ride level, but, oh well.








The ride was pretty awesome! I had been prepared for disappointment because a lot of the reviews I have read had people expecting more. I think the innovation of Forbidden Journey really raised the expectations for this ride.

Continued

 

[natebenma]

Continued from a few previous posts

After we escaped from Gringott’s, we saw a couple of fireworks over the tops of the buildings from


Universal’s Cinematic Spectacular (100 Years of Movie Memories) - features the most powerful scenes of some of Universal Pictures most iconic films, all projected on cutting-edge waterfall screens within the Universal Studios lagoon- surrounded by colorful, synchronized water fountains and pyrotechnics and all set to a powerful musical score.

We have not seen this show on our previous trips and we had just missed it tonight. But we still have 3 more nights we will be here. That should give us plenty of opportunities to watch this show for the first time. Right?






Night Night Universal Studios!

We walked back to the Hard Rock and stopped in at the club lounge for dessert. They were offering pound cake with strawberries and cookies.











We each got a plate of sweets and some water, we returned to our room and got ready for bed.

Despite our very late arrival in Orlando that afternoon, we had an excellent afternoon/evening in Universal Studios and we really did hit all of our must-dos:

Mummy
Simpsons
Transformers
Rip Ride Rockit
Men in Black
Escape from Gringotts

and a great dinner at Leaky Cauldron.


Next Up: Wizarding World of Harry Potter- Islands of Adventure: The Early Bird Catches the Snitch

 

[natebenma]

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. I haven't really abandoned this trip report, but I'm finding it hard to get over here and update. I am also simultaneously posting this report on the DIS trip report pages. It used to be easy to just copy the updates from there, however I am direct loading the pictures instead of going through Photobucket and it does not move over the photos when I just copy and paste.

I have a very thorough photo review of Forbidden Journey- I am going to link the 6 posts I have so you can check that out if you want. Then, in the next few days, I will probably do a similar writeup on Dragon Challenge and Flight of the Hippogriff.

Tuesday February 17- The Early Bird Catches the Snitch

Tuesday February 17

The Early Bird Catches the Snitch

We started the morning with breakfast in the club lounge at 7 am. It was not very crowded when we first arrived, but filled up within 10 minutes. Here is a link to pictures of the breakfast offerings.

Breakfast photos 1

Breakfast photos 2

Today was the warmest day of our trip, and we all chose to wear shorts and t-shirts to the parks.

A few weeks before our trip, the park with early opening for US resort guests changed from Universal Studios to Islands of Adventure. That was too bad, because that has been the park that has been open early for our two previous visits and it would have been nice to be able to go to Gringott’s first thing. But still, we walked to IoA entrance for the 8 am opening and eventually made it through the turnstiles. It probably took 10 minutes or so, but was not the worst wait we would have at the entry.

Once you get to Seussland, there are TMs (Team Members) who check to make sure you have resort keys to prove that you are staying onsite and are eligible for early entry.

Continuing on through Seussland and then the Lost Continent, you arrive at the entry to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. As many times as I have walked underneath this gate, I am always awed at being immersed in the magical world created by JK Rowling.



















As always we headed directly to Forbidden Journey. I think there was a 30 minute wait time every morning when we arrived here. In the next few posts, I am going to do a thorough review of the ride and post a lot of pictures. For me, a true Gryffindork, the queue through Hogwarts castle is almost better than the ride because of all of the Harry Potter details and references.

I will give anyone who wants it a pass through this section of the trip report without reading, 1) if you are not interested in Harry Potter’s world (I know there are some of you out there) or 2) if you have not yet visited the Wizarding World and you prefer to experience this without having a previous exposure to what you will find in the castle.




After our ride on Forbidden Journey, we all did Dragon Challenge (an extreme coaster) and Flight of the Hippogriff (not-so-extreme coaster). I’ll have pictures next time I post. We had hoped to go on the Hogwarts Express to take us to Kings Cross over in Universal Studios/Diagon Alley, but the train was either down or not running yet, so we decided to proceed through the rest of Islands of Adventure.


See you next time if you prefer to skip the next part or continue to the next posts.

 

[natebenma]

Harry Potter & the Forbidden Journey

Castle and Dungeon
Greenhouse
Corridors and Portraits
Dumbledore's Office
Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom, Part 1
Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom, Part 2
Gryffindor Common Room
Sorting Hat and Ride

 

[schumigirl]

Fabulous updates!

Oh it does take time doesn't it to do a long trippie........but worth it!

We were impressed with Simpsons area, even though not fans of the show.......and we love RRR too at night.

But enjoying following along your report