luke
Señor Mejor
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2006
- Messages
- 4,028
Ok so my first trip report so go easy on me, hopefully I'll get some of it done before I'm back to work next week and then will try and keep it going 
I also didn't take any kind of notes so hopefully my memory will hold up for the most part
Cast: Luke (me, surprisingly) and Paula
Day 1 - Thursday 5th August
Up bright and early and Paula's mum arrived to drive us to Manchester Airport.
Nice quick journey of a bout 30 minutes and we were at a fairly empty check in counter and with no real wait we ready to check in. We got great seats, in a two seater configuration at the rear of the plane with some sneaky extra legroom for Paula next to the window due to how the plane tapers at the back
It was torsie24 who summed up recently how a flight to Orlando feels, basically quick and slow at the same time where time can seem to stand still but also speeds by - and this was exactly how the flight went. We ate, we drank, I listened to the whole archive of Ricky Gervais XFM shows I'd downloaded before we left and even crammed in a little snooze while Paula had a bit of a read.
The flight was uneventful and even a little quicker than sometimes so even after leaving Manchester slightly late we arrived in Orlando about 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. And here was the drawback to our seats - we were last to leave the plane and on arrival at immigration we were greeted by a queue to rival Test Track's! After winding round the new (to us) queue set up we were through in about 40 minutes after, oddly, being seen by the exact same immigration clerk as October 2008
We traipsed through the terminal at MCO after picking up our luggage fairly quickly, and found our way to the Hertz desk where we had our hire car reserved. After the usual turning down of their upgrades we were pointed in the direction of the parking garage and found our car, a Chevy Cobalt. I reached in for the keys and went to open the boot with the remote, only to find that no amount of button pushing would make it work! Paula took the keys over to the helpdesk and came back telling me that the remote didn't work. Now it's a stupid thing to get annoyed by, but it did annoy me so again Paula went over to the desk and we were given a choice of some random Mazda, or a Beetle!
Now I would never fancy driving a Beetle at home, but couldn't resist having a little Herbie for the next two weeks (in and almost DIS green colour too
) so without further a thought we took that one and crammed our cases into a combination of his boot and back seat.
Sat Nav set on my iPhone and off we drove headed for the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal, our first stay onsite there. Despite my instincts to always think I knew best and drive the way I thought I followed the sat nav's instructions to the letter, and as would happen for the rest of the holiday, it (or Jane as we called it, thanks to it's voice settings) we got to our destination easily with no fuss nor problems!
Nice easy check in and we arrived at our room which was on the bottom floor which is where some barking pets seemed to be residing, which probably would have been a pain if we'd A)been there for more than one night, or B)not already used our 'complaint' for the day at Hertz - us Brits really don't like to complain.
Sorry for the room pics, these early photo were all taken on my phone rather than the camera
A quick rest then we set off towards the water launch to the parks and after a nice boat ride we decided on Universal Studios.
Once in, we went on Jimmy Neutron which we'd never done before, which was ok but barring Spongebob and the Rugrats I was kind of lost on who most people were, and the 'birdy song' bit made us feel a bit sick
After that it was mainly wandering round, looking in a few shops including Paula's favourite Betty Boop one then grabbed a quick hotdog and fries to share over at Nathan's which was ok (well, it was probably pretty good but we were both tired by now) and made our first good use of our Express Pass jumping past a half hour wait for Jaws where we had a fun captain.
I love this ride even though some people are a bit scathing of it these days!
Some more wandering round and I decided I might as well do Hollywood Rip Ride Rock-it now as any time
The queue was about an hour but by all accounts it was always a long wait so that was ok. I got the front seat but for some reason the song selection bit didn't work so all that thinking of which song I'd use while the flatscreens round the queueing area was a waste
Overall it's a pretty good coaster and worth doing
It was closing time by now, and we were dead on our feet so on leaving the Studios we had a quick check at the lines for the boat back and decided it would be better to walk, which is a fairly easy and quick walk, reminiscent of walking back to the Santa Fe or Cheyenne at Disneyland Paris.
A bit of channel flicking in bed was about all there was left this day, which I always enjoy doing in America (nice to see a hotel that has a HDTV offers HD channels for once!) then it was off to sleep to get ourselves ready for a trip to Hogwarts in the morning
I also didn't take any kind of notes so hopefully my memory will hold up for the most part
Cast: Luke (me, surprisingly) and Paula
Day 1 - Thursday 5th August
Up bright and early and Paula's mum arrived to drive us to Manchester Airport.
Nice quick journey of a bout 30 minutes and we were at a fairly empty check in counter and with no real wait we ready to check in. We got great seats, in a two seater configuration at the rear of the plane with some sneaky extra legroom for Paula next to the window due to how the plane tapers at the back
It was torsie24 who summed up recently how a flight to Orlando feels, basically quick and slow at the same time where time can seem to stand still but also speeds by - and this was exactly how the flight went. We ate, we drank, I listened to the whole archive of Ricky Gervais XFM shows I'd downloaded before we left and even crammed in a little snooze while Paula had a bit of a read.
The flight was uneventful and even a little quicker than sometimes so even after leaving Manchester slightly late we arrived in Orlando about 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. And here was the drawback to our seats - we were last to leave the plane and on arrival at immigration we were greeted by a queue to rival Test Track's! After winding round the new (to us) queue set up we were through in about 40 minutes after, oddly, being seen by the exact same immigration clerk as October 2008
We traipsed through the terminal at MCO after picking up our luggage fairly quickly, and found our way to the Hertz desk where we had our hire car reserved. After the usual turning down of their upgrades we were pointed in the direction of the parking garage and found our car, a Chevy Cobalt. I reached in for the keys and went to open the boot with the remote, only to find that no amount of button pushing would make it work! Paula took the keys over to the helpdesk and came back telling me that the remote didn't work. Now it's a stupid thing to get annoyed by, but it did annoy me so again Paula went over to the desk and we were given a choice of some random Mazda, or a Beetle!
Now I would never fancy driving a Beetle at home, but couldn't resist having a little Herbie for the next two weeks (in and almost DIS green colour too
) so without further a thought we took that one and crammed our cases into a combination of his boot and back seat. Sat Nav set on my iPhone and off we drove headed for the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal, our first stay onsite there. Despite my instincts to always think I knew best and drive the way I thought I followed the sat nav's instructions to the letter, and as would happen for the rest of the holiday, it (or Jane as we called it, thanks to it's voice settings) we got to our destination easily with no fuss nor problems!
Nice easy check in and we arrived at our room which was on the bottom floor which is where some barking pets seemed to be residing, which probably would have been a pain if we'd A)been there for more than one night, or B)not already used our 'complaint' for the day at Hertz - us Brits really don't like to complain
.
Sorry for the room pics, these early photo were all taken on my phone rather than the camera
A quick rest then we set off towards the water launch to the parks and after a nice boat ride we decided on Universal Studios.
Once in, we went on Jimmy Neutron which we'd never done before, which was ok but barring Spongebob and the Rugrats I was kind of lost on who most people were, and the 'birdy song' bit made us feel a bit sick
After that it was mainly wandering round, looking in a few shops including Paula's favourite Betty Boop one then grabbed a quick hotdog and fries to share over at Nathan's which was ok (well, it was probably pretty good but we were both tired by now) and made our first good use of our Express Pass jumping past a half hour wait for Jaws where we had a fun captain.
I love this ride even though some people are a bit scathing of it these days!
Some more wandering round and I decided I might as well do Hollywood Rip Ride Rock-it now as any time
The queue was about an hour but by all accounts it was always a long wait so that was ok. I got the front seat but for some reason the song selection bit didn't work so all that thinking of which song I'd use while the flatscreens round the queueing area was a waste
Overall it's a pretty good coaster and worth doing
It was closing time by now, and we were dead on our feet so on leaving the Studios we had a quick check at the lines for the boat back and decided it would be better to walk, which is a fairly easy and quick walk, reminiscent of walking back to the Santa Fe or Cheyenne at Disneyland Paris.
A bit of channel flicking in bed was about all there was left this day, which I always enjoy doing in America (nice to see a hotel that has a HDTV offers HD channels for once!) then it was off to sleep to get ourselves ready for a trip to Hogwarts in the morning
