It’s Horrific and Epic.

[disneyAndi14]

Hello There
I wanted to add my Universal, HHN, and Epic portion of my trip here! I travel with my daughter and we love HHN! We did the premium scream this year and 1 regular night with EP. We spent the first 7 nights at WDW and will have 2. Ignitable a HRH and 2 nights at Helios. My name is Caroline and my daughter is Andi! You can find my full TR on the WDW trip report board if interested!
Today was moving day! We said goodbye to The YC and Disney. We ended this portion of the trip with another Mickey waffle meal. We both had the kids meal and Andi got bacon to give to me. Double bacon with Mickey waffles makes for a great morning.

Goodbye YC, we love you.

I ordered a Lyft at about 11:00am for our ride over to The Hard Rock Hotel (HRH).

This will be our first stay at HRH. It is very close to the entrance of US and this was perfect for our next couple of days.

We arrived and checked in and our room was ready, yay!






The room was on the 6th floor towards the end of the hallway" we like this, it is usually more quiet away from the elevator area. Here are some pictures of the room and our view. I liked the hotel and the rooms are fine but overall it is my least favorite of the three premier resorts. My favorite is Portofino Bay and Royal Pacific as my 2nd. What I usually do is look for the best AP deal for the premier resorts and pick that one. HRH is usually the most expensive but this time it was the least expensive.
Our Hotel view

We settled in and took a little rest before heading out to Citywalk. The walk was really nice and very convenient. I would say a 5-8 minute walk including the security check point.

We wanted to have a later lunch at Toothsome’s Chocolate Emporium before going to US for HHN.

Our plan was to do the stay and scream for Fallout. You get a wristband and can line up earlier than guests who only have the HHN tickets and not US tickets. We have APs so we could participate in this.

We walked over to the restaurant around 2:15pm for our 2:30pm reservation.

Andi picked this restaurant and I have always enjoyed our meals/drinks/dessert here,

We were seated quickly and decided to share the Wild Mushroom Risotto with chicken.

We also each ordered the seasonal pumpkin spice martini.

This was delicious! I could have drank several if they weren’t so expensive.

The risotto was delicious as well.

Penelope and Jacques came by to say hello and to ask about the Horror Nights. They said it maybe too scary for them! I know how they feel!

We finished our meal and headed out to Universal Studios.

Follow me to the scary business

 

[Robo56]

Reading along on your trip report Caroline….So nice to see you and your daughter enjoying another Mom and daughter vacation.

The Pumpkin Spice martinis look yummy.

Good to hear your experience at Toothsome was a good one.

 

[hardcorestitch]

Hello There
I wanted to add my Universal, HHN, and Epic portion of my trip here! I travel with my daughter and we love HHN! We did the premium scream this year and 1 regular night with EP. We spent the first 7 nights at WDW and will have 2. Ignitable a HRH and 2 nights at Helios. My name is Caroline and my daughter is Andi! You can find my full TR on the WDW trip report board if interested!
Today was moving day! We said goodbye to The YC and Disney. We ended this portion of the trip with another Mickey waffle meal. We both had the kids meal and Andi got bacon to give to me. Double bacon with Mickey waffles makes for a great morning.

Goodbye YC, we love you.

I ordered a Lyft at about 11:00am for our ride over to The Hard Rock Hotel (HRH).

This will be our first stay at HRH. It is very close to the entrance of US and this was perfect for our next couple of days.

We arrived and checked in and our room was ready, yay!
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The room was on the 6th floor towards the end of the hallway" we like this, it is usually more quiet away from the elevator area. Here are some pictures of the room and our view. I liked the hotel and the rooms are fine but overall it is my least favorite of the three premier resorts. My favorite is Portofino Bay and Royal Pacific as my 2nd. What I usually do is look for the best AP deal for the premier resorts and pick that one. HRH is usually the most expensive but this time it was the least expensive.
Our Hotel view
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We settled in and took a little rest before heading out to Citywalk. The walk was really nice and very convenient. I would say a 5-8 minute walk including the security check point.

We wanted to have a later lunch at Toothsome’s Chocolate Emporium before going to US for HHN.

Our plan was to do the stay and scream for Fallout. You get a wristband and can line up earlier than guests who only have the HHN tickets and not US tickets. We have APs so we could participate in this.

We walked over to the restaurant around 2:15pm for our 2:30pm reservation.

Andi picked this restaurant and I have always enjoyed our meals/drinks/dessert here,

We were seated quickly and decided to share the Wild Mushroom Risotto with chicken.
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We also each ordered the seasonal pumpkin spice martini.
View attachment 1017659
This was delicious! I could have drank several if they weren’t so expensive.

The risotto was delicious as well.

Penelope and Jacques came by to say hello and to ask about the Horror Nights. They said it maybe too scary for them! I know how they feel!
View attachment 1017660
We finished our meal and headed out to Universal Studios.

Follow me to the scary business

Awww it was too soon for you to leave Disney… but hopefully you’re enjoying Universal!

 

[disneyAndi14]

We entered US and got our wristbands for the stay and scream area, we had some time to do ET, along the way we stopped in the SpongeBob store, I got Andi’s picture with Gary.

The Cat Lady’s House

Next we rode ET and MIB before going to the stay and scream area. We were able to enter Fallout early so we could do this house twice. It was hot waiting, I drank a lot of water! US has Coke freestyle machines and you can fill your water all over the park and the water is cold!

A lady in front of us went to lay on the ground because she was feeling ill from the heat. Park medics came to assist her. The heat is no joke! She was sitting up in a wheelchair soon drinking water.

We did Fallout twice then continued on to more of the Haunted Houses. We had express pass for the night which was really needed even for a Wednesday night in early September. The wait times were all 40+ minutes.



We really enjoyed all the houses tonight with some great scares! Terrifier and 5 nights at Freddie’s had the longest lines but we got in each house in 15-20 minutes with stand by waits of over 100 minutes.

We saw a few characters walking around the scare zones, the chainsaw guys always get me!

The toxic 20s, be careful of toxic ooze!

The food lines are incredibly long. We really wanted the giant cheese stick but the line was crazy long.

We got the twisted tater chips this year. I like the twisted tater on a stick better. The chips were pretty good, seasoned with a ranch dressing.

I thought the big Transformer on the building looked cool in the night sky.

I wanted the famous pizza fries, which are iconic at HHN.

A simple snack which are weirdly delicious, it is french fries, pizza sauce, sausage, pepperoni, and cheese. Andi had some of the fries without the meat. Andi tried a couple of the specialty drinks and I would take a sip or two.

We didn’t watch any of the shows tonight. We finished all 10 houses doing one twice by 11:30pm and decided to head out.

I got a few pictures of the statues, Andi by Art the Clown from Terrifier.

We really love HHN and I am glad we got to go twice this trip.

Goodbye Horror Nights until next year!

Steps 28,786

Tomorrow is our first take it easy day, haha, we still visit two parks, the dead coconut club, Pat O’Brien’s restaurant and Fat Tuesdays!

Stay tuned!

 

[disneyAndi14]

Reading along on your trip report Caroline….So nice to see you and your daughter enjoying another Mom and daughter vacation.

The Pumpkin Spice martinis look yummy.

Good to hear your experience at Toothsome was a good one.

Thank you! I had to pause for a bit because I was back at WDW and USO last week!
The martini was delicious could easily be a dessert!

 

[disneyAndi14]

Awww it was too soon for you to leave Disney… but hopefully you’re enjoying Universal!

Haha very true, it is hard to leave! Trips go by very fast! We love Universal and Andi is a huge fan now that she is older!

 

[disneyAndi14]

This is a synopsis of each house and my order of favorite to least, all the houses were great this year, in my opinion!

#1 El Artisa A Spanish Haunting, this was amazing and an original US house

#2 Galkin Monsters of the North, another amazing original house with large puppets and a beautiful set.

#3 Terrifier, this is a movie franchise I have never seen. The clown Art in the house was crazy scary and funny at the same time. This was a gory house with many jump scares!

#4 Graves of Flesh, very creepy original US House, you descend deep into the catacombs of a graveyard!

#5 Five Nights at Freddie’s, based on a video game and movie, I saw the movie before this trip and I thought it was just meh, the house was really cool with the actual animatronics from the movie set and puppets from Jim Henson’s company.

#6 Jason Universe, based on all the Friday the 13th movies so many jump scares in this one.

#7 Hatchet and Chains Demon Bounty Hunters, this is an original house with a cool western set, a train and a lot of jump scares!

#8 Dolls Let’s Play Dead, an original house where we our doll size and this naughty girl does terrible things to her dolls, like a R rated Sid from Toy Story!

#9 Fallout, this is based on the Amazon Prime series post nuclear war, I watched the series to get ready for the house. I really liked the series, the house was not that great, it wasn’t really scary I thought it could have been better based on the show.

#10 The Horror of the Wyatt Sicks, this was based on the professional franchise in the WWE smack down brand. Like fun house characters based on Bray Wyatt who is now dead. I thought the house was cool with big huge scare actors but I didn’t know anything about it. I think it was better than Fallout for a House but I gave 9 to Fallout because I knew more about the series.

 

[disneyAndi14]

Hello There!

Today was our rest day, well what we call a rest day!

We didn’t set an alarm and took our time this morning.

I did make note and we still headed out around 9:15am. Our plan was to spend some time at US before going over to IOA on the Hogwarts Express.

Andi wanted to check out the Wicked exhibit so we headed there first. Here are the witches starting our day. Are we good or bad? you decide!


Our plan was open, whatever the heart desired today. We headed to ET, of course we did. Just like Dinosaur, ET at US is a favorite of mine. On our way to ET, I noticed Patrick from SpongeBob was meeting in the store with no line. We had a nice visit with Patrick.

ET was next and we rode twice! After ET we checked out The Dreamworks area, this is the newer kids area at US. We rode the Troll rollercoaster and visited Shrek’s swamp area and picked up the Shrek pretzel with the green cheese. This was really good, high above a Mickey pretzel in my opinion and the cheese is made at US, not prepackaged.

We worked our way to MIB and the Mummy. I chose not to ride the Mummy. I have a love-hate relationship with this attraction. My back hates it! I hung out in the gift shop which this year was the Halloween tribute store area.

A bit disappointing this year. Usually the tribute store is a big production with creepy rooms to explore, this was just a small area with a few props and HHN merchandise.

I was sending pictures, of this year’s shirts, to my sister. She always wants one. She loves Halloween.

Andi returned and said it was a rough ride today, yikes if a 25 year old complains about it, I’m glad I didn’t ride.

Next was HP Diagon Alley, we rode Escape from Gringotts which is a very similar ride to Mummy, but much less jerky and intense in my opinion.

We headed to Hogwarts Express next. If you have park to park tickets riding the train is a must! It is a very unique HP attraction. It takes you to IOA, the other park. The train goes from Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade!

The ride is different each way so if it is your first time, ride it both ways, you won’t be disappointed!

Hagrid’s ride now has EP. Our hotel HRH provides unlimited EP to both parks. It is a skip the long line pass that can be used multiple times a day for all your days. For us having 2 nights at HRH the EP is good from day of check in through check out day! This is an awesome perk and it is why we always stay at a premier resort.

This ride is about as intense of a coaster that I can handle. It is really fun, fast, and with great animatronics. I always ride in the side car, Andi rides on the motorcycle. It is a smooth ride and the backwards motion is not as intense as Everest at Disney, so I can handle it.

We waited about 20 minutes and had a great ride!

Andi wanted to ride a favorite of hers Velocicoaster so we headed there next.

I wait in the Dino Discovery Center for her. She rode twice.

While I was sitting in the center, a TM came out with a small animatronic dinosaur. I was able to pet the dinosaur. She was really cute and she was full size per the TM. A very little Dino!

Andi just missed this interaction. We took a few pictures in here and headed out.

We explored the Jurassic “kids” area. It was really cool! We went in several caves with water below us and waterfalls. I can’t believe we never checked this area out before.

We headed towards Spider Man next. This ride is always a must. We first stopped in the passholder lounge for our PH button and magnet! I was really happy to get the new magnet, which has ET on it!

The lounge also has discounted merchandise. We didn’t see anything we liked.

We rode Spider Man next and headed out to Citywalk for a late lunch.

Our plan was Red Oven Pizza. You can sit down, mobile order, and the food is brought out to you.

We ordered the Margherita pizza, fresh buffalo mozzarella, mozzarella, fresh basil, and tomato sauce.

This was very good. Once we finished lunch we took the short walk back to HRH to have a little rest.

This evening, we planned on a visit to the “Dead Coconut Club” this is a lounge in Citywalk that changes as the seasons change. It is the Red and Green Coconut Club at Christmas time and it is also themed during the Mardi Gras Festival.

This year the Halloween theme was Koven, a witches sorority house.

US does an excellent job with the themes in the club.

We loved the theme this year and the sorority “witches” did a dance and put a hex on a fraternity boy who thought he was all it! It was really a good dance show.




We found a 2 top table on the upper level and had a great view of the dance and the lounge below us. Andi brought her HHN souvenir cup and could get drinks in here at a discount. I tried what she had. We shared 2 drinks in here before heading to Pat O Briens restaurant. The restaurant has a piano bar and you can give the singers requests. It was really fun in here and we enjoyed the singers. There was a man on one piano and across from him was a lady on another piano

I ordered the famous Hurricane drink and Andi had some type of rum drink.

We shared the Chicken Po Boy here with fries, we also shared the fried pickles The Po Boy was huge and plenty to share. It was good, not outstanding but overall good

We really enjoyed this experience and would highly recommend checking out the piano bar entertainment.

Andi definitely had a little buzz going and she gets quite talkative haha We did get a souvenir cup with my Hurricane and I gave this to Andi.

We headed to the big US store to pick up our HHN t-shirts before having one more drink at Fat Tuesdays. We shared some concoction with extra booze, haha Good thing we weren’t driving, just walking back to the room.

We headed back to the room to get a good nights sleep because tomorrow we move to The Helios Resort and start our EPIC portion of this trip!

 

[disneyAndi14]

Hello There!

I am going to write this portion a little differently. I will write about each portal, our hotel, and a couple different restaurants we visited.

We packed up at HRH and checked out around 7:15am. We ordered a Lyft and headed to Helios. Helios is the new premier resort at Epic. The resort is actually facing Epic park. The resort offers direct access into the park. The resort inside and out is absolutely beautiful! I went to check in and our room was not ready yet. We had a standard view room not a park view room. I was able to switch our reservation to both nights at Helios about a week or so before we left for the trip. The price had come down from a crazy $650 a night to $350 so I modified our reservation and canceled the Stella Nova resort. The park access was very good. Security is right in the hotel and ticket check is next then out the doors right into Celestial Park which is the center of Epic. What a perk for staying at this hotel! It will be hard to come in the main portal after this stay. Our room was on the 3rd floor facing the pool. The rooms have an IPad that controls everything from lights, curtains, TV, shower (yes, you could turn on the shower from your bed), and talking with the front desk.

This was fine but with any electronic device problems can arise. I would say not having a TV remote was at times inconvenient. The IPad was a little quirky with the TV.

We also thought the rooms were small for a premier resort.

The beds were very comfortable queen beds. One sink in the bathroom area and a separate toilet/shower room. The mirror over the sink has the lighted mirror which is really nice. Our room was quiet and not far from the ice and elevator. One thing that could be a little hassle is the elevators got extremely busy with a very long line at park closing time. We took the stairs a few times because it would have been a long wait. If you have a higher floor you may have a wait at prime park opening and closing times.

Hotel Lobby

Hotel facing the park





Our room

Bathroom


Room view

The lobby is small overall with a restaurant on the main lobby level, marketplace with coffee, breakfast sandwiches, snacks, and gelato. We got a $12 breakfast croissant on our last day-it was tasty and we had a cup of gelato one night.

We also went out to the pool bar/lounge and had a drink out there. I didn’t get any pictures of that. The drinks were fine but pricey!

We also ate at the main restaurant one evening and I did get to check out the Bar Helios on the rooftop but didn’t purchase anything up there. It was beautiful up there and you could watch the water/light show from up there. This is a show every evening at park closing. It was beautiful with lights, water effects, and music from each portal.

 

[disneyAndi14]

I’m not going to count Celestial Park as a portal. It is the main hub area. There are 2 attractions in this area and numerous restaurants, bars, shops, and dessert options. Almost all the restaurants are elevated QS. Everything has mobile options for ordering. The two attractions in this area are Stardust Racers, this is a big rollercoaster with two sides and it looks like you are racing the other side. This is way too intense for me. Andi did ride this 6x by herself. She tried each side and liked it. It is a dual launch racing coaster. I asked Andi which side she preferred and she said she really didn’t notice much difference but the yellow side moved way faster in the wait line so she did the yellow side 4x and the green side 2x. She said it is a very cool rollercoaster and when the two coasters are coming at each other she said you can actually make eye contact with the people on the other coaster below or above you! Sounds intense to me! I’m a ride chicken got my certificate and everything, haha

Her review of Stardust and Velocicoaster is this, she prefers Velocicoaster because of the inversions, it is faster, taller, and the scenery is cooler. She did say you get more air time on Stardust Racers, yikes, flying up in your seat, no thank you for card holding chickens!


The other ride is more my speed, lol it is a carousel. We rode this twice and it was cute. Your celestial animal goes up and down and circles around the carousel. I rode a Lion and rabbit. Andi rode a rabbit and bear


It is slow loading but overall a cute ride and it was included in EP (express pass) We had multi day EP. I bought it for 2 days, it gave us one time on every ride included in the EP each day. It was not unlimited and unfortunately unlike a MB at Disney, Andi couldn’t use my EP on the rides I didn’t go on. The system recognizes your face in the EP line so that was a bummer since she does ride twice at Disney on the rides I don’t do, she just taps with my MB. The only ride in Epic that didn’t have EP was the Dragon Racer’s Rally in Berk. Celestial Park also has the beautiful fountain of water, which has the water show every evening. We had a late lunch at Meteor Pub one day and I have no pictures. Andi had the Spicy Grilled Chicken without the pesto because of her allergies. She has a life threatening peanut allergy and most tree nuts are bad for her. With all the mobile ordering, you put allergy in your cart with your order and the chef staff comes to talk with you before preparing your order.

All the staff on this trip were great help with her allergies.

I had the kids cheeseburger meal with fries and water. Universal’s kid meals do not come with a drink.

We enjoyed our lunch. Andi also had a beer here.
A few more pictures around celestial park.






I will talk now about each portal from favorite to least favorite.