It's an epic 16th birthday celebration (TR) - Update 9/1 - Days 3&4 with wrap-up

Speaking of Touring Plans - here's the ratings for the various days they are showing for that weekend:

May 24, 2019 Friday:
6 overall
US 8a/9a-9p: 5
IOA 9a-9p: 6

May 25, 2019 Saturday
9 overall
US 8a/9a-9p: 9
IOA 9a-9p: 8

May 26, 2019
Sunday
7 overall
https://touringplans.com/universal-orlando/crowd-calendar/date/2019-05-26
US 8a/9a-9p: 7
IOA 9a-9p: 7

May 27, 2019 Monday
5 overall
US 8a/9a-9p: 5
IOA 9a-9p: 5

So really from a crowd standpoint - the only really bad day is Saturday at a 9 level, though slightly lower at IOA at 8. Friday and Monday are both not particularly bad crowd-wise. Sunday is moderate to heavy crowds at a 7, but even this is still doable.

This also says my initial instinct to do the Studios on Friday and Sunday is right, with Friday being a lower day there. Saturday and Monday for IOA, with Saturday seeing the lower crowds at IOA as well.
 
I'm anticipating the weekend and maybe even Monday to be pretty busy, but since we will be there a couple more days beyond that, I'm hoping it slows down just a bit. Even still, with so many days in the parks I think we will end up ok. Just hate the idea of melting in really long lines with a whiny 8 year old. lol
 
I'm anticipating the weekend and maybe even Monday to be pretty busy, but since we will be there a couple more days beyond that, I'm hoping it slows down just a bit. Even still, with so many days in the parks I think we will end up ok. Just hate the idea of melting in really long lines with a whiny 8 year old. lol

Early and late with breaks during the day! You are off-site on this trip too, right?

Very excited to finally meet you and your family! Hopefully on Sunday or Monday.
 
Early and late with breaks during the day! You are off-site on this trip too, right?

Very excited to finally meet you and your family! Hopefully on Sunday or Monday.

Yep we are offsite too this time. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a hassle to go back for a break during the day because I know it will be hot & we will want the pool.

I’m excited about it too! It’s been a long time!
 


I've never used touring plans. I would be curious to see what they rate Disneyland and DCA compared to what I think is busy.

Sounds like you have a good solid plan.
 
Hey everyone - I cannot believe are just 16 days away from this trip. It feels so surreal because I am really doing nothing in particular to prepare for the trip, other than borrow our friends Minion mug. This minion mug has travelled to Florida more often than I have.

IMG_20180219_114532424_HDR

More excitement that I wanted to share. I procure a thread on the DVC boards about predicted room availability. Link is attached HERE . Pete has recently started a DVC focused weekly podcast, and he invited me to come on an episode to talk about this thread, and then asked me to stick around to record 4 episodes in total. He had added another in-studio host - bringing his original team of 3 up to 5 including me. At the end he said "I really like this dynamic, would you mind continuing with the show in the future." I said "Sure!" not being completely sure how I was going to arrange my schedule to be available for recordings - and not really sure if he was serious. Anyways, the next day he sent an e-mail to schedule the next round of shows, so looks like maybe I'm going to be a regular! Didn't want to post this to the greater board just yet until I was certain - but figured I was safe to post it here in a less read corner of the boards. So anyone that wants to check it out - they haven't posted an episode yet, so it will likely be Episode 12 or maybe 13 that I will start to appear on. The link to the episodes are here. This is a really good podcast if you've ever thought about getting into DVC - there's really a lot to know before you should consider buying.

https://www.disboards.com/threads/the-dvc-show-latest-episode-05-06-19.3741300/

Look for a special appearance by our cat Julia, who likes to jump on my lap when I'm on the computer.
 


So - the first episode I appear in has been posted. The link above works, but another easy way to view the episodes is via the below link. It's episode 12. I don't contribute a ton in this episode, especially later when they start talking about Vero Beach and Aulani, but some of the future episodes I get more involved.

https://dvcfan.com/the-dvc-show/

Starts with Episode 12 - but if you are new to the idea of DVC there's some earlier episodes that might be more interesting - particularly the first 5 episodes where they talk about the basics of DVC, buying resale, and especially the "who shouldn't buy DVC", which I didn't wholly agree with.

Anyways - back to the trip. It is 10 days away now and I think we are all starting to get excited about it. It's so weird to me that when we plan Disney trips we start planning more than eleven months in advance, and ADRs are set at 180 days, fastpasses at 60 days. Universal has none of that. But here's a quick overview of our plans.

Friday - Arrive at MCO at 7:45 AM - since we only plan on having our carryon, we will call for a Lyft/Uber once we land, and be off to our resort to drop our bags. With luck, we might even make close to rope drop at Universal. Day 1 plan is to do Universal Studios. A good chance we will head right to Harry Potter land to try and get a ride on the Gringott's ride and do a little magic. We may break for a late breakfast. From there I could see doing MIB and probably the ET ride, as well as Fast and Furious. I also want to try and catch the Monster Makeup show either today or on our next trip.

Very likely we are going to stay at the park until our room is ready, hopefully before 4 PM, but won't know until they call us. I am thinking this may be the one night we don't go back to the park in the evening. We will see how everyone feels, but with such an early start to the day (Probably a 3:30 AM wake-up call.) we may decide to just stay at the resort. If not, I could see us going back for a SHORT time in the evening just to get some dinner and maybe one or two more rides. The other thing we are likely to do is get a ride over to the grocery store and pick up some basics for breakfast. If we don't go out tonight, we are just as likely to get a pizza along the way.

Saturday - Today we will hit IOA, with intention to go at rope drop and hit Harry Potter land first thing. After Harry Potter I think Jurrassic World is most likely. We will be meeting up with a friend of ours at some point as well. I need to ride Ripsaw Falls at some point as well but I don't like walking around wet. We are likely to go back to the resort during the heat of the day...we just don't have the constitution to handle 90 degree weather. Tonight we are more likely to come back in the evening.

To be continued in later post...
 
Sounds like a perfect agenda!

A heads up
Sometimes the front desk gets busy checking in guests and do not send out the text your room is ready

Call front desk during the afternoon and ask if your room is ready

I learned the hard way and found out I had the room assignment hours before I called to check on it at 4:00

Just did not get a confirmation text when it was set up
Front desk was swamped and was delayed in contacting me
 
Second part of plans

Day 3 sees a return to Universal Studios. Again I am aiming for rope drop. Our friend is still hanging with us today. This is the park with Early Entry, but I think we will shoot for the Minion ride and hope the line isn't too long. Then we will likely hit the things we didn't do the previous day, and maybe even try Gringotts again. Again, I don't anticipate staying much past 1 PM before taking a break back at our resort, and then coming back in the evening. I really want to see the nighttime show here, it wasn't up and running yet the last time we were here. I tried to look up if they do any kind of dessert party or anything like that - but it doesn't appear to be the case, so I guess we'll just grab a spot for the night.

Day 4 - Last day already. Our hopes is to meet up with @khertz and family today at some point, but we'll be in IOA. Again I assume we're shooting for rope drop and again for the Harry Potter world. What are the odds that we get to see Hagrid's ride do some soft opening? I would say extremely low as it's still 2 weeks away, but you never know! Again, I could see us returning to the park after a break. Our hotel is booked through Tuesday, so no need to leave early. Our flights are at 10:30 so we could probably be in the parks until close to 8 PM if we really wanted to! Also possible we will just want to chill for the evening, but we will see. I think that since we are not "ride the same ride over and over" people, there's a good chance we will be done with Universal by this point and will want to chill by the pool.
 
Sounds like you have some solid plans. It's too bad that US/IOA is not really a full day sort of park. When we've gone we ended up spending time in the room relaxing as well. I even got to the pool last time we were there.

It's coming up so close!
 
We pretty much finalized our arrival day plans, so we are aiming to be in the parks around lunchtime if all works out well. We start driving Saturday and will get a bulk of it done that day, stop overnight, and go to church in the am where we are stopping so that we can head right to the parks afterwards.

I'm really hoping we see some technical rehearsals for Hagrid's, but I'm not holding my breath. lol
 
We pretty much finalized our arrival day plans, so we are aiming to be in the parks around lunchtime if all works out well. We start driving Saturday and will get a bulk of it done that day, stop overnight, and go to church in the am where we are stopping so that we can head right to the parks afterwards.

I'm really hoping we see some technical rehearsals for Hagrid's, but I'm not holding my breath. lol

One of my sources said we have a shot at it, but they have not yet announced Team Member previews, so I think it is unlikely this weekend - you may still get lucky and get soft opening before you leave.
 
So - we are leaving in under 20 hours - just thought I would say if anyone wants to follow along for the trip - my Instagram account is under "Skierpete23" . I am going to try and post more than normal on there - so please feel to join along with us and Jerry the Minion Mug.
 

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