June comes before August & the APs will still be valid! I think we're done here!

[yellowfish78]

Have fun at Universal! I hope you enjoy your hotel! (Where are you staying at again?)

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Thanks, Chanon!

Uh, that would be Hard Rock Hotel.

 

[Tammi67]

Take lots of notes for me!

 

[PNO4TE]

Have fun!

 

[snappy]

I thought I would come over from the GAGWTA thread and send you my best!

I am dying to hear about Harry Potter land.

I hope everything goes smoothly and your pictures come out as good as they have so far.

You are awesome in the trip report department not to mention the tri planning department.

 

[PghLybrt]

Ohhh have a Hard Rock lemonade sitting polside for me!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

OK, we are back!

We left AKL promptly at 7 AM yesterday. We arrived at Hard Rock around 7:25. No line for check-in, and our room was ready! We took our bag upstairs and dashed over to IOA.

Last year I bought 2 tickets from Ticketmaster because we had the free ticket from the Super Bowl promo. Well, we never went to Universal last year and the free ticket expired. So I had to buy a third ticket this year. I showed the Ticketmaster ticket to the guys at the hotel and they had NEVER seen Ticketmaster park tickets. Hmm. OK. I took them up to the ticketing window and the lady said they were fine - go directly to the turnstiles.

We had our tickets scanned, they looked at our room keys, and we were IN for Harry Potter!

The theming is spectacular. It is truly amazing. We got in the queue for Forbidden Journey at 8:20 AM and we were on the ride by 8:45 AM. Now, let me tell you all stright away that the ride made me feel EXTREMELY queasy. I can't ride things that spin, and I don't particularly LIKE Star Tours. But other than the Astro Orbiter there is nothing at WDW that makes me feel truly ill. The combination of ride movement, animatronics, and screen effects were too much for me. I was able to make it to the end of the ride, but I was ready for it to end before it did!

Now, getting OFF the ride isn't the biggest challenge. The challenge is getting through the CROWDS to get your things out of the locker (people coming IN are all crammed into this teeny room, fighting against the people trying to get OUT). Once you get your stuff out of the locker you have to fight your way through a shop to get back out into the village. Let me tell you, fighting the crowds while you are queasy and your head feels weird is NOT FUN. There was a girl vomiting in the trashcan outside of the shop. I felt horrible for her because I know how hard it would have been for her to get THROUGH the shop to the trashcan! Keep in mind this is still a preview ONLY for onsite guests and it wasn't even 9 AM. The area is very poorly designed for the crowds that will be there.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Once I got some fresh air and had a bottle of water I felt OK. Not fabulous, but OK. We rode "Flight of the Hippogriff" which is basically a baby coaster like Barnstormer. That was fine.

DS and DH rode one of the Dragon coasters, and they liked it. I walked through the queue and that was very cool.

From there we got some butterbeer and pumpkin juice (the frozen butterbeer is FABULOUS).

We walked through Honey Dukes and Zonko's, but we didn't buy anything.

There was another shop with general stuff, the wand shop (which had an incredible line WAY out the door), and an "Owl Post" shop. Those are all on the right side as you face the castle, and they are all right next to each other so the area gets completely congested. The VAST majority of the shops are facades. We did not go inside the Three Broomsticks restaurants so I can't comment on that.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Before I get too far ahead let me back up and post more photos.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Photos from MGM on Tuesday

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Dinner at Citrico's on Tuesday night

Amuse bouche of tomato, ham, and melon

Kid's chicken noodle soup

Gateau of crab

Kid's fried shrimp, fingerling potatoes, and broccolini

Swordfish with spring vegetable crepe

Black grouper with mussels

Lemon cheesecake

Kid's ice cream

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Pics from Hogsmeade. Since we locked all the cameras in the locker we didn't have a camera on the ride.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

So, my overall impressions of Harry Potter World are OK. It is too small to effectively handle the crowds that will turn out. A man ahead of us in the line was told he was too large to ride so they sent him out after he made it almost to the boarding area. I am not sure if he sat in the test seat outside of the ride or not.

From WWoHP we went out to explore IOA. After the Forbidden journey I wanted to do CALM rides so we went to Seuss Landing. We rode the trolley train and Cat in the Hat. We decided One fish, Two Fish would be too wet. We didn't ride the carousel then, but we did come back to it later.

We wandered over to Hulk, and DH rdoe with DS while I waited. While they were riding I was watching and talking with a Team Member about the ride. Then I rode with DS! It was fun!

DH wanted to get a soda after that, so we ATTEMPTED to get our free refillable mug-type things with our AAA coupons. OMG, what a pain!!! There are limited places to redeem the coupons. We ended up at the Comic Cafe. We stood in the line for 10 minutes, then waited 10 more minutes for them to HAND US THE DRINKS! It was REALLY frustrating.

We browsed around, saw Spider Man (but DH wasn't standing there when it was our turn, and DS's camera settings were all weird so the pics didn't turn out). We went over to the Jurassic Park area and looked through the Discovery Center.

We had a 1 PM reservation for lunch at Mythos. The lady couldn't find any sort of reservation, but we only waited a couple of minutes for a table.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Lunch at Mythos was pretty good. Our waiter wasn't the best. No drink refills, the salad plates were never cleared. Little details, I suppose, but still.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

After lunch we went to the Poseidon show. I now have a new gold standard for lame attractions. It was truly horrid. 20 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

By late afternoon we were tired, and we had done pretty much everything we wanted to do. I HATE rides that splash water on me, and DS was wearing sneakers so I didn't want him to get his feet wet. We wanted to see the Sindbad show but the next one wasn't starting for quite awhile, so we headed back to the hotel. We stopped at the Hard Rock Cafe for DS to look around. I bought him a shirt, he bought a keychain.

I just realized we never took any pics of the room at Hard Rock. Well, it was a standard room. Nothing special. It was fine. One of the bedside lamps didn't work, and the alarm clock didn't work. That was a problem, but it wasn't worth calling about since we were only there one night.

It was lovely to have two sinks. The hairdryer was really good, and so was the shower head and water pressure! The bath towels were stained, which gave me the heebie-jeebies. I have to have my pristine towels, you know. DS thought his bed sheets looked discolored. If the bedside lamp would have WORKED maybe I would have been able to tell. As it was, I just told him to sleep on the other side of the bed. I felt like the room probably wasn't as clean as a Disney room, but that's just me.

DH and I took a nap, DS watched TV, then we cleaned up and headed off to City Walk for dinner. I had been under the impression that we would be in the park from open to close so I didn't book anything for dinner. We decided to try Bubba Gump's. They told us 25 minute wait, but it was more like 15. Which was awesome. Loved the restaurant!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I was so disappointed that I was too full for dessert. The dessert pics in the menu looked FABULOUS! I should have skipped the appetizer. Or the entree. Or something. But it was all REALLY good.

My yummy drink in a souvenir glass. It was called a Beach something.

Shrimp cocktail

Mahi mahi and shrimp over rice

Kid's chicken strips

Cap'n Dan's drunken shrimp

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I gave the waiter our room key to pay for dinner, and they said it was declined. EXCUSE ME? They said I just needed to sign the paper and they would phone the hotel for authorization. That brought our evening to a quick halt. We hoofed it back to the hotel to see WHY it was declined! Having never been to Universal we didn't know their procedures.

It turns out they only give you like $100 in charging privileges. WITH a credit card on file! Well, DUH, we had gone over $100. At least we got it sorted out. I think. I still need to pull up our crdit card online and see exactly what they did.

We called it a night around 10 PM.

This morning we went to the breakfast buffet in The Kitchen. They count anyone age 12 and under as a "child", and they charged DS the child's price even though he is a bit over 12. He only ate one plate of food, so maybe that was why! (DH left the camera in the room, so no pics.) From there we took our bag to Bell Services and went to Universal Studios.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

We got to Universal about 8:45 AM, and they opened the gates at about 8:50. The first thing we did was Shrek 4-D. It was cute. I was worried that Jimmy Neutron would make me feel sick, so we skipped it. A lot of the rides opened later in the morning, but we just kept walking along until we found an open one. Mummy was broken when we went past the first time.

We rode Men In Black and loved it! So we jumped right back on and rode it again. Express Pass is incredible. What a WONDERFUL feature!! We skipped the Simpsons because again, I am very worried about simulator rides now. We went back and rode The Mummy (fun!).

I told DS I would do Rip Ride Rock-It with him. He had been watching it from the hotel window and he REALLy wanted to ride. Surprise! NO Express Pass. The stand-by line was an hour. He wanted to do single rider but I had no clue how long that would take, and DH was already getting cranky.

We did some character photos, rode the Nuthouse Coaster (well, DS and I rode), saw the Beetlejuice Rock show, DS and I did Twister (LOTS of pre-show, very little else), saw the Horror Make-Up show (THAT was fun!), had lunch at Mel's Diner because DS was so besotted by the theming. The food was marginal theme park fast food.

We tried to go to the Disaster thing but the queue wasn't marked very well and there was just a MOB of people. We went over and rode JAWS, then tried again for Disaster but it was broken. I am seeing why they call it Disaster.

By then it was about 3:15 and we were ready to go. I called the town car folks and asked if they might be able to come get us earlier than 6:30. They said yep, they could come get us immediately! Yay! We hurried back to Hard Rock, grabbed our bag, met our driver out front, and came back to AKL.