Overall thoughts:
Hotel:
First night, the only room card that worked to open the door was my daughter’s. I went down to the front desk and they re-programmed new cards for all of us. It took a bit because everyone wanted specific cards (Simpsons, Minions, etc…). Next morning none of our cards worked. We did not get a yellow light or red light or anything. Someone from housekeeping saw we were having problems and explained the battery in the door must have failed. Luckily my husband was still in the room, so he let us in so we could change before we left for the parks. But once we all left, we did forget sunglasses and could not get back in the room. Oh well. I texted the hotel and they had the door fixed within the couple of hours while we were at the park that day.
Housekeeping came to our room both days at about 4pm when we were napping, so we sent them away and we never had housekeeping in the room. By the time we left, garbage and towels were piling up and we were out of toilet paper. I am sure they would have come if I had called them, but for such a short trip I guess we were okay. For Sunday the hotel gave us a 2pm check out, so all was forgiven then. Plus I loved the texting feature. They sent me a text when we checked in and then I texted them back whenever I had a question (example – what was for dinner in the club lounge?) and within minutes they would text back. I even used texting to request my late checkout. And I loved the size of the villa room that we had. Fit all 5 of us comfortably. And the beds are the best! When we checked in, the club lounge paper said that our access to the club lounge would turn off at 11am on day of departure. In reality, it turned off sometime after 12:45 (as my husband was able to get in then to grab a bottle of water). The Avis counter was convenient. We booked through Costco and everything was ready as expected. We were out of there with our rental car in about 10 min.
Clothing:
I really made an effort to keep my self more covered this time to try to avoid the sun. Most days, I covered up with a long sleeve pullover like this
one. In the evenings, I often wore a dress like this
one. The material that Lily Pulitzer uses is so breathable and it was remarkably not too hot to keep my arms covered with these cute clothes. My daughter found the cutest
t-shirt at Children’s Place on sale before we left to wear while she was casting spells. Check it out. Definitely a lot cheaper than buying a t-shirt at Universal.
Lanyards
The girls and I wore our lanyards from Vera Bradley which I love. They have little zipper pouches, so I can carry ID and cash, in addition to my room key and the club lounge key. My husband and my son wore their lanyards from skiing last winter.
Souvenirs:
Besides all the stuffies they won from games, my son bought a “Duff” shirt. It was super soft and he “thinks” he will be able to wear it to school since it does not say beer on it and “Duff” can refer to anything. Hmm, we will see… My middle daughter wanted something special and wanted something Harry Potter-ish. We looked and looked and nothing stood out for her. On the last day, we stopped at the hotel Universal store right before leaving and she found the perfect gift for herself – a beige and purple scarf that was the Maurader’s map. It was subtle enough that she can wear it out anywhere.
For me, I love Disney souvenirs -things like Dooney & Bourke, Vera Bradley, maybe even some Alex & Ani. But, I have never found anything at Universal that I liked. So, I actually bought myself my souvenirs ahead of time at my local James Avery store. I bought
a scooter charm to remind me of the Portofino and a
pearl charm to remind me of the beach (the second part of my vacation). They were running a promo so I got a free charm necklace with my 2 charm purchase.
Parks:
Even though it was only early June, the parks still felt a tad crowded during the day. Evenings were better. Sunday was not crowded at all, but that was the day we left. Also, I saw lots of families in matching t-shirts, and I used to do that a bit for my Disney trips, but never thought about it for a Universal trip. I thought they were cute and I will probably pursue it for next time. If for no other reason, they make it easier to quickly spot everyone.
Lockers:
This was my first trip using lockers and they worked well for us. I never got brave enough to leave my phone in one (I feel naked without my phone and luckily always had pockets), but I put out other stuff in the lockers. Definitely slowed us down a bit (especially at Escape from Gringotts where it was always so busy at the lockers), but not as bad as I had imagined.
Carnival Games
I thought they were great to be honest. The kids loved winning the prizes. The folks running the games were super nice and patient. At one point, my son sat down to do a game where you shoot a ball at some cans and the attendant told him that it was one of the hardest games at the park and suggested he try something else if he was really counting on winning something. I thought his honesty was nice. While expensive to play, I think the prizes they won would have cost even more had we tried to purchase something similar in a gift shop. And, I confirmed that you can buy the prizes too. My daughter really wanted this spider pig stuffie from the baseball throwing game, but you had to knock 3 figures over with the 3 balls, and we never quite got that good. We asked, and the attendant told us that we could buy spider big for $15 or trade in the 3 little Maggie dolls for it. $15 for that jumbo spider pig was a great deal in my opinion. And being able to buy a prize is a great option. The only issue with the carnival games is that we won so much stuff that we could not fit it all into our suitcases (we had carry-ons only), so we had to ship them back home