indimom
Are We There Yet?
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2008
- Messages
- 6,601
I'm working on a trip report for our joint Disney-Universal trip, but in the meantime wanted to share a quick "Magical Moment" from our stay at Universal.
We checked into the RPR at about 8 a.m. on Thursday, July 25th. We got our room right away and moved all our stuff in, then got our express passes and on to the parks where we picked up our 3day tickets at the kiosk outside the gate. By the time we reached the parks it was 10 a.m. so we chose to visit US first. After dinner, we headed over to the WWoHP just to check it out when (hopefully) the crowds had diminished somewhat.
It was still fairly crowded, but we were able to navigate fairly well. We saw that the line for FJ was 50 minutes; and since we wanted some pictures in the line, we decided to go ahead and wait for it, even though we were coming back the next morning for early entry.
We are a family of four and our lanyards were all the houses of Hogwarts:
DH was Slytherin
I was Hufflepuff
DD was Ravenclaw and
DS was Gryffindor
As we entered the line, a team member noticed our lanyards and joked that we could all go through to the line, except DH.
Well, DH played up the offended slytherin and pretended to stomp off toward the entrance of the building.
The team member was laughing and told him to come back, then leaned in a bit closer to DH, and said "Tell Jennifer at the start of the line that James sent you."
DH wasn't sure what he meant, but we headed up to the line to where they direct folks to the lockers or to the ride line, and repeated what James had said. She smiled and said "Well, it's straight through to the front for you."
And that's exactly what happened. She walked us through a line (for future express maybe??) and straight to the front of the line. We didn't even get to see the castle.
We could hear all the rustling and comments coming from the regular line as we passed, wondering if they had opened an express lane or we were VIPs. 
Pretty exciting for our first trip through the ride line!!! We did the ride several more times during our trip and noticed them sending a few other small groups to the front as well, so this must be a little perk they are allowing the team members to do from time to time.
On a side note, we enjoyed the ride very much, despite some motion sickness issues for DH, DD and myself.
DD did okay with Dramamine, but DH and I had to avoid most of the video portions at first. We finally learned that if we focused on Harry when he's flying in front of you that helped for every scene but the Quidditch scene (just too many distractions that drew our eyes off the central focus of the screen I think).
We still really liked it. The spider, dragon and dementor parts were fun and the movement of the ride was amazing! Really great!
I'll try to post my Universal trip reports on here when I get to them (we did Disney first, so it may take me awhile), but I wanted to get this one up here just for fun!
Love, love, love Universal!
We checked into the RPR at about 8 a.m. on Thursday, July 25th. We got our room right away and moved all our stuff in, then got our express passes and on to the parks where we picked up our 3day tickets at the kiosk outside the gate. By the time we reached the parks it was 10 a.m. so we chose to visit US first. After dinner, we headed over to the WWoHP just to check it out when (hopefully) the crowds had diminished somewhat.
It was still fairly crowded, but we were able to navigate fairly well. We saw that the line for FJ was 50 minutes; and since we wanted some pictures in the line, we decided to go ahead and wait for it, even though we were coming back the next morning for early entry.
We are a family of four and our lanyards were all the houses of Hogwarts:
DH was Slytherin
I was Hufflepuff
DD was Ravenclaw and
DS was Gryffindor
As we entered the line, a team member noticed our lanyards and joked that we could all go through to the line, except DH.
Well, DH played up the offended slytherin and pretended to stomp off toward the entrance of the building.
The team member was laughing and told him to come back, then leaned in a bit closer to DH, and said "Tell Jennifer at the start of the line that James sent you."
DH wasn't sure what he meant, but we headed up to the line to where they direct folks to the lockers or to the ride line, and repeated what James had said. She smiled and said "Well, it's straight through to the front for you."
And that's exactly what happened. She walked us through a line (for future express maybe??) and straight to the front of the line. We didn't even get to see the castle.
We could hear all the rustling and comments coming from the regular line as we passed, wondering if they had opened an express lane or we were VIPs. Pretty exciting for our first trip through the ride line!!! We did the ride several more times during our trip and noticed them sending a few other small groups to the front as well, so this must be a little perk they are allowing the team members to do from time to time.
On a side note, we enjoyed the ride very much, despite some motion sickness issues for DH, DD and myself.
DD did okay with Dramamine, but DH and I had to avoid most of the video portions at first. We finally learned that if we focused on Harry when he's flying in front of you that helped for every scene but the Quidditch scene (just too many distractions that drew our eyes off the central focus of the screen I think).
We still really liked it. The spider, dragon and dementor parts were fun and the movement of the ride was amazing! Really great!
I'll try to post my Universal trip reports on here when I get to them (we did Disney first, so it may take me awhile), but I wanted to get this one up here just for fun!
Love, love, love Universal!
Thanks for the little peek, now hurry with the rest of the TR! I want to see how you guys enjoyed it before WE leave next week. (I know, I'm probably dreaming...but a girl can hope.)
They were ugly, will cause you to sweat a lot in the heat, and were quite painful
