"Look at all these sunny balls!" - WDW/Uni TR Feb 17-26th 2018 (6/18 Wrap-up and DVC review)

[skier_pete]

Next up we headed over to Diagon Alley. The one section of the park that makes Universal worth a repeat visit.

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Kreacher’s watching the muggles at Grimmauld Place:

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We started by heading for the sweet shop. DD wanted to get two mini Pygmy Puffs and some chocolates for herself and her friends. It was at this point that we were notified that our room was ready. I remember this because I had just filled out the form to deliver stuff to the resort but didn’t know the room yet, and then immediately got a text.

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DD wanted another butterbeer while DW wanted a Otter’s fizzing orange, so we went to the Leaky Cauldron.

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We spent some more time exploring the area. There’s just so much to see here. Surprisingly, DD had no desire to use her wand to cast spells. Maybe because you constantly have to wait in lines to do this. But instead we explored through the area – checking out Knockturn Alley as well.

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Magical Menagerie is probably my favorite store, because someone somewhere said “We need a stuffed animal for every single creature in the Harry Potter books. I mean EVERY creature!”

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We wanted to ride the Gringott’s ride, but again DD didn’t want to ride. So we left her to sit on the stairs. However, when we got over to the ride, we noticed it was a110 minute wait. I asked the TM how long the FOTL wait was – she said “it’s about half of the main line”. We decided with leaving DD alone that long wasn’t something we want to do. I could hardly believe that this was the truth, and based on what I’ve seen since – I think this was the fifth time we were misinformed by a TM.

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I do enjoy the dragon here – though I wished it had just the littlest of movements. When it lights up though it’s pretty friggin’ cool.

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We decided to head over to see the Jimmy Fallon ride. DD was already asking to go back to the room. (It was probably about 11 AM at this point.) One other thing I like about Universal is all the entertainment they seem to have going on. This was one of many acts they have going on – just guys banging on stuff – but it gathered a crowd.

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The fun thing about Jimmy Fallon is the pre-show, though in this case we managed to just catch the very end of a session with the Ragtime Gals.

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Instead we got Hashtag the Panda, who jumped around for 3 minutes and collapsed on the ground.

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Then he took photos with people. I think Universal is going out of it’s way to annoy me, because we really enjoyed the Ragtime Gals last time, and instead we got this. Then we went on the ride. DD minded it less than most. I think I enjoyed it more the second time, but it’s fairly slight – and yet another screen ride.

After this, the family sat down for a bit while I said I wanted to ride the Mummy. I did this again using FOTL. This time I had to wait in line about 10 minutes, but it was pretty fast. The ride is fun, but it definitely would scare the pants off DD.

That's it for today - next up - what's steampunk and chocolate and brown all over?

 

[franandaj]

Your review of Universal doesn't make me want to go back here. Especially since we now have half the Harry Potter land in our backyard, but I would like to ride Gringott's again, and now I'm sad I missed Flight of the Hippogriff when I was there. I liked the train and did the Simpson's ride once but it made me sick. We've always stayed at the Royal Pacific and yes they nickel and dime you into the highest cost stuff.

That's it for today - next up - what's steampunk and chocolate and brown all over?

Oooh! OOOh! I know what restaurant you're talking about! And all I've heard is lukewarm reviews!

 

[skier_pete]

Your review of Universal doesn't make me want to go back here. Especially since we now have half the Harry Potter land in our backyard, but I would like to ride Gringott's again, and now I'm sad I missed Flight of the Hippogriff when I was there. I liked the train and did the Simpson's ride once but it made me sick. We've always stayed at the Royal Pacific and yes they nickel and dime you into the highest cost stuff.

Yeah, I do realize I'm coming out a bit negative. I think in the end my summary which I get to eventually I admit that I am being a little cynical about it, but truthfully when you spend all that money only to find out your daughter would rather sit on the curb playing on her phone than actually ride the rides then it doesn't exactly leave you encouraged.

Oooh! OOOh! I know what restaurant you're talking about! And all I've heard is lukewarm reviews!

We thought it was really good! Getting ahead of myself, but I had no complaints. (Except that we had to wait like 30 minutes for a table, but when they seat you, about 50% of the tables are empty.)

 

[skier_pete]

Day 2 continues

Everyone was getting pretty hungry at this point. It was approaching noon so we decided to try out the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. I had heard it was just about the best food at Universal, and DW is a real chocolate addict so I knew she would like this.

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Lots it macaroons and truffles.

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The place is very streampunk inside.

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One thing really strange - they made us wait a good 25-30 minutes before we were seated, and they had a LOT of people sitting around to get seated by the time we got in, but inside, at least a third of the tables were empty, and stayed empty the whole time we were in there. What's up with that?

They actually had two roaming characters that were supposed to be Penelope Toothsome and I guess her robot sidekick. I never got a picture because they never came to our table, though. Here's a shot from on-line I stole of them.

Professor Doctor Penelope Tibeaux-Tinker Toothsome

Toothsome Chocolate Emporium at Universal Orlando (VISIT FLORIDA)

DD was excited to be able to have Waffles with berries for lunch. She was mistrusting of the lemon topping, though and had it on the side.

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I ended up having the Croque Monsieur – which is sort of a fancy grilled ham and cheese. It was in fact very tasty!

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DW went with the Chicken Bourginion – I guess we were in a French mood. She really enjoyed this.

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Though we were reasonably full from lunch, we sort of couldn’t resist getting some dessert – so again we ordered two desserts and shared them. DD especially rarely finishes a dessert. She picked out a no-flour chocolate cake that I thought was just sort of so-so, but it came with Hazelnut ice cream, which was rather delicious.

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DW and I got the chocolate bread pudding, which was pretty good, but we used to have a restaurant near us that made the best chocolate bread pudding ever, and this wasn’t THAT good, so only the second best. The ice cream with both desserts were wonderful.

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On the way out, DW picked out some macaroons to go. I just like the looks of the desserts – I couldn’t want anything else!

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I have to say - this place gets a big thumbs up from our family, I would definitely come here again.

At this point I think it was around 1:30 PM, and we were ready for a break. (It had been an early start.) Realistically, we didn’t exactly get a lot done today – but that was fine. We were having a much better time than our first evening, so that was great.

Got back to the hotel and we had to get all our bags moved to the room. It was a long walk from the lobby to the room, but it wasn’t the WORST resort walk ever. We were almost at the end over by the main pool. Again, we had ended up with a “deluxe” room because with the AP discount, this was the cheapest price. It was still $389 a night, which is literally the MOST I’ve ever spent for a hotel room – but again that price includes two days worth of Front of the Line passes, which I think are probably worth the money.

But what about the room itself? Well, I’m going to give this resort one thing – this is definitely the most spacious room we’ve ever had at a theme park. The Disney rooms, even at the Deluxe DVC resorts, are fairly small. They want to give you a big bathroom and a kitchenette, but in doing so, the living room is small, and if you have more than 2 people I would even consider it cramped. These rooms are far from cramped and are in fact quite spacious, even with a large bathroom as well. There’s also two actual beds – which being used to DVC rooms now, you don’t get two bed – you get a fold-out couch instead.

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The view was nothing to write home about – an off-angle view of the pool. Here’s one spot that DVC wins on – you get a balcony as opposed to just a window.

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We rested in the room for a while (re: took a nap) and then we went down to the pool for about 45 minutes. The main pool was nice, and it had a sandy area and zero entry as well as a decent little slide, but it was small and very crowded – it was hard to even find a chair to put our stuff. The nicest thing was a very large Jacuzzi that had a waterfall of hot water constantly cascading from above. Overall, I don’t think this pool compares favorably with the BEST Disney pools, but it’s right there around average. Here’s a few shots from other sources on FLIKR.

Portofino Bay Hotel

Portofino Bay Pool 2

Next time - back to the park!!

 

[cstorm65]

I've enjoyed reading your report so far. That was some bad luck on the first night, but it sounds like your day 2 is going much better so far! We haven't stayed at Portofino, but did stay at Royal Pacific before and the pool there was awesome! Like you said it was probably a little smaller than Disney main pools, but the water play area there was a lot of fun. Looking forward to reading some more.

 

[Majordis]

We also travel with teens so I can totally relate. Portofina looks great. We stayed at Royal Pacific during a tropical storm so we didn't explore the other hotels. But Gringotts was a walk on so that made up for it . I'm with your DW - eyes closed on half those rides lol. Can't wait to read more

 

[skier_pete]

I've enjoyed reading your report so far. That was some bad luck on the first night, but it sounds like your day 2 is going much better so far! We haven't stayed at Portofino, but did stay at Royal Pacific before and the pool there was awesome! Like you said it was probably a little smaller than Disney main pools, but the water play area there was a lot of fun. Looking forward to reading some more.

Yeah, mostly just surprised that the size was a little small making it rather crowded. I guess as an adult that's always my main thing about a pool, it shouldn't be so crowded that I'm constantly being kicked by children. Probably why I like Uzima so much - anytime we've been at AKV the pool is never crowded enough that you can't find some space of your own because it's so big. Otherwise it was fine. The hot tub was quite nice.

We also travel with teens so I can totally relate. Portofina looks great. We stayed at Royal Pacific during a tropical storm so we didn't explore the other hotels. But Gringotts was a walk on so that made up for it . I'm with your DW - eyes closed on half those rides lol. Can't wait to read more

Thanks for joining in. DD teen behavior gets rather old at times. Too much selfishness drives me crazy.

 

[skier_pete]

Day 2 comes to an end or "I enjoy the nightlife, I got to boogie...with Blue Man Group, Mardi Gras, and Margaritaville."

We couldn’t spend too much time at the pool because we had plans – specifically, I had gotten for Christmas for DW and DD tickets to see Blue Man Group. The show was listed to start at 6 PM, so we left the hotel about 5:15 PM to catch another boat.

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I think the Piazza looks more “real” at dusk.

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Wait – is that a smile from DD?

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Oh good – it’s gone again…

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I took this one because how often do you see CURLING broadcast on a giant outdoor screen in Florida? (The answer – exactly every four years..)

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Getting ready for the show.
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This is our first time seeing a live Blue Man Group show. It was pretty much what you would expect. Lots of humor combined with performance art – there was quite a bit of audience interaction as well. For the price point I paid ($29 a ticket) it was WELL worth the price of admission. Not a show I want to watch over and over again – and I would probably say I slightly prefer Cirque De Soliel as a less repetitive form of entertainment – I definitely would recommend this show.

After the show – we had a plan – to enter the park and watch the Mardi Gras parade! The timing was near perfect – we entered the park through a side entrance right by the BMG theater, and we walked about 10 feet into the park, found a spot to watch the parade – which started about 5 minutes after we got there.

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There were a lot of performers, a LOT of stilt walkers, and a lot of glitter and skin showing – probably more than I would expect in a theme park – but definitely a cleaned up version versus what you see in actual New Orleans.

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There were probably about a dozen floats, and each float had Annual Passholders who signed up to throw beads to the crowd. It was kind of fun and a little bit dangerous as I got a pretty decent clock in the face from the occasional bead.

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We were right across from the entrance of the Despicable Me ride, and though DD wanted to go back to the room, we persuaded her to get on the ride. It was showing 20 minute wait during the parade, but the second the parade ended, it flipped up to 50 minutes. We dove into the FOTL queue, and really ended up with ZERO wait.

I have to say, this is one of the more fun simulator rides. It doesn’t shake you around as violently as some, and it’s a fun little story. I do like the DM films, especially the first one, though they are losing momentum fast. The charm of these movies is really the family dynamic between Gru and the 3 kids, and this show hits that pretty well.

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After this, we brought DD back to the hotel, but DW and I wanted to take the opportunity to do some more rides that DD doesn’t like, so we turned right around and headed back out to the parks with less than an hour to go until they closed.

One thing we quite noticed at Universal, at least this trip – while Disney it is hard to find short lines in the evening, even if you wait right until park closing, the Universal parks seem to empty out pretty deep for the last 2 hours, so honestly I don’t know that our FOTL passes helped much with the remaining lines – other than allowing us to skip the longer walks through the standby queue.

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We had a goal to knock off 3 rides if we could make it, and decided to start from the back of IOA and move forward. First up was Kong. (No pictures it was too dark) We basically walked on this ride. I like this ride more than most of the screen rides here – the immersive level for the main section is great – with the battle going on all around us. However, the ride managed to “glitch” while we were on it, and the visuals didn’t exactly sync up with the sound, which made for a rather weird experience.
Next up we headed back towards the front of the park, with about 20 minutes until closing we got onto Spiderman. What’s interesting to me is back in 2000 – the first time we rode this ride it felt so amazing and cutting edge. Now it sort of blends in with the cacophony of screen rides that flood Universal. It’s still a pretty good ride though, even though the pumpkin fireball effect wasn’t working.

Finally we bolted out of there, and I got in line for the Hulk Coaster. There was definitely a benefit here to FOTL, there were probably still several hundred people waiting in line. DW won’t do coasters, but I love them. This is probably my favorite coaster in the world…just so awesome. Love the first 15-20 seconds especially. The only problem is I was wearing my glasses, and I spent the whole ride thinking they were going to fall off. They didn’t though!

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At this point, the park was closed. I still wasn’t all that hungry, but DW was and she wanted to stop for a meal. We decided to just eat at Margaritaville. They had a live band play called “Frequency” and they were pretty good! I didn’t take pictures of our food though.

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It was getting pretty late when we headed back to the hotel. Considering we wanted to take advantage of early entry tomorrow, we felt we needed to get some sleep.
So – now the question is, in hindsight, are we happy we paid the extra $127 to upgrade our tickets to get into Universal Studios today. Considering we spent most of our time in this park, and especially since we got the chance to see the Mardi Gras parade – I think I was overall happy that we spent the extra money.

Tomorrow - Universal is over already? It's fine, we're going to Disney World!

 

[Joben]

Joining in. Got caught up on your PTR and first TR. Lots of Universal. We went when Hogwarts was pretty new, but haven't been back. I agree the design there is pretty great, but even with that I don't get the bubble feel like I do with WDW.

Ugh not looking forward to teenage years. I have not been on the boards so much the last couple of years as we had an addition to our family. Baby's take up a lot of free time(and to put things in perspective we are the same age) We have a boy and I feel teen boys are easier than girls, but still ugh.

Looking forward to your review of of all the DVC resorts. I actually owe you some thanks, as you produced a spreadsheet that really broke down buying DVC pretty well. We bought shortly after you, just before they took away the perks from re-sale buyers (whew) we made our home at OKW, which I know some would same as dumb, but we love that place and really wanted to call it home. we got 175 points there and in a few years will try for another contract hopefully at an Epcot resort. Did you resale your second contract? Curious about the new resorts. A gondola resort might be a good idea.

Got two trips planned for now, but none match up with yours, so going to have to wait awhile longer to buy you that beer.

 

[skier_pete]

Joining in. Got caught up on your PTR and first TR. Lots of Universal. We went when Hogwarts was pretty new, but haven't been back. I agree the design there is pretty great, but even with that I don't get the bubble feel like I do with WDW.

Ugh not looking forward to teenage years. I have not been on the boards so much the last couple of years as we had an addition to our family. Baby's take up a lot of free time(and to put things in perspective we are the same age) We have a boy and I feel teen boys are easier than girls, but still ugh.

Looking forward to your review of of all the DVC resorts. I actually owe you some thanks, as you produced a spreadsheet that really broke down buying DVC pretty well. We bought shortly after you, just before they took away the perks from re-sale buyers (whew) we made our home at OKW, which I know some would same as dumb, but we love that place and really wanted to call it home. we got 175 points there and in a few years will try for another contract hopefully at an Epcot resort. Did you resale your second contract? Curious about the new resorts. A gondola resort might be a good idea.

Got two trips planned for now, but none match up with yours, so going to have to wait awhile longer to buy you that beer.

Nothing wrong with OKW if that's what you like - in fact if you like it there it makes a TON of sense. We haven't stayed there yet so have no opinion, though overall I wasn't impressed with SSR and I think of OKW as similar in style. (Spread out mutiple buildings not near a park.) People say the same thing about AKV since you can frequently get in there at 7 months, but that is the resort we really like that was still inexpensive, and I am not at all disappointed in owning there. (We've stayed there a few times and stayed elsewhere quite a few times as well.)

Our second contract is also resale. I had a significant raise last year and decided to surprise my wife for her 50th birthday with a small BWV contract, at the time (May 2017) I was not happy with the $105 price tag for a 75 point contract, but since then in last than a year costs have increased like 15-20%, so the timing was good. We haven't used any points from that contract yet - this trip we stayed at BWV on our AKV points. That'll be for October.

 

[skier_pete]

Day 3: Universal wrap up.

So we had a limited amount of goals for today. Basically, we hadn’t yet ridden any of the Harry Potter stuff, and we also had to get to Jurassic Park. We had another problem today. My wife is Ukrainian Catholic, and they use the Julian calendar and for that reason today was the first day of lent for her – which also required not eating any meat or dairy for both her and DD. This led to a lot of problems later in the day, but for starters, we headed for the parks early to try and take advantage of early entry. Unfortunately I couldn’t get everyone to get a move on in time for things to get there at 8 AM, so by the time we were heading down to the boat it was probably like 8:15 AM.

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Another beautiful day with sunny ball in a clear blue background.

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The way Early Entry works is they had two paths to get into Hogwarts. One went along the water at Suess Landing, and the other (for non-EE people) went through Suess landing and held people at ropes there. In the end – there were people EVERYWHERE. Hogwarts was extremely crowded.

Sunny Ball even helped me get a nice backlit shot of the Owl Post.

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So as we got to Forbidden Journey, we saw that the wait was sitting at 40 minutes! So much for early entry. I asked about front of the Line….”Oh FotL doesn’t open until 9 AM.” Well, at this point, it was 8:48 AM. I asked “Can we just go inside by the lockers and wait for it to open?” “No I’m sorry we can’t allow foks to stand by the lockers, come back at 9 AM” Well, I decided we would go in at 8:55 AM, I didn’t want to have to deal with the crowd being held back at the ropes. So we entered and put our stuff in a locker, and again by the time we finished, we found that our timing was perfect and instead of waiting 40 minutes, we waited about 5 minutes because there were only maybe 10 people in front of us at FOTL.

For those that haven’t done it, Forbidden Journey is an amazing ride –definitely the king of the theme park industry. I don’t even mind the use of screens here that makes me eventually sick of all things Universal. The only problem is I find this is the ONLY theme park ride that actually leaves me nauseated at the end. I mean, it’s only slightly and I get over it pretty quick, but it leaves me with no desire to get back on the ride. So goodbye, Forbidden Journey – see you in a few years. (I don’t want to bring my camera on the ride, so no photographs.)

Next up we decided we were going to try and get some breakfast, but didn’t really want to eat at the 3 broomsticks. So we ask a few TM if there was anyplace else to get breakfast towards Jurassic Park. Team Member Answer: “I think so.” We hadn't had a good track record to date - but for some reason we gave it a try...Correct answer: “No” What are we up to 4 or 5 times of being told the wrong thing? Anyways – since we wandered over to Jurassic Park, we decided to just ride the river journey. Again I didn’t have my camera out for other reasons.

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So, somehow DD, who closes her eyes the whole ride, spotted the fact that they had moved some of the dinosaurs from outside (attacking a truck) to inside. DW and I didn’t remember this at all, but they did close for a refurb the day after we were here last year. DD this time kept her eyes mostly open. I really love this ride – maybe because it’s one of the few that don’t assault you with 3-D screens. Plus a pretty big fan of the original movie.

After this we were getting REALLY hungry, some would say even hangry. So we headed for the Three Broomsticks as our only apparent option in all of IOA. (We tried to use the app to find other options, but apparently there are none.) I ordered the American Breakfast while DD got the pancakes (probably her favorite food) and DW got the fruit plate. Remember, no meat allowed for them, so I got double portions of bacon and sausage. Shortened my life span by about a month.

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We decided at this point to head for the Hogwarts Express.

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The entrance took you right near the new ride being constructed. I am so impressed how they are keeping this secret. There were lots of beams being pounded in. I wonder what it will be.

The Hogwarts Express ride is probably the least impressive ride that will ever cost me a huge amount of money to ride. Here’s my logic behind this:
1) If this ride didn’t exist, I would NOT have bought a park-to-park pass for Universal back in 2017.
2) Buying the park-to-park pass led me to decide to spend an extra $180 on season passes.
3) It then led us to plan this return trip to Universal, spending $450 on a hotel and $127 on another ticket upgrade, plus food and merchandise.

So good job Hogwarts Express…perhaps this is why I am so unimpressed. The ride is SOOOO slight. They put you in a car and a show you a short movie. There’s no variation of the movie – it’s the same the first, third or 50th time you ride. It’s a screen, how could you not at least randomize it a little bit like Star Tours? I mean, c’mon you are suckering thousands of people into buying hopper passes, at least make this ride decent. This was the third time we’ve ridden in this direction, and I am less impressed with it each time.

We got to the loading platform and at first they weren’t going to let us on. We had to be back to the room by noon, and it was probably like 10 AM at this point, so when they asked if we would split up, we said sure. I rode with DD, and we both rolled our eyes whenever Hermione said anything, because the voice actor they got to replace Emma Watson sounds almost nothing like her. We rolled our eyes so hard I think I sprained an optic nerve.

Last target for the day was Gringott’s. This seems to be the hardest of rides to get on. Wait was too long back in November, and we skipped it the day before as well. Today be damned, we waited. In fact, we only waited about 10 minutes. I actually have to say I enjoyed this ride a little more this time than the first time. I bash on Universal and there screen rides, but when they take the screen rides and combine them with a pretty good ride mechanism – in this particular case they have a roller coaster car that can also twist and spin. I wish there were SOME amount of actual animatronics on the ride, but really this is a top-notch ride if just a slight step down from Forbidden Journey.

No pictures on the ride, but I took a few in the queue.

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DW loved the elevator dial. I also like the elevator – a take on the stretching room, except this is an elevator that doesn’t go anywhere.

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After we got done with the ride, DD wanted one last butter beer. So, we went to the butter beer stand. And wouldn’t you know it? The butter beer stand over by the area where they do the puppet plays (Deathly Hallows and such) they sell DWs favorite drink – the Otter’s Fizzy Orange Juice. When we came here back in November, DW really wanted one of these drinks, and when we inquired we were told “You can ONLY get them at the Leaky Cauldron”, at the time, there was a giant line that turned out to be more than 30 minutes long, but DW really wanted the drink so we waited in that long food line just to get a drink. Well, turns out, Team Member was wrong, they sell the drink not 100 feet away with no wait. So, thank you again Universal, for giving me one last irritating moment!

I hate to come across as whiny, besides the problems the first night - we really had a good time on our two days at Universal. The on-site stay does make traveling here super-convenient. But the parks themselves just don’t impress me all that much. The cost for us vs staying at WDW with DVC is more than double, and while there are some great rides, we are typically “one and done” type ride people, and DD mostly didn’t want to ride any of them. The food is extremely unimpressive unless you head to City Walk, and the non-ride attractions (shows and such) are all completely disposable to the point we didn’t bother to go see any of them. So really it’s a matter of that Universal and our family is a very poor fit – we are happy to stay at Disney. In fact, I mentioned to DW that when we come back again – maybe in 5 or 6 years - I would probably do something similar: Stay maybe two days on-site, get a single-park-per-day pass and just stay 3 days. At this stage a return isn’t even in our thoughts.

But we were definitely happy campers with our time here - as we were leaving – I posted this picture on facebook and said “That feeling when you realize you got to use the 365th day of your annual pass.”

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We returned to the hotel – and though we had arranged for late check-out at noon, it was just right at noon when we walked into the room. We called bell services and transferred our stuff to the lobby and loaded up our car. We talked about if we wanted to go back to the parks, but everyone was up for moving over to Disney.

Next up – this is no Bored Walk!

 

[Lesley Wake]

I totally understand you about Universal. About the Team Members, I feel (and I could be mistaken), so many people working at WDW are people who love Disney and really wanted to work there specifically. It seems Universal TMs are more seeing it as just another job at a theme park, not something they specifically wanted to work at (maybe some of the ones at Harry Potter are exceptions though).

I think the park-park option is way overpriced, and they can get away with it. I liked the Hogwarts Express, and will probably get the park-park ticket on my December trip, but more because I want to see the Christmas stuff at both parks; I'll probably avoid the lines for HE.

I also didn't like how the rides at USO are designed. Way too intense and not smooth. And the restraints are too tight-you'd think they could design somewhat for fluffier people. I have never had a problem fitting on any Disney ride, including FoP, while at USO I had to really suck it in and TM had to push down a bit, which didn't exactly make for a comfortable ride!

If it wasn't for the Christmas stuff, I'd skip it for another several years.

 

[kboo]

Having just been to Italy in September, I want to say that they did a nice job capturing the style and architecture of Italy, but one thing they failed miserably at was capturing how OLD everyplace in Italy feels. It was like a simulation of Italy that didn’t feel at all like the real thing. This is actually a relatively minor complaint, it was a beautiful resort, and I would imagine that this would be a fun place to wine and dine in the evening.

But wouldn't you say the same about Italy/Epcot? Love the pictures and the hotel looks nice - but I wonder how it compares to the deluxe hotels at WDW. Your TR is making me think that at most Universal would be part of a short split stay for us too - but like, 10 years in the future. Maybe the PB will look older by then.

 

[skier_pete]

But wouldn't you say the same about Italy/Epcot? Love the pictures and the hotel looks nice - but I wonder how it compares to the deluxe hotels at WDW. Your TR is making me think that at most Universal would be part of a short split stay for us too - but like, 10 years in the future. Maybe the PB will look older by then.

Let me start off by saying this was a very minor complaint - neither Universal nor Disney would want their high-end resorts to look as run down as real-life Italy looks. Yes, Italy in World Showcase (and WS in general) also is much to "polished". That said, one of the coolest things that I discovered in WS-Italy after we came back was that the clover shape column toppers along the balcony that mimics the Doge's Palace in Venice's Piazza St. Marco - these shamrock shapes all have 5 cracks in real life from years of pressure weighing down on them, and the Disney simulation also has those same cracks. (IF you look close in this picture below you can maybe see them.) So I would say Disney tried a little bit harder.

I would say that PBH compared very favorably with Disney deluxe hotels - and certainly has (a) a lower price point and (b) a benefit that Disney does NOT include - namely the Front of the Line pass which doesn't exist at Disney. For all my complaints about the cost - $378 a night is still a lot less than the $500-700 for the prime Disney hotels. The location here is not much different from say staying at the Poly - about a 5 minute boat ride to both parks.

I think it's really all about what your interests are. If you are interested in a very thrill ride-centric theme park, then Universal is definitely the place to go. The impression I get from Universal lovers is that they love riding rides multiple times through a trip. (There's a smaller contigent on these boards of Universal lovers, and many of them will spend 1-2 weeks at Universal. I can't imagine this myself, but it's all about what you love.) If what you love about Disney is the theming and the atmosphere that the different theme parks provide - the food, the shows, the shops - then I don't think Uni will hit the same sweet spot.

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[DVC Matt]

I love Krusty! The Simpsons is a great show =)
~ Matt
#dvcrentals

 

[franandaj]

Sounds like your meals at the toothsome Emporium were pretty tasty. The "meh" reviews that I heard were drom people who ordered the chocolate bread and shakes.

The room looks very nice. Never seen Blue Man Group and never really had the desire to do so, nice that you enjoyed it.

That's really odd that the Three Broomsticks was the only ace you could get some breakfast in the park. Then again, I have never been impressed with the food selections at the Uni parks.

 

[skier_pete]

Sounds like your meals at the toothsome Emporium were pretty tasty. The "meh" reviews that I heard were drom people who ordered the chocolate bread and shakes.

The room looks very nice. Never seen Blue Man Group and never really had the desire to do so, nice that you enjoyed it.

That's really odd that the Three Broomsticks was the only ace you could get some breakfast in the park. Then again, I have never been impressed with the food selections at the Uni parks.

We saw a table near us and everyone got these over top "shakes". (I hate to call them shakes when they have like cupcake stuck on top of them.) Of the table, only one person approached finishing, most of the people left at least half the shake. They just looked so overwhelmingly sugary. Of course, I do not like over the top sundaes. The idea of the Kitchen Sink grosses me out. Anyways, i can't speak for those shakes, but the food we had was all pretty good, and pretty much the best thing we've eaten at Universal - though admitted the bar there isn't very high.

BMG was fun - I would definitely recommend it once. I enjoyed it much more than say "Stomp", which got pretty repetitive after awhile. They actually varied their shtick pretty well, and a lot of audience participation made it pretty funny. More of a comedy show than say Cirque De Soliel is

 

[skier_pete]

Sorry - we were on vacation (again) in Arizona this time - I meant to do an update while we were there but never got around to it.

So instead let's continue with why most of us are on this site - the Disney portion of our trip.

Day 3 continued:

Before heading to Disney – we stopped and did a little bit of grocery shopping – in this rare case that we have a vehicle, it was nice to not have to pay $6 for a half-gallon of orange juice. We were also very much looking forward to being in the same room for more than one consecutive night. We’ve been living out of our suitcase for 4 days now and were ready to stay it one place for a time, even if it was only 3 nights.

I’ve told this story in our PTR, but one very strong memory from one of our earliest trips together in 2000 was parking at the Boardwalk to go to Epcot first thing in the morning, and I remember walking down to the Boardwalk and thinking – “Oh man, could you imagine someday staying here? We could never afford it, but maybe someday.” And now we not only are staying here, but we own here. Amazing, I feel so blessed.

But still, we bought here without ever having STAYED here – that seems a little crazy. Are we going to like it? Seems hard to imagine no. I dropped DW and DD off at the front entrance with most of the luggage. In the meantime, I had to run over to the car care center to drop off the rental car. I have to say, this is SO handy – this is the second time in a row I’ve had to drop off a rental car, and it’s super easy. The car care center is near the MK parking lot / gas station. I drop the car, they put you in shuttle, and the shuttle drops you back at your resort. Total time was less than 30 minutes. I got back to the room and DW and DD were still waiting for the luggage to show up while relaxing. Here’s some quick shots of the room.

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The Deluxe Studios always seem small, because versus the hotel rooms, they give a lot of space to the kitchenette and the bathroom, but overall, I think this room set up pretty nice. I really like the rooms that have the drop down trundle. (under the TV) It’s a pretty clever use of space to have the table turn into a bed.

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One thing I do very much like about the studios versus a Disney hotel room is the kitchenette. Sure it’s just fridge, sink, microwave, toaster – but we prefer to eat breakfast in the room and this also us to have some variety to our breakfast. We pack a small kit of utensils as well, but they do also supply plates and plastic ware.

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While I would never really want to cram 5 adults in one of these rooms, it’s nice to have the option if you would have 4 people to have 3 separate beds, or also if you have 3 smaller kids you can make this work pretty well.

The best part of all was that even though we didn’t use our Boardwalk Villa points, I was still able to swing a Boardwalk view room at 7 months. One of the main reasons I bought points at Boardwalk was OK with buying here even though the points were pretty expensive was that there were two options that were advantageous to have points (a) the “Standard” view rooms cost about 25% less most of the resort, and are often impossible to get at 11-months and (b) the “Boardwalk” view rooms are the same point price as the regular “Garden/Pool” view rooms, and are also hard to book as a non-owner, though in this case that’s what I did. And let’s face it, the view is as good as it gets!

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We also are using this years trips as an experiment. This trip we are booked in the “prime” rooms, the Boardwalk room. Is Boardwalk view worth it? Is it too noisy when trying to sleep? Can you really see illuminations? Then the second trip in October we have a “standard” view room, which allowed us to book 5 nights with only using our diminished supply of points (55 points to be exact). This will answer the question of are the standard rooms an acceptable alternaive to conserve points, or are they shuttled so far away from the main parts of the resort that we’d rather pay the premium rate. The difference being that our 75 annual points can get us a full week in a standard room in the low-season (Sept 1 through Jan 31 excepting holidays) versus perhaps 4 or 5 nights in a Pool/Boardwalk view. Is the Boardwalk worth less nights? Well, that is To Be Determined. But by initial judgement, the view from the Boardwalk room is a pretty big winner.

So here’s where problems started. We had a late breakfast, but we never really stopped to have lunch because we couldn’t figure out somewhere to get food for DD that didn’t involve any meat or dairy. So by 3:30 PM everyone was getting hungry, so we got the idea to go into WS and find something to eat. Besides, we had the main reason we left Universal early – we wanted to see the Arts Festival Broadway performance, while I think was scheduled to start at 5:30 PM. So we headed off. Here’s a shot of our room from the Boardwalk – if you see the flag in the middle, the yellow section to the right of the flag, we were on the first balcony up from that. Right below us was Big River Grille’s outdoor seating.

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Things seem happy enough….at first.

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So as we entered Epcot – we had to get DDs Annual Pass activated. DW and I had already used our passes in November, but it didn’t make sense to activate DDs then. This was pretty quick, taking maybe 5 minutes. So we got into the park and headed to France to see if we could find something to eat. Now, understand that when DD and DW both get hungry, they also tend to get “hangry”, easy to set off. So we went to Les Halles, but there was nothing there that DD would eat that didn’t have meat or cheese in it. So now they both started to get mad – DD because she just wanted to eat and thinks this whole thing is stupid, and DW because she has already given the OK that dinner tonight is going to allow dairy, and she just wanted to stand pat the rest of the day. So we try going to Tangerine Café, which clearly has vegetarian choices, but again DD won’t try any of them. So now, to help matters not one bit, DW storms off all pissed off, leaving DD and I alone not knowing exactly what to do. We waited about 10 minutes for DW to come back, but it became apparent she wasn’t coming back. I kind of annoyed by all this, because I have to be the problem solver AND try and rescue everyone’s bad mood.

So, I suggested to DD that we go over to America and get some funnel cake. (I don’t there’s any milk in there – who knows.) So I get her the funnel cake, and set her up by the fountain. Meanwhile DW has texted me she is waiting in the standby line for the concert. I go to talk to her but she’s still fuming about everything and doesn’t want to talk. So I go over to one of the food booths, and get a scallop snack for her and foist it on her.

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Mind you I still haven’t eaten anything – but at least I got my hangry ladies calmed down. The sunny ball was pounding heat down on us all, so I went to the food stand near there – and ordered the Jack’d up frozen lemonade (some up of whisky poured into the lemonade) and while I was tempted to get an American Dream (ice cream + red and blue slushie = YUM) I resisted and just got the slushie. I got DD and we went to wait in the standby line together, everyone had some cooling slush and tempers finally started to settle down. This was good because we were close to the time we needed to be seated for the show!

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Next up...Broadway SINGS!

 

[skier_pete]

Day 3 completed...

The Broadway series was basically 30-minute concerts with some Broadway stars. In our case, it was Ashley Brown and Josh Strickland. Ashley was the original Mary Poppins on Broadway and Josh Strickland was the original Tarzan on Broadway. I did a little deep dive on them, and they are long-time friends it seems in real life, so doing two weekends here is probably a pretty fun vacation for them and their families. The show by the way was fantastic, we were in the 3rd row, and I would say I wish it had gone a little longer, but overall it was great. (I know some people go and see this show all 3 shows, but unless they change it up significantly, once was enough for me.)

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I also took some video but honestly if you want to hear the show look it up on Youtube, it’s pretty available.

I neglected to mention that while waiting for the show to start our friend “K” from the previous trip report joined us. She was leaving for Las Vegas the next morning, and had a hotel near the airport for the night, but wanted to just see the show, so we only chatted with her after the show for a little bit and took a few pictures at the art booths.

Here we are crossing the Delaware. DD is of course taking a selfie. And somehow I’m the only one rowing!

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Then we found “Birth of Venus” a personal favorite of mine:

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We invited her to join us for dinner, but she wanted to get to bed early. Meanwhile, we had a reservation for Via Napoli. By now everyone was happy to be sitting down and getting into a better mood.

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I forgot to mention earlier that we now have one of these…

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..meaning that we couldn’t resist a bottle of vino.

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DD is at an age where she doesn’t want to be in the pictures. Here’s her hand.

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So – our pizza couldn’t have meat, but DW allowed a dairy exception:

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This was a pretty good pizza. I would say maybe slightly better than Red Oven over at Universal. This is a great sit-down restaurant to go to with the family, because even though the Pizza is expensive – say $30 for a pizza – it’s enough to feed the 3 of us on a single pie, making it a pretty cheap dinner. Even with the bottle of wine, dinner cost $69 including tip.

We actually had a Test Track FP+ set for after dinner, but it had been a long day and we were all tired, so we just headed back for the room. Again, our room in this shot is the fourth column from the right edge, just to the left of the Swan on top of the Swan.



I realize now that we didn’t take a picture from our balcony in the evening. However, we were able to watch Illuminations from our Balcony – sort of. The angle is such that the fireworks go off over the other end of the Boardwalk – so really you are just seeing the upper section of the fireworks. You also don’t get any of the music, so really though I’d say it is an pleasant way to watch the fireworks, its not really a very good way to watch Illuminations.

This was a pretty long day if you think about it…in fact a day that followed several busy days…we were ready to slow the pace of the trip down a bit. (It occurs to me as I write this…that maybe this is why we’ve developed such a love of Disney, and Universal just doesn’t do it for us. Even with a bit of a meltdown, we had a really fun evening at Epcot, and never once considered that we needed to go on a ride. I just don’t see that at Universal, the rides are great, but beyond the rides and I guess the Citywalk nightlife there’s just not a lot of draw to me. I would be perfectly happy doing a trip to Disney and not going on rides at all. (There’s a pretty good chance this could happen come October!)

 

[rteetz]

Boardwalk is definitely on my list. I have done BC but I have always liked the Boardwalk.

Festival of Arts looks like a great time. It starts right after I leave from Marathon Weekend.

I have always enjoyed Via Napoli too.