hughesfamilyadventures
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2025
- Messages
- 34
An early 7am start, which immediately required food-based motivation. We stopped at McDonald’s on I-Drive, where I tried my first ever bacon & egg McGriddle — and honestly? Life-changing. I devoured it. I’m also secretly thrilled that these are coming to the UK in February because I will absolutely be revisiting this moment.
Fully fuelled, we arrived at Loews Royal Pacific for our overnight stay. Check-in took around 30 minutes, after which we were handed our Express Passes — a moment that always feels like being given a golden ticket.
With passes secured, we hopped on the water taxi to CityWalk, which is one of my favourite ways to arrive anywhere. Relaxing, breezy, and zero walking — perfect.
Once at Islands of Adventure, we collected our annual passes and everyone else’s 14-day tickets, grabbed our accessibility pass, and headed into the park.
Obviously, the first ride of the day had to be The Cat in the Hat. As tradition dictates.
We reactivated our refillable mugs and then headed to VelociCoaster… which we did not ride because our bags wouldn’t fit in the lockers
Instead, we made our way to Hogsmeade to meet the rest of the family, who were in the queue for Olivanders, so we did what anyone would do — went to Honeydukes.
At this point, reality hit hard. My fibro was absolutely doing me dirty, so we headed back to the park entrance to hire an ECV/wheelchair. $75 later, I was mobile again and ready to rejoin the group.
We managed to sneak on Hagrid’s — despite feeling like we might actually perish in the heat — and it was, as always, incredible and still a firm favourite.
Lunch was at Fire Eater’s Grill, where Chris had a… soggy chicken kebab. Not the highlight of the trip. The garlic pita chips also failed to impress, which felt personal.
We then rode Forbidden Journey before unanimously deciding it was far too hot and heading back to the hotel to see if we could check into our rooms early.
On the way out, Val’s scooter also decided it had had enough of the heat and completely ran out of power. Turns out that the night before, Val and Stephen assumed that because the battery was still showing green, it didn’t need charging.
Spoiler alert: it did.
Cue Chris, Stephen and Thomas manually pushing the scooter from just outside Islands of Adventure all the way back to Royal Pacific. Core memories were made. Mainly sweaty ones.
Back at the hotel, Val and Stephen’s room wasn’t ready, so they joined us in ours. I promptly fell asleep, and a glorious afternoon storm rolled in — confirming that we had made the correct decision to retreat.
At 5:30pm, we rallied and headed back on the water taxi with Val, Stephen, and the kids to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., using our Landry’s card.
Once seated, I realised I had misplaced our Express and annual passes — all of them — which were in my card wallet. Cue me speed-walking back to the boat dock to see if they’d fallen out of my pocket. No luck.
Thankfully, I had our annual passes on my phone, meaning we could still get back into the park — just without Express. Crisis partially averted.
Dinner was lovely, and after eating I felt well enough to head back into the park. Val and Stephen decided to head back to the hotel, so we carefully explained which boat to get and how to get back to the room.
This information was… not retained (More on that at the end)
Back at Islands of Adventure, Guest Services very kindly printed us temporary paper Express passes, and I picked up another ECV.
After some classic scanner chaos at Hulk (phones, keys, battery packs, pockets — you know the drill), we rode The Hulk. Noah rode it for the first time and absolutely loved it — a proud parent moment.
Next, the boys and I rode Dr Doom, while Chris refilled the refillable drink. Our final plan was VelociCoaster, which was now… down. Naturally.
So instead, we rode Hagrid’s again — this time in the dark — and it was incredible. Possibly even better at night.
A little shopping on the way out (because obviously), a mandatory Cinnabon stop, and we headed back to the hotel by just after 11pm
When we finally arrived back at Loews Royal Pacific, utterly shattered and running on fumes, we headed straight to reception to get new key cards — because I was convinced I’d lost ours.
What followed was a surprisingly long and complicated process involving:
Questions
And the small issue of needing photo ID
Of course, my ID was in the room.
The room we could not access.
Because I “didn’t have” the key cards.
After a fair bit of back and forth (and me internally replaying every decision I’d made that day), I suggested that a member of staff could escort me to the room so I could retrieve my passport for identification purposes.
Up we went.
The door was opened.
And there — proudly displayed on the TV unit — sat the wallet.
Inside the wallet?
The Express Passes
The Annual Passes
On the plus side I had not lost them - I had simply never taken them with us in the first place.
I stood there in silence, questioning my life choices, blaming menopause, fibro and heat exhaustion. The poor staff member, to his credit, was incredibly polite and did not laugh (at least not to my face).
With keys recovered, dignity slightly bruised, and it now being 11:30pm, we collapsed into bed and were asleep within minutes.
The Adventures of Val
The next day, we asked Val and Stephen how their evening went after leaving us.
It turns out they had:
• Got on the wrong boat
• Still don’t know which hotel they ended up at
• Been rescued by brilliant boat staff who returned them to CityWalk and redirected them to the correct dock
Once back at Royal Pacific, they then spent ages trying to get back to their room.
Stephen got into the lift before Val and the scooter, and the doors closed. Stephen went up a few floors, got out, and told a couple entering the lift that his wife was stuck outside.
The couple went down, found Val waiting, and informed her that her husband was upstairs. They helped reunite the pair, and the terrible twosome finally made it back to their room at around 10pm…
Considering we left them at 7:15pm, this was quite the journey.
And that is why you can’t leave Val and Stephen alone on holiday.
Tomorrow join us for Universal Studios.
YT Version:
Fully fuelled, we arrived at Loews Royal Pacific for our overnight stay. Check-in took around 30 minutes, after which we were handed our Express Passes — a moment that always feels like being given a golden ticket.
With passes secured, we hopped on the water taxi to CityWalk, which is one of my favourite ways to arrive anywhere. Relaxing, breezy, and zero walking — perfect.
Once at Islands of Adventure, we collected our annual passes and everyone else’s 14-day tickets, grabbed our accessibility pass, and headed into the park.
Obviously, the first ride of the day had to be The Cat in the Hat. As tradition dictates.
We reactivated our refillable mugs and then headed to VelociCoaster… which we did not ride because our bags wouldn’t fit in the lockers
Instead, we made our way to Hogsmeade to meet the rest of the family, who were in the queue for Olivanders, so we did what anyone would do — went to Honeydukes.
At this point, reality hit hard. My fibro was absolutely doing me dirty, so we headed back to the park entrance to hire an ECV/wheelchair. $75 later, I was mobile again and ready to rejoin the group.
We managed to sneak on Hagrid’s — despite feeling like we might actually perish in the heat — and it was, as always, incredible and still a firm favourite.
Lunch was at Fire Eater’s Grill, where Chris had a… soggy chicken kebab. Not the highlight of the trip. The garlic pita chips also failed to impress, which felt personal.
We then rode Forbidden Journey before unanimously deciding it was far too hot and heading back to the hotel to see if we could check into our rooms early.
On the way out, Val’s scooter also decided it had had enough of the heat and completely ran out of power. Turns out that the night before, Val and Stephen assumed that because the battery was still showing green, it didn’t need charging.
Spoiler alert: it did.
Cue Chris, Stephen and Thomas manually pushing the scooter from just outside Islands of Adventure all the way back to Royal Pacific. Core memories were made. Mainly sweaty ones.
Back at the hotel, Val and Stephen’s room wasn’t ready, so they joined us in ours. I promptly fell asleep, and a glorious afternoon storm rolled in — confirming that we had made the correct decision to retreat.
At 5:30pm, we rallied and headed back on the water taxi with Val, Stephen, and the kids to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., using our Landry’s card.
Once seated, I realised I had misplaced our Express and annual passes — all of them — which were in my card wallet. Cue me speed-walking back to the boat dock to see if they’d fallen out of my pocket. No luck.
Thankfully, I had our annual passes on my phone, meaning we could still get back into the park — just without Express. Crisis partially averted.
Dinner was lovely, and after eating I felt well enough to head back into the park. Val and Stephen decided to head back to the hotel, so we carefully explained which boat to get and how to get back to the room.
This information was… not retained (More on that at the end)
Back at Islands of Adventure, Guest Services very kindly printed us temporary paper Express passes, and I picked up another ECV.
After some classic scanner chaos at Hulk (phones, keys, battery packs, pockets — you know the drill), we rode The Hulk. Noah rode it for the first time and absolutely loved it — a proud parent moment.
Next, the boys and I rode Dr Doom, while Chris refilled the refillable drink. Our final plan was VelociCoaster, which was now… down. Naturally.
So instead, we rode Hagrid’s again — this time in the dark — and it was incredible. Possibly even better at night.
A little shopping on the way out (because obviously), a mandatory Cinnabon stop, and we headed back to the hotel by just after 11pm
When we finally arrived back at Loews Royal Pacific, utterly shattered and running on fumes, we headed straight to reception to get new key cards — because I was convinced I’d lost ours.
What followed was a surprisingly long and complicated process involving:
Questions
And the small issue of needing photo ID
Of course, my ID was in the room.
The room we could not access.
Because I “didn’t have” the key cards.
After a fair bit of back and forth (and me internally replaying every decision I’d made that day), I suggested that a member of staff could escort me to the room so I could retrieve my passport for identification purposes.
Up we went.
The door was opened.
And there — proudly displayed on the TV unit — sat the wallet.
Inside the wallet?
The Express Passes
The Annual Passes
On the plus side I had not lost them - I had simply never taken them with us in the first place.
I stood there in silence, questioning my life choices, blaming menopause, fibro and heat exhaustion. The poor staff member, to his credit, was incredibly polite and did not laugh (at least not to my face).
With keys recovered, dignity slightly bruised, and it now being 11:30pm, we collapsed into bed and were asleep within minutes.
The Adventures of Val
The next day, we asked Val and Stephen how their evening went after leaving us.
It turns out they had:
• Got on the wrong boat
• Still don’t know which hotel they ended up at
• Been rescued by brilliant boat staff who returned them to CityWalk and redirected them to the correct dock
Once back at Royal Pacific, they then spent ages trying to get back to their room.
Stephen got into the lift before Val and the scooter, and the doors closed. Stephen went up a few floors, got out, and told a couple entering the lift that his wife was stuck outside.
The couple went down, found Val waiting, and informed her that her husband was upstairs. They helped reunite the pair, and the terrible twosome finally made it back to their room at around 10pm…
Considering we left them at 7:15pm, this was quite the journey.
And that is why you can’t leave Val and Stephen alone on holiday.
Tomorrow join us for Universal Studios.
YT Version:
