My first PRE-trip Report

[Teknik_DC2]

Hey everyone. This is my first ever Pre-trip report so I hope you guys enjoy it and can add some help to any questions I may have. This trip will be taking place from October 7th-17th, 2009.

Anyways the people you will be seeing in this pre-trip report (as well as the actual trip report when we are done) is me Jeff (26) and my wife Kiera (22).

We got married in Febuary of 2008 and have had a love of traveling since. For our honeymoon we went on a mexican rivera cruise on the Carnival Spirit to Purto Vallerta, Mazzetlan, and Cobo San Lucas, as well as spending a day in Hollywood and Santa Monica in Southern California.

For Christmas last year we treated ourselves to another vacation to Southern California. This time we hit up Universal Studios Hollywood, Disneyland, Disney's California Adventure, and Knotts Berry Farm as well as a couple nights in Las Vegas. The Trip report for this vacation can be found at the link below:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2071198

Which now brings up to the point of this Pre-trip Report. 2 months ago we bought our first house. And along with our first house we got the $8,000 tax credit from the government. Those who have bought a home before know the stresses that can be envolved with getting a home. And we had plenty of them. So we decided to take $1,000 out of the $8,000 and put it towards another vacation because we desirve it lol.

We have been wanting to go on another cruise since our honeymoon. This time my wife made it very clear that she wanted to go on a caribbean cruise. So a couple nights ago i made the first steps to making this happen. I booked us a cruise on the Carnival Glory from October 10th-17th. Ports on the cruise include Nassau, Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. With early booking discounts the cruise only cost around 1,100 after taxes and insurance.

Since the ship sails out of Port Canaveral near Orlando we decided to add a couple days to the vacation and spend October 7th-9th in Orlando and go to the Univeral Orlando Parks for 2 days. I havn't been to florida since 1994 and my wife since 1997 so I figured we could treat ourselves to a little theme park fun while we are there.

So this is all I have so far. The cruise is booked. However I still need to find airline tickets, hotel, rental car, and park passes. I'll try and keep this updated as often as I can. hope you enjoy this.

 

[Darcy03231]

Sounds like you have a great trip planned!

 

[macraven]

i hope you love the universal parks as much as we homies do.


sounds like you have a great adventure coming up this fall !

 

[Teknik_DC2]

Hey everyone. Its about time i've come back for an update. I should do better at updating this when I've got a things to update on lol.

Anyways first we are no longer making this trip by ourselves. We were able to convince some of our friends to make the trip with us. So Tyler and Rachael (both 21) will be making the trip as well. They were even able to get the room 1 door down from us on the cruise so we will have a blast having someone to spend some time on the vacation with.

A couple days after Tyler and Rachael decided to come on the trip we all got together and went and got our passports taken care of. We decided to just get the Passport Cards instead of the Booklet since you don't need the booklet unless your traveling out of the country by air. So hopefully we don't get stuck somewhere on our cruise where we'd have to fly back lol.

When we got done with the passports we got to talking about what we were going to do while in Orlando. This reason is the biggest part of why I havn't had and update for a while. We got to talking and the Wives (kiera and rachael) wanted to go to Disney World instead of Universal because both of them didn't care for Universal Studios Hollywood at all. So for a couple weeks following that I had been doing alot of research to see how possible it would be to do Disney World in 2 days. Looking at what we couldn't miss and figuring if we would even want to attempt it or not. Well we came to the conclusion that we should stick with the original plans and go back to Florida to do Disney World when we have a week to experiance it. I also was able to convine everyone that Universal Orlando is nothing like Universal Hollywood and is much better.

So the Orlando plan has stayed the same. We will be getting the 2 day 2 park unlimited tickets. We also decided since Universal is half the cost of what we would have spent for the Disney tickets that we would check out the Halloween Horror Nights event as well that Thursday night since the Stay and Scream ticket would only be $30 bucks a person extra.

With a plan set now it was time to find our plane tickets. I had been watching tickets for a couple weeks and found a non-stop Delta flight to Orlando from Salt Lake City as well as non-stop on the return flight for just under $600 for the 2 of us. We decided we should book this flight so the next morning I checked the costs. Yeah it went up about 30 bucks a person. So as I paniced when I got home I was determined that we needed to book the flights that night. So when I got home from work I pulled it up again to buy tickets. And once again the tickets went up again. This time another $60 bucks a person. My wife really got worried and I went right to work on finding us the cheapest flight to Orlando for our trip.

After about 2 hours of searching I finally found our flight plans. Kiera called up Rachael and walked her thru it as I purchased our plane tickets so they could make sure they are on the same flights as us. Anyways because of the price of tickets we decided that it would be cheaper for us to stay an extra day in Orlando and fly home Sunday instead. So now we have an extra day after the cruise in Orlando to find something to do.

Our flight leaves SLC on October 7th at 7:10am and we will be flying on American Airlines (we will be flying with them the whole trip). We have a stop in Chicago for an hour and then we will continue to Orlando where we will land at 3:55pm. For our return flight we will be leaving Orlando at 2:05pm on the 18th and have a 2 1/2 hour layover in Dallas. We will arrive back in SLC at 8:10pm.

So now your all caught up to speed. The only thing we really have left to plan now is our Hotel room and Rental car for when we are in Orlando. We decided that all 4 of us will share the room to keep the costs down and the wives want the hotel to be at least a 3 star and as cheap as possible lol. I found some pretty good package deals on Expedia for the room and rental car. I just gotta contact them to see if we do that package deal if we can return the car in Cape Canaveral where we catch the cruise ship or if we have to return it to MCO and find a shuttle to the cruise port.

Anyways theres my update for now. Hope you enjoy it and hopefully I will have more to report on soon.

 

[tlinus]

Can I stow away in your luggage??

Sounds like a great plan so far

 

[Teknik_DC2]

Alright i'm back with another update. We final got the last things taken care of to prepare for the trip. That being our Hotel and Car rentals.

Since we are doing this on the cheap we decided to go with a cheaper hotel as well. To help keep costs down as well we are sharing the room with Tyler and Rachael as well. I ended up booking us at the Days Inn Universal Maingate. I guess its pretty much right across the street from the parking structures at Universal. I ended up getting the room for around $38 bucks a night and we will be staying there from Oct 7th tell the 10th. Theres alot of mixed reviews about this hotel. Just over half the reviews were positive and there were alot of negatives as well. However we decided to take our chances and see for ourselves. I've done this many times and havn't had a bad experiance yet so i'm keeping my fingers crossed lol.

For our rental car I looked around and compared prices of all the major companys and found that Budget would be the cheapest for our trip. I got us a midsize car and we will be picking it up at the MCO airport. Since we have to be in Port Canaveral saturday morning for the cruise we are returning it to the rental agency in Cape Canaveral where there free shuttle will then take us to our cruise ship. The one way rental and 3 day charges came to around $160.

When we get off the Cruise ship a week later we are pretty much doing the same thing again. Picking up a midsize rental car from Budget in Port Canaveral and then driving back into Orlando where we will stay the night and then return the Car at the MCO rental office. This rental is costing us $80. We have to wait tell they pretty much kick us off the ship though cause we can't pick it up until noon. Thats because if we picked it up any sooner then Noon it would have cost us $75 more. So we decided to wait it out lol.

For our one night in Orlando we are just staying down the street from Universal at another Days Inn. This one being the Days Inn Orlando/International Dr. And once again we will be taking a chance with it as the reviews were even with positive and negative remarks. Once again we are also sharing the room as well to keep costs down and this one also cost us $38 bucks for the night.

So thats it for now. We still havn't decided for sure what we will be doing for our extra day after we get off the ship. Right now we are talking about checking out the Space Center at Cape Canaveral and probably just some basic sight seeing around Orlando. I guess we will see when the time comes.

 

[Teknik_DC2]

Well since its been almost 3 months since i've posted in this I figured maybe it would be time for somewhat of an update.

We are now in the final countdown tell the Vacation. In fact in exactly 4 weeks or 28 days from now we will be in Orlando. Everything is now in the final stages. Just got to plan out what excursions we want to do on the cruise and just buy our Universal Tickets (which we will next week).

I figured I would do something different with this update since I really don't have anything new to update you all on. I figured I would try and remember and share some of my memorys from the first time I went to Universal Studios Florida.

Growing up my family has always been a fan of Universal Studios. We made yearly trips to Disneyland in California and probably every other year we would also go to Universal Studios Hollywood. Our Florida trip in 93 or 94 (honestly I can't remember the date for sure) will always be one I remember. Not only because it was my first (and only so far) trip to Florida but it was also the last family vacation we went on before my parents Divoced.

I was only 10 at the time but I still remember many parts of the vacation vividly. I remember the flight (my parents actually tricked us kids. We thought we were going to Vegas for the weekend but we actually drove to the Vegas airport where my parents suprised us with the trip to Florida). I also remember walking thru the Orlando Airport and getting our Rental car.

I don't remember how long we were in Florida for but it was awesome. The trip was mostly centered around Disney World. I remember going to Epcot, MGM Studios, and Typhoon Lagoon pretty well. However I don't recall to much from the Magic Kingdom. My guess is because I went to Disneyland so many times as a kid they two kind of blended together and because of such I don't remember really anything about the Magic Kingdom other then the Castle.

The other part of the trip that I remember though probably better then any of the others was the trip to Universal Studios Florida. I remember looking forward to going to that park someday ever since it opened. It was Universal Studios Hollywood taken to the next degree. I remember seeing that familiar globe spinning that I would see all the time on Nickelodeon.

Once inside we knew right where we needed to go. One of the holy grails for any kid growing up in the early 90's. That being Nickelodeon studios. From walking around outside the main building to seeing the slim gyser. It was like one of my dreams had come true. We took the tour of the Nickelodeon studios. They were even taping an episode of Clarissa Explains it all when were in one of the rooms that over looked the sound stages. In the "Game Lap" I was even picked to try out a new video game that they said would later be on "Nick Arcade". Nickelodeon Studios was amazing for a 10 year old. It may have been the highlight of the trip. Its sad to admit but when I found out that Nickelodeon Studios closed at Universal a part of me may have died inside.

One of the things Universal did with the Florida park was take some of the attractions on the tram tour at Hollywood and make the full attractions in Florida. The three main ones being the Kong Encounter, Earthquake, and Jaws.

I unfortunatly don't recall Kongfrontation very well. I remember that the cars you were riding in hung from the cealing but thats about it. I've even watched a few Youtube videos of it and none of it sparked any memories. The only thing I really remember about Kongfrontation was after the ride there was a photo op place where you could get your photo taken in Kongs hand. I remember that very well. It suprises me that I don't remember anything else about the ride other then I know we went on it.

Earthquake I don't remember all that well ether because it was pretty much the exact same as the tram stop in Univesal Hollywood. The difference I belive being you loaded into what seemed to be subway cars and then got pulled into the earthquake scenes. So like you were really in a train when this earthquake hit.

Jaws I remember fairly well. Climing in that boat and having Jaws chase up around the harbor. I still remember Jaws poping up all bloody and mutilated from gunshots and such. I really look forward to this when we go there next month.

There was a newere attraction at Florida that had opened in Hollywood as well. However the one in Florida would be the first time I would ride it. That being Back to the Future The Ride. This was probably my favorite ride in the park. I loved it and I loved enjoying it in Hollywood up until its closer. The Simpsons was a sutable replacement. However its no BTTF.

ET I only remember being the same or similar to what it was in Hollywood. I'm not positive if the memorys I have of it are from the Florida version or the Hollywood one. Most likely its a mix of both.

The thing that excited me the most about Universal Studios Florida was the Jurassic Park exhibit that was going on at the time. I was obsessed with the film at the time. From seeing the different vehicles from the film outside to going in the lobby and seeing the actual sick triceratops from the movie as well as many other props from the movie. It was awesome. So awesome that I think I made my parents take us back there at least 3 times before we left the park.

I remember being suprised at how fun the Hanna-Barbera ride ended up being. I didn't think I was going to like it cause I was too "grown up" for characters like the Flintsons and the Jetsons. However the ride was so much fun and I was disapointed we only got to ride it once before the park closed.

The last thing I remember about Universal Studios Florida was the stunt show thing they had in the lake. I remember that being cool with crazy stunts and lots of explosions as well.

Overall I really enjoyed Universal Studios Florida. I couldn't wait tell we got to go back there again. It blew not only Universal Studios Hollywood out of the water. But in my opinion most the Disney World parks we went to on that trip as well. Little did I know that it would take me 16 years tell I got back to that park. Once I knew we were going to be flying into Orlando for our cruise I did all I could to make sure we could spend some time at the Universal Orland Resort.

One last thing about the trip that stuck out to me. On our way to Universal Studios Florida we passed a Mcdonalds that was huge and had what they said "the worlds largest playplace". My parents were nice enough to take us there for dinner after our day at Universal. I remember that being so awesome as well. it was 2 storys tall and it seemed like once in the play place it took like an hour to find your way out. Once again something that was just amazing as a kid. I even think they called it something different from your standard McDonalds. Somethingl like MickyD's or something. Anyways I might just need to go there too on our upcoming trip lol.