Oh Why did we have to pick the coldest wknd of the year?

[sditty]

Ok, so I finally have all my pictures after my camera was lost and now finally found so I am going to go ahead and do this trip report from our trip in January.

So, the cast are
Me, 30 years old but don't tell anyone because I have convinced my son to tell people that I am 29 and never having another birthday. I am the planner, the packer, and the go to gal for needing to know things in my family.

My husband, turned 30 after our trip. We call him Obi Wan because he is the mentor of the little one, fearless leader of our troop, and of course the payer.

My son, 6 years old who is the ultimate light of our life, miracle child, and of course spoiled rotten.

My mother, yes we took grandma with us, 50 years old.


So, a little background info is my husband and I decided we would take a little vacation because he had some vacation time he had to take at work or lose it and we are always ready to go. We have annual passes to Universal so the immediate thing we thought of was we would take a couple of days and just go to universal and relax. Well, as always with us the vacation grew from 2 days to 5 and also somewhere along the way picked up an extra person in the form of Grandma. After all the details were discussed to death and of course Obi Wan won the battle and we were staying 5 days I got to work planning everything. One thing you should know about me is that I am totally unhappy if I do not have something to plan so this was great. After much discussion and this time mommy won the battle it was decided that we would stay at the Royal Pacific instead of the Portofino because of the price. We really like the Portofino better but since we were adding more days I wanted to keep the cost down.

Well, I booked the room and this was before we knew that we were taking Grandma so I later had to call back and add her to the reservation. Most of you already know all this but in the interest of people who are reading that do not it is a $25 charge per adult added to the room.


Ok so that is the pre information and I am going to save this because I am uploading photos and I will be so mad if my computer freaks out or something and I lose this so I will add more in a few.

 

[sditty]

Ok, so Obi Wan decided that we needed to drive down and be there when the park opened. So, this meant that we had to leave our house by 2am. Of course there was much discussion over this but as always he prevailed. Let me say before anyone thinks my husband is bossy or controlling he definitely is not either but he is like a little kid when it comes to vacation and gets so excited that it is easier just to go along with what he wants most of the time because he will pout. And after all he is paying for the whole thing so I usually just let him get his way. Him and my son are both spoiled rotten.

Well, as I said we had to leave at 2am and of course my son was too excited to sleep so ended up in the bed with us which meant none of us got much sleep but we were ready to go after we picked up grandma and had to repack the car because she thought we needed like half our luggage in the car with us because we needed this or that for the trip. She sat in the back with the spoiled baby (who by the way is a wonderful kid even though he is spoiled rotten)


I apologize for the huge pictures and if they are wacky. I am completely computer stupid sometimes. The above one is grandma on the way down. And these next ones are pictures from the car coming into Universal.

http://i711.photobucket.com/albums/ww111/sdittywarden/100_0344.jpg

So, we get checked in very quickly and the staff at the RPR were all very nice and were great with Hot Dog (that is what grandpa calls my son because when he was real little he always wanted hot dogs for every meal so it stuck) They even gave him a little toy upon check in and our room was great. Well, the boys are dying to get to the parks so we head over. We decide to walk over because it is a little chilly as it is only 9am and we want to get the blood flowing after the long ride (6hours). These next pictures are just random shots of the walk to the parks from RPR but I decided to include lots of pics for people who have never been.

This one is of Hot Dog in front of Nascar cafe. He is a huge Dale Jr fan so he had to pose with the cars.

 

[sditty]

Ok, so I tried to post more with pictures but it said it had to be approved by a mod so I am guessing that I screwed up the pictures so I guess that I will have to wait until they tell me what I did wrong which who knows what I did since I am absolutely not a computer genius. So more after that!!

 

[pixeegrl]

maybe you just need more posts so I guess continue posting after each person responds lol...can't wait for the pics!

 

[sditty]

Ok, so I am going to go ahead and type this out and maybe it will go through but if it has to be approved then it will be eventually hopefully. So Day 1 we decided to start with the Studios as my son was dying to know if he was tall enough to ride the mummy.



Well, first thing we head over to get a stroller rental because we like to go pretty hard and I do not want tired feet on Hot dog by the end of the day and also I get kinda tired of holding the bag.

That is my wonderful DH pushing the stroller and he says yes real men do push strollers!

Ok, so if you all will notice something really strange about the trees in this picture. They are wrapped in plastic because the weekend we decided to go was a record low for Orlando. It was 29 degrees one night. It was so cold. But we did not let that slow us down.

First stop Nicktoons Blast Jimmy Nuetron. Hot Dog loves this ride and laughs the whole way through it. *If some of these pictures look different or we are wearing different clothes they are from our vacation in June last year when we took grandma and grandpa but I figured they are from the same place so all's good*

Here is JImmy and Dora coming out for a visit. We did not get over to them but did zoom in for a picture.

Next up Shrek 4D. While the rest of my family loves this one it makes my eyes go funny so I end up with my glasses off halfway through it.

I am going to post this and will continue in a few minutes. I hope all these pictures are not boring you guys but wanted to include as many a spossible because I remember the first time we went the excitement of how bright and cheery everything was made it so wonderful. Hopefully it can make someone else excited to get there.

 

[sditty]

That might be it but I have been going ahead and writing it all up and posting it and hopefully one of the mods will approve everything and post it for me so after that all the pics will show up. Thanks for replying.

 

[phamton]

OK I have no idea why it was asking for moderator approval. Must be some type of glitch so I'll let the board administrators know. I did apporve the posts though. Sorry it took me so long---I was out of town.

Bev

 

[sditty]

Thank you Phantom. I appreciate it. I will try to get this finished now.

 

[sditty]

more Shrek pictures!!

OK I know enough with the Shrek photos. So, after we indulged ourselves into the world of Shrek we moved on and Hot Dog just could not wait he had to see if they would let him ride Mummy. We measured him at home and he was tall enough but I had prepared him for the possibility that he might not be since he was right on the line. Luckily he just made it. Now let me say that this is my absolute favorite ride. I LOVE IT!!! I was a little nervous about him on it because after all he is only just turned 6 and he does get nervous of the dark. SO my DH and I put him in between us and away we went. I was staring at him the whole ride and all I could see was his eyes were as big as saucers and he did not say a sngle word through the whole ride until we stopped and in the middle of the silence he yells out That Was SO Awesome!! Can we go again? Every one in our car was dying laughing at him.

So. after dragging hot dog out after riding like 15 times in a row. We decided it was time to get something to eat. So, we polled everyone and decided we would head over to IOA and eat over there.

 

[sditty]

So, we headed over to IOA and ate at I never can remember the name but it was a little place on the right when you first enter the park. They have pizza, burgers, and stuff. I have to say that the food was just so-so. I think that universal overall has some of the best choices for food of any theme park around.

After we got fueled up with some food we headed over to Spiderman. Let me just say that by the end of the trip my son could recite this ride word for word. Well, we ended up in the car with soem people from Sweden. They were so nice but I felt kinda bad because one of the guys asked me if this ride was like a roller coaster and I told no it was like a movie. Well, through the whol ride he was saying oh %&$^ this is too much. It was hilarious especially when after the ride he said the baby is not scared but I think I peed my pants when we fell off that roof.

Well, after riding this a few or maybe 10 times we were all just so worn out since someone made us get up so early so we thought we would just go back to the room and relax, change for dinner and then call it a day. After taking a short nap and getting cleaned up we had the great debate on where to eat. A running joke in my family is that we spend more time on deciding where to go than we do on actually eating. But grandma won this debate and we ended up at BUbba Gumps. The food was great and we were very pleased. I do not have any food pictures because Obi Wan forbids me to take pictures at the table he says we look like crazy people. I disagree but I give in on this one. Anyway we called it a day after supper and went back to the room to relax and turn in. Day 2 up next.

 

[Darcy03231]

Great report so far. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

 

[sditty]

OK, so when we woke up the next morning it was 29 degrees. Yes, I did say 29 degrees. I hate the cold so I was grumbling and complaining but Obi Wan and HotDog, and Grandma just told me to be quiet and man up. So, we set out to the parks and our first stop was IOA and a shop to find some tobogins (probably not spelled right) I stole a second jacket from my DH so I looked like I was in Alaska but I was warmer and that made me happy so I did not care.

After our ritual stop for a stroller we were on our way. This is my crazy little one.

And this is Grandma. As you can see spirits were high and everyone was having a good time.

We saw Woody Woodpecker and let me say that he was great. He took a tremendous amount of time with the kids and his handler was funny also. I know that it is easier when it is less busy like it was in January but I was really impressed with how grea tthey were.

My little man wanted to be big enough to ride the Hulk but made me take a picture of him in the seat so he could say that he at least got to sit in it. He is totally unscared of the coasters. Well, Obi Wan wanted to ride Hulk and made me and grandma take turns riding with him. It was so cold when that spray hit you in the face that I think I had icicles in my hair.

Here is all of us after me and daddy got off the Hulk.

We had more rides on Spiderman and took our time exploring Superhero Island. Hot dog got a comic book since he collects them and had a blast just taking everything in. We also had to stop for a snack and of course he had to have a hot dog.

Random shots of the superhero Island section.

Dr Doom Fearfall The one ride I will not get on but Obi Wan rode a couple of times.

Here is a picture of just how tall it is.

Picture of the Hulk

I jus tput in all these random shots so anyone who has not been can see just how great everything is.

 

[Metro West]

Keep up the good work on the report!

 

[sditty]

Thanks guys for reading my report. As I am typing this I am plannig our next trip in June and we are going to Universal for 4 days and Sea Worl for 2. So, we can't wait to go again.

So, as we were thinking of moving on from the Superhero Island we saw the superhero parade pull up. They come driving up on their 4 wheelers and split up so we just had to get some pictures. I am going to add them even though you will probably get tired of seeing my DH and son over and over but oh well I am writing this so I get to make the rules

Captain America

The boys favorite of course Rouge. But what man big or small can resist a pretty women in a spandex superhero suit?

Cyclops HE was like really really tall

Wolverine trying to kill my DH. He was absolutely hilarious.

And of Course Spiderman

Let me just say that these guys stood out there in those little suits in 35-40 degree weather for over an hour. THey were so good with the kids and were joking witht he parents and everything. It was wonderful.

Well at this point we decided that we were starving and needed to eat. So, we had the great food debate again and this time I won and we headed over to the studios because I wanted to go to Lombards and then my son and I had some serious alien butt to kick.

Let me say that the food here was really good. We had the calamari appetizer. Dh had fish and chips, grandma had some kind of shrimp basket and I had a steak sandwich of some kind and it was delicious.

Up next MIB and the Simpsons.

 

[EPRV We love Disney]

Loving your report! Thanks for all the photos. You got some great shots!

 

[sditty]

So glad you are enjoying it. I always think about the first time we went to Universal and how in awe I was of all the theming and the colors and just how much it makes you smile when you look around. I always feel so excited and just happy when I am there so I wanted to add as many pictures as I could so that maybe someone who has not been could feel a little of that magic. Because I do believe that Universal has its own bit of magic. Different than Disney but magic all it's own. So thanks for reading this and hopefully I will get it finished today and tommorrow.

 

[pixeegrl]

You can never have too many pics, I know when I was planning our first ttrip that's what i wanted to see...lots of pics! Keep em coming for all the other newbies and those of us that just want to live vicariously through your TR!

 

[Metro West]

Loving your report! Thanks for all the photos. You got some great shots!

 

[jcc0621]

Thanks so much for this report. We are going in August, [first time staying on property - Did a day trip in 2002] and all of your pictures are getting me really excited for our trip. My DS is 5 (will be 2 weeks shy of 6 when we go) and loves all the Marvel heroes too. He's gonna love it!

 

[schumigirl]

Really enjoyed reading that and the pictures are fab

We liked Lombards a lot too and plan to go back this year.

Totally agree that Universal has it`s own kind of magic, we love it and can`t wait to get back, your pictures are really getting me even more excited for our trip in Aug