Our Trip to the Dark Side and Other Tales of Survival *The Future?*

Hi! I'm subbing! So excited to read more about staying at Wyndham Bonnet Creek. I definitely plan on trying it out sometime in the future. Your kids are precious!

Hello and thanks for joining in!:woohoo: We really enjoyed our stay at Bonnet Creek. There really was a lot to see and do there and I only wish we had more time to enjoy it but that would mean less park time!

Awesome view and great photos so far. Joining in for the rest of the fun!

Thank you and welcome!:yay: There will be plenty of fun coming up!

subbing in for the dark side info, we are considering a split stay next trip and I'm conducting research!

I think doing a split stay is worth it. You'll get to see how we made this particular trip work, so I hope seeing what we did will help :thumbsup2
 
So we left off with fireworks and everyone scooting off to bed. Ha! Yeah, right!! I put the kids to bed but it took them a while to go to sleep but can you blame them? We're in Disney World for crying out loud! Who want to sleep!:rotfl2:

So what park did we choose for our first full day? None, that's right I said none. I chose not to do a park on our first day for two reasons. One to give Tom and I time to recover from the long drive and two to give my dad some time to relax and get his pain under control before he ventures out. Before I get into our trip report I thought I would fill you on our family since I promised other stories of survival in my title.

My dad has not always been in a wheelchair. He was a History/Social Studies teacher/Softball, Basketball Coach and all around athlete. My parent's bought into timeshares in the mid-nineties so that we could afford to go on vacations. So we spent a lot of time in Orlando in the summers and when I was break from college.

My parents love traveling around "the World."

Yes, we even went to Universal from time to time. That was back in my tomboy stage.


My dad and I posing with our long lost relative, Casey.


My mom LOVES Bullwinkle so she loved posing in front of his gym back in the day.


We loved our trips to Orlando and have such great memories of all of our trips. Then 13 years ago, my dad was in a head on collision on his way to work. That day changed our family forever. My dad died a few times on the way to the hospital and remained on a coma for months. The doctors expected him to never wake up but two months later he did wake up. It was a miracle!:littleangel: Even though he had massive physical injures, there was no brain damage. He was still my dad, just in a different body now. His hip was shattered and was later reconstructed and broke both of his legs. He is partially paralyzed from the waist down and has a lot of nerve damage which causes him daily pain. He has forms of pain management that only temporarily work which can make traveling difficult. I hate that he is in pain everyday and that my mom works so hard being his caregiver but my family continues to survive and take things day to day. My dad got a second chance at life and even with the pain, it is worth it to keep going for his grandkids.


I'm so proud of my strong family and wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.:hug:


So we celebrate life by spending as much time together and taking trips to our favorite vacation destination!
 
So subscribing! What a great start! Bonnet Creek looks amazing-- the grounds look gorgeous and you really can't beat that view!

Your dad is certainly a survivor-- I'm so glad he pulled through and your family continues to make wonderful Disney memories together!
 
So subscribing! What a great start! Bonnet Creek looks amazing-- the grounds look gorgeous and you really can't beat that view!

Your dad is certainly a survivor-- I'm so glad he pulled through and your family continues to make wonderful Disney memories together!

Thanks for subbing in and welcome!!:cheer2: My dad is an awesome guy and and my hero! Even though we don't take our yearly trips like we did before, we try to come together as a family when we can.
 

So now that you know a little bit more about my family, it's time to get back to our trip. So for our first full day we decided not to do a park to give everyone a chance to get rested up and relax a bit. The only plan for today was I had a lunch reservation at Downtown Disney so the rest of the day was up in the air.

So while everyone slept in, the early birds (me and the kids) went to test out the pool. We went to the main pool first to try out the larger lazy river. The pools don't open up until 8 so we were there first thing and had the place to our selves for like an hour and a half. Because we're apparently the only crazy ones who get up so early just to hang out at the pool. Since there were so many pools here, the kids had the idea that they wanted to test them ALL out to see which one would be there favorite. Me, being a pool-lover, was game for that. So we spent about a half an hour at each pool to "test" it out. The only thing we did not get to do was the pirate ship slide because it was not open for some reason. Maybe it was too early for the pirates too, who knows.:lmao: After all of our hopping, we concluded that the main pool was our favorite because it had the largest pool and the lazy river was faster than the other one. So have any of you "pool hopped" before?

I apologize for the lack of pool pictures. I didn't want to carry my camera around with me near the water because it was not waterproof. But I DO have pictures from our afternoon. YAAYY!!

So after our pool hopping adventure, we headed back up to our room to change and grab Tom. Our afternoon would be spent at Downtown Disney with reservations at Rainforest Cafe for lunch. I have eaten here a few times and this was the restaurant that EJ chose when we we first started planning our trip. We headed straight to Rainforest with the plan to do some shopping and possibly meet up with my parents and my BFF who recently moved to Orlando later on.

So we only had to wait maybe ten minutes before we got seated. As you can tell the kids were excited and ready to eat!


But not as excited as Tom was...


We were seated in a pretty good area with a view of the aquarium. Gotta love a view of the fishes!


We were near the elephant but glad to not be seated next to it because man, that thing was loud!


Just to give you a heads up, I have no food porn in my trip report:sad: Sorry I just feel weird taking pictures of everyone's meal. :confused3 So I will just have to tell you about our meal and hope you like it! Our first meal was a really good one! Maybe we were just all too excited or maybe the food really was that good. It was hard to tell but overall we had a great experience and our waiter was pretty awesome and probably more excited than we were. So what did we order? I had the Rumble in the Jungle Turkey wrap, which I thought was excellent and very filling so I ended up saving half for dinner. Tom had Ribs, Steak and Shrimp Trio which he also enjoyed. He thought the steak was ok, but really like the ribs and shrimp. Trinity got the mac and cheese and EJ got the Python Pasta with alfredo sauce (his favorite). I could tell that both the kids enjoyed their meals because they cleaned their plates and not a single whine or "do I have to eat all of it?" was muttered. So a BIG thumbs up from them! So after filling our bellies full of deliciousness, we headed out into the Rainforest Cafe store and looked around. Of course, we did end up playing around too.

This was the first of many hat wearing sessions that happened on this trip. It was spontaneous and fun and it became our running gag throughout our trip.

After that store, EJ picked the Lego store to hit up next. So we made our way over there and took a Tigger and Pooh pic along the way.


EJ wanted his first souvenir to be from the Lego Store, so after looking at everything it was a toss up between something from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Legend of Chima. He finally decided on a character package of Kragger from Legend of Chima.


It was Trinity's turn to pick a store so she chose The World of Disney, a classic! As we were wondering around being led by Trinity, I got text from my BFF who got dropped off at Downtown Disney and wanted to know where we were. I told her World of Disney, not thinking that it could take a million years to find someone in that store! Maybe I should have been more specific. As I pondered about texting her back with a specific room, I see her daughter waving at me in the distance. Just call it Best Friend powers because they found us right away.:goodvibes

So after catching up for a bit while Trinity tried to figure out what she wanted for her first souvenir, Trinity decided she needed some chocolate to think about it. (I like how this girl thinks!) So we headed over to Ghiradelli to grab a piece of free chocolate as well as a bar for the kids. During this time my parents had called and said they were having a hard time trying to find a parking spot. Because of the changes that are going to Downtown Disney, they had a whole parking lot closed down which limited the amount of handicap spaces. They had apparently been driving around for about 20 minutes trying to find a space. So they were getting frustrated and decided they would go back to the resort and try another day.
Even though it was disappointing to hear, we were going to be wrapping up our day at DD soon anyway because it was getting really crowded. So we tried one more store which was the Toy Store before Trinity decided that she wanted to go back for a stuffed cheetah she saw in the Rainforest's store. With cheetah in hand, we took my BFF and her daughter back to our place to do some more visiting and hanging out.

I took my friend back to DD later on because she had dinner plans with her hubbie. Our dinner was not so exciting. It was leftovers night, so I had my wrap while everyone leftover pizza and some tacos that my mom fixed at lunch. Our evening was pretty lazy because I wanted everyone to be go rested up because we were going to be getting up a the crack o' dawn. My parents were staying home again so they could do the owner's tour and get their discounted Disney and Seaworld tickets. But the three of us were getting up early so we could be the first in line for this brand new Universal Studios attraction. Any guesses??!!​
 
So how do Disney fans survive Universal Orlando? For our family, each one of us had at least one thing that we were big fans of that made it worth it to go check out. Universal Studios had the new Transformers Ride for me and Springfield for Tom. Islands of Adventure had Jurassic Park for EJ and Harry Potter for Trinity. For our first full park day, I chose Universal Studios because according to Touring Plans.com it was the least crowded. Even though it was going to be a 8 out of 10 day, I was determined to get there before the gate opened so we could be the first ones at Transformers.

I was just so excited that I ended up waking up at 5am. I just laid there for a while with my eyes wide open until I heard someone rummaging around in the kitchen. Thinking, the only person that would be up this early would be EJ so I decided to go out to see if he needed something to eat. It turned out that it was my Dad that was making all that noise, trying to find a snack before he went back to bed. He had a puzzled look on his face and asked, "What are you doing up so early?" I replied, " I'm just too excited...you know for Transformers..." He paused for a moment and then laughed. I stayed up and we chatted for a bit while he looked at the newspaper. I turned on the news to catch the weather report before I decided to wake the kids up. Dad went back to bed and I went in the kids room to go get them. When I walked in I saw EJ sitting up just staring over Trinity. I whispered, " She's not going to wake up by staring at her, you have to do this-" I pulled the curtain back and said "Good Morning:yay:!!" (yeah, I'm just too chipper for my own good." Trinity grumbled and me and EJ went into the kitchen to fix breakfast. Every morning was pretty much the same. I was the first one up, made breakfast for me and the kids and Tom made his coffee and did this...
Ahhhh, doesn't this look so relaxing...


After everyone was fed and fueled up for the morning, the 4 of us headed out to Universal Studios, while my parents took another day to relax and do the owners tour so they could get their discount tickets. The drive to Universal was not that bad. I clocked it about 20min to the parking deck and a 15 min to the gate.
Taaa Dahhh-We made it to Citywalk in record time.


There's the Icon for Islands of Adventure. We will see you soon!


Now we are at the Studios!


As we walked toward the gate when I realized we were pretty early.


Like twenty minutes early :rolleyes1


I gotten everyone there too early according to Tom and the kids were apparently "bored to death" as we had to wait to be able to walk in.


Soon it was 9am and the flood gates were opened. As you will soon learn about me, my park style is commando style! We get there as early as we possibly can and stay as late as we can. So since Transformers was brand-spanking new, everyone knew that was the first thing we were getting on.

Hello Despicable Me, we will be back later, or will we....


There it is! I can see the Autobots symbol!


Wonder what this thing is? Oh well, we will have to find out later. I'm on a mission!!


We walked in the entrance and saw that it had a 10 min wait. YESSS!!! So we fast walked through the queue lines and I snapped a few pics along the way.

The AllSpark.


Part of Megatron's arm from the first movie.


We were given our mission to protect the AllSpark.


We picked up our 3-D glasses and away we went! And let me tell you, this ride was so awesome! Everyone gave it a big thumbs up. It was similar to Spiderman where it is a ride simulator where we move about different rooms and given different scenes. But the updated technology and having Decepticons chasing you the whole time made this way better than Spiderman! With our adrenaline pumping, we headed outside for our next mission. But not without taking a picture with Optimus Prime. I was trying to get Trinity to "prime" with me but apparently I was just embarrassing her. Ugh, tweens!


When we got out of Transformers, we walked by The Mummy. The kids really wanted to go for it and I didn't bother to tell them about the roller coaster part so they could be surprised. I have no pics of this because they make you but your bookbags and loose items in the free lockers near by. But believe me, everyone liked this one too. Except Trinity got a little freaked out when it turned into a roller coaster. I wish I had my camera because our picture at the end showed me with my arm infront of her to protect her somehow. What can I say, it's the mommy reflex.:goodvibes

After Trinity calmed down we moseyed on over to Disaster which is one of the few older attractions I never got to do. So let me tell you, I did not miss anything. It is actually pretty lame, so when we got out of there the kids were ready to something "fun" again. I knew that Despicable Me is pretty popular so I suggested we try to see that now before it gets too crowded. By the time we go there, it was already at 60 min:eek:!! So where did we head off to next? To Be Continued.....​
 
Wow, thanks for sharing the remarkable story about your dad! I'm sure it has been a difficult road for all of you and especially tough for your dad to be in such constant pain.

:grouphug: to you all!

Sounds like you had a nice outing to DTD. I love a good fish-tank view! We had one at Lombard's two years ago and again this year at T-Rex. I like the thoughtful process your kids used to pick out their souvenirs!

That is great that you were so excited to get to Transformers. And that you loved it so much! And that it was still operating! :rotfl2: We found that it was down more than up on our trip, so you really had to catch it when it was open.

Yup, that line at Despicable Me is BRUTAL!!! Even with express pass, we waited almost an hour.

Mummy rocks!!! Must have been cool watching Trinity's reaction.

I'm guessing it is about time for you folks to head to Springfield.
 
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Wow, thanks for sharing the remarkable story about your dad! I'm sure it has been a difficult road for all of you and especially tough for your dad to be in such constant pain.

:grouphug: to you all!

Sounds like you had a nice outing to DTD. I love a good fish-tank view! We had one at Lombard's two years ago and again this year at T-Rex. I like the thoughtful process your kids used to pick out their souvenirs!

That is great that you were so excited to get to Transformers. And that you loved it so much! And that it was still operating! :rotfl2: We found that it was down more than up on our trip, so you really had to catch it when it was open.

Yup, that line at Despicable Me is BRUTAL!!! Even with express pass, we waited almost an hour.

Mummy rocks!!! Must have been cool watching Trinity's reaction.

I'm guessing it is about time for you folks to head to Springfield.

Thanks for the Group Hug, I'm feeling the :love:

Cool that you got the tank seat at T-Rex! We were seated in the ice room a few years ago which is very cool too.My son LOVES that restaurant, which surprised me when he said he wanted to try Rainforest. But I am encouraging him to try a few new things each trip so I guess he is listening.

I can't believe that Transformers was down so much! We saw it down later on that day that we were there but I didn't realize it was down that much. We got lucky then!

Yep, we are heading over to Springfield next, with a few distractions along the way :rolleyes1
 
Where did we head off too? Well, we decided to make our way toward Springfield USA so that Tom could get his Simpson fill. So we made our way down this street.

This I guess was taken right out of the old Hollywood days. We passed on Terminator 2 because both of the kids were not interested and EJ has still has a fear of robots even though animatronic dinosaurs don't freak him out.:confused3 Oh, well this road had a few shops along the way as well as the theater where the Horror Make-up Show is which we will get to later. As we were walking down this street, Tom noticed a shop that was apparently the dump shop for T2. It had some cool Terminator gifts as well as Star Wars and gasp, DC Comic stuff. I gasp because I am a huge superhero fan and I know that Universal having a Marvel Super Hero land and also Disney buying out Marvel, I was surprised to see my beloved DC heroes with a gift shop! So we looked around and I couldn't resist trying on this Yoda hat.(who is my favorite Star Wars character!)

Thinking, I am. Hmmm....


After exploring that shop we had our way to another shop with another beloved character in our household. That's right-SPONGEBOB!!


Before we headed in EJ wanted to take a picture with one of his favorite old school characters, Woody Woodpecker. I'm not sure what he sees in him but ever since he saw a few episodes on Netflix, he has loved this guy!


After that we headed on it! Here's Squidward's house.


There were all kinds of fun props and photo ops in this store. And we had a blast taking pictures in there!


EJ pushing Trinity out the way. Geesh! You think they were related or something!


Krabby Patty, anyone?


EJ loves Patrick because, well, he's just so hilarious!


EJ also wanted to try on the jellyfish hat.


Had to take a picture of this sign.:rotfl:


So after having a blast in there, I saw we were close to ET and since I haven't been on it since 97, I suggested we head over there. The wait time was like 10 min so we hopped in line. The kids were not impressed. Maybe it's just an eighties kid thing? When we got out EJ noticed the Woody Woodpecker Coaster and he was dying to ride a "real" ride so when we saw it had only a 10 min wait as well we hopped on. After that, wait, where were we heading to? Oh right! Springfield!


Everyone taking a closer look at the comic shop window.


We headed to the Kwik-e-Mart because Tom was on a mission. To find some Duff beer!!


Hmmm, Duff Beer or a Flaming Moe's. Tough Decision!


While Tom was trying to decide. I decided to try on the Marge wig which kinda just looked weird.


Tom decided to go for the Duff beer, which was an energy drink that kinda had a citrus taste. Not really what he was thinking off but oh well, he drank it anyway.


After snapping this quick picture of some of the construction going on for the future Harry Potter expansion, we heading on in to the Simpson's ride.




We all LOVED this ride. It was another simulator ride except you are only in one room with a huge screen and your car moves with all the action going on. Being that Tom and I were already Simpson fans, we were cracking up with the pre-show before you pile into the moving car. We were laughing so hard that the other couple in the room with us just looked over at us. :rotfl2:
It's like they've never seen the Simpson before! Even though the kids don't watch the Simpsons, they still enjoyed the pre-show and the ride itself. So after we all gave a big thumbs up to this ride, it was almost lunchtime so we headed to where else but the Krusty Burger!

The Krusty Burger is like a big food court with separate dining rooms. Like you could take your meal into Moe's Tavern or into the main rooms that had Simpson murals on the walls. We ate in the main dining room and again with no food pics. I didn't even take pictures of the inside! Bad DISser! So you had to choose from Krusty Burgers,of course, pizza, chicken & waffles, some fried seafood and healthy wraps with a few vegetarian offerings. The food was ok. We just went because Tom was so curious about the Krusty Burger. Trinity and Tom both had Krusty Burgers while Tom added on a chicken and waffle sandwich. I had a personal sized pizza while EJ had a kids chicken tenders meal. My pizza was just ok too. EJ liked his chicke tenders and Tom liked his chicken and waffles sandwich better than his burger. Go figure? Well with our bellies full we were ready for more adventure, coming up next!
 
I'm doing a double report so I can move my trip report along and get to our Disney Days!:banana: This report has less pictures as our day actually peaked after lunch. Before getting on MIB, I decided we should hit a few shows to let our stomachs settle. The Animal Actors show was about to start so we headed over there. I took a few pictures but all the animals are blurry because my camera sucks at action shots! The kids thought the show was cute but you can tell they just wanted to ride something. I took them to one more show because I have never been to it and I thought Tom would enjoy it since he love Horror movies. That's right, we headed over to the Horror Make-up Show, which was really enjoyable to me even though I hate horror movies. Most of the humor went over the kids heads so it was more for adults even though it is a somewhat kid-friendly show. The hosts were hilarious and I love the skit they put on with the audience member. I tried to get a good picture of Chucky for Tom but we were in the last row so pretty far away from the stage. But the props were pretty cool!


So enough shows already! Lets hit some more rides! After the Horror show, we headed to MIB. Because this was another ride that you had to put your loose articles in the lockers, I have no pics of it. But we did go on it even though it had a 30min wait at this point. Since we didn't have much else let to do we went for it. It did actually take longer than 30 mins though. We ended getting mixed up in a group of Brazilian teenagers that just kept letting their friends cut in front us until we were sandwiched in between the group. I'm usually pretty cool about stuff, but I was extremely annoyed that when is it a rule that by letting a few kids in front of us to be with there friends turned into hundred kids able to just cut in front us.:mad: Eventually, one of the leaders noticed what the kids in front were doing and made them all stand to the side so that we could go back to our rightful place in line. Thank God someone was paying attention! So we did lose sometime in line but we eventually got on and tried to save the world from evil aliens! When we got out of MIB, I noticed the skys were pretty dark and we were going to have to find shelter soon. We made our way across to head for Disaster next. They had some posters on the scrims to where the construction was. I took a picture of the Jaws poster as it paid homage to the area of the former ride which was my favorite as a teenager.


So we headed over to Disaster and it started pouring! When we got out it was still pouring so we headed over to a candy shop to figure out our next plan. I wanted to take a picture with Jaws but because of the rain, it was going to have to wait. Since the kids were starting to get cranky and it was getting close to dinner time we decided to eat. Tom saw Panda Express on the way to Universal so he had Chinese food on the brain. Trinity was up for that but since I'm not a chinese food fan I figured me and Ej would just grab something from over there as well. So we threw on our ponchos and headed out of the park to grab some dinner. EJ was getting really cranky at this point and kind of had a melt down at dinner. Tom and I knew EJ was probably done for the day but since we still had a few things left to do we gave the kids the choice that when we back for pictures and souvenirs we could either ride one more ride or just go home. Both kids agreed to just go home. Can't blame them, it was our first park day and we didn't want to get worn out already! So after dinner we went back for my Jaws pics.




The kids and Tom had already figured out what souvenirs they wanted so as we were heading back over to those shops I noticed one very important character that I had to have my picture with! Bumblebe!!!


He's been my favorite Transformer ever since I was little and played with Transformers and watched the cartoon with my brother. I had to get in that line! I mean I was EXTREMELY excited, like poop your pants excited! (As you can probably tell by the look on my face!)
So Tom took the kids to get there gifts with plans to meet up with me when they were done. I barely made it in before they cut off the line! The line wasn't that long and by the time I was almost up, they were telling everyone that we could only have ONE picture with him. So thank God I wasn't blinking or something!


They opened the door and Bumblebee went back in and a few minutes later they brought out Megatron.


Soon after my crew was back with gifts in hand and with me glowing from excitement of getting to see Bumblebee, we headed back to the car to go back to our home away from home. We had another busy day next and this time we will be joined by my parents!
 
Loving your report so far, your room view is amazing and the BC pool sounds fabulous!

We're venturing to Universal for the first time next trip as my DD is a huge Potter fan so I'm interested in reading your account!

I'm so sorry about your Dads accident, he definitely sounds like a fighter :goodvibes
 
Loving your report so far, your room view is amazing and the BC pool sounds fabulous!

We're venturing to Universal for the first time next trip as my DD is a huge Potter fan so I'm interested in reading your account!

I'm so sorry about your Dads accident, he definitely sounds like a fighter :goodvibes

Welcome Disney Jo!:cool1: Thanks for joining in! Glad your making a trip over to Universal. Your DD is going to LOVE Harry Potter! I'll cover Islands of Adventure toward the end of our trip so stay tuned!:thumbsup2

Thanks for the good vibes, our family appreciates it:hug:

Also very cool that you were on the Disney Mom's Panel! I have tried every year since it was first formed but never got in :( I know there's a lot of competition out there but it seems like a very fun job for a year anyway!
 


Welcome Disney Jo!:cool1: Thanks for joining in! Glad your making a trip over to Universal. Your DD is going to LOVE Harry Potter! I'll cover Islands of Adventure toward the end of our trip so stay tuned!:thumbsup2
Brilliant, I look forward to reading it :thumbsup2

Also very cool that you were on the Disney Mom's Panel! I have tried every year since it was first formed but never got in :( I know there's a lot of competition out there but it seems like a very fun job for a year anyway!
Applications open again on Monday if you want to try again this year :goodvibes
 
Ok, so we last left off with having mostly full day at Universal Studios. We went back to our resort to relax and get ready for our first Disney Day! We chose Hollywood Studios for our first Disney Day because it is the park that has the most attractions that my dad could do and still stay in his wheelchair. Plus me and EJ haven't been to HS since he was a year and a half old!:eek: Which has been too long for me. It's my favorite park!


Again we had another early morning to try to make it before the park opens. I got the kids already and my parents were kind of dragging behind. So by the time that we left it was 9:00. The crowds weren't too bad when we got there but it did take a long time to park. My parents left a little after we did and parked in the handicap section which is right near the entrance and we still waited a while at the front for them. While Mom was going through the bag check, Dad came on through and got some more morning hugs and kisses.




Now that everyone had their bags checked and was hugged, it was time to go in!


I lead everyone straight over to Toy Story Mania, just to see if we could get a fastpass and maybe sneak a ride in. But being that it was after 9:30 at this point the line was already at 30 min. So I just grabbed some fastpasses and we headed over to the Great Movie Ride because I knew that he could do that one. Plus it was 5 minute wait which works for everyone!
One of my favorite movies-Singing in the Rain


A blurry Mary Poppins, yes my camera sucks at taking low light pictures!


After the oldie but a goodie, it was time to head over to our family favorite attraction. Can you guess what that is?


Yep, that's right! Muppet Vision 3D!!


The Muppet's never disappoint, even though the kids aren't as big of fans as me and my parent's are, they were definitely giggling throughout the show. So after we got out of there, we headed over to the Muppet's shop and looked around. Even Dad got into the hat fun!


After the store, I wanted a family picture in front of the fountain, but EJ didn't want a picture and we couldn't find a photopass person so Tom took the picture.


Eh, good enough. After bathroom breaks for everyone it was time to figure out what was next. It was almost 10 so we knew that lunch would be soon so picked a place to eat and would do whatever was near that. We picked the Backlot Express which none of us have ever eaten at so it was going to be new to us. We walked over there and realized that it didn't start serving food until 11:30. Since it was right next to Star Tours, me and Tom took the kids over there and Mom and Dad got a table inside Backlot Express to cool down and relax. So with a 15 minute wait time posted we were able to practically walk straight on. Man, I love this ride! I have not ridden it since it has been updated. I love that the sequences are different everytime. Everyone gave the ride a thumbs up and we couldn't resist taking pictures on the Speeder Bike. Of course, getting EJ to sit still enough for a picture can be challenging.


Apparently he was fascinated by the forest painting behind him. This won was when I found out he had been turned around.


Finally got EJ to turn around and Trinity blinked! LOL! Oh well, good enough!


So after our picture taking we headed back to Backlot to have some lunch. It was actually pretty cool in there with all the props and different rooms that you could eat in. We all got burgers except for EJ who got the PBJ kids meal. Everyone gave a thumbs up for the burgers and liked that there was a fixings bar and also a the soda machines to get a refill to go.
With our bellies full, it was time to pick which show to do next. We decided on Lights, Motors, Action because there were only 2 shows a day plus our FP for Toystory Mania didn't start until 2. The next show was in an over an hour so it wasn't enough time to catch another show so I decided to lead everyone over to this place to kill some time before we grabbed a seat for the show. Any guesses??​
 
Caught up on your past few updates. Sounds like you continued to have a good time at Universal-

We haven't seen the animal show, but we enjoyed the Horror show, ET, the Simpsons area and Men in Black.

We miss Jaws, too!!!

Love you pictures with Bruce the shark and Bumblebee. So glad you got that picture!

Great start at Hollywood Studios!

I love everything there is to see on the Great Movie Ride. The Muppets Rock! Can't go wrong with Star Tours!

I'm guessing your family is headed for a little Honey I Shrunk the Kids fun before LMA.
 
I just discovered your TR and I'm joining in!
So far, it looks like you're having SUCH a fun time!
Can't wait for more! :)
 
Caught up on your past few updates. Sounds like you continued to have a good time at Universal-

We haven't seen the animal show, but we enjoyed the Horror show, ET, the Simpsons area and Men in Black.

We miss Jaws, too!!!

Love you pictures with Bruce the shark and Bumblebee. So glad you got that picture!

Great start at Hollywood Studios!

I love everything there is to see on the Great Movie Ride. The Muppets Rock! Can't go wrong with Star Tours!

I'm guessing your family is headed for a little Honey I Shrunk the Kids fun before LMA.

Yes, we definitely enjoyed our day at Universal and I was so relieved to get those shots because they're all part of the fun too!

I know that Jaws was so cheesy but I was so disappointed that when I found out it was gone before we went on our trip. I would have loved to take the kids on there!

My family loves the Great Movie Ride but the kids were a bit disappointed that even though it said it was a "ride" it wasn't a ride by their standards!:lmao: So Star Tours was just enough to keep them happy till we got to the thrill rides later.

DING, DING, your right again! We are headed to Honey I Shrunk the Kids until showtime!

I just discovered your TR and I'm joining in!
So far, it looks like you're having SUCH a fun time!
Can't wait for more! :)

Welcome! And thanks for joining in!:banana: This is by far one of my favorite trips so we have more fun times ahead!
 

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