PIC-TRIP REPORT Orlando 8/13 - 8/22 LOTS OF PICS COMPLETED 27/09/2010

[cagenot]

Little Background Pre-Trip Info

I read all your wonderful suggestions and tips while planning our vacation to Orlando during the past 6 months. I want to start this post with a big THANK YOU to every member of this forum as I´m positive our trip would not have been as well planned without your help.

Now a bit of background information. My parents married 32 years ago and spent their honeymoon in WDW so they have really fond memories from that time. I am their oldest son and I have a brother and a sister. Once we were old enough our parents decided it would be great to visit WDW one more time so we visited in 1997, MK 25th year anniversary. I was 18 yrs old, brother was 16 and sister 13 (you can do the math and find out our ages now, LOL) we had a really great time but we didn´t have enough time or planning help to visit SW, US/IOA. So that was something we had always in the back of our minds and finally the opportunity showed up, as my sister, mom and myself are BIG HP fans so there was no discussion about when we should go, 2010 was set in our minds and always kept looking for WWOHP opening date. Spring 2010 was announced so we knew we had to start planning things with time. That´s when I found this wonderful forum and alongside my sister started planning a trip that would allow us to enjoy a well deserved and long due family vacation. Everything was going perfect until March when my dad got sick; the trip was on hold and we had 3 months of doctors helping to control his problem (Nothing serious, he´s ok now).

After this scare we finally decided that we would be travelling July 12th to Miami and then we would go to Orlando from the 18th until the 24th via the Universal HP Offsite Package.

So, did we travel the 12th? Will we ever make this trip?

You guessed it! We couldn´t travel the 12th, why you say? I got sick, LOL. We were leaving Monday afternoon but during the weekend I wasn´t feeling too well but didn´t think too much of it, but that day I just felt awful and my brother (he´s a Doctor) told me I shouldn´t travel and he sent me some blood tests and an endoscopy (I have a hiatal hernia) to check on things. Everybody was really sad that day and now we had to reschedule everything, airline tickets, travel package and our health care insurance for the trip.

As it was high season do to summer, the airline told us that we had to pay a 600 dollar difference for each ticket and a 250 dollar fine each for not making the trip!!! Now, even if we had that money I wouldn´t pay that much of a difference. So they told us we had to find a ticket online with a similar price and we only had to pay the 250x4 for not travelling on the scheduled date unless the manager allowed 2 of us to be exonerated of pay by proving my illness. I returned home with the news and proceeded to call Universal in order to change our Travel Package, we looked on the airline´s site and found tickets where available starting the second week of august so we took a chance and told Universal to book us from August 13th to the 22nd, YES! We added 3 extra nights to the package which provided us with a calmer itinerary to visit the parks and some extra Orlando sites and shows. Universal had no problem with us changing the days of our package but told me to wait on the phone because they had to call the Hotel (Hilton grand Vacation Suites at SW, more on them later) and see if they would charge us anything as we called 48 hrs before our reservation was due. Fortunately they didn´t charge us anything.

Now it was time to return to the airline company with all my exam results (after 1 week) and see if they could not charge us the 250x4. The lady at the counter was really understanding but told us she had to talk to the manager and see what she decided, she took my exams and 10 minutes later returned with the news. We had to pay ………. absolutely nothing! but if we couldn´t make the new dates she wouldn´t help us no matter what. So the good news kept coming! At the end we extended our vacation package days by 3 nights, didn´t have to pay any fines and only had to pay 40 dollars total for ticket price difference, not a bad deal at all!

Next: We arrive to Miami and finally reach Orlando (Pics will start from this point on)

 

[jnjusoioa]

I am jumping on for your trip report, heading down myself in early Dec and can't wait to read all your pointers and see the pics, really excited to see Wizarding World photos.

 

[cagenot]

August 10 – August 13

So after almost one extra month the day finally arrived. We boarded our plane August 10 and after making 1 scheduled stop we reached Miami 6 hours later. The flight was fine but I still don´t like flying, . We went to a friend´s apartment (he was out of town so he lent it to us) and rested until the next day.

Early Wednesday morning we had to rent our car, we decided not to make a reservation from home as we thought once we finally made it to Miami we would rent it via internet in the apartment, the only problem? The apartment´s wireless connection was down! So we decided to go and try our luck, we reached the rental car office at 10am and the lady asked us if we had a reservation, when we said no she gave us a worried look and told us she didn´t have any cars available at that moment and maybe she could get us one around 5pm. We said ok, she proceeded to call the main office and asked if they were sending some cars to her site and they said yes. So we were set, we had to come back but we thought it was OK and we started to leave when the lady said wait a minute! She told us someone just arrived and we should see if they were returning the car. So we waited and our luck continued as the man was indeed returning the car, so the lady told us she would give us one of the reserved cars she already had prepared and use this one to replace it so we didn´t have to wait for it to be cleaned. Awesome!! We now had our full size car and loved it very much, I had to get accustomed to the automatic shift as I drive stick shift, after a few errors (kept using my left foot and stepped on the brakes a few times) I got the hang of it and enjoyed it very much as it was my first time driving an automatic car.

The 11th and 12th of August we rested and did some dinning and shopping.

We left Miami Friday the 13th at 11 am and programmed the GPS to take us to the Hilton Grand Vacation Suites at SW avoiding tolls and then with tolls, it was just a 30 minute difference so we travelled the no toll road. It was a very pleasant drive and after 4hrs and 20 min we arrived to the hotel.

We proceeded to the front desk and gave our reservation. Then the clerk told us if we had booked 2 rooms, I said no it´s only 1, he told us he had us down for two rooms and then it hit me, Universal contacted them to change the dates of our reservation but the first one wasn´t cancelled. The clerk was worried not about the room but if maybe I was charged double to my credit card, but I knew I wasn´t so everything was ok. I asked for a quiet room away from the main pool and he gave us exactly that as we were assigned to the warwick house that is next to a more private pool. We got room 8411 (8th building 4th floor room 11) and it was perfect!

We got settled in our room and headed to our first destination, the Orlando Premium Outlet, LOL. I had to buy some comfortable shoes and found them there. We ate at the food court and went to the hotel to rest as the next day we had planned the heaviest day of our trip, MK.

Next: We relive the memories in MK at WDW 14/08/2010

 

[cagenot]

I am jumping on for your trip report, heading down myself in early Dec and can't wait to read all your pointers and see the pics, really excited to see Wizarding World photos.

Glad you jumped in! I´ll try to keep updating the post as fast as I can, took more than 2000 pics and have erased the blurry ones so I´m left with 1800 , I´m trying to post the best ones. WWOHP pics will be the center of my report as I love HP.

 

[jessrose18]

joining in...

 

[rpbert1]

Glad you got the trip sorted , and the Hilton Grand vacations looks lovely.
looking forward to more pics.

 

[cagenot]

joining in...

Glad you are joining ! Hope you enjoy the report and pics.

Glad you got the trip sorted , and the Hilton Grand vacations looks lovely.
looking forward to more pics.

Yes it was a relief we finally made the trip, we thought we were cursed or something, but the trip was worth the wait. The Hilton was great! I really enjoyed the place, very friendly personnel and full of activities in hotel specially for kids. It also has a great location close to all parks and attractions, the farthest we had to travel was 20 minutes and you have grocery store and pharmacy within 5 minutes. Pics are coming, I just hope I don´t make the post slow with so many pics!

 

[cagenot]

As I told you at the beginning my parents have really great memories from MK and WDW as they spent their honeymoon there and so do we from our 1997 trip. So it was a must that we had to visit a Disney park and what a better park to relive all those memories than MK.

We left the hotel just before 9am (I wanted to be there at rope drop but we were too tired from the day before) and arrived at MK at 9:08, it was a 15 minute trip from hotel to MK.

We boarded the ferry at 9:34 and enjoyed the great view as we got closer to MK.

We bought our 1 day tickets and the CM asked us if we were celebrating anything special, we told him about my parents honeymoon and our visit in 97and he gave us 4 I´m celebrating buttons. We entered the park and it was an incredible feeling, we knew we had been there before but it had been so long ago that it was like everything was new for us. There were characters signing autographs and posing for pics just after you enter the park, Pinocchio, Daisy and Pluto were there.

I then saw the Roy statue with Minnie and took a pic.

We then went through main street, got our photopass pics taken and then waited for the 9:30am Dream Along show. While we waited I took some pics.

The show started at 9:35 and it was really fun with lots of characters.

We then headed to Adventureland and enjoyed POTC (loved the new additions do to the movie), Enchanted Tikki Room (We thought it was nice, the song just stuck for a while) , Jungle Cruise (We hadn´t ridden it and enjoyed it very much, our guide was really fun) and my sister and mom rode Aladdin´s Magic Carpet.

 

[cagenot]

Our next destination was Frontierland as we wanted to ride Splash mountain (really loved it from past trip and was a must for this trip) but the waiting time was 90 minutes, it was too hot to stand in line with my parents so we decided we would try it later so we headed to Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn & Café and ate our lunch. It was around 1:30pm when we headed around the castle to Fantasyland.

We entered Mickey´s Philharmagic and loved it!! It is just an amazing show, loved the 3D image effects. We thought it was one of the highlights of our MK visit. Just wonderful. We then entered Snow White and decided my parents needed a rest so we went to main street to see the Dream Come True parade at 3:00pm and then left to the hotel.

We returned to MK at 7:30pm to enjoy the rest of the park and experience the last day of Summer Nightastic Fireworks. We decided to take the monorail this time but regretted our decision as it was too crowded and the monorail took almost 30 minutes to get to MK do to having to stop and wait for the tracks to clear. We entered MK and enjoyed the different colors the castle was lit up to.

We then headed to Splash Mountain but wait time was again over 60 minutes, so we decided to leave it out So we headed to fantasyland and rode Peter Pan´s Flight after a 20 min wait and just as we were reaching the end of the ride it broke down, we were stuck almost 10 minutes We went to Main Street and found a spot to watch the fireworks and enjoyed it very much.

We waited to see the electrical parade, I took some pictures of the displays while we waited for the parade, then it started and we left the park at 11:30pm into the chaos of the monorail and to the parking lot.

We arrived at the hotel at 12:30am really tired, but as we knew this was the hardest day of all we had nothing planned for that morning so we could all rest.

Next: We visit SW with twilight tickets 15/08/2010

 

[cagenot]

Today we woke up and relaxed in the hotel. My sister and I had to print our SW twilight tickets and our tickets for MT the next day so we went to the business center to print them out. We reached the business center and we might of looked a bit overwhelmed by the price as the Guest Service Manager approached us and asked what we needed, we told him we had our tickets in our laptop but needed to print them out, he told us that we could send them to his email and he would print them out for us. So that´s what we did, and in less than 5 minutes he approached us with our printed tickets, great!
We went to the room and had lunch after we did some cooking; my father is Italian so all members of our family like to cook. We prepared our cooler bag and filled it with water (iced water and cold water) and proceeded to the parking lot and drove 5 minutes to SW.

We had a plan to do all the live shows and in between try and do the rest of rides and see attractions. So first my sister who loves rollercoaster had to ride Manta and so we waited for her. I´m not a rollercoaster fan so I just stayed on the sidelines, lol. The wait time was 15 minutes but the ride broke down so we waited for 40 minutes total. During the wait I took some pics.

My sister came out of the ride really happy, she loved it and said she felt great and secure. It was time for Blue Horizons to start so we headed to the Whale and Dolphin Theater. We thought the show was really good, the costumes where great ,full of vivid colors. The dolphins were awesome and we loved all the soaring birds. It was a great way to start our visit.

After the show we had 30 minutes to get to the other side of the park to Shamu Stadium as Believe was about to begin. We thought it was a long walk and my parents, specially my mom had to stop and rest as she has trouble with her legs (they hurt when she walks too much).

We got to Shamu Stadium and even though the park was crowded the stadium was not, so we got great seats. The show was just OK and we thought the story was nice but the show as a whole lacked something. We enjoyed all the tricks the killer whales did but felt a bit disconnected with the show.

We left the stadium and headed to the Nautilus Theater to enjoy A´lure, the call of the ocean. As you can see we had everything planned to enjoy the live shows first and one after the other, in that way my parents could rest and in A´lure we could enjoy some cold air thanks to the AC. Our walk to the show was nice, we bought some strawberry frozen drinks and enjoyed the decorations that simulate coral reefs.

The show started and we loved all the acrobatics and interaction the artists had during the show. We loved the tumblers and all the vibrant colors the show had.

We finished all the scheduled shows we had planned as some of the other shows were done for the day so we couldn´t see them. We walked to Shark Encounter and toured the exhibit. As usual and with all aquariums it was fun to see the different kinds of sea life and the replica of their environment. The underwater tunnel was fun and all the sharks and fish in there were amazing.

After Shark encounter we saw that most of the crowd was heading to Shamu Stadium for Shamu Rocks; so we decided to go there because we didn´t want to be left out of the show. When we arrived to the stadium the crowd wasn´t allowed to enter yet (it was more than 1hr till show) so we waited in line. I told my parents and sister to go ride the wild artic while I waited in line as I thought they could make it to the stadium with enough time. So they left and I stood in line for 10 minutes and they started to let people into the stadium so I entered calmly and found a great spot, the problem was I had to do what I hate to do, save seats for my family. I started to get worried when 30 minutes had already passed and the stadium was almost full, 45 minutes passed and nothing, no family yet. Finally I received a phone call and my sister tells me they aren´t allowed to enter the stadium because it has reached its capacity. I told her she needed to tell them that I had seats for them, the guy wanted to know where I was seating so they could check if what they were saying was right. The problem was I didn´t have a clue to the section or area I was in, I could only tell them reference spots to where I was and not even a SW employee who was behind me managing a spotlight knew the section number. After almost 10 minutes I received another call and they tell me they are being escorted into the stadium and that they needed to see where I was, I saw them come in and finally the guy sees me and allows my family to enter. So, what did we learn? Don´t separate when waiting in line for a show that you know will get full.

Now onto the show, we thought it was much more exciting than Believe do to the lights and great music. The show was very good and really enjoyed the preshow where the zoomed into people in the crowd, just hilarious what some people do. I didn´t take pics as I was taking video, I will try to upload video some other time as it is HD and is too big to upload and I´m looking for a way to downsize it (any ideas?).

The show ended and we decided not to attend Reflections as we wanted to avoid the crowd and after Disney´s Illuminations we thought we had fulfilled our fireworks quota. So we left the park at 9:30pm and got to the hotel in 5 minutes.

NEXT: A day of rest and medieval times 16/08/2010

 

[Brit_Jude]

Just subscribed! Great so far - thank you for the pics. They are so great - what camera do you have?

 

[jnjusoioa]

Your trip report is so great, love the Sea World photos, so pretty, it seems like a lot has changed since I was there last. Might have to take a trip back there at some point. Keep up the great work, your trip report is awesome.

 

[flafan]

I love your report so far. I can not wait to hear and see more. Your photo's are GREAT!!!!! Thanks for Sharing

 

[cagenot]

Just subscribed! Great so far - thank you for the pics. They are so great - what camera do you have?

Thank you for reading and leaving your comments. I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ-28, bought it 2 yrs ago and think it´s just an amazing camera, it´s a bit bulky but as I don´t ride too many coasters it´s not a problem.

Your trip report is so great, love the Sea World photos, so pretty, it seems like a lot has changed since I was there last. Might have to take a trip back there at some point. Keep up the great work, your trip report is awesome.

Thank you, don´t know how much it´s changed as it was my first visit, lol. But comparing it to my parents pics from 32 yrs ago it really has changed. . Hope you keep reading as I´m reaching HP pics time.

I love your report so far. I can not wait to hear and see more. Your photo's are GREAT!!!!! Thanks for Sharing

Thank you. I´ll be updating tomorrow (sunday).

 

[schumigirl]

Really enjoying your trippie. Pictures are lovely.

We`ve never been to Seaworld......don`t know why really, but it looks lovely. Looking forward to more

 

[cagenot]

Really enjoying your trippie. Pictures are lovely.

We`ve never been to Seaworld......don`t know why really, but it looks lovely. Looking forward to more

Thanks, glad you are enjoying the TR and the pics. I thought Seaworld was great even though we didn´t have time to see all that it has to offer do to us using twilight tickets, you should visit.

 

[cagenot]

If you have read all the TR you might be starting to see a pattern during our vacation days. We planned several resting brakes in our itinerary; we wouldn’t spend a whole day in a park, we preferred to divide it in two visits after taking a break by going to the hotel in order for my parents (and us, lol) to get our energy back and avoid the high heat that usually started around 3pm.

This morning and afternoon was all rest and rain. Today rained all morning so we decided to stay in the room and enjoy the hotel commodities. Luckily we didn´t have anything planned outside of the hotel so it was perfect timing. We had lunch in the Coral Reef Bar and Grill located inside the hotel. We really enjoyed our food and service, it was great and prices were really good. As we finished eating the rain stopped so we walked to the lake and I saw a little croc swimming in there. We went back to the room and we decided it was time we checked our emails so that´s what we did until it was 5:30pm cause we needed to get ready to leave for our dinner/show at Medieval Times.

Note: I want to thank all the people who suggested in this forum the use of the Orlandocoupons site as we found a great 50% discount coupon for Medieval Times.

Our reservation was for 7:30 but they suggested guests arrive 1 hour early to enjoy the village and see the great hall. We arrived 6:45pm to the Castle and started to get immersed into the medieval times concept. We got our crowns (each section has its own colored crown depending on what package you bought and that color also represents the knight you will be cheering on), we then took our group picture with the King, entered the great hall and waited to be seated. The hall has a bar, several display stores filled with various items from t-shirts, jewelry, key chains, home decoration, swords, knifes and all medieval related items.

The show started and the guests started to be seated according to their crown color, we were red and where seated in a great place! First row next to the center of the arena, so we had a great view.

The plates and drinking mug were awesome, they were made of metal so they were heavy. No forks, knifes, spoons as you can see in this pic; yes! We ate with our hands! We were introduced to the knights and story.

The show started and drinks where served (they offered drinks from the bar but we don´t drink alcohol so we declined), then they started serving our meal. We started with a tomato soup bisque that was delicious and tasty. The show went on and we were first treated to a classic equestrian skills show that was amazing!

We really enjoyed all the tournament games as I thought it was the only time the knights were really competing against each other. The meal continued and we were served some garlic bread, ½ oven roasted chicken, spare rib and a herb-basted potato all very tender and juicy. We really liked the food. When the jousting began we knew it was serious stuff as a safety net was lowered infront of us to avoid anyone getting hurt. The show continued and we had some jousting, sword fighting and “deaths” as the story developed. At the end our knight was “killed” (sad) but the green knight (he was the bad guy) was defeated as we finished eating our pastry.

We left the castle and we all agreed it was a great show and we would really recommend it for a night of great entertainment while eating very good food.

Next: Our first visit to Universal Begins with US

 

[rpbert1]

Another excellent report, and had considered this show, but keep putting it off, because of differing reports, but probably one for next year.

 

[cagenot]

Another excellent report, and had considered this show, but keep putting it off, because of differing reports, but probably one for next year.

I appreciate your comments, thanks. I thought Medieval Times was great but as you know we all have different views and opinions, I can tell you it is entertaining but the atmosphere is given by the audience while cheering for their knight during the show. So if you get a crowd that doesn´t get as much into the action with no screming and noise then the experience will go down a little but in no way make it bad. The food was excellent and plenty.

 

[Brit_Jude]

Thanks for more info - I am not sure on Medieval Times either. Last time I did a show like this I was still in my early 20's I believe and my friend and I went when we were on vacation in the Canary Islands. I think my Niece would like the equestrian show as she rides horses.