Pixie Dust and the Dark Side!

[laekia]

Hi Everyone

I have a Trip Report in progress over on the Disney side, but it was suggested that I post my Universal portions over here as well. We were in Orlando from Feb 17-27 and we went to 8 parks in that time including the 4 Disney parks, Seaworld, Busch gardens and of course 3 days at Universal We is myself, my husband, and our 2 girls who are 12 and 8. We also were travelling with 4 other family members who joined us for about half the stuff we did... my mom, dad, sister and grandmother

If you have any interest in my entire trip review you should be able to get to it from my signature.

So without further ado....

 

[laekia]

Now that we have experienced the magic of Disney it was time to venture over to the Dark Side *cue ominous music*.
I had a lot of preconceived ideas before we left… I spent hundreds of hours (literally) researching this trip (my family thought I was crazy). I was expecting Universal to be fun… we are all huge Harry Potter fans so that was a huge draw, but I was expecting to love Disney and think of Universal as a great one time thing. Don’t get me wrong, we did love Disney, but Universal surprised me…. Anyways more on that later.
We got to Universal a little bit later than we wanted… This was one of those days that just started off a bit wrong. We were all in good spirits for the most part. When we got to the park we parked and took the LONG walk to the actual parks. I read about this but I was still unprepared! And it was about 9:15 at this point so there was 12039830948309480398 people around Not the best start to the day. We got down to the bag check and DH realized we didn’t have our wallet…. Totally my fault  I had left it in the van when I took it out to pay for parking. So he ran back to get it (muttering some choice words under his breath I can imagine) and I have to give him tons of credit cause he didn’t say a word! So finally we got in and got to Universal Studios the original park.

There were so many people it was insane…. Not at all what I was expecting. We stopped for a minute and looked around in horror and then shook ourselves off and planned to make the best of it.

This was no later than 9:30 am.... park opened at 9 <.<


So we start down the main street… Despicable Me wait time…60 minutes. Nope not happening. Shrek 4D…. 10 minutes! AHA! So we made that our first ride. It was cute but I am perfectly ok with having it be a one time only ride. We had gotten over our initial Universal shock by this time thankfully!

Stopped to meet Shrek and Fiona quickly


And DD1 and DH wanted to ride the roller coaster of course. I took one look at that one and said absolutely not. We had a preplanned plan for rides before we left home. DH and DD1 are far more adventurous than myself and DD2 so they were ride partners and myself and DD2 were ride partners with me agreeing to follow her lead. Fortunately for me (I really don’t love thrill rides) DD2 never quite got over Expedition Everest the whole trip and avoided most of the crazy coasters. So in this case since there was no way I was getting on this ride DH and DD1 went to do that while DD2 and I wandered and eventually decided to go on twister. Another good “I’ve done this once that’s plenty” ride. We met back up and headed to Transformers which was the ride I was most looking forward to… and it didn’t disappoint. This is when I truly began loving Universal. Ive never been on a ride like that and if you ever get the chance you really should experience it at least once. This is easily one of my top 5 favorite rides from all the parks combined. We also stopped to see Megatron.

This was in Line for Transformers


We kept wandering down the street and went to Disaster which was another fun one time thing, and the Fear Factor show which the rest of my family didn’t really want to go to but I really did and they are glad that I made them cause it was actually really fun. DD2 still talks about the girl with the scorpions on her head, and the milkshakes that were made with gross things like meat you wouldn’t even put in hotdogs. Yeah my kid… she likes strange things…. Anyways next we hit MiB which I loved… nothing like challenging your family to an alien shooting contest. The rest of our group showed up shortly after this and we headed with them over to the Simpsons area.

That was a blast I used to watch The Simpsons every week when I was younger, and my kids actually watched it when they were young but we stopped for some reason. The whole land was really well done. We took my dad on the Simpsons ride which none of us were expecting too much from, but we all agreed later that it was another favorite for sure.

Actually by about day 6 I was asking what everyones favorite things were and all 5 of us mentioned the Simpsons ride!

Couldnt pass up meeting Bart and Homer


After that the boys wanted a Beer and the littler girls wanted doughnuts so we bought the big pink doughnut to share. Im pretty sure I would have been in a diabetic coma if I ate that whole thing… and Im not diabetic lol. It was good but I thought it was really sweet…. The rest of my sweet tooth family loved it of course.

It was getting a bit later by the time we were done.. at least 4pm and we had dinner reservations at 6pm. My mom and sister decided to go on Shrek since they had missed it before, and the rest of us wanted to take my dad on Transformers and maybe the Mummy if the line wasn’t too long. We got to transformers and the wait said 30 min but the line was literally out the door… SO we went to check the Mummy and it was only 10 so we did that. That’s my speed of roller coaster lol… DD2 liked it too. We went back to Transformers and decided to brave the line which still said 30 but was just inside the door now. It took actually right around 25 which was one of the closest wait times we experienced. In comparison our earlier visit to transformers said 20 min when we got in line and it was really more like 45. By the time we were done it was just after 5 and DH and DD1 ran off to do the roller coaster one more time before dinner.

We found the rest of our group and went to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville for our reservation. It was good but nothing to write home about. The best part was the girls on stilts and DD2 got a really cute penguin balloon animal that she adored.

By the time we were done it was about 8pm and we headed home. Universal was a bit more crowd busy than I was anticipating but it had some of the most amazing rides ive ever experienced.

 

[Metro West]

Excellent start...looking forward to much more!

 

[audrey2580]

Great report! We've decided to add a day at univeral so I'm enjoying your report.

 

[schumigirl]

Enjoying your report so far......look forward to more

 

[Heluvsme]

It looks like you all had fun!

We will be going for our first trip this summer (well, kind of, there was a brief visit nearly 16 years ago, so I'm actually counting this summer as our first time to Universal!). Your reviews are helping a lot!!

 

[Kirby]

I feel the same way you do about coasters on top of getting motion sick. My daughter and I are planning a trip to Disney later this year with a stop at the dark side. Are there any rides that you rode that you suggest I stay away from? I can't do rides like Star Tours or Tea Cups but Buzz Lightyear doesn't bother me.

 

[dvcnewgirl]

Thanks for the report. We are doing Universal for the 1st time in April. I am going crazy not knowing what to expect!

 

[laekia]

I feel the same way you do about coasters on top of getting motion sick. My daughter and I are planning a trip to Disney later this year with a stop at the dark side. Are there any rides that you rode that you suggest I stay away from? I can't do rides like Star Tours or Tea Cups but Buzz Lightyear doesn't bother me.

Hmm well I don't get motion sick thankfully but hopefully I can help transformers is amazing BUT it does have spins and jerks and you may have issues with it. A lot of Universal has to to with motion simulators so you will probably have to be more careful than at Disney. Spider-Man is the same as Transformers (haven't gotten to that trip review yet) and Harry Potter is very similar too. The Cat in the Hat ride at Suess landing has a few minor spins and one or 2 pretty spinny spins. Despicable me is one where the seats move while you watch the 3d screen. Not as intense as transformers or the other 2 but still quite a bit of movement. I liken those to dinosaur, they are all very much the same style in a sense. MiB is a shooting one like buzz light year but the cars you are in spin a ton and you don't get to control it. Oh the Simpsons ride I forgot (I'm mentally touring the parks LOL) and that one is also more like transformers and the others. I gues you could say its a lot like star tours probably. I don't remember star tours very well.. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan so I was a bit underwhelmed.. Blasphemy I'm sure

It really depends on how motion sick you get.... The water rides at islands of adventure are all either drops or a lot of rocking movements. There's a lot more roller coasters at Universal and crazy things that I don't do like the death drop... Mind you I got on the tower of terror for some ridiculous reason...... I'm still not entirely sure what I was thinking.

I feel like I'm sounding super negative about universal lol I'm not trying to be! The rides are generally more intense than Disney tho that's for sure. I can explain any of them in more detail if you like! They have some great shows too.

 

[laekia]

Thanks for the report. We are doing Universal for the 1st time in April. I am going crazy not knowing what to expect!

Welcome I can try and answer any questions you might have! I was like that too... I'm OCD about being as prepared as possible for things... Thankfully my husband and kids don't mind for the most part and are blissfully happy to follow my plans lol

 

[dvcnewgirl]

Welcome I can try and answer any questions you might have! I was like that too... I'm OCD about being as prepared as possible for things... Thankfully my husband and kids don't mind for the most part and are blissfully happy to follow my plans lol

Great! Any tips/ tricks for a first timer? Unfortunately we have to stay offsite so no express pass for us

 

[laekia]

Great! Any tips/ tricks for a first timer? Unfortunately we have to stay offsite so no express pass for us

We were offsite for this trip too so no express passes for us... Next time we are going to try it the resort way. Honestly if the rides are important to you get there for park opening. It wasn't easy getting up early every day but it was super worth it and actually no one complained our best hours of rides were the first 2 hours of park opening for every park. Even Harry potter was pretty quiet at 9am... I think we waited 10 min tops.

We didn't find the waits at universal to be as bad as Disney that's for sure... I think our longest wait was the 40 minutes for transformers because the wait times lied to us... But the que was really entertaining so it wasn't too bad.

What's your focus? What do you like to do? My family is into rides the most so we plan everything around where the rides are and anticipated wait times/popularity.

Universal... Ride despicable me as soon as the park opens... Even the day we went that the park was dead had a 45 min wait there after the first 30 minutes. Transformers next

Islands of adventure... Definitely Harry potter if you are into that and Spider-Man second.

That's if you want to beat those wait times

 

[dvcnewgirl]

We were offsite for this trip too so no express passes for us... Next time we are going to try it the resort way. Honestly if the rides are important to you get there for park opening. It wasn't easy getting up early every day but it was super worth it and actually no one complained our best hours of rides were the first 2 hours of park opening for every park. Even Harry potter was pretty quiet at 9am... I think we waited 10 min tops.

We didn't find the waits at universal to be as bad as Disney that's for sure... I think our longest wait was the 40 minutes for transformers because the wait times lied to us... But the que was really entertaining so it wasn't too bad.

What's your focus? What do you like to do? My family is into rides the most so we plan everything around where the rides are and anticipated wait times/popularity.

Universal... Ride despicable me as soon as the park opens... Even the day we went that the park was dead had a 45 min wait there after the first 30 minutes. Transformers next

Islands of adventure... Definitely Harry potter if you are into that and Spider-Man second.

That's if you want to beat those wait times

Rides are definitely the main focus. I plan on being there before opening. Thanks! Just hoping that going on Spring Break is not totally frustrating

 

[laekia]

Rides are definitely the main focus. I plan on being there before opening. Thanks! Just hoping that going on Spring Break is not totally frustrating

Well our crowd levels were 4s an 5s out of 10 and there were 474838726262 people and some really long lines sometimes.... I'm not sure I would be brave enough for spring break but I have crowd issues so....

Being there early is going to be your best trick to doing what you want to do. Definitely do the busy rides first. If you like rollercoasters make sure you go on the mummy... That was a fun one not too crazy but a neat ride.

Good Luck! And Have Fun!!

 

[zebsterama]

Great TR - thanks for sharing!

Will be following along.

Cheers,
Zebsterama

 

[Kirby]

Hmm well I don't get motion sick thankfully but hopefully I can help transformers is amazing BUT it does have spins and jerks and you may have issues with it. A lot of Universal has to to with motion simulators so you will probably have to be more careful than at Disney. Spider-Man is the same as Transformers (haven't gotten to that trip review yet) and Harry Potter is very similar too. The Cat in the Hat ride at Suess landing has a few minor spins and one or 2 pretty spinny spins. Despicable me is one where the seats move while you watch the 3d screen. Not as intense as transformers or the other 2 but still quite a bit of movement. I liken those to dinosaur, they are all very much the same style in a sense. MiB is a shooting one like buzz light year but the cars you are in spin a ton and you don't get to control it. Oh the Simpsons ride I forgot (I'm mentally touring the parks LOL) and that one is also more like transformers and the others. I gues you could say its a lot like star tours probably. I don't remember star tours very well.. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan so I was a bit underwhelmed.. Blasphemy I'm sure

It really depends on how motion sick you get.... The water rides at islands of adventure are all either drops or a lot of rocking movements. There's a lot more roller coasters at Universal and crazy things that I don't do like the death drop... Mind you I got on the tower of terror for some ridiculous reason...... I'm still not entirely sure what I was thinking.

I feel like I'm sounding super negative about universal lol I'm not trying to be! The rides are generally more intense than Disney tho that's for sure. I can explain any of them in more detail if you like! They have some great shows too.

Thank you for your input! I'm beginning to think that US/IOA will be a park for her and her hubby to do another time and the two of us just focus on Disney.

 

[laekia]

Sorry for the delay in an update.... As i figured life has gotten in the way We have some super big news coming up but i will save it for the end of the trip report! Lets just say my husband is giving me THE BEST christmas present ever! Now on with Islands of Adventure!

So we made it to Saturday. 4 parks down and 4 to go! Saturday was our day off from the parks, so we hung around the house, did some shopping, the boys went golfing in the morning and then the kids and DH went swimming…. It was somewhere around 55-60 degrees outside im guessing… it was a little chilly in the pool I wasn’t about to be jumping in there! It was a good relaxing day but we were ready to get back to the parks!


Sunday was the day the kids had been looking forward to the most I think… All of us are HUGE Harry Potter fans… that was actually our biggest reason for going to Universal, I doubt we would have if they hadn’t had the harry potter world. So this time we actually made it to Universal nice and early. The crowds weren’t nearly as bad as they had been the previous week when we went to Universal Studios so I was already feeling a little more optimistic. It’s a little sad watching all the resort people getting to enter the park early, but even with all the people going in early it wasn’t very busy. We had gotten to the park at about 830 for the 9am open, and they did open pretty much right at 9.

We beelined for the Harry Potter ride and when we got there the line was only about 10 minutes (Yay!) so we hopped right on that first.

We spent A LOT of time exploring this area… DH and DD2 went on the dueling dragons roller coaster.. they said it was ok. DD1 and I went to Honeydukes and Zonkos which is a candy shop and joke shop respectively.

We got a kick out of the candy shop and spent too much time and money in there They roped us into the chocolate frogs which I have to admit were really cool.

We also went on the smaller roller coaster that I cant remember the name of… it was a little freaky actually I kept thinking DD1 was going to fall out… really bad restraints on this ride. We went back towards the shops and saw that the line for Ollivanders was really short so we quickly jumped in.

Ollivanders is a wand shop and they do a little thing showing how a wand chooses a wizard and they pick a child from the “audience” to be the witch or wizard. There’s about 30 people in the room for each “show” and I knew that they liked to take kids between about 6-10… DD2 is 8 We got really lucky and she was chosen! She was absolutely beside herself it was the cutest thing. She got to wave the wands and say the spells  I didn’t get any pictures because it was no flash and I was too caught up in the moment and forgot I could have video taped it with no lights coming on <.< Anyways she ended up buying the wand that chose her and she was beyond excited about it. Really Great memory.


So after that we finally decided it was warm enough for some butterbeer. We decided to get one of each the frozen and the regular and see if we a) liked it at all and b) which one we liked best. Myself, DH and DD1 preferred the regular one and DD2 loved the frozen one. It was a bit hit all around for sure! We watched the Singing Frogs group while we drank our butterbeer which was also pretty fun… the girls were really excited to see the “singers from the movie”…. Sure we let them think that lol

 

[laekia]

We decided that was enough Harry Potter for the moment and we wanted to see the rest of the park so we headed out to the lost continent. We went to Poseidons fury first since the line wasn’t too long and Sinbad didnt start until 1230 (it was about 11 at the time). Poseidon’s Fury was a fun show/ride where you are guided through different rooms and experience special effects and a fun story line. It was fun to do once that’s for sure.

We still had time afterwards before the Sinbad show and the girls were a bit hungry so we decided to see if we could get into Mythos for lunch. We waited less than 10 minutes which was great  I cant remember the names of what we ate but DH and DD1 had some sort of burger with pulled pork on it which was delicious (I tried a couple bites  ) I think I had the steak and portobello panini which was ok but nothing to write home about… I liked the burger the others had better! DD2 had what she almost always eats… cheese pizza I have one very adventurous eating kid and one kinda boring eating kid lol at least DD2 will try new things even if she always goes back to the usual stuff. Anyways Mythos was worth it just for the décor if nothing else! The restaurant was amazing to see and based on the other food I would definitely recommend it.

She was super happy about her chocolate frog!


We finished lunch at about 1215 and booked it over to the Sinbad show. The girls were pretty excited about this show and wanted to sit in the splash zone. DH and I weren’t into the getting wet idea so we found a nice spot not in the splash zone

The show was good but I wasn’t blown away.

The girls liked it, especially the splashing part. It was actually pretty funny they had gotten splashed a bit near the start of the show and were disappointed they weren’t wetter. As the show was ending they got totally dumped on! It was hilarious cause neither of them were expecting it at all! So with happy wet kids and happy dry parents we headed to Suess Landing.


I was definitely excited for Suess landing and so was DD2…. DD1 was being a typical im too cool for this preteen and DH doesn’t like Dr Suess at all so I already knew he wasn’t going to be thrilled with this area.

We went on the High in the Sky Suess Trolley first because I really wanted to. Unfortunately the wait was a bit horrible…. I think we waited about 30 minutes for this one. I thought it was really cute and it was fun to read a bit of a Dr Suess book while we waited. DD2 and I had fun riding around Suess landing and checking out the sights…

the other 2 of course weren’t impressed and thought it was a bit of a waste of time although to their credit they thought I couldn’t hear them talking about it The girls went on the caro-Suess-el afterwards and then we met up with the rest of our group at the Cat in the hat ride. I decided to spring DH and DD1 mostly because they were getting grouchy and I could sense they would start irritating me soon lol so DD2 and I went on Cat in the Hat and had a blast and I sent the other 2 off to ride the Hulk since DD2 and I had no intent on riding that anyways.

The picture of the hulk was from up on the Suess trolley ride

Cat in the hat was really cute, it was a spinny ride (but not too spinny) that went through the story of the Cat in the Hat. We both really liked it actually. We went and met up with the other 2 near the Hulk and I sent them to go ride the crazy Doom drop since the line was short for that too. We went on the Storm Force Accelatron which is a ride like the teacups that you spin yourself. Then the other group went for ice cream and we stole my dad to go on the Spiderman ride. I loved this ride which wasn’t terribly surprising since I loved the transformers ride… it’s pretty much the same ride… it’s a 3d video ride where you sit in a large car and get taken through a Spiderman story line. I don’t make it sound as good as it is lol but trust me it’s fantastic, especially if you like Spiderman.

My favorite X-Men character outside of Spiderman


We met back up with the rest of the group and headed for Bilge Rat Barges. Again we stole my dad away and took him on this ride.

We had been on Kali River Rapids and we had gotten fairly wet and this ride was supposed to be pretty much the same so we figured we knew what we were getting into. Omg we so didn’t LOL. I don’t think any of us had ever been that wet in our lives! My dad said he would have been less wet if he had just jumped in the river instead! LOL It was really fun though. My kids wanted to go again but the rest of us figured we were wet enough for the moment We sat in the sun to hopefully dry off a bit while we waited for the girls and we hear the announcement that the ride has been shut down…. Hmm. We figure the girls might come back… nope. Hmmm….. we wait some more and watch the empty rafts go down the river….. hmm. My mom goes back to look for them but cant find them so they must still be somewhere back in like where she cant see…. HMM……. Im a little worried but not insanely so yet. 40 minutes later I finally see them floating down the river /end heart attack. The ride was shut down for about 20 minutes and they were about 20 minutes back in line so that was why mom couldn’t find them. I was super proud of myself for not tracking them down and letting them handle things on their own! Even if the handling meant waiting and trusting that my 12 and 8 year old were fine even if I couldn’t see them… I have a hard time with that, I micromanage a lot But anyways all was well and the kids were thrilled at the second ride and just as drippy as before! We kept heading around the park and saw Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls.

None of us really wanted to get wet again except for DD1 who was dying to try this ride. Luckily her grandfather took pity on her and took her on the ride.

They had a blast and were once again wet… theres an awful lot of water rides at islands of adventure….. We headed to Jurassic park but unfortunately it was closed  I wasn’t looking forward to the drop on the ride but I LOVE the movie and I was really disappointed that I wasn’t going to get to experience it cause I heard it was a great ride…. Although more water lol.

We passed Jurassic park since everything was closed and headed back to Harry Potter and Hogsmeade since the rest of our group hadn’t been there yet.

The girls took grandpa on the Harry Potter ride and I took the rest to the Three Broomsticks for a snack and some Butterbeer. I would have loved to have a full meal here! I was really cool.

We actually shared the pasties and some French fries and each had some butterbeer.

It was a nice break It was late afternoon by this point and we decided since we had so much food still left at the house we were just going to have some sandwiches/leftovers when we got home.

We looked around at the shops in Hogsmede again and then we decided to try and get on Spiderman again before the park closed. Closing was at 7 and it was about 6 at this point. We got to Spiderman and found the ride was closed and not working  We waited for about 30 minutes but it looked like we were out of luck so we decided to head out and head home for the evening. Islands of Adventure was definitely good but not as good as I was expecting. We had planned to go back on our last day but we changed our minds and decided we likes Universal Studios better than Islands of Adventure.

 

[clsteve]

Really good start- love the pic's!

And yes, Bilge Rat Barge wet is a whole new level of soaked, isn't it...?

 

[laekia]

Really good start- love the pic's!

And yes, Bilge Rat Barge wet is a whole new level of soaked, isn't it...?

It was definitely fun! I'm fairly sure I've never been that wet in my life good thing it was a hot afternoon!!