Short trip, long day: 12/1-12/3. Live-ish report

[cschaaf]

We’re on a very short trip and I’ll be doing some live posts as we go.

My wife and I have tickets to the Orlando Informer event on Saturday 12/2. It’s our first time at the event.

We also decided to spend some time at Volcano Bay that morning.

We made the drive down this evening, it takes us about 5 hours to get here. Right before we left, I saw an article (I think it was from Taste of Home) that listed the top pizza places in the US. One was Satchel’s in Gainesville FL. Our route takes us right past there and we’d be in that area around dinner, so we decided to give it a shot.

Fun place, pizza was good, but not anything spectacular. I’ve had better pizza in FL for sure. Maybe the writer went to the University of Florida and had fond memories of the place lol

We’re staying at Aventura for the second time. We enjoyed our first stay here and loved the smaller size of this place. The short walk to VB is also nice.

If you’re looking for Christmas decorations, Aventura doesn’t have much.

There was no one in line to check in. I had put the deposit on a credit card. I had a few gift cards that I bought at Target for the discount and wanted to move the deposit to the gift cards plus pay off the balance. The check in agent said he could do that.

He disappeared for a bit and came back with what I assume was a manager. She helped him get the gift cards entered. I forgot how long that takes. It looks like such a painful process for them. She said they rarely get people paying with gift cards. In the end, they only used the gift cards for the balance and not the deposit. Which means I’ll have a few cards left at the end of this trip. Oh well, guess that means we’ll have to use them next time.

My wife is still recovering from a full hip replacement over the summer. She’s doing well, but we figured the walking might be too much, so we rented a scooter from Gold Mobility. We used them last Christmas and had a great scooter and great service.

We booked it months ago when they were running a discount. I was curious a few weeks ago and went back to their site to see what the current price was and they showed completely booked for 12/1-12/4. Glad I booked well in advance.

At Endleas Summer (where we stayed at Christmas), they were able to leave the scooter at baggage storage. At Aventura, they can’t, so we scheduled to meet them in front of the hotel at 8 tomorrow.

They called this morning and said that tomorrow is, “the busiest day we’ve had all year” and asked if we could move to 9:00. We aren’t in any hurry, so that was fine.

 

[cschaaf]

When we walked in the lobby, we saw 4 scooters from another company sitting there lined up. My wife sat on one of the benches while i checked in and the renters of those scooters showed up. They told her they had a bunch of issues with the scooters including one that would constantly reset. They called for a replacement and had to skip their reservations at Vivo to meet the driver. When I went to park, the company showed up and swapped two of the scooters.

Our room is the first one off the elevator, so we have a really short walk.

We usually travel with our AppleTV and connect it to the TV in the room. Doesn’t look possible here.

My wife got a shower, then I went. When getting out of the shower, I slipped and fell. I did the thing you aren’t supposed do and put my hands behind me to try to break my fall. I landed mostly on my right hand and hip.

My wife called to me to ask if I was okay. I said, “I don’t know yet” and sat there for a bit trying to assess the damage. Took me about a minute to get up. Both wrists are a little sore, the right one is worse than the left and my hip is a little stiff. We’ll see how I feel in the morning, but I should be fine.

The shower pan, despite being textured, is pretty slick. One I stood up, I tried sliding my foot around and there very little resistance.

The plan for tomorrow is to get up early and head to breakfast in the hotel. Then meet up with the scooter company at 9. Once we have that, we’ll go to VB for a few hours, then come back to the hotel to nap before the OI event.

 

[cschaaf]

Lots of clunking sounds from the elevators last night. If noises bother you, as for a room further down the hall.

We woke up around 6 and headed to breakfast at 7:30. Ate at Urban Pantry. I got the bacon, egg, and cheese croissant, my wife got the pancakes. Bot we’re fine. Nothing special, but we’re fresh and tasted good. The sandwich is a bit small.

Only a few people at breakfast and there was no line. We were done eating by 8. Now just waiting on the scooter.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Ouch - how is your wrist this morning?

Back to the hotel to rest/ nap before the Meetup is a good plan.

Have fun!

 

[cschaaf]

Ouch - how is your wrist this morning?

Back to the hotel to rest/ nap before the Meetup is a good plan.

Have fun!

Thanks for asking - my right wrist and right hip are a bit stiff, but not too bad. My shoulders hurt more than anything. Nothing serious, though. Could have been a lot worse.

The scooter company met us at the front of the hotel exactly at 9. It was just a dude in a small Toyota car. He somehow packed that thing in his trunk. Last Christmas, we thought there was barely enough room in the back of our Highlander lol.

Volcano Bay had a light crowd. It’s 11:30 and everything is still a ride now. Last time here, it was over 100 degrees and the park closed to capacity by this point in the day.

Rode a few slides, spent time in the wave pool, did a few laps on each of the rivers, now thinking about lunch!

I don’t like swimming unless it’s like bath water temperature, but it’s not too bad. Cold when you get in, cold when you get back out. The worst place are the bathrooms, the AC is still cranked up in there lol

 

[cschaaf]

The longboard Hawaiian pizza is peak theme park food. Really good.

My wife wanted chicken fingers, so she went to Bambu while I walked around to the longboard pizza shop in the back of the park. There was no one in line in either remand only 1 or 2 people eating - this was at noon. Stark difference from our last time here when you could barely move lol

The sun finally came out and warmed things up a bit.

 

[cschaaf]

Spent more time in the wave pool and rivers, then headed back to the room. If VB had a ticket where they charged a bit less and you could only do the wave pool and rivers, we’d go more often.

Napped for a bit, then went to check in for the OI event. Checkin is easy. It’s a bit of a walk to get to the checkin soundstage, but once inside, the line moved fast.

It looked like they had some holding pens, a la HHN Stay and Scream, for those without day passes. Since we had our APs, we went to the front gates. Our plan was to go see Grinchmas, but my brain broke and we entered USF instead.

The front gate was a madhouse. It was jammed with people. TMs yelling instructions that you can’t hear. Eventually, we figured out that 98% of the crowd either didn’t have day passes and we’re waiting until their OI tickets would work (about 10 minutes away) or they were confused and didn’t realize that day guests were being told to squire past the giant crowd.

We scanned in and headed to MIB, trying to get through the area before the parade started. All week leading up to this, we debated on what clothing to wear. Would it be a bit cool at night? We finally decided to go light based on the forecast. We failed to think about how cold some of the ride buildings are lol. MIB is one of the coldest and there is a strong breeze in there.

After MIB, we wanted to go to dinner, but the parade was going. So we rode ET. We got out of ET and had to wait another 10 minutes or so before the parade ended.

We wanted a small dinner since food will be free later, so we tried the Hot Dog Hall of Fame. Pretty good hot dogs, if a bit pricey.

There were a handful of open tables. We pulled the scooter up to one and went to order. My wife made her order then went back to the table while I ordered and paid. When she got to the table, a couple had sat down there. You didn’t see the scooter? You never wondered why it might be parked there? There were plenty of other tables they could have taken. So odd.

Back to USF after dinner and in line for Gringotts now. 25 minute posted wait look more like about 15 minutes

 

[cschaaf]

The OI event has started. The day crowds moved out pretty quickly. Rides are all listed as Ride Now except Hagrids. We rode everything we wanted in USF, and grabbed some drinks for the Hopping Pot. Tried to grab something at Minion Cafe, but the line was out the door and down the sidewalk. The line at Finnegans looked long, too

We decided to jump on the Hogwarts Express and head over to Hagrids. Posted wait is 30 minutes, we’ll see if that’s accurate

 

[cschaaf]

Walking towards Hagrids and the wait showed 25. Just as we were entering the queue, it changed to 35. Took about 30.

the rest of the night is a bit of a blur, rode a bunch of things as walk ons. Ate a bunch of good food including fish and chips and all the different tots at Green Eggs & Ham.

We finally hit the wall around 12:15 and decided to head back to Aventura.

The OI event is pricey, but we had a great time and will likely try to do it again at some point.

 

[cschaaf]

Final thoughts

• Vcolcano Bay is a beautiful park
• Aventura isn't a bad choice if you plan on visiting VB. It's short walk (when the pool isn't open, it a few steps longer)
  • The rooms are on the small side, but they work for us
  • The fancy technology gets in the way more than it helps.
    • The nightstand is packed with hotel stuff to the point where there's not much room for anything you want to put there
    • Controlling the TV volume with a touch screen slide is a bad idea
• Gold Mobility scooters have worked well for us twice. Comfortable scooters that are in good shape. They only rent by the week and area bit more than other vendors I researched, but it's been worth it for us.
• It was slightly less convenient that Gold isn't allowed to drop off at the luggage desk like they can at most of the other Uni hotels.
• Gift cards are a pain to use at the Uni/Lowes hotels
• The new Minion ride was fun, but chaotic. It was hard to know what to shoot. The aim of the gun seemed to be a few degrees left of where I was aiming and it reacted slowly to movements. I think with some practice, it'll be much better.
• The OI event was a very different way to see the parks - crowds were low, ride lines were short, and we were able to try food that we would have probably never bought on our own (and now we might buy some of them on future trips)
  • Was it 'worth it' - hard to say. We didn't do nearly as much as we could have and still had a great time. There are a few value points to pull from to decide if it's worth it.
    • Short lines for rides - as short as you might ever see them. If you're a fan of rides, this is a great way to visit. You could do similar with EP. This, by itself, probably wouldn't push this to 'worth it' status. You'd need to be interested in some of the others below.
    • Free food - a great way to try things you might risk paying for normally.
    • See the parks at night - that's not always possible depending on when you normally visit
    • See the parks with low crowds - we were able to take it a bit slow and look at things that we don't normally see when there's a big crowd
  • Next time, we'll go in more hungry so we can eat more.
• I think this was our first trip without eating at a table service restaurant. We did all counter service and enjoyed everything we ate.
  • The Hawaiian Longboard pizza at VB was so good. I wish they'd add that somewhere in the dry parks.

 

[nighttowll]

Glad you had such a great trip.

Also, completely agree about MIB air-con, especially the single riders line. That spot where they hold you at the chain, oh my gosh!, it is like a cannon of cold air is sent blasting over you. We kept trying to figure out where it was coming from as we didn't see any vents there.

 

[christophfam]

Enjoyed reading your report. I attended Friday night of the OI event. The low crowds really spoiled me for the rest of my stay. I had express for part of the trip but you just can’t beat being able to walk around without loads of people in your way. Those low crowds and the free food do tempt me to do it again.

Hope you have fully recovered from your fall. That is so scary. I’m glad it wasn’t any worse.