The Ever-changing US-IOA-SW-BG TR - June 2016 Trip - COMPLETE!

kittylady1972

Disneyholic
Joined
Oct 20, 2003
WARNING: I am TERRIBLE at remembering to update my Trip Reports...so BUYER BEWARE! :Po_O

BACKGROUND: We are a family of 5 - 2 adults and 3 kids ages 16, 13 and 11 and normally Disneyholics by nature. However we are going to attempt, once again, to make this a NON-Disney trip since we already have a Disney trip planned for November 2016 with extended family. I think this time we can succeed...unlike last time I planned a NON-Disney trip.


PLANS: Well I'm known for being a crazy vacation planner, I will make and cancel a zillion (not quite...but close) reservations between the time I decide on a trip and the time we leave. Case in point, last night I told my DH at dinner that I was sure I had finally made some definite plans for our trip...and he wouldn't EVEN LISTEN. He just wants me to let him know when we leave where he should go!

We live in MD so we are planning to drive for this trip because the cost of 5 RT plane tickets is more than I'm willing to part with, especially since we have a big honking SUV (that we just put a brand new transmission into...wonderful) and gas prices are pretty reasonable. My kids are fairly well seasoned in travel by car for long trips, as we've done it many times. With tons of electronics to keep them entertained...it's not the hardship it was when *I* was a kid and we did long drives...with on an A/M radio on whatever music my parents wanted to hear!

Anyway...the kids last day of school is a Thursday in June. This is a 2-hour early dismissal day so they will by done by 1pm at the latest. However if they don't have exams that day, or don't have any that afternoon, we can pull them out as early as possible and hit the road. Original plan was to leave on Friday, but that's a waste of a good day! We know we can do the drive-all-day-and-into-the-night thing as we've done it before. Our last drive to Florida was July 2015 and we drove until about 11pm, stopping overnight in Jacksonville, FL.

PARKS: Right now our highest priority is both Universal parks. Our last visit there was when the kids weren't even big enough to ride all the BIG stuff. That was back in June 2011:

UniJune2011a_zpsowldglkd.jpg


Now that they have all reached magical roller-coaster height (about 52 inches) they can't wait to do it ALL! Back then, I know we must have ridden the Simpsons ride about a half-dozen times...that was a big hit for them. We only did I think one or two park days at the time, which was enough for them.

So we are planning on getting 3-day Park2Park tickets for Universal, and we are staying two nights at Royal Pacific Resort (right now 8-) :P) so that we get FOTL access. That was key for this trip, as we've been to Florida and Universal in June...we know lines will be long. Our other HIGH priority is Busch Gardens Tampa, as our last time there was during that NON-Disney trip (also our first time there) and we just LOVED it there. We've been wanted to go back...this is our chance and I have a friend living in Tampa area who has opened her home to us to stay for a few nights. She'll most likely be joining us with her son, who I think is about 7 or 8 years old. She may even join us for one night at Universal as well. I'm not sure yet.


As I've gone over ticket prices a million times, I finally looked into Discovery Cove for the first time this week and the Ultimate Package which includes 14-day park tickets to BG/SW/AQ/AI and so I thought...why not? Kids love the water, they would love to do the helmet dive (they wanted to do this activity offered at a few places on our last cruise, but I told them we could do it elsewhere) and it seems like a nice place to relax after several long amusement park days. It isn't booked quite yet, but that's the plan.

Next UP: Breaking it down day by day!
 
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UniJune2011b_zps8hr6q4bz.jpg
THE TRAVEL PLAN

THURSDAY: After packing the night before, we plan to get the kids no later than 1pm from school, head home, they can change if necessary and then we hit the road. We will drive as far as we can, with hopes of making it to AT LEAST Georgia, with a preference for Jacksonville, FL if possible sometime before midnight. DH has dreams of driving all night...but I'm just not up for that.

FRIDAY: Remainder of our drive to Orlando, with any luck no more than 2-3 hours. The hope is that we arrive early enough to hit a park that morning/afternoon and my plan (as of now) is to make that a SeaWorld Day. Kids will mostly be interested in the RIDES there, so it's not an all day park for us. They can finally do the coasters here and there will be a new one to try I think. Depart sometime before dinnertime and check-in at our first resort: Universal's Cabana Bay Resort. THIS was a last minute change for us, as my original plan had us off-site just outside of Universal gates...until YESTERDAY. After doing some math, I checked out AP rates and decided I'll upgrade one of the 3-day Universal passes to an AP while there and thus the room with AP rate was booked here for a little more than our original off-site. I hope we can spend the afternoon/evening relaxing at the pool here.

SATURDAY: Our first Universal park day! I'm not sure which one yet but I can tell you if the Hulk is open that will most likely be number one on our list. Plus the new Harry Potter stuff as we've only seen half of it. We also need to check out of our one night at Cabana Bay and head to our new resort early that morning, Royal Pacific Resort, to pick up our FOTL passes. This is an all-day park day, with breaks if necessary for the pool.

SUNDAY: Another Universal Park day. Will two days be enough? I'm not quite sure which is why the next part of our trip is hard to plan

MONDAY: My problem is that I'm not sure if we'll really need a 3rd day at the Universal Parks, since we'll have FOTL access. If so, we'd need to plan that for this day. If not, then I'd be booking the next part of our trip, a total surprise to the kids, a day at DISCOVERY COVE! We'd probably spend until dinnertime here and then get a hotel nearby for the night, which I have NOT booked yet. If this is a DC day, then we may just spend the day at DC and then drive that evening to Tampa. If it's a Universal Day, we'd need another night nearby to move DC to Tuesday.

TUESDAY: If we are in Tampa, then this is a BG Tampa Day. If not, then this will be our Discovery Cove Day.

WEDNESDAY: Another day at BG Tampa, or maybe a few hours at BG Tampa and then maybe some time at Adventure Island? Never been there...hoping our 14-day pass from the Discovery Cove package covers this park on the same day...anybody know for sure?

THURSDAY: Back on the road we are heading about 9 hours north to North Carolina. We'll stop at my brother's house and visit with him and his family, and we will be leaving our 13 year old daughter there to be a Mommy's Helper for a week or so with my SIL and their two small boys.


FRIDAY: Spend some time with the family for the day. We will either depart around dinnertime and drive home, or stay another night and depart back home for MD on Saturday.

This is the current plan...but as I said I am always rethinking things when it comes to vacation planning!


 


Following along!


THANKS! :wave2:

Sounds like great planning so far!

And THANKS to you too! :wave2:

Nothing much new to report in terms of planning this trip. Still planning to totally surprise the kids with the Discovery Cove part, but if it isn't available by the time I'm ready to book (which may be about a week or so before we leave) then I'll take it as a sign it wasn't meant to happen. Unfortunately my husband and I both have moms that have health issues and things for them can change very quickly. We have a hard time planning things too far in advance that we can't cancel at least with a few days notice right now. That's just the way it is.


I thought my mom's health was okay, and then last night I got some bad news there. I won't go into details, but my mom has been battling cancer for many years now, and her most recent scans showed her current course of treatment wasn't making any difference to the tumor she currently has in her body. My parents will now (finally!) seek a 2nd opinion from another institute to explore more options for mom, but if a surgical option ends up being presented to her again (it was tried before but unsuccessful) then that will mean I will most likely travel from MD to NC to be there for that. It's a possibility that I'm keeping in my mind so it makes it difficult to do too much other planning. My parents had planned to join us on our next trip to Walt Disney World in November, and my dad asked me last night about what I have booked and how difficult that might be to change it. I told him no worries, I could manage it if for some reason they can't make the trip.

Anyway kids are still very excited about our June trip so let's hope this all happens just as we hope it will!
 
Kittylady..........I hope your mother gets some better news. I hope you don't have to change any plans for your November trip.

But for this trip your plans look good.......the kids will be so happy they'll be able to ride everything they want........looking forward to reading along with your plans......it's nice to hear from folks who haven't been to the parks in a while........things will have changed so much even since 2011.
 


I'm so sorry to hear about your mom and MIL. Hugs and prayers!

Thanks so much. We've been on this cancer roller coaster for about 10 years now with my mom...and it never gets easier.

Kittylady..........I hope your mother gets some better news. I hope you don't have to change any plans for your November trip.

But for this trip your plans look good.......the kids will be so happy they'll be able to ride everything they want........looking forward to reading along with your plans......it's nice to hear from folks who haven't been to the parks in a while........things will have changed so much even since 2011.

Thanks. I am hoping for no changes either. We live each week these days being grateful when we don't get calls from our families about any bad news on either mom. His mom is much worse off than mine and has only been battling for about 2 years but for now she's doing well and we're happy about that. Back in September, she was basically given 6 months.

I'm sure the kids will be very happy about this. I have to say when I mentioned Hulk NOT being up and running to my husband last night, his response was more of 'then why bother going?' as he's so been looking forward to riding it. I think we'll still enjoy the rest of the park time and plenty of other rides the kids still haven't done. We'll miss some favorites (RIP Jaws) but are looking forward to the new stuff!
 
MUST STOP LOOKING AT RESORT RATES.

I'm really bad about it. I'm sad I didn't keep the deal I had booked several months ago at RPR I think. I'm still wondering if we should just pay a little extra to stay in the same Resort (RPR) for all 3 nights. It would cost me about $130 more to book an additional night at RPR and drop our first night at Cabana Bay.

I'd really like to check out Cabana Bay, and yes I know I can pool hop but this makes it easier. I'm afraid going from that spacious room/suite to cramming 5 of us in a room at RPR (probably with an inflatable twin mattress we will bring) might be tight. I know we don't spend much time in the room though.

I wonder if I should consider the bigger room at Portofino instead? Plus that pool has a pool slide. And we do love Italian food since my husband is Italian. Switching to that for only the current two nights about be about $28 more.

I think we'd love Hard Rock Hotel too...for the music. I would like that. Kids would like it. Additional cost over RPR would be $80 for a regular room, not the deluxe room.

Yet saving money by keeping what I have is a good thing. We are still planning on doing Discovery Cove. I don't know how we'll fit that in with all the other stuff we want to do though. I see us doing half-days at some parks (like SeaWorld) instead. We'll have our own car, so it's easy enough.


Ok that's my daily ramble. The Universal Resort struggle is real.

 
We've always found the "lack of space" for the 5 of us at RPR manageable, since we aren't in our room much more than sleeping, for the benefit of the express Pass. But we also LOVE tent camping, and compared to 5 in a large tent, a RP room is like a castle, HAHA!

We will miss Hulk this year too, but Dragon Challenge is a close second for me ;) and there are 2 sides, which I hear are a bit different (I always forget and go on the same side :D )
 
We've always found the "lack of space" for the 5 of us at RPR manageable, since we aren't in our room much more than sleeping, for the benefit of the express Pass. But we also LOVE tent camping, and compared to 5 in a large tent, a RP room is like a castle, HAHA!

We will miss Hulk this year too, but Dragon Challenge is a close second for me ;) and there are 2 sides, which I hear are a bit different (I always forget and go on the same side :D )

That's good news thanks! We are not above tent camping ourselves, so we know that we can manage in smaller spaces. It's just getting more difficult as the kids grow into teenagers!

We are also huge fans of the Dragon Challenge and I don't think any of the kids have been on it as of yet. So that is definitely a bonus, as is HP and RRR. I'm sure it will be plenty for us, and having FOTL will allow us to take some breaks and hit the pool too.
 
Love the pictures of the kids.......really cute!

Any of the hotels would be good for you........having EP makes life so much easier, being able to pop back midday is so easy............
 
Love the pictures of the kids.......really cute!

Any of the hotels would be good for you........having EP makes life so much easier, being able to pop back midday is so easy............

Thanks! Yeah they were so little back then. I'll have to try to take some before-after photos in the same places this trip just for fun. I'm sure having the hotel nearby is going to be great...thanks! I'm going to try to stick to my current hotels I think...but can't make any promises! o_O
 
Just a little tweaking of THE PLAN

THURSDAY: Departure from MD, no later than 1:45pm. With any luck, more like noon. Approximately 10-12 hours of driving, arriving in Florida late Thursday evening.

FRIDAY: Early breakfast at hotel, drive to Orlando. Check-in at CABANA BAY RESORT. Perhaps spend a few hours at Universal Studios on rides that won't have extremely long lines. So maybe E.T., The Simpsons, Men in Black, Revenge of the Mummy, Terminator, Transformers. Of these, we have done E.T., Simpsons, and MIB and I think one kid has done Revenge of the Mummy. Back to Resort for dinner (or maybe CityWalk area) and then pool time.


SATURDAY: Check out of CABANA, and head over to RPR very early in the morning. We'll need to check-in and get our FOTL passes and then make our way to the parks. Perhaps we should start at Harry Potter in IOA and do everything here. Then ride over to the other side of HP and do the rest. Possibly a mid-day break at the pool and for lunch. Return to the parks for a few hours later that afternoon/evening.

SUNDAY: Universal/IOA again for all the stuff we haven't done yet. Maybe try to hang until dinnertime. Back to resort for dinner and maybe some pool time. Since parks are open until 10pm, maybe a few more evening hours at the parks since it will be our last day. We will then upgrade 4 of our passes to Power Passes before leaving.

MONDAY: At this point, I am thinking this will be Discovery Cove Day. We will check out of Royal Pacific early in the morning and head over to Discovery Cove. Breakfast and lunch and the day at Discovery Cove is the plan. We will leave around dinnertime where we will check into a nearby SeaWorld hotel. I booked one that gives us QuickQueue access as a bonus! Since SeaWorld is open until 9pm, I think we'll grab dinner quickly and then head over and do a few hours at SeaWorld to ride some rides using QuickQueue. I assume since we check-in Monday, we can use QuickQueue both Monday and Tuesday? I'll have to look into the logistics of this.


TUESDAY: Morning at SeaWorld OR Aquatica. Depending on weather, we may just do a little time at Aquatica just to check it out and also do some time at SeaWorld. We'll probably do both parks until after dinnertime, then make the drive to Tampa area. We'll stay with friends here.

WEDNESDAY: Spend the day at Busch Gardens Tampa with our friends and spend the night there.

THURSDAY: On the road early in the morning to head to North Carolina. We'll visit with my brother and his family here and stay Thursday and possibly Friday night there. We will be leaving our 13 year old daughter there to be a Mommy's Helper for a week or so with my SIL and their two small boys.

FRIDAY evening or SATURDAY morning: Head back to to Maryland.


This is quite a bit to pack into a vacation of just over a week, but I think it's pretty manageable.
 
Hey there! :wave:

We're driving in June too - from NoVA (but I was raised a MD girl). We're stopping for an overnight stay - good luck with the driving through! :drive:We're also staying at RPR but from a Monday - Thursday so we'll probably miss each other.

But your plan sounds like a TON of fun - you guys will be busy for sure! I'm going with a friend and her 2 sons (14 and 9 years old) who have never been to an amusement park in their lives. If they're really into rides and things, I'm thinking about how to squeeze a little Busch Gardens Williamsburg in their 1 month stay here in the US. How would you say Tampa compares to Williamsburg (if you've been to both)?
 
Rest when you get home!!!

Busy or not, your plan sounds fine to me.........I like a busy trip!
 
Hey there! :wave:
We're driving in June too - from NoVA (but I was raised a MD girl). We're stopping for an overnight stay - good luck with the driving through! :drive:We're also staying at RPR but from a Monday - Thursday so we'll probably miss each other.

But your plan sounds like a TON of fun - you guys will be busy for sure! I'm going with a friend and her 2 sons (14 and 9 years old) who have never been to an amusement park in their lives. If they're really into rides and things, I'm thinking about how to squeeze a little Busch Gardens Williamsburg in their 1 month stay here in the US. How would you say Tampa compares to Williamsburg (if you've been to both)?

Hello there! We will most likely stop overnight but hopefully not until Florida. With any luck the kids won't have any big exams on their last day of school and we can leave even earlier but we'll see how it goes. We have plenty of room in our vehicle for stretching out and resting for them.

How cool about your trip! I must say, we've done many more BG Williamsburg trips (only been to BG Tampa once) and honestly it is a BEAUTIFUL park and in a great location and perfect for thrill ride lovers. Apollo's Chariot it on my all-time favorite list as is Griffon. Honestly if you can do it, I'd also highly recommend a day at Water Country USA, a lovely waterpark near BGW. I will say BGW is a very hilly park so great exercise going up and down the paths there...but honestly we love it.

Rest when you get home!!!

Busy or not, your plan sounds fine to me.........I like a busy trip!

I totally agree...vacation is NEVER about REST for us! We are used to the GO-GO-GO and have done our share of park-to-park vacations so this will be no big deal for our crew. I'm adding the DC day as a sorta "rest" day but it will still be a nice day of vacation for my water-loving group. While I wish my family was a big sit on the beach and relax group, they just are NOT and that's okay.
 
You get the quick que from the Expedia desk in the hotel lobby. While the quick ques can be out of stock, I'd check to see if some are still available when you check in. You can also get quick ques the night before. At least that's what we did at the Residence Inn.

Sounds like a great trip. We'll be staying near DC and doing all the Busch parks for Christmas. We did that a couple of years ago, and Orlando calls again.
 
How cool about your trip! I must say, we've done many more BG Williamsburg trips (only been to BG Tampa once) and honestly it is a BEAUTIFUL park and in a great location and perfect for thrill ride lovers. Apollo's Chariot it on my all-time favorite list as is Griffon. Honestly if you can do it, I'd also highly recommend a day at Water Country USA, a lovely waterpark near BGW. I will say BGW is a very hilly park so great exercise going up and down the paths there...but honestly we love it.

It should be a lot of fun! I should have prefaced with the fact that I've actually been to BG Williamsburg many times. I LOVE Griffon and Apollo the most too - not a fan of the new Tempesto. The food is good for an amusement park IMO. Summer crowds are pretty manageable (I have never once needed to buy an express pass). Water Country is also a lot of fun! I guess wether we go or not will largely depend on my friend's budget during her month stay here. My boyfriend has been to both (he grew up in MD, has family in Tampa) and thinks Williamsburg blows Tampa out of the water. Granted we went to Williamsburg the last 2 summers and he hasn't been to BG Tampa in years!
 

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