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

[Lynne G]

Wahoo! Glad to hear you had a good night sleep on the road, and should be at the resort soon. I never seem to remember to put requests for rooms, but I am sure you'll get a room that will be just right. We love that resort and it's our favorite when visiting the dark side.

Have a great time in the park this afternoon! Enjoy the vacation. The bills can wait until you are back.

Hugs that the cat does well, and is ready to join his family when you get home.

 

[schumigirl]

Lol.......I love driving in Florida.........but then many years ago we both used to enjoy Raleigh and sports car driving (I was much slimmer then ) so driving anywhere is a joy!

Glad you're almost there though and will be enjoying the parks real soon..........sounds like you made good time in your journey so far, and glad hotel was nice.

Looking forward to hearing all about it.........

 

[kittylady1972]

Wahoo! Glad to hear you had a good night sleep on the road, and should be at the resort soon. I never seem to remember to put requests for rooms, but I am sure you'll get a room that will be just right. We love that resort and it's our favorite when visiting the dark side.

Have a great time in the park this afternoon! Enjoy the vacation. The bills can wait until you are back.

Hugs that the cat does well, and is ready to join his family when you get home.

Thanks so much. I'll update on our room situation here next.

Lol.......I love driving in Florida.........but then many years ago we both used to enjoy Raleigh and sports car driving (I was much slimmer then ) so driving anywhere is a joy!

Glad you're almost there though and will be enjoying the parks real soon..........sounds like you made good time in your journey so far, and glad hotel was nice.

Looking forward to hearing all about it.........

The DC/MD/VA area is no picnic for driving either and I do trust my DH and his driving but not so much the other people here!

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Ok so sorry for the delay in updating. Just been busy vacationing but let me give the highlights.

Our room wasn't ready at check-in but she said she would upgrade us to a bigger villa that was ready...was that ok? Heck yes. We have a garden view room overlooking the quiet pool in the West Wing and it is in a great location.

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Let's see in arrival yesterday we unpacked since a storm looked to be brewing. It was not much of a storm at all so we ended up taking our chances and hopping a boat to the park. We chose IOA as our park of choice.

The weather yesterday was pretty nice for Florida. Overast and in 80s maybe with very low humidity. We spent a few hours did a few rides and then returned to the resort for a quick swim in the beach pool which is lovely. Afterwards we cleaned up for a 7pm dinner at Trattoria del Porto. It was nice enough to eat outside which we did..and the hostess mentioned no characters visit the outside tables..which is when I remembered this was a character meal. Oh well..no matter. The restaurant in and out was quiet and before long Bart and Homer came strolling by...and right over to our table for a visit and photos!

The waitress even mentioned after how lucky were that they stopped by the outside table. So cool!

So we were all feeling pretty good already about our first day...and it still wasn't over.

 

[kittylady1972]

OK so typing on my tablet has proven challenging especially for posting photos. I'm not quick enough to get them on here very well. Anyway here is one from dinner Friday night:

 

[kittylady1972]

OK so one more quick update before the evening is over.

Another great day today. We did the majority of the rides we wanted to do at Universal Studios after spending most of our first day at IOA. We've now been on the Howarth Express 4 times and done the major HP rides and really loved Escape from Gringotts which we did in the last hour Friday night. Our last trip today on the Hogwarts Express was for ONE reason...to get in line for this:

That smile on my face is because the ride WAS GREAT!

Our timing could not have been much better for this one. The hold queue across from the ride stretched waaaay down the path and in a back area and I thought the kids were gonna lose it when we walked to the end of it. We told them our plan was to waif for a bit to see when/if the ride would open knowing it usually opened after 3pm lately. My oldest son gave up and headed back to the room and as he did that the line moved. We could not believe our luck. I would say overall it was less than an hour from the time we got into the non-moving hold queue when the ride wasn't even open to when we were done.

Anyway had a great meal this evening at The Kitchen and met a few more characters and took advantage of the rainy weather to just chill the rest of the evening. Tomorrow is our big Discovery Cove day and kids aren't overly excited but hopefully they will enjoy it.

Now to relax in bed watching Finding Nemo from the comfort of our non-Disney resort!

 

[schumigirl]

Glad you are having such a lovely time.......and you got to ride Kong......fabulous!! So looking forward to that one....

Room looks lovely and you've definitely had a wonderful start to your trip!

 

[angai379]

Have a great Discovery Cove Day!!

 

[kittylady1972]

OK so another good day. Discovery Cove was lovely and I think the family enjoyed it. My boys and DH just love to swim and snorkel and though it isn't my thing I just loved watching them enjoy the day.

This reef area was so cold and it was the first place we hit. When we felt that water....I was worried that all of the water would be that cold. Watching the kids with the stingrays was awesome though.

When we arrived and checked in we had asked about doing the helmet dive and were told it was sold out that day. DH was very disappointed. They told him to check back after 12:30pm in case some spots opened up but actually he checked about 11:30am and they had 3 spots for him and the 2nd kids that wanted to do it. So theyou did get to do the dive around 1:15pm. Of course we also bought the CD of photos also.

Thankfully the other waters here was much warmer. We definitely enjoyed mostly swimming and floating around all day long. Once again weather wasn't too bad, we did have a few brief showers but that was fine. Nothing like the soaking downpour we were caught in yesterday leaving Universal.

We decided around 4pm we were done with Discovery Cove but did grab one last meal before leaving there so I think we at least got outo money's worth out of food...or better than we would have done to feed five in a standard amusement park.

Since we had several hours left in our day we returned to the hotel, got cleaned up and then headed right back out to SeaWorld because there were some kids anxious to do this:

We figured lines would be short with it being so late in the day and we were right. Arrived around 7pm and walked right onto Manta twice. Kids even got to ride in the front row.


While there we also rode the new Mako with a short wait (maybe 10 minutes?) And finished the evening with a ride on Kraken. With those big three done we decided to call it a night.

Another good day and tomorrow will be our last Universal day.
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[Lynne G]

Wow! You did do a lot. And I am glad the family got to do the helmet at DC. Yeah, the water in dolphins and ray pools is like 75 degrees or so. You do get used to it, at least we dd. If you get cold, you jump in the lazy river. That's like in the 80s temp, and like bath water.

And Kong, and the new Mako, lucky.

Great pictures. Thanks for the live reporting.

 

[kittylady1972]

Wow! You did do a lot. And I am glad the family got to do the helmet at DC. Yeah, the water in dolphins and ray pools is like 75 degrees or so. You do get used to it, at least we dd. If you get cold, you jump in the lazy river. That's like in the 80s temp, and like bath water.

And Kong, and the new Mako, lucky.

Great pictures. Thanks for the live reporting.

Yes it has been a good trip so far. My kids are thrill seekers so it is all about coasters and big rides. I keep mentioning shows and I get the glares. Ugh.

Anyway today we have said we arein no rush so of course they are taking that to heart. I'm in bed and hear a little bit of stirring and it's already 8:15am.

Our plans include checking out if Portofino Bay (sadly) and packing an overnight bag for our next hotel tonight. Once we get the cat packed we will head over to the Universal Parks and spend pretty much all day there. We will ride a few things we haven't done yet and try to re-ride stuff we liked (RRR and Escape from G's is on the listbor redos). Once we are done we will head to our next hotel. Since it is a SeaWorld partner hotel we will get the quick queue access to use at SeaWorld which we plan to hit tomorrow.

So hopefully everybody will stir soon. I may have to start the ball rolling by getting up and beginning some packing.

Will try to do another update later today.

 

[schumigirl]

Glad you had a good day.

Enjoy your final Universal day.......

 

[kittylady1972]

Glad you had a good day.

Enjoy your final Universal day.......

Thanks! So far so good. We did a bunch of re-rides at Universal Studios this morning including two rides on Mummy and MIB. Headed over to IOA and our plan was right to Kong. We haven't been as lucky today. While we were pretty far up in the hold queue it is clearly not running as smoothly today. Yes I know that is why it is a soft opening. We are nearly two hours into the wait and have been in the real queue since 4pm. It just started moving again at 4:40 or so and since we are no longer outside no way to see if vehicles are being loaded. For the distance we just moved I gotta believe they have loaded at least one car. No more movement though and having a preteen that now has to pee...oh so fun.

Anyway this may be our last ride here today but we will see how much longer this takes.

 

[kittylady1972]

Ok apologies for the lack of photos. Didn't take too many today and they weren't too exciting.

So in my King Watch update...we finally got in the ride around 5:30pm even though the line entered the queue at 4pm and we were very close to the front. They were clearly having a lot of technical difficulties and EXTENDED technical difficulties as evidenced by the queue announcements.

Once we clearly were moving it was only a 20 minute or less wait from our spot. Even considered trying to leave the queue around 5pm but the thought of five of us weaving our way out if the line was not appealing. Good news was we saw more stiff today than Saturday, more queue elements were working and at least one scare actor popped out from the walls. We were glad to have experienced it against especially since we probably won't return for a few years.

So did three rides after KONG the took boat back to Portofino and then drive to our current hotel. This hotel is very lovely and would happily stay here again. We got in about 7:30pm and walked across the parking lot to Beedubs to get some food. Bellies full and now kids are enjoying a late night swim in the pool.

I already have our quick queue reservations for tomorrow. At least this time we will hopefully remember to bring our SeaWorld tickets. One thing nobody mentioned to us at Discovery Cove was the lanyard and plastic pass you get at DC is your ticket for the entry to the other parks like SeaWorld and BG Tampa (since we purchased that option too). When we arrived at SeaWorld yesterday evening we had no idea that we needed those. My oldest son almost threw his out at DC but we made him keep it! The girl at SW guest services told is that last night and when I said we were never told that at DC she made a quip 'they probably did tell you that' but there were five of us at checkin at DC and I'm sure one of us would have remembered especially one of the kids if we had been told that.

Anyway another five minutes of pool time for kids and then we will head to bed. I'm so ready really. Vacations are exhausting you know!

Tomorrow is another SeaWorld day but probably won't be a long one. Plus at some point I need to make arrangements to spring my cat from the vet and pay for him.

 

[schumigirl]

Sounds fun!

Just spoke to my nephew and they got to ride Kong couple of days ago......they loved it!

Hope your sea world day is as much fun as you've had already......and yes, vacations can be exhausting.......lol

 

[kittylady1972]

Sounds fun!

Just spoke to my nephew and they got to ride Kong couple of days ago......they loved it!

Hope your sea world day is as much fun as you've had already......and yes, vacations can be exhausting.......lol

Yes it was awesome! And thanks...I'll give an update of our SeaWorld day now.

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So we took our time getting up and ready. No real rush with QuickQueue access already reserved and the park only right across the street.

Had our free breakfast and checked out. I called to make arrangements for my cat for the day. He was being sprung from the emergency vet clinic and I had to arrange to make payment to them for the final bill and figure out when he could be picked up. The surgical employee told me the surgeon was in surgery and had to finalize the bill. Once done I told them to email me so that I could authorize the charge. Seems they are very funny with payments there and insisted I had to fill out something in writing with final payment amount for it to go through. They wouldn't accept all my credit card information over the phone. So we packed the car and headed to SeaWorld and we no sooner reached the park when I got the email that the bill and authorization was ready for me to approve.

I made sure we got the quick queue passes printed then sent the husband and kids into the park while I returned to the hotel. I got o the hotel and hopped on their computer and printed the authorization and...no paper. Had to have them refill the printer. Then I filled everything out, took a photo of it, and emailed that photo as an attachment. Better than a fax.. technology rocks. I then went back to park to meet up with family. All in all I was gone maybe 25 minutes.

Kids really were all about the coasters. Good news was they didn't need QuickQueue for most of them. Even the brand new Mako had only a 10 minute wait. We did that one with them but they did Manta alone as well as Kraken. We did ride Atlantis together and the Arctic Pengun ride too (once it was operational again...it was done the two times we tried to ride it but we chose to wait the second time). We viewed the Sharks and the Aquarium and i got to see ONE show...Clyde and Seymour which even the kids enjoyed and they all cringed every time I asked about shows. We also rode the carousel.

We were really mostly done by about 2ish. We had some ice cream (lunch!) and then my daughter insisted on touching a stingray so we went there for a bit and fed them. We were out of the park by 3pm so I suggested cooling off at Aquatica.

We headed over there, changed I at the park and enjoyed some time getting cooled off. A shame the park closes so early (5pm) as we easily could have stayed longer.

Spent some time at the park exit on the phone making further cat arrangements. Seems my kitty was discharged with meds to be given 3 times a day for 3 days which was not the original instructions when I had spoken to the surgeon before surgery days earlier asking about recovery. So I was then calling a kennel near my house that I had toured before leaving to check on their cat accommodations and they also have a vet there where i had taken my cat so I felt he would be in good care there for a few days. Made all arrangements with them by phone and instructed SIL who had picked up cat from vet to take him to kennel.

And so hopefully he is in good hands there until I can return home and they are giving meds and keeping an eye on him aware that he has just had surgery.

Afterr all that left the park and grabbed dinner at a nearby Mo's and then hit the road to Tampa. Arrived at my friend's home around 8pm.

Really need to get some sleep now. Tomorrow is a long day at Busch Gardens Tampa.

 

[Lynne G]

Have fun at BGT. My kids like that park as much as the others. They are coaster junkies too. It's a beautiful, hilly park. We'll be visiting it again in December.

 

[kittylady1972]

Have fun at BGT. My kids like that park as much as the others. They are coaster junkies too. It's a beautiful, hilly park. We'll be visiting it again in December.

Yes it is a nice park but I think the BG in Williamsburg is even more beautiful. Although Tampa wins for the coaster factor.

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So we stayed with some great friends near Tampa and were about a 25 minute drive from BG Tampa. We let the kids sleep a little bit yesterday morning but we were on the road close to 9am.

Our first order of business was this new coaster:

We got in line and immediately heard the dreaded announcement that the coaster was temporarily down. The wait was showing 20 minutes when we got into line. The queue is quite elaborate and winding so even without the delay that lasted for ages least 20 minutes I'm still not sure that wait was accurate. We had a child under 50 inches with us today and his mom so this would be needed of the rides we could all do together. I would say it probably took close to 45 minutes before we were done with this one. The ride is very unique and fun but not worth that long of a wait.

Next up was another one we all could do together...our favorite Cheetah Hunt. That wait showed 40 or 50 minutes I think and we might have waited a little bit closer to 35 minutes. This coaster is always worth it to us...and clearly others agree since it is rare if doesn't have a long wait.

Beyond those two we didn't have much of a wait for anything else including Sheikra. Kids did all of the coasters and a few other rides. It was hot and kids and adults were all ready to cool off by late afternoon. We left the park close to 4pm having done all we wanted to do. Grabbed some food for dinner (pizza and fried chicken) and headed to the pool for the rest of the evening to eat and cool off.

Great day and thankful for friends opening their home to us for two nights. Today we are on the road for another 9 hours to NC to visit my brother and family. So we say goodbye to Florida for now..until November.

 

[kittylady1972]

Dupe

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[kittylady1972]

We are just about 3 hours from our home in Maryland now. Today we left our 13yo daughter at my brother and SiLs home in NC as she will spend the week with them giving my SiL a chance to do some stuff around the house and farm they have without having to keep as close of an eye on her 2yo and 4yo sons. my daughter loves the little ones and she will have a good time I am sure. I do miss her already though.

Reflecting back we had a great trip to Florida. We honestly could not have asked for better weather. other than some spritzing on our first Universal day, and an evening downpour one other day, we had very little rain and very low humidity with a slight breeze quite often. I was thankful to not have that smack in your face humidity.

I think 3 days at the Universal parks worked out quite well for us. The express pass worked out very well except for one time on Mummy where we waited a very long time i think for Express. Single rider ended up being better for that ride that one day but the next time we tried it another day express went much faster.

While not big HP fans those two areas were really great. We ended up riding Hogwarts Express 4 times (2 times each way) and enjoyed it. it was our first time experiencing Gringotts and i really thought that ride was great. We rode it again our last day in single rider (and all 5 of us ended up on the same train) but glad we went thru the first time the regular way to experience the whole thing. Going back to the park for the last two hours one night to do the HP ride was a great decision.


More to come soon....

 

[kittylady1972]

Ok so my definition of soon was not very soon really...but let's continue.

RESORT: Portofino Bay - Ok so this was our first stay on Universal property. This resort was so lovely. As I mentioned, we did not put in a room request and when we got there we were told our room wasn't ready...and they upgraded us to a larger room. I'm not sure how much larger it was than our original room but it was a great size. We brought our inflatable single mattress and that worked out perfectly in the back corner of the room. We didn't do a lot of unpacking since it was just three nights so storage space was fine for us. Rooms were cleaned daily so no issues with housekeeping other than they didn't leave us enough towels...but since we brought beach towels we just used one of those. We brought a cooler with us and stored it in front of the connecting door since we weren't using it and we just refilled it each morning with ice. I hated not having a refrigerator but we managed with the cooler. Oh and my other complaint (not to compare to Disney...but I'm gonna) is the lack of quick food options at the resort. I walked into the one little convenience shop there one evening hoping to get a decent small container or two of milk because I had packed dry cereal and bowls and spoons for the kids to eat breakfast and I found only a very small hidden refrigerator door in the back corner that had some water, some sodas and some very small cardboard single containers of organic milk...not even something I could seal back up when we didn't use it all. I bought 3 of them and that worked for us. I would have liked to have a few other grab and go like food and drink options there. We spent some time at both the larger beach pool and the smaller pool and enjoyed both. The staff were lovely there.

FOOD: We ate only night there at Trattoria del Porto and it was okay. My family loves pasta so they did enjoy the all you can eat pasta bar. I thought it was okay but since I wanted a small amount of only some chicken with sauce and a salad it was cheaper for me to get the pasta bar as well...and just not get pasta but load up on protein (chicken and fish) and some sauces. It was a nice night to eat outside so we did and it was cool that we still got a visit from Bart and Homer even after being told they don't visit at outside tables. Sadly we did not get a chance to try any other restaurants at PB so I missed out on the pizza. Maybe next time?

We also ate one night at The Kitchen at Hard Rock. This was a also a character meal and we got visited by Scooby and Woody Woodpecker. We were so hungry here and ordered way too much food but most of it was good. The bread they brought to the table...delicious and only wish I'd known it was coming before I had ordered an appetizer. We got the spinach and artichoke dip and it was huge, plenty of chips and outstanding! I got the shrimp tacos here...soooo good! I had only room for one of three but took the other two to our room, put in the cooler, and had them another night. My daughter got the kids chicken breast...and it was somewhat burnt and dry and really NOT good at all. She had ordered a caesar salad too and ate some of that, plus had the appetizers, so when the waitress came around I told her she just didn't enjoy it and she took it off the menu. I think my son got a burger that he enjoyed...don't recall any complaints. My DH got a steak which he said was OK...not the best steak around but it was good enough. I think my other son got steak and ate it all...but might have been a filet so maybe better? Only wish we had saved room for dessert but no dice.

I loved that we took the resort shuttle from PB to HR for our dinner because it was pouring rain the night we ate there. We walked back though, which was lovely.

Most of the time we took the boat to/from the park each morning. Only one morning did we arrive early and have to wait until the second boat to get to the parks, and one evening we had to wait in line for a boat back to the resort. Lines weren't horrible though and wait wasn't bad. One day we did hire the pedicab to take us from the park to our resort and it was pouring down rain and there were 2 adults and 2 kids. This poor girl...at some point we felt like we should get out and help push us up the hills but she was fine. We tipped her $25 for the ride...hope that was enough. The sad part was that we hired her just as she dropped off a couple coming from the resort to the parks. The guy got out and had no cash but wanted to tip her, so she opened up the seat of the cab to get her phone so she could run a credit card for a tip. When she asked how much..he replied $5 and she just looked at him. His response? "What...I don't know how much to tip a pedicab". Anyway she ran his card for $5 so we were next in the cab so hopefully we tipped her enough??

PARKS: We enjoyed our time at the Universal parks. My family is all ride focused though, so as much as I would have like to catch a show or two it just wasn't happening. FOTL access was awesome and my family loved getting to flash their passes and bypass most of the bigger lines. Longest wait was Mummy, where even with FOTL we waited probably a good 30 minutes. Lockers are such a hassle for phones in some places. Just trying to weave through those crowds to get to the kiosks in the back to get a locker, then back later to open it...ugh! When we learned about the rides we could keep stuff with us in closed pockets and didn't have to go through the metal detectors...we stopped using lockers for those rides. At least they are free (hear me SeaWorld and other parks???) so that was a bonus.

I can't tell how how crazy it was when we went to Universal Studios one day and TRIED to find the Harry Potter area there. I kept insisting there were rides and shops and yet...no signs to tell us how to find it other than we knew it had to be near the location of the train that went between both areas. So funny when we walked behind the walls and found that area finally...and along with that we always found the crowds of people there! Thankful my kids weren't into the wands and stuff there because we only wanted to hang around there for a little time as possible. My family just wanted to get Butterbeer (frozen was excellent) and we also tried the Florean Fortescue's ice cream which was yummy. We ate at Three Broomsticks for lunch one day, but we had eaten there before. We shared 3 meals between the five of us (turkey leg, rotisserie chicken meal and fish and chips) and that worked well for us.

The Harry Potter rides (both Gringotts and Forbidden Journey and the Hogwarts Express) were all favorites among my crew. Another favorite was RRR of course, where it took until my 2nd ride this trip (and I rode it once five years ago) to FINALLY select my own music for the ride. I've never had success...just not fast enough...and always end up with some song I don't enjoy. MIB and Simpsons are also still faves of our group as well. Transformers was also pretty cool. We managed to catch Kong on soft opening TWICE and that was a great ride as well! Sad we missed Hulk but we may try to do a quick one day there in November.

What else? Oh food there...of course it's a theme park so pricey. We got a Freestyle cup to use and I paid for a second day of use for it and that worked great. We had to hunt down the Freestyle machines at times though. I wish the stands would have just filled them for us with regular stuff sometimes. All 3 of my kids shared this drink so they took turns filling it. I was able to figure it out the one time I went to fill it.

Best bang for our buck on food was Louie's Italian Restaurant where the five of us split a large pizza. It was enough to satisfy our bellies for a while and probably the cheapest meal for all five of us. We also ate one morning at Monster's Cafe and really enjoyed the food here too. DH and I split the rotisserie chicken meal here and both the chicken and the steamed broccoli were delicious.

Overall this was a great trip and I think we are hoping to return again sometime in the near future. I think we'd like to try out one of the other Resorts next time just to compare. As always, it just seemed too short but now that we have a good idea of the parks and layouts I think future trips will be easier for us if we don't wait five years!