Okay folks, I admit this has been a long time coming, but I am determined to finish this TR sometime or another! At least before the next Disney ditty.
We left you snoozing cosily in our obscenely huge bed in the Royal Pacific, after a bellyful o’ Bubba Gump. We had set the alarm for around 7/7.30am, and surprise surprise I was up again before it went off. Darn time zones. However, this meant I got to finish off packing our stuff that I was too tired to do the night before, meaning that all we had to do was change and skedaddle when the bell tolls.
And that’s what we did. We quickly change, had the obligatory CSI-like room scour to make sure we hadn’t left anything under the bed/in the shower/in the drawers (even though we hadn’t put anything in there – something always lands up in there doesn’t it?). Carting our now fuller bag after our purchases yesterday, we check it into the luggage storage place, stick ticket safely in purse, and check-out of the room.
We manage to get to the boat launch in good time, and lo and behold – what good luck, here comes a boat straight away! It must be our lucky date! Oh, how fate must have been looking down, laughing and pointing at us at that very moment – more to come on that later. We arrived at Citywalk and this time walked around to Islands of Adventure instead of Universal Studios. I kinda hoped the Simpsons would be out again as we walked by, but no such luck this morning. We got into the queue in IOA, and waited.
You know how you can get out of the wrong side of the bed? Can you get into the wrong queue, because I swear, there must be at IOA. Els went through the bleepy-ticket-fingerprinty-thing (yes, that’s its technical name) first with no problems. Me with my seemingly alien fingers on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. For some reason, my ticket just wouldn’t work – I put it through the machine, put my finger on the scanner and…. zilch, zero, nada entrada, do not pass go, do not collect £200. The employee eyed my ticket suspiciously and told me to fingerprint ‘Again!’ and ‘Again!’ and ‘Again!’. Oh boy. That got old fast. She had me try every finger, in case I had forgotten which finger I scanned (why I would scan with my little finger I had no idea), and then asked could I have done it with another finger? “By golly, you’re right! Now that you mention it, I did scan it with the spare finger I carry in my purse”. She must have wiped my fingers a million times with her little cloth and nothing. All the time making it worse was this girl in the queue behind making comments, which I understand was frustrating, but I must say I was thrilled that I was participation in the biggest attraction, which was getting into IOA.
Girl: “Gawd, this is takin’ forever. Her taykit ain’t workin’”.
Me: *Evil Stare*
Employee finally made it work, or just gave up on me and let me in, and thankfully I was reunited on the other side of the border with Els.
Naturally, this had put me in a bit of a stinking mood, but I brightened up a bit when we rounded the corner and saw Hulk towering over us.
I was reeeaally looking forward to riding this. The employee at the front told us we needed to put our bags in the lockers, so off we went in a hurry – we wanted to ride! I told Els jokingly, as I don’t seem to have fingerprints any longer so you do it – I would live to regret this. The locker machine selected a locker at random for us, we put our stuff in, but if you pulled at the door it just opened even if it was ‘locked’. Els went back to the machine, chose another locker and put our stuff in that one, it locked and we were good to go.
We used our FOTL Pass to get on Hulk and were on in about 5 minutes max – we really loved our FOTL Pass! Hulk was awesome, a bit bumpier than I’d imagined, but still awesome! Not wanting to waste the opportunity of being here so early, we jumped on another 2 times with our FOTL. While we had our bag safely stowed away in the locker, we moved onto Spiderman.
Now I had heard that this was the best ride in IOA, and all the time I was thinking, how can a simulator/ride be better than a crazy rollercoaster like Hulk? Besides, VR rides make me queasy. Anyway, off we go as I wanted to ride this fabled holy grail. We skipped the queue again and walked onto the ride, front row – cool! I have to say, this ride was awesome! Hands down the best ride at IOA! It’s one of the best 3-D things I’ve ever seen, and the bit where you fall at the end is so realistic! We went on again! Since we were near Dr Doom, we rode that next, and this is a good ride, although we visit Blackpool Pleasure Beach quite often, around 2-3 times a year, and this is practically the same as the Playstation (what can I say, I’m oldschool, it will never be IceBlast to me!) so nothing new for us – but the view of Orlando was great!
Thinking we’d spent enough time at Marvel Island for now, we thought we’d just grab our bag and head over to Toon Lagoon, right? Wrong! We got back to the lockers and I realised that in the confusion earlier and the hurry to get on Hulk, I didn’t remember the number, and neither did Els – but we were certain that it was one of 4 so at least that was something! So we did the reasonable thing, try Els’ fingerprint with all 4. Uh Oh. That’s not working. We tried again, and again, and started trying every single locker on the whole wall with Els’ fingerprint. We started second guessing ourselves as to whether this was the wall where we’d left our bag. I was starting to feel sick, and Els went off to find someone to help. A guy finally came over and tapped some code into the machine, scanned Els’ finger and open popped the locker door, and the guy started to walk away… but wait! That’s not our locker! We started in dismay at the one that had opened… it was the one that we’d had originally and wouldn’t close – we didn’t officially ‘finish’ with that locker before adding Els’ fingerprint to the next one, so the machine still thought we had the first! Eek!
Wait locker dude! After we explain the situation, he does seem a tad suspicious, but anyway, covers the machine with his hand, enters another code, puts his key in the top, and the lockers pop open one by one (he closes one and the next opens, he closes that one and the next opens, etc…). The first 3 were empty but the 4th, the locker we thought we’d had, popped open and our stuff was in it! Yeah! He asked if we had any ID in the bag to identify ourselves – luckily my purse was in the bag, so I did, and I gladly showed them to him so we could have our precious goods back! Yay!
With that drama over, and a good ten to fifteen minutes wasted, we decided we should shake the bad start to the day and have some fun! I got out my camcorder and started filming our surroundings – I’ve watched it when we got home, and you can see the wait for Spiderman in the background is 90 minutes long!
(Sidenote: Els loves Marvel everything, so we have way too many photos of this land!)
We entered Toon Lagoon and walked though a bit. I loved this land as I thought the theming was amazing! It was so well done and bright and colourful.
The water and the fountains were a welcome relief – it was an immensely hot day, one of the hottest we had in Florida. The heatwave was still well and truly on. We bypassed this as it contained Bilge Rat Barges and Dudley Do-Right. We didn’t want to get wet just yet. We stopped at a cart just before going into Jurassic Park and bought a blue raspberry slushee to share – it was so, so hot!
We pretended to be T-Rex Snacks for a while.
For some reason, we were both getting really cranky again. We’d had a really bad morning and the heat was getting to be unbearable – but I have no idea why we started being snippy with one another. Somehow amidst the crankiness we decided to go on River Adventure – this was a really good ride I thought! Could be scary for some small children though! We didn’t get wet at all really, but I almost wish we had as it was so hot. By now, we were ready for some cover and I suggested the Discovery Centre. Still being miserable gits, on we plodded and headed downstairs to see what was going on. Nothing too substantial to do here, but kids might like it, especially if they love dinosaurs. I decided to mate with a T-Rex that caught my fancy.
We were also ‘lucky’ enough to watch the eggs hatch.
I remember seeing a programme where they said that IOA had a really lifelike Stegasaurus (I’m sure budding palaeontologists will correct me on that one!) and for some reason I thought it was here, but I was left disappointed.
How about lunch I suggest? I could smell the burgers coming from Burger Digs upstairs and boy did they smell good. But it’s only 11.30! Came the reply. True, true, and I had really wanted to eat at Enchanted Oak, only one land away… but I could not face going out in the sun again for a bit, and just wanted a sit down. Els went to grab a table and I went to grab the burgers. Luckily for me, I was second in line. Unlucky for me, the person in front’s family of fifteen came to join him. Argh! Don’t you hate it when that happens! I wouldn’t mind him standing in line and another person joining him, but heck, fifteen people – are you kidding me?! And all of them wanted to buy the Meal Deal wristband. And none of them knew what they wanted. Argh! Argh! Argh! The polite thing to do would have been to let me go first…. You know the type of people who have an overflowing trolley in the supermarket, yet you only have a bottle of water and a packet of Nik Naks and they just let you wait… ok, I’m off my soapbox.
Fifteen minutes later, I order us 2 double cheeseburgers and fries, a coke for Els and a Sprite for me. Get my receipt, and oh, I spot that they also do single burgers. Ah well, we need energy. While I wait at the get-yo-food area, I notice people being served and they get their food way before me, it’s practically ready as they arrive at the collection point. I politely ask a girl what was going on, and she asks for my order so they can put it together. I get 1 of everything. I’m sorry *sigh* I asked for 2, and gave her my receipt. Another girl comes to look at it and she squeals, omg a lady just collected that 5 minutes ago! Can you believe it? While I was making the very long 3 metres over to the food-getty-place, someone had stolen my food! I was incredulous, this was the mother of all bad vacation days. The girls were great and just made up my order, I after all had the receipt! I think they should really ask for receipts, but I can’t believe the cheek of it! Someone got over $20 worth of food for free!
I walked back to the table Els had got and told him the story – well, we couldn’t do anything except laugh, and it definitely lightened the mood! The mystery of the Burgernapper is ongoing. Anyway, I promise that is enough whinging in this TR and we’ll get back to the real business. I’m not going to post a review of Burger Digs here, but I shall say the burgers were awesome and huge! And post this:
I’m glad we went there now!
After a sit down and refreshment, and our tummies now full, we got a new lease of life. Onwards and upwards we go, for the Duelling Dragons!
First up, the queue for this is long! I don’t mean the waiting, but you walk for ages just to get to the line! Luckily, it’s worth the walk! We tried Fire first and we set off in front of Ice and whilst it was great, we kinda wished they had waited to send us both of together. So as we were walking off, we spotted a side entrance to ride again. You don’t have to tell us twice! Off we went, this time choosing Ice, and this time, they sent us both off together and it was SUCH a better ride this way and the fear of getting your head kicked off was there (wait – did I say that out loud?!) We rode Ice again, before deciding it was in the best interests of our newly-fed stomachs to move onto something a little calmer. Thirsty again, we sidled up to a drink cart and I chose a pink lemonade slushee – very good, except a definite brain freeze alert! We took a break and a few photos:
We watched the fountain for a while, before moving on to Seuss Landing.
Now this is a cool land! The theming is absolutely fantastic and the colours are so bright! The only this is, it’s very very hot in this land, and I think it’s because of all the different colours. We filmed and took quite a bit of photos in here. I had wanted to ride the Sky Trolley, but it was out of use for the moment so we headed straight onto the Cat in the Hat – it was really cute but I wouldn’t make an effort of going on it unless you had kids. Maybe I’m biased as I had to throw away my lovely pink slushee before going on.
We emerged into (surprise!) a giftshop and there were plenty of cool stuff here! We thought the Thing 1 Thing 2 t-shirts were a hoot, but they were quite expensive and we probably wouldn’t wear them again.
Back around we go to Marvel Superhero Island. I was nervous about leaving our bags inside the locker again, but I made sure that we had one that shut properly and we remembered the number. The queue for Hulk was much larger now, even with FOTL it was around 10 minutes, so go when we park opens!
We rode this again, and moved over to Spidey which we also rode again. Els is a huge Simpsons fan, and it’s true, he’s converted me over the 3.5 years we’ve been together, so everytime we rode this he had to quote Dr Nick: “I want upside down kiss with Mary Jane”. That is one of our all-time favourite Dr Nick quotes, aaaand if you don’t watch, you just think I’m insane right now!
On with the show! It was approaching 3pm, and we’d done everything we wanted once, twice, thrice. If we were staying at RPR again tonight then we’d probably have gone back and chilled out, then come back and rode some more. But we weren’t, and it was getting very hot. We decided to go for it and we would ride Bilge Rat Barges and Dudley Do Right while our bag was in the locker. We queued for Bluto, and if I haven’t said it a hundred times this TR I’ll say it again, it was sooo hot! I couldn’t wait for that water! We got sat in a raft with a bunch of really fun Americans! We had a blast and the ride was awesome! The best rapid ride I’ve ever been on and we got SO WET it was unreal – there wasn’t a bit of me that was dry! Next up was Dudley Do Right – hey, when in Rome (another favourite quote from one of the best movies – Anchorman!). Since we were already soaked, we went for it, and this was really good too, especially the huge dip – but if you only have time to do one water ride, let it be Bluto!
Dudley Do Right's Ripsaw Falls
Walking back, people actually seemed jealous that we were soaked as opposed to finding it funny, like I say, it was so darn hot!! Els spotted a sunglasses stand near Hulk so he went for a look there since his had broken the day before. He managed to get some really cool ones for $20 - bargain! Especially in a theme park! We were sideswept into a shop and I was paying for a few goodies to take home. when I turned around and there was a local celebrity queing behind us. He exclaimed he was so tired having been out fighting crime til 2am, and now just wanted to buy something for his dog. Els remarked, you look good though, and he answered, 'thanks bud, creepy, but thanks' - I thought this was hilarious! He posed for a quick photo:
Before vanishing to have upside down kiss with Mary Jane! Sorry! Couldn't help myself! Els loves Spidey!
We collected our bag and waved goodbye to IOA as we set off towards Citywalk. Els had seen a t-shirt in Bubba Gump the night before, so we went back. I thought t-shirt sizes in America were quite large, and very long – I could get away with an XL Kids there and I usually take an UK 14 because of…ahem… certain assets that need accommodating. So when Els had discovered the t-shirt too big/long for him last night (he’s 5’6 and quite lean) he grabbed a kids size. When we took it to the counter, I had to laugh when the lady looked us up and down and stated “you do know this is a kids size dontcha?”. I quickly saved Els’ embarrassment and said, “yep, it’s a present for a friend” – and by the way lady, it fit perfectly, so nanny nanny boo boo. What was so special about the t-shirt you say? It stated ‘My Momma thinks I’m Special’!!
By this time, we had completely dried off due to the Sun, and even though I was still full from the huge burger I’d had at Burger Digs, we passed Cinnabon. Now those of you who’ve read my Food TR know that I hate cinnamon. So you ask, what was I doing here? Well my co-people, I had read online about something called Caramel Pecanbon and I thought that sounded good! I thought I wouldn’t get a chance to get another on vacation so I went in and got one, and a vanilla ice cream for Els. The sauce on it was really good, albeit a little too sweet, but I could tell this would have been a good snack…. For someone who likes cinnamon! Yes, I know, the place is called Cinnabon, but it just didn’t have cinnamon in the title so I thought – yeah well, who cares what I thought, it had cinnamon in! I ate a bit of the outer pastry without the dreaded spice, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to eat more than that anyway. Admitting defeat, we caught the taxi boat back to RPR and collected our bag.
Now taxi, taxi, where can we find a taxi? Els asks concierge if they could call us one and they tell us to go outside and the doorman would flag one down for us. When I say taxi, I mean yellow thing, four wheels, has a seat, moves. I don’t mean practically a limo, white luxurious, leather seats, drive of your life, costs you $20 for about 3 miles, Lincoln Towncar – which is what we got, and yes it cost us $20 with tip to get from IOA to the Sheraton Studio City. Our final kick in the teeth from IOA which sums up the day nicely. Couldn’t get in, bags locked in locker, someone stole our food, cinnamon in the pecanbon, a small fortune to ride round the corner….
For the rest of the day, we chilled out in the room, had a much needed shower and called home. We decided on dinner at Sweet Tomatoes tonight and it was very good! Review at a later date! We practically fell into bed after such a hectic day and went straight to sleep, hoping we’d have better luck in general tomorrow!!
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. I would love a copy of your card template to use for our trip, can you please mail me the template to 
Thanks , Tj
. Your pre trip planning pages got me all excited, and I have more than a year to wait until we can go again although we do have a DLRP trippie coming up very soon 
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i think your american choices of snacks are funny. i probably would have no idea what to get in england though, so i guess i shouldn't talk... haha. how'd you like them by the way???
