Trip report - "Dreams do come true" (video complete - pg 45)

[Mary626]

I got the CD with all of our professional pictures on it last week.. Finally uploaded them all and have some to share

Here is a link to all the photos (all 740 of them)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmary/sets/72157594172163995/

and here are some of the ones that I thought were okay.. (i'll do a few posts with the pics)

that “stayin’ alive” song always gets in my head when I see this picture

 

[Mary626]

hidden mickey

I turned invisible.. ghost bride!

 

[Mary626]

post ceremony pics

 

[Mary626]

by the lighthouse at the yacht club

maybe i'll post the link in a seperate thread too. Hopefully that won't be too redundant!

 

[Philadisney]

these are great photos! I love the one of the two of you walking down the aisle with petals being thrown at you.

 

[ZPT1022]

Wow you were a gorgeous bride! You got some really great shots in there. I've been loving reading your TR, are you going to do the part about the Universal surprise trip too? The whole thing was beautiful and it seems like you all had such a good time

 

[jackdis]

Those are such beautiful photos! I like the ones with you and Jim on the bridge.

 

[RadioFanatic]

All I can say is WOW!!! You must be SOOO happy with how your pictures turned out. They are absolutely amazing. And the way you wrote things, I felt like I was right there experiencing it with you - thanks for inviting us! I hope you'll keep your story so you can share it with your kids . . . . grandkids . . . . great-grandkids . . . over the years!

 

[Beana9802]

Whoah Mary, That pic of you and your mom! Your hubby must be.... .

Thank you for sharing. These are beautiful pictures!

 

[Mary626]

Thank you all SO MUCH for your really sweet comments!! You are all really sweet to take the time out to say such nice things!!

ZPT1022 - yep I'll be posting the Universal trip report pretty soon actually,

 

[Mary626]

Monday, May 1st, Day 12 (leaving Walt Disney World and heading to Universal)

Jim and I woke up pretty early the next morning so we would have time to get all of our stuff together without rushing. We had to be in front of the hotel at 8:30 for the towncar from Happy Limo to pick us up. I asked Jim if he was sad to be leaving, he said he was sad but that the vacation had been just the right length of time. I told him I could use “just one more day… if we had one more day here it would be perfect!” (hint hint wink wink). Jim asked what time our flight was, and I lied and told him “around 11:30”.

We packed up all of our remaining things and we each grabbed like 4 bags each. We managed to take all of our bags down in one trip, it was kind of impressive!

We took all of our bags to the front of the hotel and placed them by one of the benches. I took a seat and looked at the time, it was almost exactly 8:30. I looked around for the towncar but didn’t see it. We waited a few minutes.. I had Jim’s souvenir mug out and said “why don’t you go refill your mug one last time, so you have something to drink on the way to the airport.”

I waited on the bench hoping I would run into the towncar driver before jim did so I could reconfirm my plan. I waited on the bench with the suitcases while Jim headed to the food court. It was about 8:35 and the towncar was supposed to be there around 8:30, I was getting worried, right as I was about to call the company, a girl came up to me and asked if I was Mary and she said she was the driver from Happy Limo. Her car had been there the whole time actually, but it was an SUV not a towncar. I had been looking for a towncar and not an SUV so I didn’t know she was there. Right as she came up to me I saw Jim walking back with his drink, so I quietly whispered to the girl asking her if she knew we were actually going to the Hard Rock Hotel but not to mention it and she said yeah she knew, it was no problem. Okay cool. Jim came back and I smiled at him like “nothing going on here!” and we loaded our suitcases into the back.

Our towncar

jim drinking his refillable souvenir mug

We got in the car and oooo they had tvs in the back of the chair rests, cool! (of course we didn’t use them).

Jim was really tired so I told him he should close his eyes and lay his head down.

The ride to Universal is actually something like 20 minutes. Since the ride to the airport is much longer, and Jim knew that, I was worried he might catch on based on when we got off the freeway.. He was tired and kind of nodding off here or there I thought that was perfect. I told him he should try to take a nap or close his eyes or something. He kind of dozed off here or there for the next ten minutes. I was watching the signs and knew when we were coming close to Universal. If Jim was awake and I saw a sign that might give away our location, I would talk about something or distract Jim by saying something like “so are you excited about the new superman movie?”, it seemed to work pretty well.

Jim was kind of half asleep when we got off the free-way. We were really close, there were signs everywhere and you could kind of see the theme park in the distance.., it was definitely obvious that we were close to Universal. Jim opened his eyes occasionally and I would distract him, but it wasn’t working, so I just let him watch the roads and get more and more confused…

I watched the expression on his face.. It was obvious we were at Universal and it was obvious the driver was going a strange route… the look on Jim’s face kept looking more and more confused.. it was like you could almost see the wheels in his head turning and turning… I kept waiting for him to say something.. I had the video camera on and was recording, but I didn’t want to keep it pointed at him because that would definitely be obvious, so I kept moving the camera around pretending to be recording the roads or something… He looked so confused that it looked almost painful .. I kept waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t, he just kept the confused expression on his face.. …I think he figured he was just confused and didn’t want to ask me because he’d feel stupid or something..

As the driver got in the left turn lane on a road that said something like "Hard Rock Hotel road", it was pretty apparent what was going on and I could tell Jim knew something was up... I couldn’t wait any longer, so I finally said something..

I quietly said “surprise.. guess where we’re staying tonight!”

His reaction:

“that’s cool…”

Luckily I know Jim well enough to know that his mind takes a few minutes to process really big surprises. His mind was all set to go to the airport and I just totally messed with his head! It was going to take him a few minutes to process it…

But watching the expression on his face, his smile got broader and broader.. He was definitely happy!! I could see it start to sink in and he was smiling more and more.

We pulled up to the hotel and the bellhop opened our door and said “welcome to the Hard Rock hotel!” they took our luggage and gave us our luggage claim ticket and we went in the lobby to check-in. Jim asked how many nights we were staying, I said only one.

If you want to see the video.. Here is a five minute video of the car ride with Jim’s reaction to the surprise, and also me interviewing him afterwards asking about his reaction.. It’s about five minutes long (Ten MB) so you might want to give it about five minutes to load, and let it load completely before playing it… it’s also very low quality, but hey it’s a free-website so I’m not complaining!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4iRYfycbtI


I'll post more soon, forgot i have to go walk the dog...

 

[Mary626]

We were there at 9 am, and check-in wasn’t until 3 or so, so I fully expected not to have a room. But I did want to get our key-cards for the hotel.. That’s one really cool thing Universal Studios does – if you stay at one of their three hotels, your key-card acts as a “front of the line” pass. And it works great!! I don’t think they have a lot of people staying in their hotels or something, because whenever we use our key-card to get ahead in line, we are always the only ones there doing it, it seems like.

Jim in the lobby, don’t ask me why this picture is blurry

The front desk clerk gave us our key-cards and told us they would give my cell phone a call when the room was ready, and that in the meantime we could go enjoy the parks. Sounded like a plan to me!

The bathroom in the lobby.. fancy bathroom!

The lobby is actually on the third floor of the hotel due to the hotel being on a hill, so we took the elevators to go down to the first floor to exit and head to the parks.

I “interviewed” jim on the camcorder on the way asking him about the surprise. I asked if he had had any idea we werent’ actually heading to the airport, and he said he had no idea until I said “we are almost there” since he knew it was really far to the airport from Universal… and then he was like “wait a minute…. We’re almost there.. to the hard rock?” but he said it took a while for it to click.. he knew something was up , but it just wasn’t clicking in his head until I said “surprise!”

I told him that this day was his wedding gift so we could do whatever he wanted to do. If he wanted to do nothing but ride the Spiderman ride over and over again, that was fine!

We were both wearing our jackets since we didn’t have room to pack them and had forgotten to give them to the bell-hop. It was really hot so we knew we would have to get some lockers.

We walked towards Islands of Adventure, which is on the far side of the Citywalk complex. We saw Woody the Woodpecker and Scooby Do on the way there.

yeah it’s a bit hot for jackets

the entrance to universal

walking past the city walk area

 

[Mary626]

We got to the gate and I got out our admission tickets and jim was like “now I know why you didn’t want me to give the tickets to Jeff!” I was like “well yeah… that and it would have been dumb anyway!” I mean they still have 2 days of use on them, without any expiration date! We had no problems using our 3 year old tickets and the lady told us we still had one day of use on them after today. Woohoo!


The adventure begins

We were in Islands of Adventure, yay!! We went to the left and put our jackets in the lockers. One of the photographers took our picture on the way in to the park, but it was a dumb picture. The guy saw Jim’s “Superman” t-shirt and was talking to him about the new movie. It was 9:30 am. I thought the parks were open till 6 that day, but I found out from the map that they were actually open till 7, cool!

We went in and we knew exactly where to head – to the left to Marvel Super Hero Island! I don’t think I need to tell you that Jim is really into comic books and other dorky things, so this place is almost his idea of heaven! It is all themed like you are walking through a comic book. Everything is decorated with vibrant primary colors, with pictures of comic book characters that look like they have burst out of the comic book pages and are now a part of the architecture. The music they play sounds like it is from the comic book cartoons and movies. They have the Incredible Hulk roller coaster, Dr. Doom’s Fearfall.. they have one “tea cups” type of ride called “Storm force accelatron”, and best of all, is the Spiderman ride, one of the most incredible rides ever!

Jim in front of the Incredible Hulk Roller coaster

Jim in front of “nelson and Murdock – attorney’s at law” .. A dime to anyone who knows what that is referring without googling it

There’s the spiderman ride Entrance to the left

The Spiderman ride is like a 4-D experience, but you’re on a moving track and even though your “car” never leaves the ground it feels like you are falling 20 stories down at one point, it is really something! We went straight to this ride, we were going to use our front of the line passes but there was no wait anyway so we just walked right in. J. Jonah Jameson, the chief of the Daily Bugle tells us about the new newsrover car that we’re going to ride to help us get the scoop on spiderman. We put our 3-d glasses on and buckle up. Soon we’re being tossed around New York, we witness some of spiderman’s villains up to a plot, and soon they spot us and then we’re in trouble.. We get pumpkin bombs thrown at us by the Green Goblin, fire sprayed in our face, and get tossed around by the villains before Spiderman saves us and saves the day. An amazing ride!

Walking through the News room in the queue line

in the gift shop, jim likes the 3-d effect of the shirt

We spent the next hour or so looking around at the island, shopping, or just enjoying the theming.

Jim getting stabbed by Wolverine

We stopped to have some breakfast at “cinnabun” which sounds really good right now.. mmm.. cinnabon… I shouldn’t write this while I’m hungry… anyway..

While we were eating our cinnabuns the Hard Rock Hotel called my cell phone and told us our room was ready.


Jim didn’t want to ride any of the rollercoasters or anything (not surprised), and since the day was his wedding gift, I wasn’t going to force him to (even though I really wanted to.. I need to find me a rollercoaster buddy that I can fit into my pocket or something!)

More shopping..

Jim’s in heaven

Storm & Rogue singing autographs

Jim with Cyclops and xmen, who are looking at the WRONG CAMERA! Cyclops said he liked Jim’s shirt, and told him to have Superman call him, they could team up or something..

“hey man did you just touch my butt,, no it wasn’t me…”

 

[Mary626]

Around 11:30 or so, we moved on. We headed into Comic Book Strip Alley. The place is cute, and I like getting our pictures underneath the word and thought bubbles. It has two really fun water rides, but we didn’t feel like getting wet so I wanted to head to Jurassic Park.

This guy was playing one of those “test your strength” things and was winning each time, and kept getting prizes to give to people around him

comic strip alley

betty boop

I stepped on gum along the way which totally demoralized me for a while

We accidentally headed in the wrong direction and we were right by “me ship, the Olive” which was a really cute children’s playground.

While we were there, I went to get a bottle of water to drink and left Jim behind where he was waiting.

When I came back, I found Jim on the bridge and he looked completely transfixed by something. I went over to him and asked what he was doing. He had discovered the “water blasters”. All of a sudden my 26 year old husband disappeared and was replaced by a mischevious 13 year old boy, I don’t know what happened. But Jim completely turned 13 years old here. He was having such a great time.


The water blasters were cannons that for one quarter you could spray unsuspecting passengers of the Ripley Fall’s Water Ride with a cannon of water. They think the ride is over and then BAM, they get sprayed with water right in the face. You put a quarter in, the red trigger button lights up, there’s a cannon off to the side with a number that corresponds to your blaster. You can’t control the aim but you do control WHEN the water sprays out by hitting the button when you want it to spray your victims. Jim had the most devilish grin on his face you could imagine. He was really getting in to it. They were fun! I’d help him out by telling him when to hit them.

People’s reactions were hilarious. They thought the ride was over so they’d be laughing or just starting to relax and then they’d get sprayed with the water and they’d scream bloody murder, look up at Jim and the few other people who were there doing the same thing… Jim would just wave at them. I’m like “way to be a jerk, jim!” But hey, you don’t go on a water ride if you want to stay dry!

Jim did that for about 20 minutes, and spent about maybe 5 dollars doing it. It was the most fun I’d seen him having in a long time. Out of all the rides in Disney World and in Universal, he was having the best time just spraying people in the face with water. Go figure

I wanted to move on and go to Jurassic Park. It was about 11:30 now. While walking towards the entrance to Jurassic Park, Jim saw that there was another section of water blasters for the other ride (the Dudley Doo-Right ride one or whatever). He spent about 2 more quarters on that section just to see how they were compared to the other ones,, then we moved on to Jurassic Park..

The Dudley- Doo Right water ride

 

[Mary626]

I love the big gates they have up, just like in the ride,, and they’re blasting the theme from the movie.. Jim stole my line he said “what do they got in there, king kong?” so I said “welcome.. to Jurassic park!” I love those movies.

I wanted to do the “Jurassic Park River adventure” but Jim didn’t want to get wet, which I thought was ironic considering all the other people he just spent 25 minutes soaking them to the bone. But I thought we could go change into something more get-wettable at the hotel and come back later maybe. It was about lunch time now so we went to the rotunda building that resembles the Visitor Center from the first movie. It looks just like the one in the movie! We didn’t really explore it, but I’ll add my pictures from some previous trips just because I really like this area…

a baby velociraptor hatching

We went in to get something to eat, but didn’t like the options they had there, and Jim thought pizza sounded like a better idea. So we went to the “Pizza Predattoria”. The pizza looked really greasy so I asked Jim to get me a cup of fruit to “balance it out”. Yes, it completely negates the pizza if you eat fruit with it

 

[Mary626]

We didn’t really do much else. We walked around and looked around more, but we were really taking it easy. I suggested we head back to the hotel for a light nap and come back out later, it sounded good to Jim. If you go to Islands of Adventures, there really is a LOT more to do here! We didn’t do the Jurassic Park discovery trail, the pteranodon flyers, or the activities in the visitor center. I was saving the last two “islands” for when we came back later. The “Lost Continent” section of Islands of Adventure is a lot of fun! We’d be visiting that later. The “Dr. Seuss’s island” part is really cute for kids. And then there’ s Universal Studios itself too!

We walked towards the front of the park back the way we came. We stopped for some pictures along the way.

Jim spent a few more quarters at the water blasters

jim strutting his stuff

We saw these shirts and I was like “hey he looks familiar!”

I yam what I yam

We rode the spiderman ride one more time, for a total of four times that morning.

More from the queue line

We got our jackets on the way out and went to the boat/ferry dock that took us to a closer entrance to the hard rock hotel to save our achin’ feet.

 

[Mary626]

jim by the back of the hotel

Since we were staying at the concierge level, we needed to use our key-card in the elevator to access the club level and we went up. We went to our room, but our keys weren’t working, darnit I hate it when that happens! We went to the concierge club room and told one of the people working there, he asked for our id and checked our names against the ones on our cards and used his master key to let us in. He told us to get new cards the next time we were in the lobby.

Yay we were in our room! It was a really nice room, I made sure to take a bunch of pictures before we threw all our junk around in the room making it messy. I called for our luggage then looked around some more. The hotel and rooms are decorated to the theme of music, obviously. They have random music lyrics written on a bunch of the hotel items, and they give you a free CD with a collection of about 12 songs, and they have CD players in the room, along with a bunch of music video stations on the tv. There pool plays music under the water and when their employees hang up the phone they say “take it easy” (don’t ask me about that one, I thought it was a little strange myself). But it’s a really nicely decorated hotel and a lot of fun. After the luggage came up, we both took a short but really nice nap. Their beds were soooo comfortable. I don’t even know what the thread count was in their sheets and pillowcases, but it was the most comfortable hotel bed I have ever slept in. I wish I could have smuggled the whole bed out in my suitcase!

Our room

ha, a scale… I won’t be needing that while on vacation..

Our view of the pool

some stuff around the room

It was about 4:30 when I woke up from my 2 hour nap. We got dressed and I headed to the concierge club to get some snacks. I grabbed some free water bottles and sodas and grabbed a plate of veggies and dip and some “corn dog nuggets”, and a pretzel with mustard.

the free drink station at the club room

 

[Mary626]

I asked Jim if he wanted to go back to the parks, and he didn’t really want to. Okay, I know I said it was his day, but I was really disappointed that that was it. I told him I really wanted to go do at least one more ride or something, and he finally said okay. The parks were only open until 7 anyway, and it was almost 5:30 when we left the hotel, not a lot of time.

In the lobby of the hotel

exiting the hotel

the pool

on the way

We were just going to go back to the Islands of Adventure, but Universal Studios is so much closer so I asked Jim if he wanted to stop in there. I actually really wanted to try the new rollercoaster ride called “The Mummy” that I had never done before. There are a lot of really fun rides at Universal Studios, but I knew we only had time for one or two. Other rides that I LOVE here but we didn’t have time to do are the “Twister” ride, the “men in black” ride, and even though they’re really cheesey and out of date, I still love the ET, Back to the Future, and the Jaws rides. But it was off to the Mummy ride!

Walking from the entrance to the Mummy ride

We went straight to the ride and the sign said that you must put ALL your belongings in the lockers next to the ride (at least they were free). It was one of those fingerprint scan things, we put our stuff in a locker and put our finger prints on the kiosk to close it and we went to the line, used our “front of the line key card” passes to get past the half an hour wait and got right on.

the queue area

Wow that ride was amazing!! If “pirates of the Caribbean” “it’s tough to be a bug” “rock n’ roller coaster” and the new “expedition everest” ride had a baby, it would be this ride! It was just THAT cool! It was another one of those rides that was so much more then a rollercoaster, it was a complete experience. I don’t want to give anything away, let’s just say it was really cool and I was so glad we got to go on the ride!! Wow!!

We left the ride and we went to get our stuff out of the locker, and wouldn’t you know it, our fingerprint scanner wasn’t’ working… Why do they install technology that’s still obviously like ten years away from being practical? We went and got a technician who used his master key and asked if we could prove what was in there, since my drivers license was in the locker it was pretty obvious the stuff was mine.

We headed out to leave Universal. Jim wanted to stop at the “terminator” attraction gift shop. Universal was closing soon so we knew we didn’t have time to go on anymore rides there. On the way, someone asked us if we wanted to be a part of the audience for a show they were filming and then give some input about what they thought about the show. Jim kind of wanted to do it, but it sounded boring to me, I’d rather ride spiderman again, so we skipped it and went to the terminator store. We looked around a bit but didn’t see anything we wanted to buy so we left and headed to Islands of Adventures.

 

[Mary626]

By the time we got in to the park, it was 6:15. We had a whole whopping 45 minutes left to play in the park.

We headed to Marvel Super Hero island one more time and did the Spiderman ride again. Still so much fun! We looked around little bit.

Jim was content to stay but I asked if we could at least go over to the Lost Continent area. I knew nothing would really be open, but I wanted to at least go over to that part of the park. I really like the “Lost Continent” area and I was sad that we didn’t get to do much of anything there really. The last few times we went to universal, I had so much fun in that section of the park. I love the theming, it’s really cool. They have some great shows and rides.

We had to walk through Seuss Landing to get to the Lost Continent

We went to the Lost Continent area but almost everything was closed already. Well, at least we got to talk to the fountain. I love talking to the fountain. They have a comedian/improv actor somewhere where you can’t see him, but he can see you and interact with you, so he you can ask him questions and he can talk to you or make fun of you, depending on what kind of actor is working there at that moment. The first time I went here, the fountain’s name was “bob”. I loved that there was a fountain named Bob.

Entering the Lost Continent

looking back at the front of the park

We went to the fountain, and someone came up to us and asked if we wanted to come to this nearby hotel in the morning, eat breakfast, and they’d give us 90 dollars if we filled out a survey. We lied and said we had a really early flight. Then we went to the fountain and the fountain asked what the guy was trying to sell us. We told him and the fountain said ‘oh that’s too bad, I hear that guy has 20 kids to feed. Or he’s blind. I think last time he was blind. You should have gone, they record you eat so they can learn from you how to eat, so what you do is mess with their heads and eat really sloppy” or something. The fountain said he was about to go to sleep and wished us a goodnight.

Pretty much everything was closed, it sucked. We asked an employee what was open still and he said the Jurassic Park river ride was still open, cool! So we headed in that direction and went on the ride.

I love this ride too. The animatronics are great and it’s just a fun ride! I love the giant T-Rex at the end, it really looks like it’s going to come down and bite your head off, it’s kind of scary! Jim got pretty soaked, I only got a little wet.

jim’s pants got a little wet

I was relatively dry

We stopped to look at the scary dinosaurs on the way out of Jurassic Park

Jim running from the dinosaur

I saw some “love bugs” on the way out.. they fly around connected together copulating all day, gross

We walked towards the exit and Jim once again decided to use his last few quarters on the water blasters. There were only a few more people coming down the rides since the park was closing, but jim got them pretty good. On the last vehicle, there was only one guy and he was wearing a raincoat. I think he was probably one of the employees, since I think they have to go on the ride once at the end of the night. Jim got him good, and the guy was like “thaaanks…”

Some fun optical gags

There was sooooooooo much we didn’t have a chance to do at both Islands of Adventures and Universal, but we still had a great time. After 2 weeks of having fun in the theme parks, doing every single ride doesn’t seem as important anyway. Though hopefully we will return one day soon and use our remaining admission ticket and do more of the rides!

 

[Mary626]

Jim and I were both really hungry so we headed to the Hard Rock Café in the Citywalk area for a bite to eat. There was no wait, woohoo!

The food was sooooo good. As much as I love Disney food, the food here rocked! (no pun intended, honestly)…

Jim hungry!

They have great nachos, so we ordered some of those as an appetizer with chicken..

For our entrée,s Jim had the Twisted Mac & Cheese. It was Mac & Cheese but made for adults, I had a few bites and it was really really good!!

But the winner, hands down, was my entrée. It was pineapple Quesadillas. Don’t ask me to describe them, I don’t know how, but they were SO GOOD!! By far one of my favorite meals on the trip! (They were so good I actually had them while we were in San Francisco a few days later for my birthday). They were a little spicy, but not too spicey, they were just perfect!!

We also had a dessert, it was a peanut butter and chocolate dessert, it was good but not memorable.

We headed back to the hotel.

still haven’t had the chance to use their pool

We spent the rest of the night enjoying the perks of the hotel, listening to the music CD they gave us, and eating some of the desserts they had for free in their club, just because it was free. Jim went on the internet for a while seeing if the new Superman Returns trailer was available on the internet yet (it wasn’t).

Their desserts

Jim checking out the latest superman returns news

the most comfortable beds in the world

Well, it was the last night of our Orlando Honeymoon Trip. Having had just that extra day was perfect! It was like a perfect transitioning point. We left the magic and wonder of Disney, but didn’t leave it for an abrupt change to reality. Instead, we went to an incredibly fun theme park, which we both love, but Jim and I both agree it’s no Disney and never will be, but it was still so much fun. It was a perfect transition. We were leaving for California in the morning, for real this time.

Still, I wasn’t ready for the honeymoon to be over, so I was so thankful we were heading to San Francisco on Thursday!! We would fly home tomorrow (Tuesday), had Wednesday to catch up on our sleep and do some laundry or whatever, fly to San Francisco early Thursday morning, and stay until Saturday night.

So even though there would be a day and a half of “reality” I told myself it was basically a “pit stop” and the honeymoon would continue!!


We both went to bed and had a wonderful night of sleep in the world’s most comfortable beds.