Universal Sapphire Falls Trip Report - April 2022

[jrmint427]

Welcome to my trip report! We go to WDW more frequently than Universal, so this was our first time back to Universal in over 10 years. It's hard to believe it had been so long! We took a quick weekend trip to Universal the weekend of April 22nd. We stayed on property, spent one day at the parks, went to a wedding and hung out at City Walk.

Cast of Characters

I’m the planner, Jessica. I believe this was my 3rd time ever at Universal (once when I was a kid), and I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. I traveled with my husband, Pat. We left our kids behind for this trip since we were going to a wedding, and they are still too little for many of the Universal rides.



Hotel

We stayed at the Sapphire Falls Resort on Universal property. It was a beautiful hotel, and we were lucky to have a great room location that was close to the lobby and the boat dock. We would stay here again!

Overview

We flew in on a Thursday night and had a late dinner at the hotel. We spent all day Friday at the parks and City Walk. On Saturday we enjoyed some time at the pool before dressing up to head to a wedding. We had a late flight Sunday so we went for brunch and hung out at City Walk until it was time to leave. It was a quick but very fun weekend!

 

[jrmint427]

Table of Contents
Travel Day
Amatista Cookhouse
Islands of Adventure - Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure
Coffee + Islands of Adventure Rides
Hogwarts Express to Diagon Alley
Universal Orlando
Diagon Alley
Gringotts, Butterbeer, Hogwarts Express
City Walk
Bigfire + Voodoo Donuts
Sapphire Falls Pool
The Wedding
Toothsome Chocolate Emporium
Hollywood Drive-In Golf
The Trip Home

 

[jrmint427]

Travel Day

I know this is always the most boring part of a trip report – we all just want to be at our destination already! But it’s part of the story, so here it is.

It was hard saying good-bye to our daughters in the morning. This was only the second time we’ve ever traveled without them, but they were staying with grandparents so we knew they would be spoiled and wouldn't miss us too much.

I never like to “waste” a vacation day on a travel day if I don’t have to, and we’re lucky to work in jobs that can be done remote. We decided on a 4:20pm flight so we could justify working the day, but still arrive in time for dinner at the hotel. Our initial plan was to drive to the airport over the lunch hour so we wouldn’t miss too much work, but then I had a team meeting scheduled during my lunch hour (which happens when you work on a team that spans multiple time zones).

I started to worry about arriving at the airport late if we left after my team meeting, but Pat had a meeting late morning, so we debated what to do. We decided the morning of that we would leave for the airport at 9:45am. I drove so Pat could take his call from the car. This worked out well, and his meeting was wrapping up just as we parked at the airport.

We dropped off our checked bag and made it through security quickly. We went straight to the United Club to use a pair of free passes we had. We had never been in a United Club before. It was much more crowded than I expected, but we found a couple of free desks next to each other and settled in for a few hours of work. I was able to take my calls and get some work done.

We tried some of the free food in the Club – there was a quinoa salad and quinoa wrap, both were just okay. We wrapped up a little before 3pm and I was still hungry, so I picked up a Which Wich sandwich. I love their black bean patties. We got settled at the gate and got our work laptops out to check in and do a little more work until we boarded the plane.

Our flight was delayed about 30 minutes and took off around 4:50pm.

This was the week that the mask mandate was lifted on airlines. We wore masks at the airport and on the plane. Some others did as well, but we were in the minority. We landed in Orlando at 8:03pm, 23 minutes later than planned.



When we landed, I received a notification that our luggage had arrived on an earlier flight, and we would need to see a luggage specialist to pick up our suitcase. We were initially concerned, picturing a long line for customer service, but it turned out to be a lucky thing that our luggage came earlier. There was no line to talk to a person (a guy was heading back to the office and stopped to offer assistance before we had even reached the door), and he immediately found our suitcase for us. We would have waited longer for our suitcase to come off the plane!

By 8:23pm we had our suitcase and ordered an Uber. It arrived in about 5-7 minutes. We arrived at our hotel (Sapphire Falls Resort) at 8:51pm.

We waited in a short line to check in. I had a moment of panic when I asked the front desk about how to get our park tickets for the next morning, and he told me I could pick them up at the Vacation Planning desk starting at 7am at the hotel. Early park entry started at 7am and we were planning to be at the parks by then! I was crushed and asked what we could have done differently, so we would know for next time. His response was, we could have arrived at the hotel earlier. He must have picked up on just how bummed I was because he called our room 10-15 minutes later to say he double checked and was wrong about what he had told us; we could pick up our tickets at the hotel desk starting at 6:30am.

I had also texted my Travel Agent on the walk to our room (who also happens to be one of my best friends) and she confirmed that we could pick up tickets at the park entrance at 6:30am, so that would have been our back-up plan if the hotel desk truly didn’t open until 7am. But it was a relief we could get our tickets before heading out. However, I still don’t understand why they can’t mail tickets in advance!

Our room was beautiful and would have been plenty of space for our family of four. The location was great too. We were in Guest House 3, room 3102. We were confused at first because the lobby is actually on the 4th floor, not the 1st, so we had to take an elevator downstairs (which we discovered thanks to a friendly woman who saw we were clearly lost and offered us directions). The room turned out to be right around the corner from both dinner and the boat docks, very close to the elevators as well as the winding staircase that you can take up to the 2nd floor for the pool and the 4th floor lobby. I would love to stay in that room again!







We called our daughters and freshened up before heading to dinner at Amatista Cookhouse.

 

[jrmint427]

Amatista Cookhouse

We discovered that Amatista Cookhouse was just around the corner from our room. We had a 9:30pm reservation and checked in at 9:27pm. They had us wait outside on benches for just a few minutes until our table was ready.



The restaurant was beautiful! The theme was Caribbean-inspired. The server brought some bread, I forget what they called it but it had raisins in it. The bread was just alright, it was a bit dry. I had seen pictures of other people receiving different kinds of bread, so wonder if this is just what they had left at the end of the night.



We realized this was our first dinner date with just the two of us in over two years. We couldn’t believe it had been so long!

The food was amazing and the service was friendly, but timing was very off. We put in our drink orders first, and then ordered our meals. Pat ordered from the fixed price menu which included an appetizer, main meal and dessert. We ordered another appetizer to share, and then I ordered a main dish. Pat’s first appetizer came out 7 minutes before my drink (which according to my picture time stamps took almost 20 minutes to arrive), and Pat’s drink came almost 5 minutes after mine. The appetizer we ordered to share came out more than 15 minutes after Pat’s appetizer, and then our main meals came out just 5 minutes later.

I didn’t realize we were waiting so long because we were enjoying our conversation, but it was odd to wait so long for the second appetizer and then feel a bit rushed because our main dishes came while we were still working on it. They even tried to clear the appetizer plate before we had finished it and I had to ask to keep it.

Backing up, I’ll start with our drinks. We debated ordering alcohol because we were planning to be up super early the next morning, but this was our first meal alone in two years. We decided to try two different cocktails and share.

I ordered the Raspberry Rouge (Ketel One Peach and Orange Blossom Vodka, Chambord, Peach Schnapps, Lemon, Raspberry). It was so good! The orange and peach flavors outweighed the raspberry, I really liked it.



Pat ordered the Beach Chair (Aviation Gin, Grilled Pineapple, Giffard de Banana, Orgeat, Orange Bitters, Angostura Bitters). He was disappointed it didn’t actually come with grilled pineapple. It was a little smoky and had a pineapple flavor but wasn’t as sweet to me. But Pat thought it was sweeter than mine! I liked both but preferred my Raspberry Rouge.



Pat picked the Caesar Salad as his appetizer. I was hesitant to eat it because Caesar dressing is typically not vegetarian (it often has anchovies) but it was marked with the (V) on the menu, so I gave it a try. The parmesan cheese was just perfect! Thankfully it came with a pile of parmesan, so I kept picking pieces off of Pat’s plate.



Our shared appetizer was my favorite thing we ordered – the Vegan Honey-Chipotle “Pork” Arepa. I don’t know why they even put the word pork in there, the arepas were filled with jackfruit, arugula, pickled red onions and avocado cream. I would go back for these alone! They weren’t too spicy but had so much flavor, an the avocado spread was perfect with them.



Pat ordered the steak as his main meal. He said he wasn’t expecting much here but this was one of the better steaks he’s had. And that’s saying something coming from him! He was impressed with how they had cooked it.



I ordered the Vegan BBQ “Chicken” flatbread. Again, why do they need to put meat in the name of a vegan dish? I’ll give Universal points for trying. This came with red sofrito sauce, BBQ vegan “chick’n”, vegan mozzarella, artichokes, arugula and pickled onion. It was very similar to the vegan arepas, just with a different sauce. It was good but I was very full by this point and ended up packing most of my flatbread to go.



For dessert we ordered the Coconut Pineapple Bread Pudding. This came with rum ice cream (which I think was actually vanilla ice cream in our case), caramel sauce and shredded coconut. I’m not usually a big bread pudding fan but I couldn’t stop eating this, even though I was already full! Next time I’m going for the arepas and this dessert.



The cost of dinner was $108 for 2 drinks, 2 appetizers, 2 mains and a dessert before tax and tip. Not bad for a very nice meal.

We finished our dinner around 10:35pm and walked around the hotel a bit before we headed back to our room.

 

[JoyW]

For dessert we ordered the Coconut Pineapple Bread Pudding. This came with rum ice cream (which I think was actually vanilla ice cream in our case), caramel sauce and shredded coconut. I’m not usually a big bread pudding fan but I couldn’t stop eating this, even though I was already full! Next time I’m going for the arepas and this dessert.

That. Looks. Amazing. We will be staying near there. I wonder if we could come over just for dessert?

 

[jrmint427]

That. Looks. Amazing. We will be staying near there. I wonder if we could come over just for dessert?

It was soooo good! I do think you could pop in and just order the dessert, worth a trip there!

 

[jrmint427]

Universal Morning

We decided that we could get ready quickly this day, so we set our alarm for 6am with the goal of being out the door a few minutes before 6:30am. We managed to make it!

We needed to stop by the Vacation Planning desk to pick up our park tickets first. When we arrived, there were two parties in line already and two employees getting set up at their desks. I saw a lengthy line for coffee so I asked Pat to get in line at the Dutch Trading Co. while I got in line for our tickets. We moved quickly and I got our tickets for both 2-park entry and our United Express passes (so four paper tickets). We went with the option that would let us use the Express pass for each ride once, which ended up being the right decision for us.

Tickets in hand, I went to check on Pat… and the coffee line had barely moved. We made a quick decision to bail and find coffee at the park. We knew we wanted to get in line for Hagrid’s Motorbiked Adventure as early as we possibly could. I was wishing we had made coffee in the room to take with us, but there was no time to go back.

We headed out to the boat dock and made it by 6:37am.



We went through security quickly and a boat arrived just 3 minutes later. I’m guessing it took ~35 people. There were just two parties left in front of us who didn’t make the first boat either. We debated walking because we had been told the boats would come every 15-20 minutes, but decided to wait it out, since the walk probably would have taken almost that long anyway, and we wanted to save our legs for this day (which ended up being a smart decision).

A second boat came 7 minutes later. The ride was pleasant, I wasn’t expecting to see props along the way!



I spotted the Chocolate Emporium, which we would be visiting in a couple of days. I love that it looks like Charlie's Chocolate Factory.



We were walking up to the park entrance right at 7am. We waited in a short line to enter, about 3-4 minutes.



We walked as quickly as we could back to Hagrid’s. Employees yelled at a few teenage boys to stop running. I didn’t realize there would be a checkpoint for early entry, so I had to dig around my purse for our hotel key as proof that we were staying onsite. We made it to Hagrid’s line at 7:09am. The posted wait time was 100 minutes already! I pulled up Touring Plans, which said 71 minutes. This was the top ride we wanted to go on for the day, so we were committed. We ended up waiting “just” 52 minutes.

I got really excited when we spotted the entrance to Hogsmeade at 7:23am. The line had started in The Lost Continent.



Thankfully there was a friendly guy in line behind us who was willing to take our picture twice, because we also needed a picture with the Hogwarts train.



It wasn’t long before we were already at the lockers. I really liked the system they had where you scanned your ticket and a locker popped open. You would scan the same ticket when you returned, and you really didn’t have to remember the locker number because it would just pop open again. I took pictures of my lockers all day just in case I needed to know where my purse was, but it was never an issue.



I thought this meant we were close to the front of the line, but no… this meant we had officially reached the beginning of the line



It’s always fun to see a new queue for the first time. I really liked the room with the dragon’s eggs. My favorite room was the one where it sounded and looked like there were some motorbike battles going on over our heads.

The coolest thing that happened in line was Pat found a dime on the ground. His family always says that his Granny leaves dimes for them in random places at random times and it’s a sign she’s with them. It was a neat moment for him to find a dime this morning.

After our 52-minute wait, we made it onto the ride. I let Pat have the motorbike and I took the sidecar. This ride blew me away. It was such a rush, I loved the speed, all the Harry Potter scenes, and especially seeing Fluffy. There were two surprises that caught me off guard. I won’t mention them as I somehow avoided the spoilers myself, and that made the first ride even better. This is my all-time favorite roller coaster. It is worth a long wait!

 

[jrmint427]

Coffee and Rides

By the time we got off Hagrid's ride, we had been awake for more than two hours and neither of us had drank any coffee. This was a problem that needed to be fixed immediately. I don’t know the Universal parks nearly as well as the Disney parks, and since I thought we would have picked up coffee at the hotel, I hadn’t planned for this situation, and didn't know where the nearest coffee was.

We started walking, feeling sure we would run into a coffee stand. But we did not. We saw a few people walking toward us with Starbucks cups, so decided we were headed in the right direction. I eventually asked an employee where Starbucks was, and we were close. We ended up walking all the way back to the front of the park for Starbucks. I ordered an Impossible sandwich because I was hungry, Pat said he wasn't but ended up eating some of my sandwich.



We found a table outside to sit and eat. It felt like a bit of a waste to sit for breakfast when we were there so early, but it was also nice to have a few minutes to relax. Although we had the Express Pass, I saw that the Forbidden Journey had a 15-20 minute wait, so after eating we decided to get in the normal line so we could finish our coffees while enjoying the queue. Thankfully we were almost done with our coffee anyway, because we basically walked right onto Forbidden Journey. When we first rode this back in 2012, we waited 2 hours in the freezing cold! Well almost freezing… I remember it was under 40 degrees because we needed it to warm up later in the day so the Dragon coaster could run. But it was crazy to go from waiting 2 hours to walking straight through every room of the queue – and without the Express pass! I guess that's what 10 years will do to a ride, though.



I like this ride, but the spiders and dementors getting so close to you really freaks me out. The flying feeling is so much fun, and leaves me only slightly queasy.

We were off the ride by 9am and had already walked 6,000 steps. We headed to King Kong next. We used our Express pass to walk right on. Both Pat and I thought we had ridden this before but quickly realized we had not. I read this one was just opened in 2016. However, more googling taught me there actually was a Kong ride in the 1990s that we likely had both gone on, and that’s what we were remembering. This ride was really awesome – having video screens on both sides made it feel so real, and the giant animatronic Kong at the end was impressive.

We rode Spiderman next. We waited 14 minutes with the Express pass, but the posted wait time was 25 minutes. This is a fun ride, but not one that is worth a long wait for me.

We started heading back in the direction of Hogsmeade after Spiderman, but stopped at the Cat in the Hat ride on our way. I was missing our girls and knew they’d love to see pictures of us on that ride. It had a 5 min wait listed, but we used our Express pass anyway since we knew we weren’t going to ride this one more than once. We walked right on, which I think we also would have done even in the regular line. The ride was the story of the Cat in the Hat, it was super cute.





We were still on our way to Hogsmeade, but saw that Poseidon’s Fury didn’t have a long line (20 minutes posted), so we used our Express Pass for that. I was very confused about whether this was a ride or a show, and Pat saw the water features outside and asked if we would get wet. I wasn’t sure so I asked the lady who was scanning our Express pass and she said no, it was just a show. Even with the Express Pass we waited close to 20 minutes.



When I heard “show” I was really looking forward to seats. There were no seats. This is a show that moves you through different rooms, but you stand in each one. It was fine, I was glad to have seen the show at least once, but this wouldn’t be one that I would need to do on every trip. Our actress was pretty good and the special effects were neat, but I was ready to move on to Harry Potter at this point.

Next up was the Hogwarts Express!

 

[jrmint427]

Hogwarts Express

There was a long line for the Hogwarts Express, but we were able to jump in the Express lane at 10:58am, and were on the train about 15 minutes later.



I couldn’t believe the line for this. Each car held 8 people. It was a really neat experience, with a different story line going each way.



Coming out of the train station, we saw the Knight Bus. I thought about stopping for a conversation but others were already lined up, so we just paused for a moment to watch.



I knew we wanted to go straight to Escape from Gringotts. However, I was not sure how to get there. Looking at the map, I could see the direction we wanted to head in but I wasn’t seeing Diagon Alley. It took us a little walking back and forth to realize we needed to go behind a mysterious brick wall to get there. It was well hidden! This was our first time seeing Diagon Alley, which was really fun.



The posted wait at Gringotts was 75 minutes. This was probably the best use of our Express pass. We jumped in line at 11:27am and were at the elevator to go “down” by 11:36pm, less than 10 minutes later.



I loved this ride! We were excited to finally see Voldemort on a Harry Potter ride. I like this one more than Forbidden Journey (maybe because I didn’t have to come face to face with a giant spider). I was wishing we could ride it again, but we were not going to wait over an hour.

We were off the ride a little before noon and were getting hungry. We decided to check out some of the Mardi Gras booths and landed on one with Arepas.





I noticed the queso blanco areaps sounded vegetarian but were not marked with the plant symbol. I asked about this and was told that it was just because they’re cooked on the same surface as meat, so decided to go for them anyway. I usually prefer to not eat items cooked on the same surface as meat, but I was really hungry and the vegetarian options in this area were limited. Pat went with the Carnitas Arepas (top pic).

We sat on nearby stairs going up to a fake building to eat and we reapplied sunblock, as it was getting hot. Then it was off to find more rides and shows.

 

[erinch]

Following! Thank you!

 

[jrmint427]

Universal Orlando

We were close to the Jimmy Fallon ride/show so we went there first. We used our Express pass and were handed a black “ticket” for entry. We found ourselves in a giant room with a lot of people. I saw a sign that said black tickets could check in off to the side, and not everyone blocking the path had black tickets, but they weren’t letting people in anyway. So we waited until they called for the black tickets to make our way through the crowd. It took 17 minutes to make it to the pre-show.



The ride was fun, I was glad we rode it at least once. It took us on a race through NYC (and the moon), which was entertaining.

We were deciding what to do next and I realized the 1pm Horror Make-up Show was about to start. There was no need for the Express pass for this one, but as we walked in at 12:58pm, we ended up in the very back row. The ushers were encouraging people to walk all the way across the rows to make way for others, but people kept stopping to sit less than half-way through, so we just jumped to the very back.

This show was hilarious! The actress was great, she poked fun at Universal, Elon Musk and the Kardashians among many others. I would definitely go back to this one. I might have seen it years ago?



The show ended just a few minutes before the 1:30pm Bourne Stuntacular show was starting nearby, so we headed straight there. We had to stand in a large room for the pre-show but were soon in the theater. I didn’t get any pictures, but this was a really good show. I was nervous for the actors! It was a mix of a giant screen, real actors and set pieces that moved around the stage.

There was an interruption mid-way through the show where someone offstage yelled, “Stop! Stop!”

Everything paused and a woman came out to explain they were stopping due to a technical difficulty. One of the set pieces wasn’t moving as it was supposed to. The interruption was so seamless, she said she was going to use the time we were waiting for the engineers to fix the set piece to talk about how the show works. She explained how the set pieces run on magnets under the ground (I’m sure I’m over-simplifying) and sometimes they stop responding how they should and need to be reset. She also told us the screen is so long it’s almost the size of half a football field. It was really impressive.

Even more impressive, she managed to keep talking until the show was ready to start again. We actually questioned if the interruption was part of the show, but decided that it was probably a true interruption. As they were setting up again we could see Jason Bourne setting up for a stunt above our heads.

We went to the ET ride next since it was nearby. We used the express lane and waited about 7 minutes, while the posted wait time was 35 minutes (and TouringPlans said 29 minutes). I love this classic ride, but was surprised how little I actually remembered from it.

We headed to the Men in Black ride next, deciding it was probably the last ride we really wanted to hit in this park. The posted line was 35 minutes, TouringPlans said to expect 39 minutes, and we waited just 4 minutes with the Express pass. This was another ride where having the Express pass seemed to save us a lot of time.



The ride was fun, you shoot at aliens to try to rack up points. I heard someone say to aim for their eyes but I found that it seemed to be a different spot on each alien when I heard the satisfying “cling” that I got a hit. We were about halfway through when the ride came to a complete stop and the lights came on. They announced there was a technical difficulty and to please remain in our seats (we were strapped in, how could anyone have moved?).





We heard someone across from us FaceTiming with a family member about being stuck. We were probably stopped for about 10 minutes. I was mostly just disappointed because when the ride started again, our scores had been reset – and I had been winning!

As we were leaving, they handed us a Single Attraction Pass Plus, which was good on any ride except for Hagrid’s and Velocicoaster. Pat asked if we should ride MIB again, but I had another ride I wanted to use this ticket for! Any guesses?

 

[DoryGirl1963]

Loving your trip report !

 

[schumigirl]

Finally catching up properly with your report!

Loving your experiences so far and enjoying hearing of your "first timer" thoughts on so many things new to you.

Your pictures are excellent and I`m glad you enjoyed Sapphire Falls so much, it`s such a beautiful hotel. And I thought it was so lovely you had your first dinner date as a couple in so long.....it happens doesn`t it!!

Looking forward to more of your trip.......

 

[Good&Plenty]

Great trip report! Happily following along prior to our August 2022 trip.

 

[jrmint427]

Following! Thank you!

Thank you for following along!

Loving your trip report !

Thanks for joining in!

Finally catching up properly with your report!

Loving your experiences so far and enjoying hearing of your "first timer" thoughts on so many things new to you.

Your pictures are excellent and I`m glad you enjoyed Sapphire Falls so much, it`s such a beautiful hotel. And I thought it was so lovely you had your first dinner date as a couple in so long.....it happens doesn`t it!!

Thank you! It's crazy how much was new after 10 years. And yes, funny how fast time can go by sometimes!

Great trip report! Happily following along prior to our August 2022 trip.

Thank you! Hope to read about your trip in August! Where will you be staying?

 

[jrmint427]

Back to Diagon Alley

After MIB we headed back to Diagon Alley, which was our original plan anyway. I wanted to do some shopping and eat some treats before we headed back to Islands of Adventure. We reached Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlour at 3:10pm.



The line stretched outside but wasn’t too bad, it took about 15 minutes to get our ice cream. This gave us time to decide what to order.



Pat went with the Strawberry and Peanut Butter, I think because I told him it’s Harry’s favorite. I went with the Salted Caramel Blondie.





Diagon Alley was packed with people. We stood off to the side to eat our ice cream at first. We saw a bunch of people sitting on steps nearby but there wasn’t a good spot for us to sit without squeezing in. We waited until one group left to take their seats.



Our view from the steps:



My feet were aching at this point, so it was nice to sit. We decided to check out Knockturn Alley and shop a bit after we finished our ice cream. We stopped by to say hello to this guy, though I need to brush up on my parseltongue because I couldn’t understand a word he said.



We stopped by the restrooms first, and coming out, I was apparently not watching where I was going. I was so focused on the path to Knockturn Alley that I somehow missed a crowd gathered around while people practiced their wand skills. And had no idea, as I walked out from the awning, that there was this Umbrella directly above my head.


Well apparently you can wave your wand and say a spell, and water comes pouring out of the umbrella. I got soaked! I was so confused, having no idea what caused a bucket of water to dump on my head or why a crowd of people were laughing. I sure hope I made some kid’s day!

Knockturn Alley was really cool. It was very dark when we entered.



After some window shopping in Knockturn Alley, it was time to use our any time express pass. You've probably guessed by now where we were headed next?

 

[jrmint427]

Escape from Gringotts Again

Coming out of Knockturn Alley, we decided to use our any time Express pass on another ride through Escape from Gringotts. I was so excited we would get to ride it again! It took about 10 minutes to get from the start of the line to the elevators again, and the posted line was over an hour.



I loved this ride even more the second time. It’s really well done! I like this one better than Forbidden Journey. We were off the ride a little before 4:30pm. We were starting to fade at this point, but I had a couple more things on my bucket list before we headed back to Islands of Adventure. Next up was butterbeer.



I put in a mobile order at the Leaky Cauldron, and then we were able to be seated at a table immediately. We scanned our table number in the app, and a frozen butterbeer was delivered to our table just a few minutes later.



I was hoping Pat would try another version of butterbeer so we could taste two, but he didn’t want any, and it turned out to be difficult for the two of us to even finish our one frozen butterbeer. I liked this version, but it was very sweet! It tasted more like butterscotch than I remembered the original version tasting 10 years ago (and I liked it better than I recalled liking that one). It was a nice treat, and also great to sit in the uncrowded A/C for a little bit.



After our treat we popped into a couple of the shops. I had promised our girls we’d bring back chocolate frogs with the trading cards for them, and also picked up some Fizzing Whizzbees. My 5-year-old did NOT like the Fizzing Whizzbees! They had pop rocks in them that continued to fizz for a long time in your mouth. I was tempted by the fudge but didn’t know how it would hold up the rest of the day and on our trip home.

We were ready to head back to Islands of Adventure, so we jumped in line for the Hogwarts Express at 5:06pm with our Express pass. We were pretty sure the regular line was moving faster than the Express line. We ended up waiting 40 minutes for the train. My feet were hurting bad at this point. I debated sitting on the ground while we waited, but after we witnessed a toddler in line next to us have an accident on the ground… I was motivated to stay standing (and felt so bad for the parents!).



We missed a train with just 2 people ahead of us in line. After assigning us to a car early on, they asked for our party of 2 to move to a different line right before boarding. Pat and I didn’t get to sit with each other on the way back because we followed two parties of 3 onto the train. I liked the story on the way back and was glad we got to see it but wouldn’t have said it was worth waiting 40 minutes for.

We were back in Hogsmeade just before 6pm and caught the end of a Frog Choir performance. It was really good, I’d like to see the whole show some time!

The last ride on my list was Flight of the Hippogriff. I know it’s a kid’s coaster, but had read it’s worth it for the views of Hogwarts and wanted to ride it at least once. We used our Express pass and probably waited about 10 minutes. It was a cute but very quick ride.

It was 6:30pm and we debated what to do next. We could have gone on some rides again, but lines were longer and we were both ready to be done. We had an 8:45pm dinner reservation at Bigfire with my college roommate and her family, who just happened to be visiting Universal at the same time! They had gone to Volcano Bay for the day. I texted her to see what her family was up to, and we agreed to meet them at their hotel, Aventura, for a drink before dinner. It was time to head out.



Overall, I estimated that our Express Pass saved us about 3 hours of standing in line. I only counted the hour saved waiting at Gringotts once since we wouldn’t have been able to use our pass there twice. We paid $255 for the passes ($127.50 each), so in total, we spent about $1.42 per minute saved (or 70 cents per person). Was it worth it? It’s really a personal decision, but for us, it was. It allowed us to do everything we wanted in one day (though we could have stood in line that extra 3 hours and still wrapped up before the 10pm park close time). It also saved us 3 hours of standing on our feet. I was in so much pain at the end of this day, I wouldn't have lasted another 3 hours on my feet.

If we were to go back as a family of 4, I would try to stay in a deluxe resort to get the “free” passes for all of us vs. paying over $500 for one day of Express passes.

 

[jrmint427]

City Walk

It took longer than I thought it would to get back to our hotel. We left Islands of Adventure at 6:46pm. I was moving very slowly at this point as we made our way back to the boat dock. There was a long line so I wasn’t sure we would make the next boat, but we did. We called the girls while we waited in line to see how their day at school was. We were on the boat at 7:06pm and I had never been so glad to have a seat. I’m pretty sure we were at over 20,000 steps at this point.



It worked out well that the boat dock was right by our room, so we stopped by to drop off our Harry Potter bags, freshen up, and I changed shoes. We then walked to Aventura, which was right across the street from our hotel. It was only a 2-3 minute walk. We were there just after 7:30pm.

While we waited in the lobby, we were greeted by Relay the robot! He was offering to tell a joke. I was going to take him up on the offer, but another girl walked over first. Then a couple of kids chased the robot around… he seemed to be trying to get around them but they kept blocking him. It was cute but I couldn't help but wonder if the robot was truly as annoyed as he seemed.

It was great to see my college roommate and her family. We realized it had been about 5 years since we had seen them. When they last visited us, their son was 5 and our daughters were 2 and a newborn. Now their son is 10! He brought his Switch to entertain him while the adults chatted.

We quickly decided to head to City Walk to see if we could check into dinner early, since we had just over an hour until dinner. We took the bus from Aventura which came quickly but was pretty crowded.

We made it to Bigfire at 8:20pm and asked if we could be seated early (our reservation was for 8:45pm). We were told definitely not. We decided to check out the bar area next door, but there were no seats available, so we wandered over to a nearby shop. Less than 10 minutes later we received a text that our table was ready.

 

[Good&Plenty]

Enjoying this report very much! We (me/husband, plus our kids, 11 and 9) are headed during the third week of August, staying at the HRH for 4 days (cashing in accumulated Chase points).

 

[CheriePenguin]

Enjoying your trip report! Thanks so much for sharing
So the line at the Harry Potter ice cream place moved relatively quickly? DS really wants to stop there this time.