what to do if its cold?

[kajohn]

We are leaving for a 4 day stay at Universal tomorrow night. I had planned to spend the afternoons in the pool relaxing, but the 10 day forcast is not looking good The high is only 70 degrees and a couple of the days the high will be in the 60's

I'm worried there won't be enough to do to occupy 4 full days if it is too cold to swim.

What other interesting things are there to do outside the parks (or even little known things in the park)? I had planned to go to the movies once. We have three boys, 8, 10 and 13, so going out to the evening entertainment isn't practical.

I'm worried 4 days is going to be too long. Any ideas would be helpful.

 

[patster734]

What kind of transportation will you have?

 

[damo]

Why don't you just sleep in and hit the parks mid day. Spend the afternoons at the parks, when it will be warmer. Since you are onsite, the lines will be fine. Then in the evenings, hang out at Citywalk and do movies, shop, eat, etc.

 

[kajohn]

What kind of transportation will you have?

we will have a car, so I thought if we started to get bored we could head over to Sea World, but I hadn't budgeted for another theme park, so was hoping to find things that didn't cost much.

 

[damo]

There are a lot of water rides at IOA that you will want to do when it is warm in the afternoons anyway. I would just rearrange your day a bit to hit the parks when the weather is the best and hang around the hotel in the morning. The kids can go out an play beach volleyball or ping pong or use the huge shuffleboard thing. There is lots to do without going in the pool.

 

[kajohn]

The kids can go out an play beach volleyball or ping pong or use the huge shuffleboard thing. There is lots to do without going in the pool.

Thank you, this is our first time staying at Universal so that is the kind of information I'm looking for. I didn't know there was shuffleboard or ping pong.

We've been to WDW so many times and there are tons of places to get information, there just isn't as much info out there for Universal and their hotels. Before I stayed at each resort at WDW I had seen pictures of almost every inch of each resort, and pages upon pages of data (the poly had an entire website devoted to just that resort!) It is just so weird not knowing as much before going on this trip.

If anyone has any other ideas of things to do at the resorts, or even something at the parks other than rides that most people miss that would be great too.

Our plane leaves in 23 hours!

 

[Eclpz314]

we will have a car, so I thought if we started to get bored we could head over to Sea World, but I hadn't budgeted for another theme park, so was hoping to find things that didn't cost much.

Our boys enjoyed a science type hands on place down there on the main drag.........name escapes me at the moment, but it's that building that is built to look upside down.... It wasn't that expensive to get into....we actually ducked the heat of July for a couple hours in it.

 

[damo]

That is the Ripley's Believe it or Not, I believe.

Kelli, I don't know if you have seen this site but there are a lot of pictures and a long video.

http://www.uomeetingsandevents.com/Hotels/Hard_Rock/Gallery/Gallery.asp

You can also check out the other hotels on the site as well.

 

[Eclpz314]

No. I just had to look it up. It's called WonderWorks. It's got a lot of hands on experiment stuff like aging machines, sound /light experiment stuff, things like baseball pitch radar, interactive game stuff, oh...and a demo thing where you're put in hurricane force winds. My teen boys were intrigued with stuff for almost 2 hours.

 

[damo]

Ripley's is on International up there too somewhere.
http://www.ripleysorlando.com/

 

[patster734]

we will have a car, so I thought if we started to get bored we could head over to Sea World, but I hadn't budgeted for another theme park, so was hoping to find things that didn't cost much.

There are several good dinner shows in the area. The two we've done and enjoyed are Pirate's Dinner Adventure and Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show. You can get your tickets for these shows (as well as others) at http://ticketmania.biz/shop/dinner_shows.asp.

If you like shopping, stop by the Prime Factory Outlet World (formally Belz Factory Outlet World), located near the intersection of International Drive and W Oak Ridge Road. They have two Disney outlet stores and one Universal outlet store. The prices are pretty low. If you have a Universal Preferred Annual Pass, you get a discount there too. Here's a website showing the layout: http://www.orlandotouristinformationbureau.com/shopping/malls/belzoutlet.htm.

 

[Eclpz314]

Sorry, double-posted for some reason

 

[Eclpz314]

Actually, there are a lot of interesting places on the whole International Drive. There's even a bus that runs the whole route. You can get an all day pass at any of the hotel concierge desks in the lobby.......still have to get yourselves over to Int'l Drive though.

 

[macraven]

we stayed once for 5 nights at hrh and wanted to venture out of the hotel and park one afternoon.

we went to ripleys and over to mercado for tourist type of pamphlets for discount coupons for things in that area.

we had a blast.

we parked the car over by ripleys and spent 90 minutes in there. it could have been longer but one of my son's hit the other and then the third one jumped in to save brother #2............

had to leave, i was so embarrassed....

i think damo has a great idea !

rent a movie thru the hotel and watch it late at night. sleep in for the morning and start your day around 11 for parks. do dinner at city walk and check out the shops on that strip.

check out the activities at the hotel.

one thing we did that we all enoyed was to take the shuttle bus that circled around al the hotels. we did this in the evening so we could see everything lit up at night. we got out and walked around in the other hotel lobbies and checked out the pools and gift shops. had a coke at each hotel.

i think you will do fine for 4 nights at hrh.

you can always check out the celebrity clothes, awards, knick knacks that are on each floor at the hrh.
we did. the boys were curious on which stars pictures and clothes were encased on each floor.

 

[bg4]

the OP kajohn should be back home since 11/21 so we want to know how it went. At least you missed the snow flakes and cold weather on Thanksgiving Day (so I am told - Florida does get snow flakes falling but nothing sticks usually)