TommyJK
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2015
So I've never written a trip report before as I've found that writing a full week's worth of report days to be a bit daunting. Well, this trip that was originally scheduled for a week got cut short to a few days so I figure I'd tell our tale (probably lengthy on its own anyway). This was a trip for my family of Myself, Wife and 2 boys (aged 11 and 14).
Pre-Trip Planning:
I'd been planning this trip for basically a year. A year ago I had been checking daily for flight prices near the end of March 2019 to see when some would go on sale and I lucked out finding really great prices for our March break when they went up for sale. So the trip started to take shape originally planning for March 13-20th. With flights sorted out I started checking resort prices. Not too long after that I booked RPR for the week. Club level (have never stayed club level before). Finally after that, we got a great deal on Park tickets during Black Friday/Cyber Monday from visitorlando.com that had buy 2 days, get 2 days free, get 3rd park (VB) free and an additional 10% off already discounted prices.
So everything was finally set and we had been excited to finally be coming back to my favourite place on earth. Began planning out all the different things we wanted to do on our different days. Which days we would do the parks, which days would be resort days. Researching VB as we had never been there. Looking through all of the different restaurants we wanted to try that we hadn't done before (like the Wok Experience at Islands dining, some off-site restaurants from Schumi's various reports that looked interesting). When it comes to our Universal trips I obsess with planning. Not to meticulously schedule everything, but more to get excited and make lists of different things we want to do and learn the ins and outs of things we hadn't done before.
The week leading up to the trip:
Well as everyone knows, the global spread of coronavirus was looming large over everything. Our flight was leaving Friday morning at 6:30 am and I was checking daily on updates of Covid-19 in the US to see how things were progressing. Hoping and praying things would be ok for us to still take our trip. I was monitoring most closely a) the number of cases in Florida (and more specifically if any cases were found in Orange County) and b) constantly checking travel advisories issued by our government. My biggest issues in terms of potentially cancelling was that our airline had not issues any cancellation options and if we chose to cancel I would be out our flight costs.
Fast forward a couple of days and now around Wednesday I think there were better options for cancellation in terms of our Resort booking and park tickets (which expired in May), and our airline updated cancellation policy, but only for flights booked after March 4th (which would have still left us out of pocket for that). We decided to proceed as case #s were still low in Florida, and none in Orange County.
Even getting up to the day before our trip (Thursday), on the morning show I watch there was a Doctor on the TV saying if you were young and healthy he wouldn't cancel March Break plans unless you were older/suffered from respiratory issues etc. Our Canadian government had not added any travel advisories to the US. While California had announced the closure of Disney and Universal out west, Florida still seemed fine.
We packed our things on Thursday and went to bed really early since we had to wake up at 2:00 am to make it to the airport in order to get our 6:30 am flight.
The Trip:
Day 1:
Having gone to bed super early Thursday night, we wake up at 2:00am to find that both Disney and Universal made their announcement late Thursday night that they would be closing their parks as of EOD Sunday night....... Ok. Time to shift plans. We had originally planned to alternate park days and resort days, with the first day being a resort day (since we'd be super tired). Now we'd shift it to binge 3 consecutive days in the parks - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then relax at the resort for the rest of the trip.
Our arrival at the airport and the flight itself was fairly routine. We get to the Park n Fly lot (a company that has lots near the airport to park for extended periods) and get a shuttle to the airport. Go through security and customs and hop on our flight. Flight arrives a bit earlier than expected. We grab our luggage, grab a lyft, and head to RPR and arrive there around 10ish. One spark of good news is that when we arrive at RPR, they had a room ready so we could check in right away . OK great. get our stuff dropped off into the room, get organized and head to the parks around 11:00.
Plan is to do a 1/2 day at the park until about 4:00 as we have tickets to Blue Man Group at 6:00. We get to IOA and the crowds are light. We do The Hulk first. My youngest hasn't been on it before as he was too short last trip. Get on immediately as we have unlimited EPs with staying at RPR and it's a godsend to have it for this now truncated amount of time at the parks. My youngest loved it! My older son had done it before and it has been his favourite ride in the parks.
Next we do Spider-Man. It's one of our favourites and it still impresses me as to how great it is being a 20+ year old ride. From there we walk up towards Kong/Jurassic Park. My wife and younger son do Kong while me and the older son do JPRA. Younger one doesn't care for JP and older one doesn't care for Kong.
Then we head over to Hogsmeade. It's fairly crowded. Our main "must do" on this trip was to ride Hagrid's as it's brand new to us. Wait time is 120 min. I asked a team member about how well it's been running. They tell me it's been running without issue the last few days. We decide to skip for now and plan to rope drop it tomorrow (more on that later). Head over to Forbidden Journey as it's my favourite ride in the world. It's posted as a 25 min wait but we walk right on with EP. After this we're hungry and wanted to eat at Three Broomsticks. Lineup is out the door so scrap that idea. We head over to Lost Continent and grab some quick service food there to tide us over.
After this we hop onto Hogwarts Express and head over to Studios. It's gotten pretty hot by now, and we're crazy tired. So we decide to do 2 more attractions and call it a day. First we head over to Transformers as it's one of my youngest's favourites. Walk on with EP. After this we do RRR as we all love this one. It's about 3:00 and we're done. On our way out of the parks we stop by the Blue Man Group box office to grab our tickets for later in the evening. We're back at RPR around 3:30 for a quick nap.
Wake up around 5:00 and head to the club lounge for a bite to eat. It's "American Night" so on the menu is Mac n Cheese and some Chicken stew. Perfect comfort food for a weary and hungry group. Gobbled that up and head back to go see Blue Man Group. BMG was good. I think my wife and I would have enjoyed it more if we weren't so tired. The kids loved it.
Headed back to RPR after that to enjoy dessert hour at the lounge and then we crashed to sleep right after that with the "plan" to get up early and rope drop IOA for Hagrids.
coming up, Day 2.....
Pre-Trip Planning:
I'd been planning this trip for basically a year. A year ago I had been checking daily for flight prices near the end of March 2019 to see when some would go on sale and I lucked out finding really great prices for our March break when they went up for sale. So the trip started to take shape originally planning for March 13-20th. With flights sorted out I started checking resort prices. Not too long after that I booked RPR for the week. Club level (have never stayed club level before). Finally after that, we got a great deal on Park tickets during Black Friday/Cyber Monday from visitorlando.com that had buy 2 days, get 2 days free, get 3rd park (VB) free and an additional 10% off already discounted prices.
So everything was finally set and we had been excited to finally be coming back to my favourite place on earth. Began planning out all the different things we wanted to do on our different days. Which days we would do the parks, which days would be resort days. Researching VB as we had never been there. Looking through all of the different restaurants we wanted to try that we hadn't done before (like the Wok Experience at Islands dining, some off-site restaurants from Schumi's various reports that looked interesting). When it comes to our Universal trips I obsess with planning. Not to meticulously schedule everything, but more to get excited and make lists of different things we want to do and learn the ins and outs of things we hadn't done before.
The week leading up to the trip:
Well as everyone knows, the global spread of coronavirus was looming large over everything. Our flight was leaving Friday morning at 6:30 am and I was checking daily on updates of Covid-19 in the US to see how things were progressing. Hoping and praying things would be ok for us to still take our trip. I was monitoring most closely a) the number of cases in Florida (and more specifically if any cases were found in Orange County) and b) constantly checking travel advisories issued by our government. My biggest issues in terms of potentially cancelling was that our airline had not issues any cancellation options and if we chose to cancel I would be out our flight costs.
Fast forward a couple of days and now around Wednesday I think there were better options for cancellation in terms of our Resort booking and park tickets (which expired in May), and our airline updated cancellation policy, but only for flights booked after March 4th (which would have still left us out of pocket for that). We decided to proceed as case #s were still low in Florida, and none in Orange County.
Even getting up to the day before our trip (Thursday), on the morning show I watch there was a Doctor on the TV saying if you were young and healthy he wouldn't cancel March Break plans unless you were older/suffered from respiratory issues etc. Our Canadian government had not added any travel advisories to the US. While California had announced the closure of Disney and Universal out west, Florida still seemed fine.
We packed our things on Thursday and went to bed really early since we had to wake up at 2:00 am to make it to the airport in order to get our 6:30 am flight.
The Trip:
Day 1:
Having gone to bed super early Thursday night, we wake up at 2:00am to find that both Disney and Universal made their announcement late Thursday night that they would be closing their parks as of EOD Sunday night....... Ok. Time to shift plans. We had originally planned to alternate park days and resort days, with the first day being a resort day (since we'd be super tired). Now we'd shift it to binge 3 consecutive days in the parks - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then relax at the resort for the rest of the trip.
Our arrival at the airport and the flight itself was fairly routine. We get to the Park n Fly lot (a company that has lots near the airport to park for extended periods) and get a shuttle to the airport. Go through security and customs and hop on our flight. Flight arrives a bit earlier than expected. We grab our luggage, grab a lyft, and head to RPR and arrive there around 10ish. One spark of good news is that when we arrive at RPR, they had a room ready so we could check in right away . OK great. get our stuff dropped off into the room, get organized and head to the parks around 11:00.
Plan is to do a 1/2 day at the park until about 4:00 as we have tickets to Blue Man Group at 6:00. We get to IOA and the crowds are light. We do The Hulk first. My youngest hasn't been on it before as he was too short last trip. Get on immediately as we have unlimited EPs with staying at RPR and it's a godsend to have it for this now truncated amount of time at the parks. My youngest loved it! My older son had done it before and it has been his favourite ride in the parks.
Next we do Spider-Man. It's one of our favourites and it still impresses me as to how great it is being a 20+ year old ride. From there we walk up towards Kong/Jurassic Park. My wife and younger son do Kong while me and the older son do JPRA. Younger one doesn't care for JP and older one doesn't care for Kong.
Then we head over to Hogsmeade. It's fairly crowded. Our main "must do" on this trip was to ride Hagrid's as it's brand new to us. Wait time is 120 min. I asked a team member about how well it's been running. They tell me it's been running without issue the last few days. We decide to skip for now and plan to rope drop it tomorrow (more on that later). Head over to Forbidden Journey as it's my favourite ride in the world. It's posted as a 25 min wait but we walk right on with EP. After this we're hungry and wanted to eat at Three Broomsticks. Lineup is out the door so scrap that idea. We head over to Lost Continent and grab some quick service food there to tide us over.
After this we hop onto Hogwarts Express and head over to Studios. It's gotten pretty hot by now, and we're crazy tired. So we decide to do 2 more attractions and call it a day. First we head over to Transformers as it's one of my youngest's favourites. Walk on with EP. After this we do RRR as we all love this one. It's about 3:00 and we're done. On our way out of the parks we stop by the Blue Man Group box office to grab our tickets for later in the evening. We're back at RPR around 3:30 for a quick nap.
Wake up around 5:00 and head to the club lounge for a bite to eat. It's "American Night" so on the menu is Mac n Cheese and some Chicken stew. Perfect comfort food for a weary and hungry group. Gobbled that up and head back to go see Blue Man Group. BMG was good. I think my wife and I would have enjoyed it more if we weren't so tired. The kids loved it.
Headed back to RPR after that to enjoy dessert hour at the lounge and then we crashed to sleep right after that with the "plan" to get up early and rope drop IOA for Hagrids.
coming up, Day 2.....