coloredimage
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2009
Day Three: Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd Break!
Spoiler: While there are definitely more photos from this day than I had from my weekend in Universal, I found that it was a lot easier to just sit back and enjoy universal with my friends instead of taking pictures. Also, with having to put our bags into lockers so frequently it just became a hassle to take my camera out so often.
So, the next morning we were up by 6:30 and met at the front of Art of Animation. We were going to just get an Uber to Universal, but we didn’t want to split up between two Ubers and the only options were for six people. Kyle went to the concierge desk to ask what their opinion was of our options and they offered to get us a Mears minibus. I was hesitant - I have had some bad luck with Mears and Universal before - but it was a good price ($5 each) and we could all go together. So we hopped into the Mears and were on our way by 7:30.
When we got to City Walk, we stopped quickly at Starbucks to grab something to eat and were on our way.
We didn’t buy our tickets until we got there because we didn’t want to buy them and then decide we weren’t going to go to Universal. We split up into groups - Kristen bought her ticket herself, Jen and Jenny bought tickets together, I bought Sadie’s ticket with mine, and Kyle and Liz bought tickets together. It just made everything easier. But we had gotten there so early we probably wouldn’t have had to do that if we hadn’t already planned it. The night before we had a talk about what people could afford and what they couldn’t, so we had a good handle on what we were going to do for the day.
Right away we split up. Kyle, Kristen, and Sadie ran over to the gates to Islands of Adventure and rode Hulk, Doom, and Dudley Do Right right away. Jen, Jenny, Liz, and I stayed together. We’re not rollercoaster people so we were going to just walk slowly through Universal and do whatever jumped out at us.
We started with Shrek since it had such a short wait. We then hopped over to Jimmy Fallon and rode that. Liz was on a mission to get an Auntie Anne’s pretzel (she loves them, it’s a bit of a running joke) but realized that her money was in Kyle’s wallet. We had decided to only bring three bags, mine, Jenny’s and Kristen’s, so playing bag shuffle was part of the game that day. Instead, we went to ride E.T.
It was the longest wait we had so far, 20 minutes, but it was about 10:30 by that point so people had gotten spread out around the park. In all honesty, though, the entire day we didn’t really deal with bad crowds - a Tuesday is apparently a great day to go to Universal.
We got a text from Kyle saying that he, Kristen, and Sadie were headed back to Universal to meet up with us and get something to eat. As we were walking past the Mummy we saw that it was still only a 5 minute wait. Liz doesn’t like the Mummy ride but Jen, Jenny, and I love it, so she took my bag and Jen and Jenny’s stuff and waited for us.
It was literally a 5 minute wait, which was awesome. We basically walked right on to the ride. Jen sat between us and got her arm stuck against the lap bar during a turn we had all forgotten about so she called it her Mummy bite for the rest of the day lol.
Once we were off the ride we went to stand in the limited amount of shade near the stage to wait for the other three to join us. We found them fairly quickly (we were all strongly in theme again on this day) and we offered to hold their things since Rip, Ride, Rock It was a pretty short wait. We spent the time waiting for them talking to the woman next to us. We watched someone lose their glasses off the ride and she joked it was probably someone in her party.
When we were all together permanently we decided it was time for lunch. It was only around 11:30 but we hadn’t had much for breakfast and had been up for a while. The only thing we knew we didn’t want to do for lunch was Leaky Cauldron as we had all decided it was going to be where we had dinner that night. We weren’t sure where we wanted to go eat but Springfield seemed to be as decent a place to start as any so we headed over there.
Since there were a bunch of options to choose from in Springfield Kristen offered to go grab my food while I went to find a table big enough for all of us. I ended up getting chicken thumbs as did Kristen and Sadie got buffalo chicken. They were okay, not awesome, but regular fast food, theme park chicken.
Jen and Jenny got the chicken and waffle sandwich. They liked it in the moment in that it wasn’t soggy or anything, but when we talked about it later Jen said it was nothing special.
Kyle and Liz both got carne asada tacos.
When we had gone into Springfield the wait for the Simpsons ride had been 20 minutes. We decided that if it was still that short after we ate that we would head there next as our first ride with all of us together.
After checking out Lard Lad
And deciding a donut after the food we had just eaten was a horrible idea, we headed over to the Simpsons Ride to check out the wait. As we were walking over Kyle noticed that Sideshow Bob was out and had a super short wait time. He loves Sideshow Bob (I do too, to be honest) so he and Liz got in line to meet him.
When Bob saw our matching shirts were our Hogwarts houses, he came out of his queue and grabbed Jenny, beckoning all of us to come take a picture with him, Slytherins with Bob.
I’m pretty sure our meet and greet with Bob was our favorite of the entire trip that we all did together. We all talked about it a lot after we got back from our trip.
After that we got in line for the Simpsons Ride. We got to have our own room/vehicle to ourselves which was awesome and let us just be ourselves on the ride without having other people around us that we were bothering. We’re pretty sure the vehicle operator was laughing at us by the time we got off. Oh well!
Once off we rode Men in Black because it was a half hour wait. Men in Black is one of my favorite movies and definitely one of my favorite rides. Fun fact: I saw the guy who did the expo intro with us in July as a rides operator in October and recognized him. He did an awesome job and definitely had fun working the ride. Sadie and I rode together. Sadie got the bonus but until that point I had been beating her.
After a quick water break it was time for us to do the thing we all had been waiting for - we headed to Diagon Alley!
The second we got to Diagon Alley it was pretty close to an hour since we had eaten and we were getting HOT. Our first order of business was to head over to Florean Fortiscue’s. Since I hadn’t had much water that day, I also grabbed some water along with my ice cream. I ended up getting my favorite, earl grey and lavender!
We enjoyed our ice cream as we walked around and managed to get a group shot of us!
After our treat we got into line for Gringotts. It was an hour wait so we spent the time playing games and figuring out our next move for the day. We all had fun on the ride! But once we were done we decided to split up - Jen and Jenny were going to stay in Universal to explore a bit more while the rest of us got in line to take the Hogwarts Express over to Islands of Adventure.
Spoiler: While there are definitely more photos from this day than I had from my weekend in Universal, I found that it was a lot easier to just sit back and enjoy universal with my friends instead of taking pictures. Also, with having to put our bags into lockers so frequently it just became a hassle to take my camera out so often.
So, the next morning we were up by 6:30 and met at the front of Art of Animation. We were going to just get an Uber to Universal, but we didn’t want to split up between two Ubers and the only options were for six people. Kyle went to the concierge desk to ask what their opinion was of our options and they offered to get us a Mears minibus. I was hesitant - I have had some bad luck with Mears and Universal before - but it was a good price ($5 each) and we could all go together. So we hopped into the Mears and were on our way by 7:30.
When we got to City Walk, we stopped quickly at Starbucks to grab something to eat and were on our way.
We didn’t buy our tickets until we got there because we didn’t want to buy them and then decide we weren’t going to go to Universal. We split up into groups - Kristen bought her ticket herself, Jen and Jenny bought tickets together, I bought Sadie’s ticket with mine, and Kyle and Liz bought tickets together. It just made everything easier. But we had gotten there so early we probably wouldn’t have had to do that if we hadn’t already planned it. The night before we had a talk about what people could afford and what they couldn’t, so we had a good handle on what we were going to do for the day.
Right away we split up. Kyle, Kristen, and Sadie ran over to the gates to Islands of Adventure and rode Hulk, Doom, and Dudley Do Right right away. Jen, Jenny, Liz, and I stayed together. We’re not rollercoaster people so we were going to just walk slowly through Universal and do whatever jumped out at us.
We started with Shrek since it had such a short wait. We then hopped over to Jimmy Fallon and rode that. Liz was on a mission to get an Auntie Anne’s pretzel (she loves them, it’s a bit of a running joke) but realized that her money was in Kyle’s wallet. We had decided to only bring three bags, mine, Jenny’s and Kristen’s, so playing bag shuffle was part of the game that day. Instead, we went to ride E.T.
It was the longest wait we had so far, 20 minutes, but it was about 10:30 by that point so people had gotten spread out around the park. In all honesty, though, the entire day we didn’t really deal with bad crowds - a Tuesday is apparently a great day to go to Universal.
We got a text from Kyle saying that he, Kristen, and Sadie were headed back to Universal to meet up with us and get something to eat. As we were walking past the Mummy we saw that it was still only a 5 minute wait. Liz doesn’t like the Mummy ride but Jen, Jenny, and I love it, so she took my bag and Jen and Jenny’s stuff and waited for us.
It was literally a 5 minute wait, which was awesome. We basically walked right on to the ride. Jen sat between us and got her arm stuck against the lap bar during a turn we had all forgotten about so she called it her Mummy bite for the rest of the day lol.
Once we were off the ride we went to stand in the limited amount of shade near the stage to wait for the other three to join us. We found them fairly quickly (we were all strongly in theme again on this day) and we offered to hold their things since Rip, Ride, Rock It was a pretty short wait. We spent the time waiting for them talking to the woman next to us. We watched someone lose their glasses off the ride and she joked it was probably someone in her party.
When we were all together permanently we decided it was time for lunch. It was only around 11:30 but we hadn’t had much for breakfast and had been up for a while. The only thing we knew we didn’t want to do for lunch was Leaky Cauldron as we had all decided it was going to be where we had dinner that night. We weren’t sure where we wanted to go eat but Springfield seemed to be as decent a place to start as any so we headed over there.
Since there were a bunch of options to choose from in Springfield Kristen offered to go grab my food while I went to find a table big enough for all of us. I ended up getting chicken thumbs as did Kristen and Sadie got buffalo chicken. They were okay, not awesome, but regular fast food, theme park chicken.
Jen and Jenny got the chicken and waffle sandwich. They liked it in the moment in that it wasn’t soggy or anything, but when we talked about it later Jen said it was nothing special.
Kyle and Liz both got carne asada tacos.
When we had gone into Springfield the wait for the Simpsons ride had been 20 minutes. We decided that if it was still that short after we ate that we would head there next as our first ride with all of us together.
After checking out Lard Lad
And deciding a donut after the food we had just eaten was a horrible idea, we headed over to the Simpsons Ride to check out the wait. As we were walking over Kyle noticed that Sideshow Bob was out and had a super short wait time. He loves Sideshow Bob (I do too, to be honest) so he and Liz got in line to meet him.
When Bob saw our matching shirts were our Hogwarts houses, he came out of his queue and grabbed Jenny, beckoning all of us to come take a picture with him, Slytherins with Bob.
I’m pretty sure our meet and greet with Bob was our favorite of the entire trip that we all did together. We all talked about it a lot after we got back from our trip.
After that we got in line for the Simpsons Ride. We got to have our own room/vehicle to ourselves which was awesome and let us just be ourselves on the ride without having other people around us that we were bothering. We’re pretty sure the vehicle operator was laughing at us by the time we got off. Oh well!
Once off we rode Men in Black because it was a half hour wait. Men in Black is one of my favorite movies and definitely one of my favorite rides. Fun fact: I saw the guy who did the expo intro with us in July as a rides operator in October and recognized him. He did an awesome job and definitely had fun working the ride. Sadie and I rode together. Sadie got the bonus but until that point I had been beating her.
After a quick water break it was time for us to do the thing we all had been waiting for - we headed to Diagon Alley!
The second we got to Diagon Alley it was pretty close to an hour since we had eaten and we were getting HOT. Our first order of business was to head over to Florean Fortiscue’s. Since I hadn’t had much water that day, I also grabbed some water along with my ice cream. I ended up getting my favorite, earl grey and lavender!
We enjoyed our ice cream as we walked around and managed to get a group shot of us!
After our treat we got into line for Gringotts. It was an hour wait so we spent the time playing games and figuring out our next move for the day. We all had fun on the ride! But once we were done we decided to split up - Jen and Jenny were going to stay in Universal to explore a bit more while the rest of us got in line to take the Hogwarts Express over to Islands of Adventure.