Welcome to my trip report! The
index is here, and
day 1 is here.
Wednesday 14th June - Day 2
Compared to last night we had a much better night's sleep! We woke up a few times though, one time hearing a rather loud group of people having a conversation outside our room! Luckily we tend to sleep through anything so it hardly kept us up. I woke at 4.30 and thought I’d have to give in and get up but I eventually nodded off and woke to the alarm at 6. We got up, washed, got dressed and suncreamed and packed the park bags. We were taking two today because we were planning on going to Volcano Bay for a peek this afternoon before our proper visit next week. We were taking along towels and swim stuff just in case we fancied a dip. We lined the other park bag with a binbag so we could take it safely on the water rides at Islands of Adventure today. We had some Snapple and I wrote up some notes.
We were ready really quickly. Bit of a rubbish photo but you can see my Hufflepuff lanyard here!
I was wearing my go walk slip ons today. At home I’d tried wearing them with no show socks but they rubbed my heels so I was going sockless today. I’d bought some foot deodorant with me so I sprayed that and instantly regretted it. At home my nose is a nightmare with allergies and hayfever and I love having a break from it when we’re in Florida. However I really did not agree with this foot spray! I started sneezing and just did not stop. We left the room at 7.06 and I was sneezing away. Still managed to take a photo on our way out!
It was quite hazy this morning and pleasantly warm. I sneezed the whole way down to the lobby! I ordered the uber and it popped up saying our driver would be Carly and he was hard of hearing, it’s good that they let you know this! He arrived at 7.10. He was really quiet and didn’t say much to us, he had his earphones in too. He was a bit of a crazy driver looking at his phone and he did a really fast U turn at one point which gave us a fright! We arrived at iHop at the Universal Boulevard/I Drive junction at 7.19. It was pretty quiet and we ordered coffees straight away. Garth got a Florida orange juice too. I had just about stopped sneezing by this point!
I already knew that I was having the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity pancakes because I had a voucher. I chose to have the peach topping. Garth has a larger appetite than me in the mornings and created his own combo ordering hashbrowns, sausages, eggs over easy and cupcake pancakes. While we waited Garth snapchatted our friend at home, he was rather amused with this filter
Even though it was quiet service seemed to be a little slow. Breakfast arrived at 7.40. It all looked pretty good!
Looks like Garth gave me one of his sausages haha what a gent. I realised as we were eating that they had pancake sauces on the tables, what an amazing idea!
Garth finished up everything and I left one pancake. It came to $17.85 all together and we left $3 tip. I felt a bit stingy as my pancakes had come off the bill but we had no more small bills on us
I was still getting into the swing of things and forgetting to make sure I had enough small bills on us. We used the loo and left at 8.10, feeling a bit guilty about the tip but lovely and full!
We had decided to walk into Universal from here. It’s not a long walk and we weren’t using early entry this morning so we were looking forward to reliving some of the memories from our 2014 trip!
You can see Wet n Wild’s remains here!
Krakatau again.
It was a lovely walk. We got to security at around 8.35 and Garth nearly walked through wearing his bag! It was so light he forgot he was wearing it. He got a little telling off and we were soon through to City Walk. We were heading to Islands of Adventure first again today to ride the Hulk and were passing under my favourite sign at 8.45
In Port of Entry there was a staff member on a megaphone talking to everyone and spotted Garth’s tshirt. She asked if he was a superhero
Everyone seemed so friendly in Universal it was great! We were held in front of the Hulk at ten to and it started getting slightly warm.
Garth told me at this point he needed a pee, why does he always do this when we’re trying to hit a popular attraction at rope drop! It's like having a child
We were fully wedged in a crowd now so he would have to wait and go when they let people through while I grabbed lockers. They let us through pretty much 9 on the dot and Garth rushed off while I went to the lockers. These lockers use your ticket instead of your fingerprint and Garth had his lanyard on
The locker area was super busy and I was getting stressed with both bags and only one ticket so just decided to back up and wait for Garth. Once he was back the locker area had cleared and we squeezed our stuff into those tiny lockers. Phew.
Hulk was showing 40 minutes already but oh well. We joined the queue, went through the detectors and pretty much stopped there. This queue seems really tedious and it was really warm. I was a little grumpy at this point and it wasn’t helped by the children behind me repeatedly hitting me in the legs, I always seem to get children behind me who have no sense of personal space! After what felt like an eternity (it was only half an hour
) we finally got on the ride. The ride was good and fun but it made me really dizzy! The sun was shining brightly in my face and my vision went really blurry at one point, I’ve never had a problem on the ride before! I was glad we had done it though and the new ride story was cool. Garth loved it! Grumpiness had subsided now, we emptied the lockers and carried on towards Spiderman.
We had expected a long-ish queue but thought we’d appreciate the aircon anyway. As we got there it said only 15 minutes, we thought that was great for 9.35 in the morning! I absolutely love this queue line, especially compared to The Hulk. It helps that it’s properly air conditioned but I love the little detail too!
As promised we only waited 15 minutes. The ride did not disappoint! Admittedly I get a little lost with the story but I love being thrown around and caught by Spidey. Garth and I are the annoying people who applause at the end of this ride we just absolutely love it
Glad to have had our Spiderman fix we had a little look in the shop before heading out.
This was $969! Where would you even put it?! We walked straight past Dr Doom’s Freefall… not our kind of ride!
We had a mooch in a few more shops and then went back to Storm Force Accelatron. Does anybody know what ‘accelatron’ means?! We’ve been calling it Storm Force Acceleration the whole time and only just realised we’ve been getting it wrong
It was a five minute queue. We flipping love this it’s like mega bonkers teacups. We took a little selfie before the spinning began!
Garth’s such a great spinner he gets us going soooo fast! Not much else to say about this ride other than it’s so good and you shouldn’t miss it just because it looks like a teacup ride, it’s great
On the way out Garth spotted the old Hulk who used to stand in front of the ride. You can just about see him in this picture if you zoom in? He’s really hard to see but you can see his fist. He was hiding out the back, poor reject!
It was time for some Seuss now so wandered over taking plenty of pics en route.
Love Port of Entry detail! This is a lovely photo opportunity spot.
When we got to Seuss Landing we decided to walk through If I Ran the Zoo while it was quiet and relatively child free. We have so much fun doing things that are designed for 5 year olds
In he goes...
Out he comes!
I was checking out this on the floor and it shot up water and got me right in the face! Garth decided he wanted some of that
Next we decided to sit on Horton’s egg for a little bit to help him out
Seeing as we were being big kids what next other than One Fish Two Fish!
We were the only adults without children on the ride! I don’t know who put Garth in charge but he was determined to get us wet! While we were on a roll we went onto the Caro-Seuss-el, and remembered instantly how much it hurt my bum last time
Next up it was time for the High in the Sky Trolley Train.
While we were in the queue I was just looking over the news at home and I read about the Grenfell fire. It was a real shock to hear about such a tragedy especially as it was very early on and there was no news on how many people were hurt, it was so devastating and our hearts really went out to all those involved
It feels so inappropriate carrying on having fun but we were on the ride quickly and we did enjoy it. When I saw the train when we ate in Circus McGurkus in 2014 I really wanted to go on it but we always got the wrong track. This time we went straight through the big tent!
I love the views from up here.
When we got off we eyed up all the goodies and made a mental note to come back at some point. We looked in the Seuss shops, I love all the Seuss merch and the bookshop is my absolute favourite shop in Islands.
I had a big book like this when I was little and I hope to get one for my own family one day! With Seuss Landing complete we decided it was time for a Starbucks. It was 11.40 and we were a little peckish but wanted to hold out a while longer so thought this would fill the hole! I had a double chocolate chip frappuccino and Garth had the smores frappuccino. It came to $10.63. We had a little bit of a wait but by 11.50 we were sat outside with our drinks and some nutter butters from the backpack.
Brain freeze! We have Costa at home rather than Starbucks and I kinda prefer the Costa coolers to this frappuccino. It was nice though and I was looking forward to trying more different drinks with snack credits at Disney. It began to drizzle a little bit but we were fine underneath a parasol. The nutter butters were really good! It was nice to sit and relax for a bit just watching the world go by. We’d had such a lovely chilled out morning despite the slightly stressful start with Hulk! While we were eating and drinking we looked over the Touring Plans app and it told us that Forbidden Journey was on an all day low of 20 mins so we finished our drinks and walked over to Hogsmeade, recreating some more 2014 photos on the way!
2014
2017
We carried on to the beautiful Hogsmeade.
Sure enough Forbidden Journey was showing 20 minutes as we got in the queue at 12.20. We kept the camera on us this time!
We’re not great at taking photos though and they all came out a bit naff in the dark. I love walking through Hogwarts though, what I’d do to be there now! I love it when Ron makes it snow in the queue, but it was becoming a running theme that it happened whenever we left that room and could see it behind us! We loved the ride as always and were walking out at 12.55 so it took a bit longer than expected. What I love about Universal though is that I’m really not fussed about how long it takes to queue. I’m in no rush for FPs or ADRs, most of the lines are lovely and airconned and it’s nice to chill and just enjoy the atmosphere. We stopped outside Hogwarts to suncream up and put the camera on charge as it was running fairly low which means there’s a bit of a lack of photos for a bit! We swapped our shoes for flipflops because we were ready to hit the water rides now.
We walked round to start with Jurassic Park which was showing 10 minutes at 10 past 1. As we were in the queue we realised it’d take a bit longer than 10 minutes but as I said before, we were in no rush
We’d only been waiting 10 minutes or so and my feet reaaaally started hurting in the flipflops. I don’t know how some people wear these all the time in Orlando! They ached like mad so I took them off and went barefoot
When we got to the front of the queue the cast member seemed unsure which row to put us in and sent us to row 4. The ride gates opened and people started getting in. Garth got on and we soon realised there was no room for me in that row
the staff member told me to just get in the row behind which I felt was really unfair, we’d got in the queue together and wanted to ride next to each other, I wouldn’t have minded waiting for the next one if he hadn’t ushered me to get in so quickly! I was next to a really large lady as well so it wasn’t the most comfortable experience all round! We still enjoyed the ride I just don’t think it’s necessarily fair to split people up without giving them a choice! We did have a laugh on the ride, at one point just before it all goes wrong a dino pops out the water with his tongue hanging out, but it really does not look much like a tongue
We can't find a photo online but look out for it it’s so funny. We got off at 1.35 and walked on through to Toon Lagoon. Ripsaw was showing at 45 but we know it gets shorter than that so decided to go to Popeye first. It was showing 15 minutes so we walked on in, with Garth stubbing his toe on one of the queue line barriers on the way. We weren’t having much luck in these flipflops! As we were queuing the sky got all dark and it started getting a bit windy out. We knew the ride was going to shut we just weren’t sure if we would get on it before it did! The queue kept moving and then right as we got to the front the announcement came that it was shut for inclement weather
I know it’s all for safety but it’s always a bum when this happens! Today was our water ride day and we’d got 1 out of 3 done! We should have done them first thing really. We got out the queue and put our comfy shoes back on and decided to put the ponchos on while we were stopped. We had hoped to do water rides and then head to Volcano Bay for a bit for a look but obviously the rain had ruined this. We decided to wait out the weather and head to Margaritaville for lunch. We’d been eyeing up the menu for months but weren’t sure if we’d get chance to go but this was the perfect opportunity. We headed out the park slowly taking pics on the way now the camera had a bit more juice.
We stopped on the way out to pick up some celebration badges! Garth got creative for Instagram.
It started drizzling on our way out. Margaritaville is really close to Islands so we got there really quick.
We were sat at our table by half 2. The theming was great!
When I was in year 8 a geography teacher used Jimmy Buffett’s song When the Volcano Blows in a powerpoint presentation. Since then I’ve loved this song and I’m always glad to hear it, it plays so often in America, of course especially in Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville! We had a little in-our-seats boogie and Alberto took our drinks order, we both ordered strawberry lemonades.
They were really tasty, better than the one I had at the Olive Garden yesterday. The menu was absolutely mahoosive but we knew what we had come for… Volcano Nachos! We weren’t sure if this would be enough for us (foolish mortals) and ordered boneless chicken bites buffalo style as well.
They came quick and we realised that the nachos definitely would have been enough. There was so much food there!
It was delicious, all of it! Garth and I are obsessed with nachos, in fact I think we found out about the Volcano nachos on a list of best nachos in Orlando
Garth ordered another lemonade at some point, I ended up drinking some of it too though because the chicken bites were very very hot. My notes start off saying they had an “amazing kick”, and then the next note is “my mouth is on fire”
They were so good though, I can’t praise Margaritaville enough it was a fabulous meal. We left loads of nachos which was heartbreaking
We were just too full!
WE TRIED
It all came to $43.49 and we left the 20% tip of $8.17. It was still raining as we left so the ponchos went back on. We decided to walk round to Toothsome for a peek in the shop.
It was all really cool but the prices were ridiculous! We were far too full for a milkshake so we headed out. The rain was still persisting so we decided to head towards Universal Studios to do some indoor attractions.
I presume this is my full face with Margaritaville behind me
We were through the gates at 3.40. On the way in there was this photographer in a Universal uniform who looked about 12 years old. You can see in this very awkward picture of Garth as I tried to catch him in the background hehehe.
In the red shirt and beige shorts! I swear he was a kid?!
The plan was to do inside rides that we had missed yesterday starting with Terminator. There was a show starting at 4 so we went straight in. In the big hall where they do the preshow there was a little boy and girl who were messing around. They kept throwing and pushing each other about and generally had no consideration for anyone around them. Why do my legs seem to be child magnets?! The parents just watched, and then when the preshow began the Mum stood there tutting at people who were talking. Really?! It’s a bit hypocritical to respond like that when she had no consideration of people around her kids.
In the auditorium I sat next to a Mum with a tiny tiny baby on her lap, it was so adorable and the baby slept through the whole thing! So cute. They show was ok but still a good opportunity for a nap in my opinion
Garth enjoys it, I just think perhaps it’s had its day!
We wanted to catch the 4.30 viewing of Beedle the Bard in Diagon Alley so we hot footed it over, but when we got there nothing seemed to be going on so it must have been cancelled because of the weather
we never did get round to seeing it which was a shame.
We looked in some shops and dribbled over the sweet treats.
We decided on Men in Black as it was showing 20 minutes. We grabbed a locker and got in the queue. I was really really chilly! It was funny, I’d been so worried about June being hot, humid and packed out. I had goosebumps at 4.45pm and we pretty much walked into the preshow room of a ride we waited ages for last time
Having called it the “preshow” room, there was no preshow?! We remembered a cast member doing their spiel in the lift type room but this time we got sent right on through into the next room. We held back to let everyone go ahead so we could take in all the details of the queue.
I've never seen the films but I think I'd love them, I like the humour in the details. We were getting excited and competitive now and we were buzzing to attempt to whoop each other’s butts... and then it all went wrong. Garth had his phone in his pocket ready to take a pic of our scores at the end. Fast forward to the end of the ride and he can’t find his phone! I try and snap a quick pic of the scores expecting his phone to show up but as we pulled up into the loading bay we began to realise it was no longer with us or anywhere on the ride vehicle. We started to think maybe it went in the locker? But as we walked towards the locker we remembered using it in the queue. Garth asked the people in the shop what to do and they said go back up the exit to talk to the people there. We went back up trying not to panic and the guy told us they couldn’t do anything now and we had to go to lost and found about half an hour after park closing. No early night for us tonight
This put a total downer on our moods. I was worried that someone had taken it somehow. Garth admitted that his short pockets had felt shallow as he was wearing his swim shorts in anticipation for VB. This wound me up, if he knew that why did he risk it?! We emptied the locker and then checked the backpack just so we were 100% sure we didn’t have it. We had a bit of a sulk with each other because we didn’t know what to do now and we had 4 hours to fill at least and we were tired. We’re all guilty of getting ratty with each other at some point on Orlando holidays but it didn’t take long for us to realise we were being silly. We were in our favourite place, there was a high chance of Garth’s phone turning up tonight, and even if it didn’t we’d just buy a new phone, it really wasn’t the end of the world. We had a cuddle and made a plan to go look at Volcano Bay, even though it was raining, just to kill some time and have a little explore to prepare us for our trip next week. I did ring Garth’s phone a few times but it rung through to voicemail which I thought was positive, if someone had it chances are it would have been turned off or the sim would have been removed. We stopped off at Universal’s lost and found on the way out. She took down the make of Garth’s phone and he described his distinctive phone case to her but there was nothing there at the moment, we had expected that really. Like the other staff member she told us to come back after closing time when the staff could walk the track of the ride and deliver anything that had been dropped. We walked out the park to the shuttle stop for VB. (I should also add, Garth in fact whooped my butt on the ride and even though there's no score picture to prove it he wins the best score prize, but also the biggest plonker prize
)
We were there at 6ish and a bus came straight away. Tons of people got off and we were the only ones getting on! The driver checked we wanted to go to VB (in the rain? ok…) and we hopped on the empty bus. On the drive we saw several signs saying Volcano Bay full to capacity… yeah I didn’t believe that for a second!
We arrived in a few minutes and went through bag check. Garth set the bleepers off and the security man asked if he had his cell phone in his pocket. He didn’t quite get why Garth practically laughed in his face
We seemed to be the only people around. A staff member was standing in the underpass and said “This way for FUN! ”. His enthusiasm was so funny and we’ve adopted this as a catchphrase
Prepare for a photo overload of Volcano Bay!
As we got in we saw these interactive photo stations. You scanned your Tapu then ran into the spot. The idea is you buy your photo later but we just took a photo of the result… I’m not sure I’d pay for this
A family came over and asked me to take a photo of them in the frame, there were tons of them it was funny seeing them all pile in! I wonder if anyone will actually use the interactive Tapu thing and buy their photo, I can imagine people just take their own!
We walked into the main park. It was a little chilly so we weren’t going to get into swimwear today. It looked so pretty.
We dropped our stuff on deck chairs and dipped our toes into the water. It was so quiet. The volcano started making drumming noises and it did a little water show with jets on the top. I was expecting more to be honest! It was a bit cold to stay in the water so we collected our stuff and started walking round the park. I wanted to get the most out of our trip so we were looking for somewhere to grab sunbeds next week in good relation to rides we liked the look of and food places.
Moana!
This was another interactive photo op but it was broken.
We watched people on Krakatau go past a few times, it looked really fun!
The park was quite easy to navigate, it helps having the volcano to get your bearings.
The water sprays aren’t helpful when you’re cold!
We had a little look in the shop before leaving. On our way out we attempted to take a selfie on the camera with the volcano, we tried loads of times failing every time getting it all to line up! We needed Garth’s phone with the front facing camera
No success! We left the park and went towards the bus stops. There was no signage around and no cast members so we just got on the bus that was there, it said Citywalk on it and there were loads of people already on it. The bus stopped in a car park and everyone got off so we presumed we were right near citywalk and got off. We were so lost! We seemed to walk forever until we finally got to the bag check area that we recognised
Turns out we had got the carpark bus rather than the one from the shuttle stop, but we got where we needed to be eventually. As we were walking I tried phoning Garth’s phone again and the answerphone was in Spanish. I started to worry about why it had changed to Spanish and thought maybe a South American person had it and had changed it, your mind goes into overdrive when you’re tired and worried! I tried to put it to the back of my mind and we were at bag check at 7.35. We decided to go to Islands for a bit and then hop on the Hoggie over to Universal to go on Gringotts while the fireworks were on which should take us nicely up to park closing time of 9pm. As we were walking through Islands there was another beautiful sunset.
These photos give me the blues
We decided to do the blue side of Dragon Challenge. It was only showing 10 minutes again so we decided to wait for front row. There was a really scared boy behind us and his big sister said to him “just close your eyes you won’t die”, so unsympathetic!
It was a great ride, a little less crazy than the red one but just as fun. My notes are a bit vague here, but I think the queue for the Hoggie was something like 40 minutes so we decided to walk to Universal. On the way outside the Hard Rock Café a staff member with an ipad stopped us asking for our email addresses to do a survey. Garth always agrees to these things! We never actually got emails from this though so I don’t know what happened there! It was quite a slow walk and we were going into Universal 20 minutes after leaving Hogsmeade. We were exhausted by this point. We wanted to go on Gringotts so we headed straight there, stored our stuff and jumped in the queue. It was so quiet now so we got loads of pics in the queue.
After we’d pretty much walked all the way to the front we were put in one of the middle rows, but as there was nobody around Garth went back to ask if we could go in the back row. I’m so glad he did, it was so much fun! The drop at the start felt so steep from the back. I have so much love for this ride. We were out by 9.15. You could see the fireworks between the buildings in Diagon Alley it was amazing! I didn’t manage to catch them with the camera. Garth needed to use the loo so he went off and I waited watching a kid use his interactive wand to turn on all the lights in one of the buildings. It was magical but I was glad I was watching someone else do it rather than fork out all that money for a wand of my own
When Garth got out we sat and relaxed for a bit trying to kill time. We went for a look in Knockturn Alley but there was nobody around and I got too scared so we walked straight out again
imagine me doing HHN! Diagon Alley was really emptying out now which meant on our slow walk out we got some really nice pictures.
We asked someone to take our photo together. It was too good of an opportunity to miss!
This is one of my favourite photos from our trip! We said goodbye to Diagon Alley for the night. We were trying our hardest to kill as much time as possible on the way to lost and found so we stopped at the Knight Bus.
There was no putting it off now, we had to head to lost and found and find out if his phone was there or not. We got to lost and found the same time as a staff member from the Gringotts ride. She had a big bag full of hats and sunglasses and emptied it onto the desk. There was so much stuff it was crazy! I know we’re hardly ones to talk as Garth couldn’t keep his personal items on him but I’ll never understand why people keep hats on on rides! Now it was time for the moment of truth. The lady recognised Garth from earlier and she said she thought she had his phone! She disappeared off and sure enough a few minutes later she bought it out! Hallelujah! We were so relieved and grateful for Universal operating such a quick and efficient lost and found system. Even though we had to wait until the end of the day it was great not having to go back to the hotel and sleep on the worry of it. They also said earlier they would post it if it had turned up after we left. We were so happy but by this point the long day was really catching up with us. We celebrated with a selfie on Garth’s phone and then headed to the taxi pick up ordering an uber on our way.
Happy faces again!
Reuben was with us at 9.55pm. He was another silent driver, this was often the case at night time but that was fine with us as we were so sleepy in the back of the car. We got home at 10.15pm and it cost us $5.83. I have no notes from here on in. The photo evidence suggests we ate some left over breadsticks and drunk some Snapple!
Because of the time stamp I presume we had showers too and crashed into bed at around 11pm! It had been such a long day and we’d been to all 3 Universal parks. Losing Garth’s phone was definitely not in the plan but it was a great day regardless
The pace doesn’t slow down yet-
tomorrow we go to Busch Gardens and experience our first Orlando storm of the trip!
Steps today: 32547 (and we felt it! )