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Old 2 Aug 19, 01:06 PM  
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Return of the Rescuer – Day 3 –Rollercoaster Riding - 5.7.19

Return of the Rescuer – Day 3 –Rollercoaster Riding - 5.7.19

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Another early wake up at 5.25am but I managed to return to sleep until 7am. I felt I’d had a nice time acclimatising to the weather and switching off from reality over the last couple of days but I was ready for some more excitement.

I know you can check in super early and do early entry to the parks but we had already decided that the Universal portion of our trip would be fairly chilled and we were only planning to do only the things we really liked so we got organised in our time and requested an Uber at 9am.

Traffic was pretty crazy, our Uber driver pointed out the exit that took you directly into Universal and the line was crazy. The cost was $13.

We arrived at 9.30am and I was so excited with our first glimpse


Bell services collected our luggage from the car and gave us a ticket to collect it later.

Check in was straight forward – we had booked using the annual passholders discount, I paid the first night when I booked at it worked out at £313 and the second night was payable on arrival and worked out at £327. Still expensive but I couldn’t find rates like that anywhere else, at the time, I could have booked Portofino for a slightly lower rate with the annual passes but RPR had no availability on that rate.

At check in they put a hold on my card for $200 a night, although we never ended up charging anything to the room, and the cost of the second night. Our room wasn’t ready but they printed room keys for express pass, unfortunately their system crashed so although I had my proper one, ds and dh needed to get temp ones which just meant we would need to go back to the front desk later which was not a big issue. They took my mobile number and sent me a test message to ensure it worked so that they could let us know when our room was ready.

All set we went outside to take some photos at the fountain, I forgot to do this last time so now was as good a time as any or I knew we’d end up not doing it again.


Next we headed downstairs and decided to walk to the parks and cut through the pool area just to get our bearings.


There is an internal way you can go too if its raining and it takes you out at the pool gate as well. It is such a short walk, I love RPR as well but from that exit at Hard Rock it’s only minutes to get to security and the Universal gates.

A photo on entry as our annual photo pass was still valid.


How things change and Ds was determined that Rip Ride or Hulk would be his first ride, so since we had decided on the original park Rip Ride it was.


Despicable me was showing a 60-minute wait so we knew it would be a fairly busy day. Rip Ride was 35 minutes, I think it took us about 10 minutes maximum before we were ready to ride. Ds was eager to ride with Dh as he’d missed the moment the roller coaster love had finally set in at Easter so I was riding alone or rather with a very brave single rider about the same age as ds. I like this ride, other than the back row which is mental and my song of choice is I Will Survive as I need that positive affirmation for the first vertical climb.


Dh and I went to Orlando for our first holiday together in January 1999 and watched the construction of IOA with great excitement and returned to visit in January 2000, to celebrate the 20 year anniversary Universal had released a limited amount of annual passholder tops that they were only selling in the passholder lounge so I was really keen to pick one up.


The lounge opens at 11am and it wasn’t far away from that time so we walked round the streets of Hollywood and stopped off for some pretzels, reactivated the mug and got it filled with a blue fanta icee.


We took these into the lounge with us and I picked up the last small sized top for ds and our passholder pins. The lounge is basic but it is a lovely airconditioned spot with comfy couches to chill.


Next up was the Mummy, ds was all for the thrill rides today. We stored our stuff in the lockers, dh had a small rucksack and it fitted in the free lockers fine, I really like the way it is your park ticket that you use for the locker as I never had the best luck with it reading my fingerprint. If you have a small bum bag that fastens with a 3-pronged clip then you can keep this on, this applies to all rides except Hulk and Rip Ride and Hagrids is a bit of a grey area on this. This ride is wild, I find the fire room terrifying but the theming is awesome and overall, I love it. I believe there is a backstage tour here but it was too busy to ask for it today. The standard line was 35 minutes but we were pretty much walk on with express.


We decided to head round to the Hogwarts Express and walked past beat builders, they were pretty good but we only stopped for a few minutes as it was roasting hot.



When we arrived we went into Hogsmede for a wee nosey at the Hagrids line, it was 240 minutes, that would be a no then


We walked down through Suess Landings, filling the mug and popping in the shops, there was an inside Grinch meet and as I was wearing my resting grinch face top it would have rude not to meet him. The characters here are so good and Mr Grinch was impressed by my wardrobe choice.



There is a funny wee fountain in Suess Landings that Ds loves. It is a fountain that when you throw a coin into the mouth it spits water at you. it is called McGreggors pool and the money goes to a charity which I think is Give Kids the World but I am not sure. If you have some spare change it is a good way to use it as it is fun and goes to a good cause. Ds would spend ages here trying to soak us.


We had lunch booked at Confisco Grill and we were glad of the airconditioned break, I’m sure you would still get a table but you get one faster if you book.

Dh had a bud, I had a Diet Coke and ds had a fanta.

The bread was served with honey butter.


Ds was happy to order off the kids menu as he likes the grilled cheese the last time and was happy to have this again.

Dh had the buffalo shrimp and chicken sandwich, he enjoyed this but perhaps not as much as I enjoyed it on our last visit.

I had the pad Thai, it didn’t look that big or that exciting when it arrived but it was so good! Very peanuty and not spicy. Ds also had some of this and thought it was great. I’d totally have it again.

I don’t think it was that bad value for a theme park meal and was all very nice.



Afterwards ds was ready for Hulk, it’s amazing the change in him. This is my favourite ride at IOA so it’s amazing to be able to ride it all 3 of us now.


Unfortunately, it made dh feel a little unwell as he seems to be suffering from a little bit of motion sickness as he gets older. He went for a drink and a seat while I took ds on Dr Doom.

By this point we were flagging and we had had a text to say our room was ready so we decided that was enough for now. We walked back to the entrance through the shop and ds treated himself to some Ravenclaw stuff with his money and remembered to ask for his annual pass discount.


We thought we would walk back to HRH via Voodoo Doughnuts.
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