Beryl, Breakdowns, Beauty and the Bates Family - Day 14

[Nimbus]

Previously...
Pre-Trip
Day One - The Journey There
Day Two - Around the World at Epcot
Day Three - Swimming and Shopping
Day Four - Soggy at Seaworld
Day Five - Hollywood Studios
Day Six - Manic Magic Kingdom
Day Seven - Islands of Adventure
Day Eight - Wet at Universal Studios
Day Nine - More Splashing and Shopping
Day Ten - Sunny at Seaworld
Day Eleven - Back to the Future World
Day Twelve - Animal Kingdom
Day Thirteen - Park Hopping at Universal

Day Fourteen - Thursday 7th June 2012 – Pool and Back to Universal

After a wet and disappointing day yesterday, today we woke up to more rain. Feeling a little despondent, we trundled down to breakfast wondering what we would do today. The plan had been to go back to the Universal parks for a short day, but we didn't want the same soggy experience as yesterday. We did consider going shopping to a mall but no one felt like doing that either. And just staying at the hotel sounded boring.

However, by the time we'd finished breakfast, the rain had stopped and the sun was trying its best to appear. Hoorah!

It was still hot and Hannah wanted to have a last splash in the pool. We therefore decided we'd stay by the pool in the morning and get the later bus to Universal. Decision made, we took the lift back up to the sixth floor to our room, got changed and headed back down to the pool.

Now, sometime in the last few hours Hannah had discovered that one of her pin badges she'd bought earlier in the holiday had gone missing. This couldn't be found but luckily we'd noticed earlier in the holiday that the Gala Gift shop next to the hotel also sold this pin (and it was a couple of dollars cheaper than in the Disney park too!). So, after Hannah had splashed around in the pool for a while, we dashed across to the shop and bought her a replacement.

Just after 11am we took the bus for Universal and were walking into CityWalk by 11:30am. Today, we turned right and went to Universal Studios first. And, as we entered the park, the sun broke through the clouds. Hallelujah!

The Despicable Me ride was still not open yet (apparently, it started technical tests with the general public about 3 or 4 days after we left) but the minions were meeting visitors outside the attraction.



Hannah loves the minions - especially Dave - so it was great to see them. They were very cheeky. Potato!

Not only that, Scooby Doo was here near the entrance and so were the Simpsons!



We're all a big fan of them. Meeting these characters in the hot summer sun was a great start and helped lift our soggy spirits.

We'd missed out the Men In Black ride yesterday due to the wet weather and so, whilst it was sunny, that was our first port of call. It's a fantastic ride and I'm always surprised Hannah likes it so much (she's never seen any of the films). Then we went on the Simpsons ride next door and sauntered over to the Woody Woodpecker coaster to go on this a couple of times.

In the Spongebob Storepants shop, we met Patrick:



Well, Hannah did. I was struggling to get the flash working on my camera and Patrick was standing on one leg all that time - that's why he looks like he's falling over. So now we'd met both Spongebob and Patrick, albeit separately.

We probably went on a few other rides, but my notes are sparse and I no longer remember what we did. I do know that we met these dancing chicks:



...er, I meant these dancing chicks:



They were near the ET ride performing a little dance number. Apparently they're from Hop, a film we haven't seen yet.

We also went into the Monster Cafe for lunch where we had some pizza. From writing up these daily trip reports, I now realise that I had quite a lot of pizza during this holiday. Hmmm... Anyway, pizza aside, I loved this restaurant. It's very well themed, with lots of early, cheesy monster movie items and memorabilia. Like this guy:



The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Spooky. Not sure why we'd never been in here before. I think I always thought it was an expensive table-service restaurant.

After the late lunch, we left Universal Studios and strolled over to Islands of Adventure. We again went to Seuss Landings first and did the usual rides there. Then we travelled through blistering winds and scorching desert until we at last came across the Lost Continent...



...fought our way past that gryphon and trekked towards the Poseidon's Fury attraction. There was about a 30 minute wait here which wasn't too bad.

Of course, when we came out of Poseidon's Fury it was drizzling. It had to rain at some point during the day, didn't it! :angry: We quickly bypassed the Harry Potter area and aimed for the Discovery Centre in Jurassic Park, where we purchased some drinks. Whilst Michelle sat with her coffee, Hannah and I took the stairs down to the interactive dinosaur exhibits.

Here, we stroked a young Triceratops, saw a raptor hatch from its egg, analysed a couple of eggs to determine the dinosaurs they contained, scanned some rocks for fossils, and played with a variety of other dinosaur-related attractions. We were aslo attacked by dinosaurs!



Like last time we were in here, the area downstairs closed early at 5pm so we returned back upstairs to join Michelle. By now she was wondering where we were - we'd only planned to be gone 5 or 10 minutes!

Out of Jurassic Park and through Toon Lagoon, we briefly watched the fools hurtling down the slope of Ripsaw Falls in the rain (well, they were going to get wet anyway) before moving into the Marvel Island area. I went into the comic shop and bought a graphic novel and then we investigated the queue length for Spider-Man. It was quite long but they had the single rider line running today. So Michelle and I each had a turn on this amazing ride again. If the single rider line is available, and you don't mind being split up from others in your party, I'd certainly recommend using it because it's a lot quicker than the standby queue.



Just thought I'd throw in a slightly dull picture showing Marvel Island across the lake.

I think Hannah and I also went on the old favourite Storm Force Acceletron before we finally left the park.

Michelle wanted to have a better look in some of the shops, especially the surf shop, on the way out so we spent a while around CityWalk. At this point the rain began to come down a lot heavier, but thankfully, we spent most of our time inside the shops. Walking the couple of dozen paces from CityWalk to the bus at 7pm in the downpour wasn't pleasant though.



I think everyone must take a photo of someone on that surfboard.

Once we were back at the Homewood, we decided to go to Denny's for tea because it was the closest restaurant and we'd had some good meals there before. However, today, the serving staff were very slow. Really, really slow. There were only a couple of tables of people and yet it took us ages to get our drinks and our food. I think they only had 3 staff on but even so, they were slow.

Anyway, I had a Philly steak omelette, Michelle had some sort of breakfast and Hannah had spaghetti with a tomato sauce. My omelette was excellent - once it had arrived. For dessert (they didn't seem to want to serve us dessert - they gave us the bill before we could order) we all shared a large bowl of pancake puppies. Really, we could've managed with just a small portion of these because we didn't quite finish them between the 3 of us. Altogether, the meal came to a very reasonable (i.e. cheap) $25 plus tip.

It was now time to go back to our room and do some packing. Today had been our last full day and tomorrow we'd be flying home. At least this day had actually turned out to be pretty good. Hannah had had a splashing time in the pool and our day at the parks had also been very entertaining. The wet weather had only affected us at the end of our day.

Sadly, tomorrow was our final day.

Food Score: 7/10. The food was good but service was slow.

Favourite Attraction: Meeting the Minions and Simpsons

Next…
Day Fifteen - The Journey Home

[dixonsontour]

You packed alot in again

[disney owl]

another full day

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by dixonsontour

You packed alot in again

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Originally Posted by disney owl

another full day

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We always try to pack as much in as possible. We're only there for 13 full days and there's so much to do in the parks, that we have to be busy otherwise we'd feel we wasted our time there. We can rest and relax at home.

Again, thank you for reading.

[Iloveflorida]

Shame about the weather but looks like a fun filled day anyway.

[madhatter3]

Another fab day.

[hross42877]

Another good read!

[SmilingSammie]

wait, so you DIDN'T go on the Forbidden Journey ride inside the Harry Potter castle in IOA?! Or just I just miss when you said you went on it? Because if you didn't go on it then you're crazy! It's one of the best rides in Orlando!

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by SmilingSammie

wait, so you DIDN'T go on the Forbidden Journey ride inside the Harry Potter castle in IOA?! Or just I just miss when you said you went on it? Because if you didn't go on it then you're crazy! It's one of the best rides in Orlando!

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We are crazy!

TBH, the queues were always very long and, for some reason, I've never really been that desperate to go on it. Still, it gives us something new to do next time.

Thanks for reading!

[WileyCoyote]

A great last park day, loads of super character pics there. Boo to packing .