Day 2 (26.7.18) - US and IOA Marvel Character Dining

[VeryexcitedH]

We woke this morning to the sound of ds vomiting in the toilet. He felt very rough, told me he was cold and I think he even told dh he thought he was going to die. Once he had finished being sick I gave him calpol as his tummy was hurting and encouraged him to go back to bed and to try and sleep, hoping he would feel better in the morning.

I woke again at 6am and was going through all the scenarios in my head as to who would stay in the room with ds and who would take dd out to the parks and how we could swap etc. Luckily, ds woke up not long after and said he felt much better! Again, we think he had not drank enough yesterday and was dehydrated so we made a plan to make sure that we all drank plenty from today onwards so that we didn’t feel sick again.

We all got up and ready and headed to the club lounge at approx. 7.30 for breakfasts. We sat in with our breakfasts and had a variety of foods including cereal, fruit and doughnuts…well, we were on holiday after all! Once we had polished that little lot off we left the hotel and walked via the walkway to Universal Studios. This was always such a pleasant walk first thing in the morning and such a perk of staying at the HRH, we loved it!

By the time we reached the gates it looked like they had been open a little while so we headed straight on in and went to the photo shop first where we activated our 3 day photopass which I had bought at home. This was super quick and dd nominated herself as the wearer of the photopass lanyard! First stop was the Minion ride! We were on this really quickly with the Express pass and enjoyed our ride with Gru and the gang. On the way out we waved at the Minions in the shop and dd bought a bff Minion snap band for her friend from school ($9.59). Next, we headed to Rip Ride Rocket where we stowed our stuff in two lockers before heading on and waiting for only a short time to ride. This time I went on with dd and dh went on with ds and I now knew what he meant about the bar going over her, it stretched very far over her to make sure she was secure and I held on to her for dear life which was rather uncomfortable but I wasn’t letting go! This ride was, again, excellent! I can’t remember what I chose but it is such a super ride, my hair was a complete mess once we got off there!

On our way across to the Mummy we stopped at the Monster Café and bought 4 refillable mugs. Wow, looking back on my Fairfx this was $55.34 which is obviously expensive but it certainly meant that we kept hydrated and each of us could choose the drink that we wanted. Plus the choice wasn’t just limited to pop as the machines had flavoured water too. Fully hydtrated we headed over to the Mummy where we stowed the newly acquired refillable mugs (all in a locker of their own!) and our bags before riding. This was the first time riding for the kids as we had left them in Lil camp rock the last time we came so that we could do the big rides. Dh was looking forward to this as he loved it last time. Ds impressed us with his knowledge of the Egyptians as we walked through the queue and we were pretty much straight on once we’d got to the front. Loved this ride again, as did dh and dd. Ds however, did not enjoy this ride one bit and he came off absolutely petrified! Oops! Once our belongings were retrieved the children had a few photos taken with the Egyptian on stilts. After this we headed to the toilets and sat at the seats outside Louie’s in the shade while we suncreamed up.

Next, we made our way over towards London where we soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed looking around.

Photos were taken and the children queued for a photo with the Knight bus and the Shrunken head. Others in front were having a quick photo but when the kids went up the Shrunkedn Head had a super chat with them. He asked ds his name and when he replied “Jack” the shrunken head immediately said “Oh I could have done with you earlier when I got a flat man! ” This was hilarious and a good experience although I’m not sure if ds actually got the joke! After looking for the twitching curtains we headed into Diagon Alley – we were very excited to see this as it was just being built the last time we came!

When we got in there Diagon Alley was rammed! It was sooooooo busy. We had a little wander around but made our way into Olivanders to have a look at the wands. The children both bought one, ds bought an birch wand and dd bought Ginny Weasley’s wand. These cost $55.38 each and the children paid for them out of their daily spending allowance. As an aside, I saved all my quidco cashback (for several years!) and before the holiday I converted it to dollars, the children had $21 each a day to spend and we allowed them to roll over if they didn’t spend. We lost it a bit towards the end of the holiday and I think I owed them but doing it this way meant they thought carefully about what they wanted and weren’t constantly asking for tat!

Wands in hand we headed back towards the entrance of Diagon Alley to have a go at the interactive spells there. These are absolutely fantastic and they worked so well! I thought the map that came with it was great too. We worked our way towards the toilets in Diagon Alley and tackled the spells as we came but it was just so crowded that it was quite difficult to do them and there were some lines. Instead we packed these away for today and decided to ride Escape from Gringotts. That was after we had stowed two bags, 4 refillable mugs and 2 wands with only 1 person allowed in the queuing area. There was steam coming out of dh’s ears when he returned to me. This is one area where I think Universal have got it categorically wrong. The space allocated for the lockers is ridiculously tiny and should be way bigger! And to only allow one person in is ludicrous. I understand why a whole family shouldn’t go in but when two members of the party have a bag each and the lockers are tiny common sense would dictate two people and two lockers! Phew…rant over sorry!

We queued for the ride, having our photo taken on the way in.
Absolutely loved the theming of this ride through the bank and down to the vaults and the ride was amazing…I loved it so much! It was just brilliant! Once we had collected our bags form the lockers (I sent a child in with dh so that he was at least a little calm when he came out!) we headed out of Diagon Alley as it was just too busy. Oh, we watched the dragon several times whilst we were in Diagon Alley too and again the theming on this is phenomenal. I just loved everything about this area. Well, except the fact that it was a teeny bit crowded!
We left Diagon Alley and headed out and turned left. The sky was looking very dark and gloomy and it looked like there was a rain storm coming so we decided to head towards the entrance of the park in search for somewhere to drink. I remembered seeing a coke freestyle machine in Louie’s when we had walked past earlier so we headed in there. We looked at the menu ad decided that it actually looked really good and not too unreasonable. I hopped in the queue withdd and the instruction to “get anything!” while dh and ds went to fill the mugs up. The queue was long, but not massive but as we were nearing the front and I turned around the place was heaving! It was about 11.30 by now and the sky outside still looked dark so I think others had the same idea as us and were taking shelter. I chose the whole pizza and the Caesar salad to share between the four of us and the total was $50.57. No food photos as I wasn’t doing a trip report as this point! The food was very good and really filling. We finished off our lunch and the rain was well under way…in fact I had to put a poncho on to nip across the street to the toilet it was that bad! We vacated our seats and stood near the door to let the rain ease a little and once it had done so we headed out of the park and made our way back to the hotel. My notes say we arrived back at the hotel at about 2.30 but that seems to have taken us a long time from an 11.30 lunch break so not sure what we got up to on the way!

We had a short rest then put our swimming costumes on and headed down to the pool as the rain had stopped. We got to the pool and it was still very dull and overcast and the pool appeared to be shut. The kids had grabbed cans of coke form the club lounge so dh and I grabbed a daquari and a beer. No idea on cost I’m afraid as dh paid! Once we had these we sat down and settle din to read our books. The lifeguards were saying there was still lightening in the area and they had to wait 30 minutes after the last sighting to open the pool. Eventually the pool opened so the kids made a mad dash to get in and we moved on to a sun lounger although it was still overcast. Not 10 minutes after the pool was cleared again and we gave up. No sunny pool time for us today! We headed up to the room to get changed for dinner.

Once changed I got a very quick beer from the lounge where we bumped into Nan who had been a server when we stayed 5 years ago. I got my drink then headed back to the room to get the kids to see Nan as they had absolutely loved her last time we visited. Nan said she remembered them when I showed her a picture of them in the lounge, but unfortunately I couldn’t find the picture of the three of them together. She gave the kiddywinks a guitar pick each which she had made using old room keys – so clever! Dd chose a Spiderman one and Ds chose a Jurassic Park one. The kids went back to the room to finish getting ready and we finished our drinks. We left the room at about 5.20 where I took dh to speak to Nan and they got their photo taken with her.

I think one of the kids told her it was his birthday and she wished him a great day! When we came back to the room later she had put an amazing gift there for us!

We took the back entrance to the parks for our first surprise of the trip….Nobody had a clue what we were doing! We went to the will call kiosks outside IoA where I had to enter my reservation number and very promptly about 10 tickets were spat out at me! We turned left at the Port of Entry and headed to Marvel Super Hero Island where we stopped at Café 4 for our dinner reservation which was the Marvel Character Dinner! I had booked this back in about April/May and it cost $174.96 for the 4 of us (ds was classed as an adult.) This was a super surprise and all 3 of them were very excited!

We were asked to sit outside as we were slightly early for our reservation but there was iced water available. Not too long after we were called through and we handed over our numerous cards to gain entry! We were taken to a seat and explained that someone would come and take our drinks order and we could go to the buffet when we liked and the characters would be with us soon. A lady arrived promptly and asked if we would like a beer, I ordered two and she brought these promptly but then took ages to return to take the kids drinks order. In fact I think we had all been to the buffet and I actually had to ask her to get drinks for them. The buffet was good buffet food. We had pasta, pizza, shrimp, chicken, meatballs, salad and sweet things. (Again, no food photos as yet!) We ate the food and the characters came round 1 by 1.

We saw Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine, Captain America and Spiderman. The interaction from the charcters was good but Captain America and Spiderman were by far the best.

We were chatting with Cap and the kids were saying that he was a hero and somehow they mentioned that dh is a firefighter and Cap instantly said that dh was a true hero and he saluted him and thanked him for all the hard work that he does then shook his hand. Oh my, I had a lump in my throat, it was great! We had a photo with Captain America taken by the photopass photographer in front of the Character dining sign.

Spiderman was last to come around, he is dd’s hero, she absolutely adores him and the interaction with him was fab! He was really great and chatted away to both the kids with no issues or awkwardness and looking back at the pictures you can see the adoration in dd’s face as she looks up at him. He left and we finished our meal, getting a few more sneaky bits off the buffet. We paid for our beers ($17.02 incl tax) and were about to leave when dd spotted Spiderman and stalked him a bit more! Only downside to the restaurant is the toilets are outside so we needed to go with the children after we had actually left the restaurant, this wasn’t a big deal though as there was a team member on the door letting you out and in.

Upon exiting Café 4 we headed to Hulk to see if dd was tall enough to ride but she had put sandals on her feet again and wasn’t big enough. Instead we rode Spiderman and then Jurassic Park which were again excellent and thankfully we didn’t get too wet on the later! After that we thought we’d have a go on Forbidden Journey as were yet to ride it. We headed into the locker area, making sure only to send dh in to put my bag away. This is still a bit of a nightmare with families of 4 trying to squeeze in the space but at least it wasn’t as small as Escape from Gringotts.

After dh had put the bag away we headed towards the queue and went down the Express Pass lane.

I can’t actually believe what I am going to write now but, (as others have said before!) I’m writing this trip report as it happened so this needs to stay in! We were approaching the team member at the front of the queue and quick as a flash a lady came around us on the left hand side and pushed in front of us and got to the team member before us. Now if that wasn’t bad enough what was even worse was the fact that she pushed ds out of the way to do so then stood there all innocent waiting for the team member to scan her pass. Oh my word, I was raging. I am a very placid person normally but if someone wrongs me I’m not backwards at telling them and I certainly did tell her. I wasn’t rude I merely said “Excuse me, you just pushed my son.” To which she told me we had pushed in front of her family! I was gobsmacked. I repeated myself again and she just said that I had pushed in front of her yet when I looked around her whole family were sauntering up behind me so I couldn’t understand how on earth she thought we had pushed in front of them. I said it again and it was met with her saying she didn’t. I think at this point dh was getting cross too as she was just denying the whole thing yet she physically had her hand on ds’s chest and pushed him aside. Ds is normally embarrassingly honest yet this was the one time that he kept stum! It carried on backwards and forwards for a good minute or two and the cast member said nothing. In the end I conceded as this was never ending and was starting to spoil our otherwise wonderful day. I simply said “well, I know that you pushed my son yet you are obviously in a hurry to get on the ride so we will let you all through” and I stood to the side and the whole family got their express passes scanned and spoke to the cast member. We then approached the team member who scanned all our bands and simply told us that we should wait a second until the party ahead had moved. He then told us that he had informed them they couldn’t go straight on in the queue as they had an ECV and would need to take a left to take the left. He followed this up with “They are still struggling to work that instruction out and I think you will be ahead of them very soon, once they have figured out they need to take the lift!” He shouted ahead to them what he had told us and they eventually went in the lift so we could go on our way and enjoy the ride. Some people… We made it on to the ride and although I enjoyed it, I have to admit it’s not my favourite as I feel the screen is a bit blurry for my liking. I’ll say it again, I much prefer Escape from Gringotts.

On leaving the beautiful castle we retrieved our bags from the lockers and had a go on Flight of the Hipogriff which had a relatively short queue. Good job seeing as it is such a short ride! We went on this ride loads the last time we came but I could honestly say that this would be the one and only ride this year!

We left IoA and made our way back to the hotel. DH carried dd along the path and she flaked almost instantly so was fast asleep when we got back to the room. No idea what time this was or what time we finally made it back and in to bed but we hit the sack as soon as we made it back we were so exhausted!

[Floridaagogo]

Great day except for rude people 😡😡

[Nellie75]

Some nice touches to today - the chocolates in the room and the character meal. Shame some rude people have to ruin it xx

[mick]

I don’t blame you for sticking up for yourselves.
Such rude people

Joan

[VeryexcitedH]

Originally Posted by Floridaagogo

Great day except for rude people 😡😡

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I know, can't even escape them on holiday! Thanks for reading.

[VeryexcitedH]

Originally Posted by Nellie75

Some nice touches to today - the chocolates in the room and the character meal. Shame some rude people have to ruin it xx

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Nan was amazing, gutted we didn't get to say goodbye when we left. Oh well, an excuse to go back again! Thanks for reading. xx

[VeryexcitedH]

Originally Posted by mick

I don’t blame you for sticking up for yourselves.
Such rude people

Joan

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I am normally a quietly sarcastic person (mutering under my breath) but no way I was letting her get away with manhandling my child. Thanks for reading.

[Excitedx4]

Aww love captain America saluting your hubby how wonderful! Such rude people in the parks at times to push children is ridiculous! Another fab day 😁

[VeryexcitedH]

Originally Posted by Excitedx4

Aww love captain America saluting your hubby how wonderful! Such rude people in the parks at times to push children is ridiculous! Another fab day 😁

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Thanks for reading! I know, Cap was great and I loved what he said!