Day 6 ~ Islands of Adventure, Burger Digs, Royal Pacific Resort and Bubba Gumps ~ 1st November 2018

[caitlinsmummy]

Find the previous day HERE

So this trip consisted of:

Myself (Kelly) - Chief planner and organiser ... none of the trip would have happened without me

Husband (Chris) - The laid back photographer one ... I guess it wouldn't have happened without him paying for it so I have to give him some recognition there

Caitlin (Turned 12 when we were out there) - total drama llama and pre teen one.

Thomas (9) - the cheeky brain box one.

Noah (5) - the cute one (He was recently diagnosed as autistic, so it was a big challenge for us all to ensure we kept meltdowns to a minimum)

Day 6 ~ Islands of Adventure, Burger Digs, Royal Pacific Resort and Bubba Gumps ~ 1st November 2018

Today the alarm was set for a more reasonable time of 7.30am. Originally I wanted to be at Royal Pacific Resort for 7am, however, we all needed a bit of a lie in. We were all up sorted and at the food court in POR for 8.15am

As we were off to Universal today we didn't take our refillable mugs as we didn't want to cart them about with us. Chris managed to get a photo at one of the food stations. It wasn't too busy this morning.

Chris, Thomas and I had:

Bounty Platter - served with small Mickey-shaped Waffle or Pancakes - $10.69

Caitlin:

Mickey-shaped Waffle -with Fruit Topping, Bacon, and Sausage - $8.79

Noah:

Pancakes - served with Fruit Topping, Bacon and Sausage - $8.79

I had coke, Thomas and Noah had chocolate milk and Chris and Caitlin had orange juice. We all really enjoyed these breakfasts. They were hot and fresh and great portion sizes. We were so impressed with just how much Noah had eaten too! Fab use of QS credits and I honestly wouldn't mind paying OOP for these meals as they're such good value. We took the left over drinks with us to have at Universal.

We were parked up at Royal Pacific Resort by 9.10am which I was pretty pleased with. I went to check in whilst Chris tried to pacify the kid's Caitlin came with me. This took an absolute age ... I have no idea why. Looking at the date stamps on the photo's Chris took the first photo in the resort at 9.18am and the photo of us altogether in the room was at 9.57am! We received our express passes and were told our room was ready if we wanted to head up to it now, so we went and dropped the luggage off.

We decided to walk to Islands of Adventure. It was a lovely little walk that took about 10 minutes. When we arrived I decided to try and upgrade our passes to Annual Passes. I was quoted $65 for preferred pass and $45 for seasonal pass per person. That was upgrading from 3 park 14 day passes to 2 park Annual Passes. They had a special offer on at the time which was 15 months instead of 12 on the Seasonal pass and 18 months instead of 12 on the Preferred pass. I decided to pass this time as I had seen people had been able to upgrade for free. The boys were very fed up by this point and were itching to get into the park.

Today was hard to walk away from the kid's when they were playing up as we all had matching t-shirts on! Damn, who's daft idea was that?!

We headed to Seuss Landing first and did the Cat in The Hat Ride. The kid's enjoyed this especially Noah. The boys seem to enjoy playing with the merchandise in the shop too. I had to bribe him NOT to buy the hat as it wouldn't fit in the case

We went and rode One Fish, Two Fish then headed to Circus McGurkus Cafe Stoo-pendous to get some refillable mugs. These csot around $32 I think. We got 2 to share between us all. As we came out we seen The Grinch stood near the Caro-Seuss-el so we got some photos.

The kid's loved this interaction, especially Thomas ... every time he tried to hug him he'd push him away hence why he did it for the photo haha.

Next we headed round to Thing 1 and Thing 2 and got photo's there too. Thing 1 took a shine to Noah which was lovely.

We were waiting for the Stories You'll Hear show so headed on to The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride! as we were still a little early. We went and parked ourselves down waiting for the show. We were the first there. The show was good and the younger 2 sat at the front to watch it.

About half way through the Things came out and sat with the kid's behind the rope. Thing 1 sat next to Noah and cuddled him in and he didn't resist! We were amazed. He sat snuggled into Thing 1 for the rest of the show. All the characters got up dancing and Thing 1 tried to get Noah up to dance but he wouldn't so Thing 1 sat with Noah rocking side to side whilst cuddling him. The video still makes me cry watching it back now.

The characters all finished the show and it was announced they would be out for Meet and Greets, as we'd already done The Grinch and Thing 1 and Thing 2 we headed to Cat in The Hat for Noah. As we went over Thing 1 and Thing 2 were with Cat as well. When it was our turn Noah ran straight over to Thing 1 and literally just collapsed in their arms, I stood there and cried watching him. I could see just how much he had relaxed in their arms and he just stayed there whilst Thing 1 rocked back and forth with him. In the end we had to prompt Noah to stand for a photo. The video to this also makes me cry such amazing memories and such an amazing character interaction. This was definitely our favourite of the holiday and in fact I've just remembered I need to send the cast compliment in still!

I apologise now as it's total photo spam.

Next up we headed to Hogsmede. We went into the Honeydukes. Caitlin bought a chocolate cauldron, Thomas bought a chocolate wand and chocolate frog, Chris and I bought a chocolate frog and bertie bots every flavour beans.

To be continued