3 weeks is not enough! Disney & Universal Sept 2016 – day 16, Pool, Mall at Millenia & US

[sha9]

I haven't done any of this for ages with it being Christmas but I only have a few days to do so I'm hoping to get it done this weekend!

I woke up briefly at 6am today as I’d accidentally set the alarm. I got back to sleep and got up just before 8am. We checked the weather forecast for the day and it was to be wet later so we decided to spend some time at the pool in the morning while we had sun. Breakfast was coffee in the room and we split the Cinnabon.
The temperature was just right for sunbathing at that time of day and the pool was quiet. I read some of my book and had a dip if the sun got too hot. Around 11am I started to get hungry so we discussed lunch and I said I'd go back now and get ready while Marie had a little more pool time. No point her sitting in the hotel room waiting on the shower!

We wanted to some shopping and hadn’t been to Mall at Millenia for years. That meant we also hadn’t been to the Cheesecake Factory for years too! I had a rough idea of where it was and hoped as I started driving it would become clear. We couldn’t figure out how to find it in the sat nav so gave up and just drove. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn and ended up in a residential area. At that point I was able to use the sat nav as you could look for local restaurants and I knew we were close. Turned out we’d taken a turning we didn’t need to. Anyway, we got there in the end! We got seated straight away as it wasn’t too busy.

The dining report for today is here.

Loved the Cheesecake Factory and I’m hoping we get a chance to go next year again. We got some desserts to take away as we didn’t have room for them.
After lunch we wandered through the mall but to be honest we’re more outlet people so didn’t really look in any shops. There was a storm as we left but we had our ponchos so managed to get to the car with minimal soaking! We went from the to the Artegon mall to look in Gods and Monsters. It’s a lovely mall with lots of “different” shops. Marie got a collar for the dog that’s turned out to be an excellent collar and great quality. We had a look in Gods & Monsters but were a bit disappointed.
The rain had tailed off a bit and we headed back to RPR. We decided to have some dessert before going out to the parks. It was about 4pm by this time. Marie really enjoyed hers but I found the chocolate on mine too bitter.
We headed out to the parks about 5ish and went to US as there was no HHN that night so it closed at 7pm. There were also more rides we wanted to do. This is what I love about staying onsite at Universal – the ability to wander into the park late in the day for a couple of hours. We rode Minions, The Mummy and Gringotts. We did single rider for Gringotts again since there’s no express queue. We were in separate carts but that’s fine. It was time for a Butterbeer after that and we sat on the fountain near the Knight Bus drinking them. By now it was about 15 minutes until park closing so we did Transformers and headed out.
By then it was 7pm and we still weren’t hungry so we went back to the hotel. We chilled watching TV and I wrote some trip notes. Before long we started getting a bit peckish so we browsed the room service menu. I didn’t think the prices were too bad so we just went for it and had dinner while watching Pitch Perfect. The food was lovely and I’d be interested to know which of the hotel restaurants it came from.
Really enjoyed being able to pop into the parks for a couple of hours. When you stay onsite at Universal it almost feels like the theme parks are your local town centre!

[Excitedx4]

Yes that's what we loved about staying at universal, the hotels are so close to the parks, you still feel miles away at Disney hotels to the parks as the area is so vast.

[Floridaagogo]

Totally agree.so nice to wander in for a few hours.love the Cheesecake Factory but the malls a bit too high end for me too.

[disneytrio]

Love the Cheesecake Factory, totally agree about just being able to wonder in the parks.