It's The Greatest Hits Tour August 2018: Day 4 - Volcano Bay, Shopping and Taylor Swift Concert

[moosha]

Day 4 - Tuesday 14th August 2019

For some reason I woke up about 2 am and again at 4. The second time I couldn’t get back to sleep so at about 5 I decided to just get up, shower and get ready at a leisurely pace in the dark. As you do. Mat got up at 6 and the girls woke up just after that. Mat went down to get coffee from New Dutch Trading Company (the little quick service downstairs) which isn’t Starbucks like most of the other Universal hotels but it’s decent enough. He asked the cashier if the breakfast potatoes were vegan and she said they were. He knows me well enough to know I would be all over breakfast potatoes so he got me a portion. They were nice; they had onions, peppers and a tasty seasoning but quite a few of them were undercooked so I didn’t finish them. It was a massive portion for $4 though.



I think everyone else had cereal for breakfast, then the girls caught up on their journals and Freya did a bit of work. We left at about 7.20 am...



...and walked to Cabana Bay and then onto Volcano Bay deciding this would be less hassle than taking the shuttle bus from Sapphire Falls as we had on our previous visit to VB.



We always prefer to walk if we can (see also Disney car park trams). If you recall from day two’s report, someone at the hotel had told us it wasn’t possible to walk to Volcano Bay from Sapphire Falls which was clearly untrue as VB is pretty much attached to Cabana Bay and the walk from SF to CB is a lovely short walk along one of their Garden Walk paths.









This pretty pattern caught my eye at Cabana Bay:





It took about 15 minutes from leaving Sapphire Falls to arriving at Volcano Bay security.

We entered the park and sort of had our room keys checked in the way they do for early entry at the Universal parks. I managed to line up my entrance photo a little better than I had on our first visit on Sunday:



Tapu Tapu:















We were in by 7.35 and decided to camp out where we had on Sunday. It was a lot quieter in the park this morning than it had been two days before (probably because it was a weekday).



The girls went off to do Tonga and Raki twice then they dragged Mat off to do Krakatau (the water coaster) with them which they hadn’t done before. I say dragged, he was actually up for it which I was surprised about.





Then they all did the Ika Moana raft ride together twice and the plan was to go back on Krakatau but it was quite busy by that point. When they came back I noticed Freya had a bit of a black eye as Seren had kicked her in the face when they were on Tonga and Raki. Great.

They wanted us both to try out TeAwa, the Fearless River, which was the one thing I had agreed to do (I’ve said it before but I don’t like water parks and especially water slides.) TeAwa had only opened about 8.30 so they went off to test it out to see if the waves were switched on which they were. They came back to get me so in I went with a good amount of trepidation and on the agreement that they wouldn’t leave me. Seren held my hand all the way round while Freya was a little way ahead and it was fun. It was also great to see them both loving it so much too which I wouldn’t have from back at my sunbed. I did freak out a little as we approached a pretty choppy bit and Seren said ominously ‘Oh no’. She had anticipated that we were about to hit a big wave head on so at least I had a few seconds to prepare. I get a bit freaked out about water in my face because of my contact lenses.

I agreed to go round a second time, this time hanging onto Freya so Seren could go off ahead without me cramping her style this time. The second time we didn’t hit the big wave but I managed to knock Freya under the water by pushing myself over a wave. Oops. She was fine though.

I did like the Fearless River. It was lots of fun even for a water park hater like me. Then it was Mat’s turn to go around twice with them. He enjoyed it too.≈

The girls went off to get a return time for Krakatau while Mat went off to hire two towels ($5 each) and get us some tropical fruit. I had raved about it on Sunday so Mat wanted one too, but it wasn’t as good today. It was mostly melon which was pretty disappointing at $9 each.

Once the girls had their return time for Krakatau, they went round TeAwa for the sixth time that morning. After that, their return time was ready so they went to join the line. I think they had to wait about ten minutes and then as they got to the front, the ride closed as someone had been sick on it. TeAwa also closed, possibly because Krakatau runs directly above the fearless river.

Because they couldn’t ride Krakatau, the girls went back to Tonga and Raki and this time they rode the dark blue one for the first time which ended up being their last ride today.

We walked towards the exit, dumping the towels and Tapu Tapus in the relevant receptacles on the way. Lots of Team Members were saying goodbye to us and wishing us a great day. The staff at Volcano Bay were all pretty much great in our experience, and as I said before we really liked the park. We’ll definitely be back next year. When we popped back to Orlando for just a week in February, we obviously couldn’t fit everything in. Volcano Bay was one of the places the girls were most disappointed about not being able to go so it’s high on the list for our next (Universal only) trip.

We took the short walk back to Cabana Bay for a restroom stop and to use the ATM. I don't know why I have these close up photos of the vintage luggage in the cars outside. Mat probably took them:





This trip we had decided to load most of the dollars onto our FairFX cards and take out a big chunk of cash every five days or so (when we’d burned through it). We don’t like using the FairFX cards in restaurants because of the whole tip adjustment thing and doing it this way worked well for us. Cabana Bay was pretty busy and chaotic so we didn’t stop long before heading back to the relevant peace and calm of Sapphire Falls.

It was about 11 am by the time we got back to our room. We all got showered and headed out to the parking garage about 12.30. Quick lobby photo:



We were going to Sweet Tomatoes, one of our favourites, for lunch. The South Kirkman Sweet Tomatoes (the one we always go to) always seems to take longer than I expect to get to from Universal since it seems close. Today the sat nav tried to take us in the way you can’t drive in (if you know where the restaurant is, you’ll know what I mean. You basically can only drive in from a certain direction but sat navs sometimes think you can just cut across.) This has happened to us before so we probably should have preempted it. In the event we had to go back towards Universal and come back around again. Mat was getting pretty stressed about it, being the driver, but we got there in the end.

We had a family deal coupon as I’ve been on their mailing list for years (I love the rare occasion I actually need to print their weekly coupon email rather than delete it.) The deal was $29.99 plus tax for two adults and two children including a drink. I mean you can’t argue with that really can you, especially when it’s a buffet and we love the food so much we always all practically stagger out of the restaurant completely stuffed.

We all got a big plateful of salad. While we were getting our salad, Seren managed to drop her full plate and have a little girl bump into her sending the girl’s plate flying too. It was a bit of a kerfuffle as Seren was really embarrassed, the little girl was upset about losing all her food, and there was a hell of a lot of salad on the floor. The staff sorted it out really quickly though.

I was a little bit sad that now I’m vegan I can no longer eat the crispy wonton salad which was my absolute favourite thing here but I was pleased that there were vegan labels as well as vegetarian so Mat and I knew exactly what was what. I got plain cold pasta which was great with the Italian dressing, a mixed salad with blueberries and all my favourite salad bits like olives, croutons, beetroot, red onions, peppers and sunflower seeds. So good. I pretty much inhaled it.

For my second course I had black bean and chilli soup on Mat’s recommendation with some sourdough bread. I thought it was pretty meh but I am not a soup person at all. I won’t even look at soup options on a menu whereas he more often than not actively goes after soup as a starter. Weirdo. I don’t think I finished it as it would take up precious salad space in my stomach. So I went back for a final plate of salad.

After their initial plates of salad, Seren had a baked sweet potato (her favourite thing at Sweet Tomatoes) and some bread, and Freya had bread and pizza. Mat amused himself with three bowls of soup and some bread after his salad. The girls then had ice cream with a load of stuff: chocolate sauce, cookie chunks, chocolate sprinkles and a waffle cone. Oh and Seren finished off with an apple, I guess to balance it all out. I must admit, I understand why they do have unhealthy options at Sweet Tomatoes but I always wonder if there are people who go there who are on some sort of diet and are actively trying to eat healthy, thinking it will be a great option to help them stick to their guns and then they’re confronted with unlimited ice cream and other treats.

I don’t know why I have exactly zero photos of this trip to Sweet Tomatoes, sorry. #trippiefail

So yep, after all that we pretty much rolled out of there as usual. When we got back to the car, Seren realised she had left her bag at the table (she’d forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on) so we had to pop back to get that. Next stop was a quick trip to our favourite shop in Orlando (yes I’m serious) Super Target at Millennia. We needed water, cereal bars for the parks (vegan snacks are not exactly plentiful at the parks), shampoo and conditioner, liquid soap (my hands get so dry using hotel bars of soap so I always buy a cheap liquid one), shower gel and dry shampoo (so glad they sell good old Batiste in the US, honestly the girls and I should have shares in it, the amount we use). Not sure if it’s just us because I am super disorganised and leave everything until the last minute (in life generally), but we always put off the supermarket trips as long as possible when we’re in Orlando (especially if we’re not out in the car for a few days) until we really HAVE to go because we’ve run out of stuff and then we have to fit it in to an already busy day. This was definitely one of those days as you’ll see later when we’re wishing we hadn’t tried to do too much.

Continued below...

[moosha]

...continued

We spent exactly $46 on today’s Super Target haul and then filled up with gas. We went to the WAWA on Millennia Boulevard and filled up for about $37.50.



We were heading for the Florida Mall next which I always think is really close to Universal (I’m terrible with directions and maps) but is actually 15-20 minutes drive. Again we were doing this today because it was the best day location / plan wise (we didn’t want to head back up here once we moved to Disney) but by this point we were running a little behind schedule (a schedule we didn’t actually have because I like to wing it and think ‘it’ll be ok’). But if we had been on a time schedule we were probably about 30 minutes behind the ideal time at this point. And that’s before we took Seren (Miss Indecisive) into two of her favourite shops.

Anyway we parked up easily (it’s never the parking nightmare that Premium Outlets is here in our experience) and headed straight to American Girl. We always park close to AG because it’s our main reason for visiting the mall, so it was only a minute before we were heading inside. Mat found a comfy seat as he usually does in American Girl, I had a quick look round with the girls and then joined Mat while they made up their minds. They both had quite a lot of spending money for this trip (Seren had pretty much had all dollars for her birthday a few months before and Freya had somehow managed to catch up by saving and doing chores.) But American Girl is very expensive and we were only three days into the holiday. And obviously they hadn’t been anywhere near a Disney shop yet. So they both decided to buy a couple of outfits for their dolls back home (outfits are around $12 for a t-shirt to about $38 for a full outfit with shoes). The girls have two dolls each so they wanted to get something for both (of course they did).



I think the boy dolls were new this year:



Freya quickly settled on what she was buying and went to pay but Seren took ages as expected. It didn’t help that a few of the things she liked were out of stock (this happens a lot at AG, we saw the same thing in New York at Christmas and when we were there a few weeks ago.) Here she is mid-decision making:



Anyway eventually she made a decision and paid for her outfits. Freya spent $68 and Seren spent $84.



Second and final stop at Florida Mall was Hot Topic which Seren had been so excited to go back to (when we had been there on previous trips it was for me, but now having just finished her first year of high school Seren was just on her way out of her Emo phase but still into the bands).



It was a bit of a disappointment though as they didn’t seem to have very much of anything in there at all compared to previous trips. She bought some badges for her school friends (choosing a badge for about ten different friends obviously took her a while)...



...we both admired the band merchandise...



...and she went back and forth on buying some Harry Potter jewellery, in the end settling on a Slytherin bow. In fact I think we had already bought the badges and left the shop when she announced she did want to buy the bow after all which is fairly typical of her.

She popped back in and I also asked her to pick up a Gryffindor lanyard for Freya who had left her official Universal one back in England (I actually think the Hot Topic one is nicer.) Finally all done with the shops, we made a necessary restroom stop as we had a long drive ahead of us. I made a note that the restrooms were grim.

We got back in the car ready to set off for Tampa. It was about 4.15 / 4.30 at this point and we had a bit of an ‘Ooh we probably should have left earlier’ moment as I think in my head I probably expected us to set off nearer 2.30 / 3. Oops. Oh well, it’ll be fine, I’m sure there won’t be any traffic heading from a major tourist area to a concert at a stadium that holds about 70,000 people.

Ok so let’s back up a bit here. I mentioned the Taylor Swift concert with a little bit of background in my highs and lows, but here’s the story again (you know I don’t like to scrimp on the number of words in my reports.) Basically, all four of us had loved Taylor Swift for about four years at this point. And we still do. She’s the one artist that all four of us completely agree on. I know I’ve said before that Mat, Seren and I are massive music lovers though not really pop music. I have been into rock music since I was 12 with the occasional swerve into 00s R&B / hip-hop so it surprises me as much as anyone how much I love Taylor Swift. We had been to see her Reputation tour at Wembley Stadium in June and my goodness, I’ve been to a lot of concerts over the years but this was definitely one of the best. I cried pretty much the entire way through. The next day Mat and I decided to see if any of her US dates matched up with our holiday and lo and behold, she was playing in Tampa this very day so it was a no-brainer. The best seats I could get were almost as good as the ones we had in London (read: not very) but the tickets were about half the price. Yay.

So we set off. There was a lot of traffic on the I-4 around Disney.



Just as the traffic was getting better, around 5.15 pm, the sky started looking pretty ominous. I was hoping it wasn’t going to rain too heavily on the way down as Mat (understandably) hates driving in Florida rain and I knew it wouldn’t help us get there in time. Thankfully it rained briefly and then the sky brightened and it was sunny again. Phew.

The traffic got really bad again around Lakeland and at that point I started to worry that we weren’t actually going to make it to the concert at all. I think Mat and I may have had words at that point as it was all a bit stressful. Past Lakeland we sped up again until we were heading into Tampa. It took ages to get off the I-4 because everyone was going the same way, and it was pretty much at a standstill on the last bit along the US 92. There are about six car parks for the stadium along that road and people were having to get into the correct lane to turn off for their car park which, when combined with the frequent traffic lights and the number of cars on the road, meant it was very slow and frustrating. Amusingly there were quite a few people standing outside their houses along the road holding placards advertising parking spaces (their driveways) to concert goers for about $10-$20. We had managed to book a parking space the day before in one of the official car parks after doing a bit of research. When we’d booked the concert tickets, we hadn’t been able to book a parking space as booking was only open to season ticket holders well in advance. This had left Mat a bit stressed about it. I was glad he had checked again the day before as I can’t imagine how much more stressed we would have been right at this point if we didn’t have an intended car park as our destination.≈

We passed pretty much every car park without finding ours and we were now outside the stadium.





We’d been on the 92 for 30 minutes by this point in very slow traffic but we could finally see a sign for Lot 5. We had to drive around the outside of the stadium to get there so we were pleased to see it was nice and close (thank God, we didn’t need any more delays.)



We had to show our paperwork at the car park entrance and then we were in. We parked up at 7.10 and quickly changed into our Reputation tour t-shirts (yes I had got one for all four of us at Wembley) before we got out of the car. The car park was basically a field with a 150 yard walk across a road to the stadium entrance.



We headed straight up to the top of the stadium where our entrance door was, using the sloped walkway which is the bit that looks like a multi-storey car park on the left.



As we walked up we got a good view of the tour trucks:





Mat was clearly on a mission. Probably needed a pee:



At the top we used the restroom, took a photo:



...and then it was time for food and drink. It was all open at the top, not unlike Wembley Stadium, and it was lovely weather with a beautiful sky. I got a rum and Coke from a little bar kiosk (had to queue for about 10 minutes and it wasn’t worth it as the drink was too watery.)





It was $14. Mat and Freya had gone off to find food and they returned with four portions of fries, $32 (ouch) and four Dasanis which I believe were an extra $12. Looking at the photos Mat also took over queuing-for-a-disappointing-drink for me duties once he’d got the fries while we all tucked into them, bless him.

We found a table by the little bar kiosk and hoovered up the fries, firstly because the salad at lunchtime seemed an age ago, and secondly because by this point the second support act was already on so we needed to get moving.





We had a little joke about how Seren and I had missed both support acts at Wembley because we’d queued for about 45 minutes for the tour t-shirts. So we’d fully expected to get a chance to see them here but alas our late arrival had scuppered that plan. Not to worry, we weren’t exactly bothered to be missing Charli XCX (meh) and Camila Cabello (urgh). Although she was still on when we had taken our seats and I was suddenly very grateful for that long merchandise queue at Wembley. Sorry to any Camila Cabello fans out there.









We enjoyed the experience of being in a proper American sports stadium. Because it’s the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, there’s a big boat at the back of the stadium. Of course there is. You can see it in this photo:



Mat and I have been to a gig in America before but it was a new experience for the girls. In my experience, Americans are generally more enthusiastic and less inhibited than us Brits at concerts who might need a few pints to be quite so ‘relaxed.’ It’s a bit like at the Disney dance parties at the parks and Disney Springs where American adults seem quite comfortable doing the Cha Cha Slide while their British counterparts shuffle awkwardly on the sidelines. It’s great though, I’m all for that kind of attitude and the atmosphere at the show was amazing.







Taylor was awesome and once again I cried pretty much the entire way through. I had thought maybe I wouldn’t the second time but hey, it is what it is. I know some of you cry at the Disney night-time ‘spectaculars’ and I don’t really do that (although obviously I do cry at Disney. Parades usually do it for me.) I do cry during the finale pretty much every time I see a musical at the theatre and I also now cry pretty much every time I see Taylor perform live even in a video. Judge me all you want. I don’t know why I’m such a fangirl.







The set list changed a little every night of the tour so we got to hear some different songs, and Taylor also appeared at the back of the stadium (close to the boat) which she hadn’t done at Wembley. Oh and she got very emotional at one point when she mentioned it was exactly a year that day since her sexual harassment trial settlement and talked about that for a moment. It was well worth the trip out to Tampa and I’m so grateful we were able to go (again.) Freya was really tired and wasn’t as enthusiastic as she had been the first time but the rest of us were loving life.

Quick photo of the wristbands we were given for the show which light up and change colour, making the entire stadium look really cool:



The show finished about 10.45 and then we had the slow shuffle all the way down the walkway back to Earth.



We got in the car and the girls fell asleep straight away. Good job as we weren’t going anywhere fast. It was now time for the bunfight out of the car park. Freya and I had been to see Little Mix the previous month with friends and my friend had basically driven us around every other car waiting to get out of the car park so we didn’t have to wait while I sank down in my seat with embarrassment. Mat and I aren’t built like that. It was about 25 minutes of waiting and nudging forward to get out of our row onto the ‘road’ out of the car park. Then the woman in front of us hit a car pulling out in front of her (she didn’t want to let him out so just kept moving forward.) It was one of those situations where we could see it was going to happen, and ‘oh look, yep, it’s happened.’ They both got out (her car was a bit damaged) and at this point we were thinking this was going to slow us down even more. It wasn’t a major collision and we were sure everyone was ok so we didn’t feel too bad about thinking selfishly in the situation. Us and the other cars in the vicinity were trying to pull around them but the two drivers quickly agreed to let it go and didn’t even swap details. We were then a little bit stuck in an awkward position behind the woman’s car so we had to wait for her to move again, and luckily for us her having a bump hadn’t dented (pun intended) her determination to get out as quickly as possible and to hell with everyone else, so we kept up behind her as she steam-rollered her car forward.

But then, oh no! The car in front of hers managed to drive into a traffic cone which then got stuck on its front wheel. Some passing concert goers stopped to help sort that out and our mate in the bulldozer in front of us was having none of a further delay, so she nipped round and we followed hot on her heels. And then yay, we were back on the actual road and heading back towards Orlando.

Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic on the way back (I guess because of the concert) and also roadworks on the I-4 that took the road down to one lane for a bit. It felt a bit like we were back at home on the M1. We didn’t make it back to Sapphire Falls until 1.30 am. I had slept on and off for about 45 minutes and the girls had been zonko the entire time. When we got back to the room I realised I hadn’t retrieved clothes and underwear for the following day from the packing cubes before packing them into the suitcases for our move tomorrow. So I had to sort that out before I could crash. Well I didn’t have to but rather that than do it in the morning. So the others were asleep by 2 and I turned my light off at 2.30 am. I wouldn’t have missed the Taylor Swift concert but it did occur to me at that point that after that epic night and late bedtime we were beginning nearly three weeks of park days the following morning .