Taking the Young Adults to Disney June 2017 Day 12 Volcano Bay & Universal Studios

[Taggie]

Previous - Day 11 Typhoon Lagoon & Animal Kingdom

The Cast

Hubby - Richard (44) Joint Planner

Me - Teresa (46) Main Planner with plenty of spreadsheets

DS1 - Daniel (20) Can't be without my phone

DS2- Joshua (18) Desperate to go

Today looks like we are actually repeating Day 7, however, we are Disney All Star Sports and that day we were at The Royal Pacific.

We wanted to do another morning in Volcano Bay as we wanted to do a third day at Universal and as we have done Blizzard Beach twice (well three times but one was brief) Typhoon Lagoon twice, Aquatica twice and Volcano Bay, well we have done it twice, but the first visit was only for about an hour to get a feel of the place.

So we have the usual breakfast in the room, before heading to reception. Volcano Bay opens at 9:00am for non hotel guests but everyone is a bit slow, so we don't actually order Uber 8:50 am. Uber picks us up at 8:54am and we get to The Universal Bus area at 09:14am. Mileage is 14.24 and the trip costs $14.67 including a $2.20 booking fee, is this new since we have been out there and a $3 tip.

There is a Volcano Bay bus already over in the bay, so we get there and we are the last on before the bus leaves, so that was handy. We pull up just slightly down from where the hotel buses drop off, complete bag check, go through the tunnel, up the escalator and there is the entrance. We show our tickets and are given our Tapu Tapu bands.



This time we head to the first set of lockers as there is availability, later we wish we had gone to the next set, like we did last time.

Honu is open today, so we head straight there to get a return time on our Tapu Tapu of 25 minutes, we are actually on this ride much quicker. We were a little apprehensive on this one as it sweeps you up two high walls and I think the more people you have in the raft the higher you go, however, we couldn't go as a 4 and so had to go as 2 and 2, think they may have had problems and lowered the weight on this? The ride is great and so much fun and we are glad we came back and got the chance to do it after seeing this on the You Tube videos so many times when they were building it.

Next we head to Krakatau Aqua coaster and our Tapu Tapu gets a return time of 45 minutes.

Maku Puhi round raft rides were a walk on and as you can ride walk ons with a Tapu Tapu time on another ride, this is a bonus. We went on Puhi and this was really good.

The Aqua Coaster ride went down and we were notified on our Tapu Tapu, but it did come back up and our return time was 5 minutes, so we headed over there. Again, we were in the even number riders and again it was really good, I love this water coaster. So much so, that when we came off I booked a return time for 60 minutes as they all wanted to do the OhNo Slide with drops you 6 feet into the water and that isn't for me, so we head over there and get side tracked by the Taniwha Tubes which was a ride now, so we took advantage of that as we do like this ride.

We then headed over to Ohno and the return time was something like 90 minutes, so they all tapu Tapu'd that one. We went into the Teawa Fearless River and we remembered to go in via the right hand side after getting our rubber rings. This is nice just to while away some time, however their ride time went down quite quickly, then there was a problem and then the time went back up, whilst my return time was going down.

Eventually my turn to came to ride the Aqua Coaster as a single rider, so I went into the odd number queue, however, I didn't feel it went much quicker than the evens. I was put with a random young couple that seemed quite nice.

The others waited for me, then we headed over to their ride and I went down to the bottom sandy area and waited for them to go through the slide. The staff had to stop the queue though as a woman came through and was struggling, so the lifeguard had to jump in a save her. She was okay, but just to note, they ask you lots of times if you are okay dropping 6 feet into the water, so just make sure you are.




We were hungry now, so thought we would go and have pizza again at Whakawaiwai Eats as the pizza's are really tasty. We had to buy a new refillable drinks mug as we forgot to bring ours, so we bought just one at $14.99 plus 2 BBQ Chicken Pizza's $32.97 and one Pepperoni Pizza $9.99
Total $61.72 conversion rate at 1.264 £48.82.






It was 1:30pm and we had done what we wanted to do, including two rides/slides that we hadn't done on our previous visit. So we left Volcano Bay after having a shower and hiring towels (as we didn't want to bring and carry towels around with us - they were $4.26 + tax each) and headed back to Universal Garage and then into Universal Studios.




First we bumped into Hello Kitty




then Scooby Doo




after a couple of shops we head to Men in Black, which was a 15 minute wait, but it feels so slow compared to express pass. When we came out it started to rain and we had to get shelter as the heavens really opened and it poured and poured, we were hiding under a food cart cover, If only we had bought 4 ponchos!



When the rain changes to just normal rain, we run from umbrella to umbrella to the Harry Potter area and decide to get an ice cream each in Florean Fortescues, I had the Butterbeer one, which isn't very strong. The ice creams were gorgeous and we managed to find some seating out of the rain near the toilets.



The rain was at a drizzle now, so we head over to The Mummy, which only had a 10 minute wait, so that wasn't too bad. We decide we want to do Gringotts again and head back to Harry Potter, it was showing a 25 minute wait, so stuff in to lockers and in we go, luckily we didn't have to stand out in the drizzle. The ride didn't break down and so it was much quicker, but it is still a lengthy process from going through the doors to the start of the actual ride, but the theming is good.




I chose to do Simpsons, so we head over there and the wait time for there was 5 minutes, we were on the ride very quick.
Afterwards we saw the Superstar Parade




It was now time to do some shopping as we won't be coming back to Universal. Joshua bought some Minion Slippers at the request of his boss for his girlfriend. I bought some pins. It was time to leave the park at 8:15pm.





They had bought the Simpsons Doughnut to share and on the way out I spotted Menchies, having seen this mentioned before we went in and filled up my pot with lots of different flavours, sauces and toppings. The price is done on weight and including tax was $8.46. We all got spoons and they tried my Frozen yogurt flavours, it was lovely, really yummy.



We headed back to the Universal Garage and ordered an Uber at just after 8:40pm. There are random taxi's, Mears and Ubers everywhere, so we followed our Uber on the map and when it looked like it was coming in Richard headed to the other side to spot vehicle numbers from the rear. We spotted our Uber easily enough and followed it around. We were back at Disney All Star Sports at 9:08pm at a cost of $15.92.



We put the laptop on to check some of our photos, watch some TV and then went to bed as tomorrow we are off to Wild Florida and need to be up early.

Temperature today 91 degrees

Steps excluding the morning spent at Volcano Bay 12,450 5.02 miles.

Tomorrow we are off to Wild Florida/SeaWorld/Hollywood Studios!

Day 13 Wild Florida/SeaWorld/Hollywood Studios

[dixonsontour]

Another good day, my daughter loved menchies

[Goldia]

Sounds like a fab day. I'm enjoying reading about Volcano Bay and your experiences. It seems like getting their early works well, but actually getting to any park for rope drop (or as close as possible) is always a good strategy.

Looking forward to the next instalment

[collybird]

Express passes and FP+ have definitely spoiled us all. Years ago I would think nothing of a 40 minute wait but now turn my nose up at 20!

[OB1LukeLucas]

It's so lovely to see Volcano Bay photos, we watched it being built in October. Another great day.

[Excitedx4]

Another good day, menchies is on my list too. Your trip report is making me so excited for our trip next month, thank you 🤗

[Taggie]

I'm so jealous you are going and I'm back, hope you have a fab time