#USAnumber3- Helen&Andy Nov 18 - Day 5: Universal Studios & NBC Grill

[HelenJNT]

Hello and welcome back to my trip report. I bet you thought I'd given up on this one as I know getting this posted has been like extracting blood from a stone. I started writing this instalment before Easter! It's just been a ridiculously busy time at work for a solid six months - poor excuse I know. Anyway, I am absolutely committed to getting this report finished and I even have a few days all drafted and in the bank so, well, I'm back!

I know some of you were stressing as I didn't take any notes but hopefully you'll still enjoy it. Am hoping to get the rest of it posted over the next fortnight (famous last words) so if I do have any readers left, thank you, and here we go...

Day 5 - Universal Studios & NBC Grill

Index is here

Previous day is here

Unsurprisingly after our early night - thanks to being rained off - we were up and raring to go today. It was Universal day! We always plot in two Universal days on every trip, it breaks up the Disney bubble of being onsite (I know, it’d be lovely to live there but sometimes it’s just nice to get out for a few hours). Nothing of note to report in the morning routine. It’s amazing how quick you fall into a groove on holiday. Alarm goes off, I get up and put the coffee machine on – decaf on the left (for Andy), caf on the right (mine). I have a shower whilst the drinks are filtering through, deposit the coffees on the bedside table and then I put on my make-up and dry my hair whilst Andy has his shower. We’re a well oiled machine and, like our roast dinners, are timed to perfection.

Whereas with Disney, you always know it’s going to be rammed after 11:00, Universal is a little more of a lottery. We’ve had horrendous days there where we’ve only had the time/energy to ride two or three things in a day, and we’ve had blissful days there where we’ve managed multiple rides of our favourites across both Studios and Islands of Adventure. Would this be the day we finally cave – for the first time ever – and buy the Front of The Line passes? Read on and find out!

We left the room at 08:00, and ordered up an Uber. I’ve said this before, but when you’re having a predominantly on-site trip, you really don’t need a car. Ubers to Universal are nowhere near as expensive as a cab, and if we’d wanted to go to a mall or offsite anywhere else, then we’d have done the same. With the overnight parking prices about to come in for on-site guests (“guests”, lol) we’re definitely not incentivised to hire a car.

My photos tell me we were in our Uber at 08:16. We didn’t have a particularly chatty driver from what I remember. The roads were really busy though – Monday morning rush hour, maybe – so we were caught up in traffic for ages. The driver ended up coming off an exit early and taking a back route round a load of housing estates - whilst it was an inconvenience, it was interesting to see some of Orlando outside of the main road. This route spat us out at the Universal staff entrance – not anywhere you usually get to see unless you’re lost, so I guess that was interesting too.

Unfortunately, by this point, we had been in the car for about an hour and so were experiencing a range of emotions largely revolving around coffee, toilets and worries that we were going to be at the back of a queue as the park was opening at 09:00.

Anyway, we needn’t have been concerned, as we managed to walk straight in. Readers of the last report will recall that we upgraded our two-week tickets to annual passes for about $12 so we had a bit of a spring in our step as we felt like we were on a bit of a freebie. For those who haven’t read the report (why not, haha) it’s well worth doing if you think you’re going to have two trips inside 12 months as Universal tickets are not exactly cheap when you consider you don’t typically spend as much time there as Disney – unless you’re on site at Universal, of course.

So, in we went. Being the first attraction you stumble on, Minions was up to a 30 minute wait already, and we didn’t really want to do that as we had other priorities, namely the Fast and the Furious as this had opened since our last visit, and we figured what with it being the newest ride in the park, it was liable for a queue.

Wrong. No wait time at all. We pretty much had the queue to ourselves which was kind of awkward for some of the live action bits. The queue was good actually. I mean, we’ve never seen any of the movies, so we weren’t really sure what to expect – but I’m assuming the theming was all consistent with the films.

As for the ride itself, I have no idea what to make of it. It’s not fast! It’s not furious! You’re on a bus! A bloody bus. I ask you. I mean, I know it’s legacy from Earthquake (or Disaster, depending on your age…) but the only thing Supercharged about this was my feet as I got to have a Nice Sit Down™. Very strange. I mean, it’s fine, but I wouldn’t queue for it. Also, I was interested to hear a few swears in the ride dialogue – yep, we were definitely out of the Disney bubble alright!

Feeling a little confused and not entirely sure what to make of it, we headed over to familiar territory and towards Gringotts, stopping for a few photos along the way.

I deposited my bag – including my phone, as I didn’t have secure pockets – in a locker (with no incident and no queue, hurrah!) and we headed into Gringotts. We decided to go as single riders for this one as the wait time was about 40 minutes. Andy and I have no issue doing the single rider thing when it’s something we’ve ridden before. If it’s a new ride, then we like to do it together and would rather queue, but this one was fine. We did get held in a bit of a bottleneck at the top of the spiral staircase as single riders are only usually used to fill in spare seats if there’s an odd numbered party. We did get our hopes up a little as we saw that some single riders were being loaded in pairs, but alas, we were split up.

Andy went first and I saw him zooming off into the depths of Gringotts. I had less luck – someone in my ride vehicle didn’t quite fit into the seat (no, it wasn’t me, although they are…snug) so there was a lot of pulling and tugging to get them into the harness. The ride attendants were really good about it as they wanted to make it work for this poor guy rather than just turfing him off. I have read somewhere that some of the Universal ride seats are bigger than others and you get subtly pointed towards them, but I think that might actually only be the Forbidden Journey as I can’t see how they’d do it on Gringotts based on the square configuration of the vehicles.

Anyway, the chap breathed in and the harness went down, and we were off! I love the first few moments of this ride – the drop section is exhilarating. I can take or leave the rest of it (I’m a bigger Forbidden Journey fan) but there’s no denying it’s brilliantly done and extremely immersive, if a little jerky in places. I don’t know if the mechanics are going to age well, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s great fun.

Unfortunately, due to the delay in us setting off, Andy had come out ages before me and wasn’t sure where I had got to. Thankfully he was waiting for me at the exit and not wandered off. I went back into the locker area to retrieve our stuff – which was far busier and aggressive now than it had been half an hour earlier – and we beat a hasty retreat out of there, taking a few photos on the way.

After this, we decided to get a coffee and Andy also wanted a snack.

Not sure what came over me in Starbucks – as I normally just order a very boring white filter coffee – but I decided to give the peppermint mocha iced coffee a go. I don’t know why, it’s not as though mint and coffee are the perfect pairing. Plus, even the smallest size was 450 calories. Hmm.

It took foreeeever to get the drinks. I swear most of the Starbucks staff at Universal are people who are deliberately hired for their lack of urgency but excellent ability to chat to one another. It may be chaotic at Disney but at least they bang those drinks out like their lives depend on it.

We sat in the area which reminds me of Bryant Park in New York, and just watched the world go by for a while. It was blissfully quiet in Universal that morning, so there wasn’t all that much to actually watch but we like it that way!

Once we’d finished our drinks, we took a wander off to the left, and stopped to look at some of the decorations which were still up following Halloween Horror Nights.

We’d been back and forth on whether to attend this or not this year (Andy is desperate to do it) but it just hadn’t worked with our dates as we would have had to go on either our first or second night of the trip and we knew we wouldn’t be able to do it justice what with the jet lag and all. One day…

Our path took us towards ET and there was no wait at all, so we were straight in and – for the first time ever – ET actually managed to audibly say our names at the end! First time for everything.

After this, we realised that the 12:15 animal actors show was due to start, and the weather was really hot, so we took the opportunity to get out of the glaring sun for a while and headed on in.

We’ve seen this once before - but not for years – so it was good to see it again. It wasn’t busy at all so we managed to get a row to ourselves and even manage to put our feet up on the benches in front of us (don’t judge) so it was nice.

The show itself is pretty cute, albeit dated, and I wouldn’t say it is a “must-do”, but they have cats and dogs, so it kept me and Andy happy.

Following this, we decided it was time for some lunch, so we headed out of the park. Not before having a quick queue-free spin on The Mummy though. I never have any pics of this on account of the lockers, but I can confirm we rode, it was ace, and is still one of my favourite rides. I did find it a little harder on the bones this year though…

Clearly on the way out, we had to take some photos by the globe...

I’d decided a while back – I think based on numerous trip reports – that we were going to try the NBC Grill for lunch this year. Hours spent poring over menus and reading food reports on here had definitely persuaded me that there was plenty on here that we’d enjoy, so in we went.

The place is HUGE! It’s like a nightclub. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a massive restaurant and I felt immediately sorry for the people who work there. They say that the average Parisian waiter walks about nine miles a day – well, for the NBC Grill staff, they’d probably do that just in one trip to the bar and back.

We were promptly positioned at one of the high tables nearest the door. I’ve said before that I don’t really like high tables and stools when I’m eating, you can’t relax, and it makes me feel like an overgrown toddler in a high chair (or like the snippet I have seen of the CATS movie trailer - which still makes me feel a bit weird), but that was where we were put, so we scaled the heights and did our best to settle in. Beers were ordered (I can’t remember which ones, that’s testing even my memory) and we reviewed the menu.

Oh – the glasses here are pretty cool – we realised the bases of them had different balls (steady) imprinted into the bottom (no, that’s no better either). Mine had a basketball, and Andy’s had an American football. It’s the details, innit?

It felt like a long time since we had eaten anything, we had no evening meal plans, and it was the first time we had been let off the leash (a.k.a. the Disney dining plan) so we knew starters were going to be on the agenda. I’m mildly – not really - ashamed to say that what follows is probably the greasiest and most calorific meal of the holiday but hell, I’d started the day with a 450 cal drink….and I knew I’d probably burn most of it off just by trying to find the loo in this vast place, so off we went.

First up, cheese curds. I don’t think I like the word “curds” – it makes me think of Little Miss Muffet, where curds and whey didn’t exactly sound like the most appetising snack. Also, “curdles”, yeah. Anyway, these were good. I am pretty gutted that Prezzo closed its doors as I had a decade-long love affair with their deep-fried mozzarella starter (probably enough to keep them out of administration for at least a year beforehand) so it was nice to get a taste of something fairly similar. Yum.

So far, so greasy. We ordered another couple of beers (baseballs, this time) and waited for the mains to arrive.

I’d gone for this bad boy, the Pimiento.

Oh, and tater tots, taking the trip tater tot tally to three. For those of you who’ve been keeping count, well done.

Look at it.

Look. At. It.

Disgusting. Pork scratchings on a burger shouldn’t be allowed.

But so tasty.

I was so overwhelmed by mine that I don’t actually have a pic or any record of what Andy ate but knowing him, he would have gone for some kind of plain-ish cheeseburger. Sensible man. I remember pinching a few of his fries, as clearly I didn’t have enough on my plate, and thinking they were really good.

We paid the bill (no clue how much, sorry but it prob would have been about $80) and staggered out of the restaurant. The two beers had gone to my head a bit and I had major pork sweats… sounds like a character from Full Metal Jacket, that...

Continued below...

[HelenJNT]

After stopping to observe a lizard, which is mandatory when on holiday...

... we rolled back into the Studios park, deciding that we needed to be as sedentary as possible.

This is how we ended up in a 30 minute queue for Shrek but we didn’t mind too much. I spent a lot of the queue tipsily staring up at Rip Rocket and wondering if I had the gumption to get on board it this trip. It wasn’t looking good, despite the Whatsapps I was receiving from my friends Rachael and Lisa telling me to man up and just do it. I think doing it with a belly full of burger and beer perhaps wasn’t optimal and I was better off staying where I was.

We haven’t done the Shrek attraction in years – it hasn’t changed. I know frequent visitors are ready for it to be replaced but we still like it and it does stand the test of time; it’s still very funny.

After this, we decided to go and do something else we haven’t done in ages and ride Transformers. We rode this back in 2016 I think, and found it all very confusing and noisy, to the point that we weren’t even fussed about giving it a second chance on our 2017 trip. But the wait time was only about 20 minutes so in we went.

I think it was better than the first time – although to be fair, it could have been the first time as I didn’t have any defined memory of it other than feeling like someone was shouting in my face for ages. But I think we’d gone in this time with lower expectations and therefore it was actually better than we were expecting. I still wouldn’t queue any longer than half an hour for it though.


Next up was another thing we had decided we wanted to revisit, the Horror MakeUp Show. We’d last done this on our honeymoon (2010, gasp) and remembered it being hilarious but the timings of it had never quite matched up on previous trips, so we were excited to go and see this again.

Before we could get across the road though, we had to wait for the parade to pass. Look at how much of a crap other people are giving about the parade…

We took some photos by the Hollywood sign (clearly my one of Andy came out more believable but what can you do…?) and went into the theatre.

We had about 20 minutes to wait so spent some time looking around the exhibits…

…and pratting about...

The show was great fun as we had remembered it to be. I was pleased to see there was nearly a full house as well because a) that bodes better for not being chosen for audience participation (no thank you) and also because I wonder how popular the show is. Still, it’s been running for years. The main guy in it was definitely the same one we saw back in 2010 so that must be a pretty good gig.

Afterwards, we took a walk around towards the Simpsons area as we hadn’t ventured that far in to the park as yet. You can see how grey and humid the skies were!

We rode the Simpsons, clearly feeling better after our massive lunch. I asked on arrival if we could go for one of the higher up ride vehicles as we were at the bottom on our last visit and it ended up throwing my neck out for a bit as I was craning up to see the screen. Luckily this was OK, and we were directed right to the top. However, I know I said this in my last report but… I am over this ride. Andy used to love it best of all the rides in Universal but now I think we’re both agreed that it’s rough, the screen quality is iffy at best, and we both always come off it feeling grim. I’m sure it won’t put us off riding it again (in fact, I’ll have to consult my photos of the future Universal day to see if we did it again this trip as I honestly can’t remember) but it’s definitely no longer a favourite. Shame really. Does anyone else feel the same?

Next up was Men In Black. This was a walk-on, so we ended up going round two or three times. Sometimes I get a bit narked with Andy’s selective memory about things, but this time it worked in my favour as he had completely forgotten about hitting the red button, so I managed to subtly push it and get the best score out of us each time. Hehehehe. He had no idea.

After this we weren’t really sure what to do next, so just pottered about slowly - stopping to take a photo of my favourite sign:

I then made Andy pose for a photo with Jaws – it was needed given his choice of t-shirt that day.

I do seem to recall a family being particularly obnoxious and trying to barge Andy out of the way to get their own photo, so this was a couple of quick pics before moving away, definitely hoping that the fibreglass shark would take a chunk out of them as we walked away.

We were trying to decide what to do next – looking at the photos (as I had long since stopped taking notes by this point), it was 17:30 and starting to get dark. Unusually for us, we hadn’t ventured into Islands of Adventure today which was odd as we normally park hop constantly when at Universal but we hadn’t really needed to as we’d really enjoyed taking the Studios at our own pace and doing some of the longer, and dare I say it, more relaxing attractions.

We decided that there wasn’t much point going into Islands of Adventure when there was only about an hour before park closing and we didn’t really fancy getting caught in the park closing scrum or paying surge prices for an Uber so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. Very sensible, but we felt we had had a really good day.

Time to exit via the shop, where this happened – is this the first #USAnumber1 of the trip? I can’t remember. Either way, it’s a good one.

Clearly I was annoyed at these people who were refusing to walk on the moving walkway.

It looks like it took us quite some time to get back to the hotel as the next photo I have is this one, us arriving back at the Beach Club a solid hour after we had decided to leave Universal. I guess we must have sat in traffic for a bit as I certainly don’t remember any issues with getting an Uber. The wifi signal also seemed stronger at Universal as we were able to book one right away from the pick-up/drop-off area without having to hang half off the escalator, waving our phones around.

We went up to the room and Andy flaked out on the bed. I grabbed our refillable mugs and then headed back down to the Marketplace. You know there are some smells and tastes you can never forget? Like Red Bull, the London Underground, or Slough? To this day, I feel the same about the Beach Club Marketplace. Gorgeous air freshener combined with greasy cheese flatbreads. Boak.

I went to the desk in the shop to collect the PJ bottoms I had bought in Animal Kingdom that I had sent to the hotel...

...and I also spied these little earrings on a stand there. I don’t typically go in for Disney jewellery, but these caught my eye and I made an impulse purchase. Heck, why not – today was the last day of my 30s, so what better reason did I need?

I filled up the mugs (odd pink Sprite Zero for me, and Minute Maid Pomegranate Lemonade for Andy) and went back to the room. We’d both agreed we were still stuffed from the lunchtime burger so I didn’t bother getting any snacks or meals or anything. We’d used NO dining plan credits today…the horror….

Andy was fast asleep on the bed and I was pretty shattered too, so turned on the TV and found that tonight’s 80s comedy movie was one of my favourites, and certainly appropriate enough… National Lampoon’s Vacation.

Probably one of my most watched movies of all time, I think I know every line of dialogue so whilst it was a shame to be spending another night in the room, I have to say, I wasn’t tooooo unhappy about it. I watched the rest of the movie and was fast asleep by about 10pm. Ahh! Not the most rock and roll end to my 30s but never mind – pretty par for the course to be honest.

Essential stats for the day:

So there we go – I finally got Day 5 finished. I think it’s only taken me four months so thank you for bearing with me and this unexpected mid-season break.

I hope you’ll join me tomorrow, for my 40th birthday, where we have fun in Magic Kingdom and Epcot…which can now be found here
 

[jools1302]

Yeah! Good to see this update today... how was the peppermint coffee thing? I think that might be something i’d like!
Your food at NBC looks lovely... good effort! Looking forward to your next instalment
Thank you 😆

[DISNEYLIZ]

What a great day, Thanks for posting

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by jools1302

Yeah! Good to see this update today... how was the peppermint coffee thing? I think that might be something i’d like!
Your food at NBC looks lovely... good effort! Looking forward to your next instalment
Thank you 😆

See more...

Thank you. Do you know what, the peppermint mocha was lush. I really enjoyed it. In fact (spoiler), I had another one later in the trip. Not sure if it was a festive seasonal one?

NBC nearly ended me. Could go some of the deep fried cheese right about now though!

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by DISNEYLIZ

What a great day, Thanks for posting

See more...

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

[emmabanana]

Great day, I feel the same about the people who don’t walk on the moving walkway too 😂

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by emmabanana

Great day, I feel the same about the people who don’t walk on the moving walkway too 😂

See more...

Haha! If you’re able-bodied, there’s no need to have such lack of awareness for others. Theme park days are exhausting, but come on, one last push, people! Thanks for reading.

[Inky]

I do like NBC grille, didn’t know about the bottom of the glasses! Love the horror makeup show as well, haven’t managed to pluck up courage to go on Rip Ride Rocket yet.

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by Inky

I do like NBC grille, didn’t know about the bottom of the glasses! Love the horror makeup show as well, haven’t managed to pluck up courage to go on Rip Ride Rocket yet.

See more...

I now feel that any glass without a ball in the bottom 👀 is sub-par.

Next trip will be the one for Rip Rocket... Mind you, I’ve been saying that for a decade now and it hasn’t happened yet...