Universal Studios

I am finally able to write a blog! My conference went well last week and it was good to see Harald from our office who came down and attended with me. We learned some good stuff but it was pretty exhausting. Glad we are getting some fun time this week.

We woke up not knowing if we were going to go to Disney's Animal Kingdom or Universal Studios. After I did my normal morning systems checks, we decided we would do Universal as today the Animal Kingdom is only open until 5PM but on Saturday it is open until 7PM so that would give us a bit longer there.

We were up and out and arrived onsite right at the time they were opening. Universal actually has two parks at the same location so we decided we would just do the park that we thought would be the best fit for our crew.

In front of Hogwarts - Dad and Bri are on
the Forbidden Journey

Stacey and I had been to Universal Orlando before with Greg and Sarah and remembered having a great time. The new Harry Potter section of the park was not quite open then and we decided today that would be the first stop on our park tour as we thought it would get the busiest later in the day.

We all went on the first ride of a roller coaster that was not too fast (well Ben was not overly excited but went with some coaxing). It was actually a lot of fun and even he enjoyed it. Then we went to the next ride which none of the kids except Brighton wanted to go on. I went ahead and went with him. It was basically a ride in the Harry Potter castle (sorry not a big fan so I am sure there is a name for it). They did a really good job with the castle and waiting in line was actually entertaining. Stacey was even able to take the remaining kids on a tour of the castle but then just bypassed the ride part.

All of us - Cresting the peak of the rails on Flight of the Hippogriff

The ride was a lot of fun but had big spiders that spit on you which was not the most pleasant thing. I don't exactly know why they think the "4D" rides where they add smells and water are the greatest thing but they sure seem to be popular.

We all drank Butterbeer which tastes suspiciously like creme soda.

We explored the rest of the Harry Potter section, went to the Jurassic Park section and did some fun things with the dinosaur attractions there. On the ride in that part of the park, Brynna said she would wait with Ben and Spencer who did not want to go. There is a Child Swap area on every ride which was really nice so Brighton, Stacey and I got to go on the ride together. We did the same thing on the Spiderman ride. Brighton and I also did the Doctor Doom Horror Drop (or something like that) which is basically being shot up in the air a couple of hundred feet and then pushed faster than gravity back down a few times. We decided that was NOT the most liked ride of the day.

On the bridge into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

We saw the Lorax wandering around in the distance, but saw the trees
up close.

Doctor Dooms Fear Fall Faker #1

Doctor Dooms Fear Fall Faker #2

The only people who REALLY went on Doctor Doom's Ride from our
family and who came off with jelly legs. ;o)

Brighton got taken for a ride by Marmaduke!

Spencer was SOOO hungry at the end of the day, so he went to
Wimpy's for a snack.

Hahahahahaha - like this needs a caption.

The kids did really well but we were all tired by the end of the day. The weather was gray and cloudy and temps were in the low 60s instead of the high 70s that they forecasted (Stacey interjects that she told everyone to leave their sweatshirts at home since it was so muggy at Disney). We were all cold enough that none of us wanted to do the water raft rides that we did with Greg and Sarah as we remembered how wet we got and that would not be fun in the colder temperatures.

Listen to us - 60s being cold for mid-November. Guess we are fitting into Florida while we are here!