My alarm went off at 5, because I’m the moron that forgot to turn off my work alarms. Although, honestly, I needed the time this morning to get ready for the park. I hadn’t done any organizing the night before!
I laid in bed debating my park entrance strategy and then eventually got ready for the day. Once I was dressed and ready to turn lights on to see the doughnut I was eating, I woke up Mr. “I only need 30 minutes to get ready”. Spoiler alert, that was inaccurate.
I packed a park bag and ate a creamsicle doughnut while Nick got ready. This doughnut was MASSIVE, but not a mistake. The rest of the doughnuts were consumed at a later point, but spoiler alert, they were delicious too (and more standard doughnut size). Other doughnuts included a maple frosted cream filled, a guava something something, a king cake doughnut (cinnamon and frosting) and something involving chocolate.
Somehow we made it out the door somewhere between 6:50 and 7, and it was a quick enough walk to the boat dock that we were through security and waiting and ready when the first boat of the morning docked, at 7:00. First boat out of the resort for the morning! Go us!
It was a really pleasant, and honestly very quiet, boat ride to CityWalk this morning. I was trying REALLY hard to not constantly compare Disney and Universal but…these Universal boat captains don’t seem to talk much. Not even safety spiels. But…it was a beautiful and even comfortable ride.
It was a really pleasant, and honestly very quiet, boat ride to CityWalk this morning. I was trying REALLY hard to not constantly compare Disney and Universal but…these Universal boat captains don’t seem to talk much. Not even safety spiels. But…it was a beautiful and even comfortable ride.
Those boats move right along, and the boat captains spin them into the dock even faster (show offs!), so we were docked at CityWalk pretty soon after leaving Portofino. We walked over to Islands of Adventure and found a spot just a couple rows back at a tapstyle to wait, and spent our time wondering where all the people were.
Early Park Admission officially started for both parks at 8:00 this morning. The park was actually opened about 7:45. We walked almost all the way to the back of the park, stopping just briefly for a key card check in Suess Land, and made it back to Velocicoaster, quickly joining the line before I could chicken out, Nick reassuring me that I wouldn’t fall out even though you do barrel rolls with just a lap bar because I “have hips”. Thanks hun.
We were on Velocicoaster pretty quickly, despite Nick needing to be wanded at the metal detector because of his watch. Most important tidbit about boarding the ride? He fit! Honestly the most challenging fit here was actually stepping onto the ride, squeezing through the lap bars. Once seated, he had ample room.
Now…Velocicoaster… This one is INTENSE. There are several points when you have legitimate air time. There were definitely some screamed expletives. And I left the ride on absolute jello legs. I’m glad I rode once. Once was enough for me, I think. Nick loved it. We were off the ride by 8:10, so being early to early entry worked really well.
From Velocicoaster, we made our way to Hogsmeade. It was still pretty empty at this point, so it was a great opportunity to do some picture taking.
We worked our way to Forbidden Journey, where we eventually figured out where the mandatory lockers are, and made our way inside. This ride was still basically a walk on. I enjoyed it a lot. Nick? Not so much. As we exited, he choked out “nope”, and headed for a bench. I retrieved our stuff from the locker and rejoined him, where he had recovered enough to share that he, who has never had an issue with any attraction anywhere, nearly lost that amazing creamsicle doughnut on the ride. Thank you hun for not puking on me!
While Nick recovered, I did some more picture taking and got myself a cold butterbeer (not to be confused with frozen), which I enjoyed.
Once Nick had fully recovered, we ventured back out into the park. It was still early park entry time, so only Hogsmeade and Velocicoaster were open, so we walked slowly, figuring out our first destination for regular park hours.
Because we were staying at Portofino, we had unlimited express pass as a benefit. I’ll give my overall thoughts on this later, but it made it so I didn’t really worry about a touring plan, other than making sure to knock off Velocicoaster right away. Velocicoaster actually joined the express pass lineup a couple of days before our trip, but Hagrid’s was down, leading to heavy waits for Velocicoaster…including for Express Pass, at least the weekend before our trip. Yes, I do monitor wait times from home, and I do follow enough facebook groups for some of that info that doesn’t pop up in the park apps. Anyway…once the heavy duty rides were knocked off the list during early park entry, we tackled rides in the order we reached them, just walking through the park, without worrying about what would post high waits first.
So…we made our way to the next logical ride geographically, obviously taking some pictures along the way, including Nick in his Jurassic Park shirt with the classic Jurassic Park photo op.
The next geographically logical ride since we had already agreed we were not riding any water rides, despite the summer-like temperatures? Kong. We walked right on through the Express Pass line. I’m not really sure how to describe this ride. It’s 3D, you’re grouped with like 40 other people in a big ride vehicle. It’s kind of simulator like but also kinda moves, I think. Yeah…it was fine. Nick seemed to enjoy himself. Or at least he was chanting “Kong Kong Kong” a lot.
From here we went off to Spiderman. This was also a walk-on for us, and close to it for the standby riders. This was fun.
After Spiderman, Nick decided since he rode Hulk 20 years ago, and I was refusing to ride anything with that many giant drops, he didn’t need to ride…even though he probably would have been able to walk right on. So we continued back towards the back of the park, stopping for souvenir cups 3 and 4 of the trip…the refillable Freestyle cups.
Universal has a refill program in the parks. You buy the travel mug (price determine by how many you’re buying) and then get free refills all day at the Coke Freestyle machines throughout the park, many of which are just along the side of a walkway. 3-4 fills and the mug has paid for itself, if you’re buying more than one mug at once. It’s then $11 to activate additional days. So, with the weather as hot as it was, this was a no-brainer. I will say, it is easier to find these machines in Islands of Adventure than in Studios, but, you can find maps for Freestyle machine locations in Universal online, and that definitely helped our cause. Nick loved the fact that there were some unique sodas available in the machines at Universal (some German thing) and I appreciated the easy access to the various lemonades, my go to in the heat.
Mugs acquired, it was back to the back of the park. Time for another attraction I’d never done before: Poseidon’s Fury. We JUST missed the 10:00 show, so we had to hang out in the cave for awhile, but, it was air conditioned, we had our Freestyle cups, and we were not in direct sunlight. So it was all good.
Poseidon’s Fury was…an experience. It’s a “walking tour”/show with various effects. It was kinda cool. Kinda corny. I felt bad for the babies, because it was also kinda loud.
If you’re keeping track, it was 11:00 and we had tackled all of Islands of Adventure. Yes, we skipped the kiddie rides, Hulk, Fear Fall, and the water rides, and Hagrid’s was closed for our trip (BOOOOOO) so we probably could have added an extra hour or two there, but…Islands didn’t take us very long.
From here, it was back to Hogsmeade for a ride on the Hogwarts Express. It was time to start eating! Universal parks are not exactly known for good food, but, it was Mardi Gras season, which meant food booths, and you know we love us some special event food booths! These booths were primarily in Studios. No problem though since a) we were done with the Islands of Adventure attractions and b) we had park to park tickets.
So…Hogwarts Express it is! The Wizarding World has the best theming in the parks hands down, and this includes the station and the train. We express passed here too, which saved us a bit of time, but it wasn’t too crazy at this point in the day.
The ride over to Universal was cute and a fun experience. We exited the train station into the London waterfront area and...tried to find some food.
Finding food booths with actual food vs dessert was a little tricky, despite having a list of the booths we wanted to eat at, because…funky park layouts and maps, but within a few minutes we had found the Canada booth. We got the short rib poutine and a non-alcoholic maple lemonade. I didn’t taste much maple in the lemonade, but it was solid lemonade. The poutine was excellent though!
Next up were some NOLA themed booths very close by. Nick got some gumbo, I got the Category 5 (aka a pseudo hurricane) to drink, I think Nick got the Goombay Smash, and we added two more souvenir cups to the collection. Everything was excellent.
For Mardi Gras, they have souvenir cups for the adult beverages that grant you discounted “refills” of adult beverages at many of the food booths. In theory these were a no brainer. I’m not sure we did as well getting our money’s worth with these as we did with the soda mugs, but part of that is because of a comprehension issue that occurred later in the day.
Next up in our quest to get real food into our system after all the sweets of the day before? The twisted tater with garlic parmesan seasoning. This was…fine. Not enough seasoning and really unevenly fried. Some of it was light and puffy, and some of it was like eating an overcooked kettle chip.
By this point we had successfully filled ourselves up, so we did a bit of picture taking and a bit of store browsing, and made our way out of the park for a break.
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