Not that the walk from the boat dock to Islands of Adventure was excessively long, but since we were leaving from the Universal side of life, the walk to the boat dock was particularly short. We got to the line for Portofino, and they moved the rope to let us on a boat that had already boarded. We were on our way back to Portofino within minutes. We really had fantastic boat timing this trip!
Back at the hotel, I pulled out my Unofficial Guide and started reading ride descriptions to make sure there were no robot arms for rides at Universal, to hopefully have no repeats of the Forbidden Journey issue. Once we were confident that there would be no motion sickness issues for Nick at Universal, I took a quick nap. Man, I am exhausted this trip!
Nap taken, I changed into my swimsuit and headed for the Villa pool. I had a bit more difficulty finding the entrance for this than I should have, but I found it, and found an incredibly peaceful pool area. It was also a really high class pool area. They had a dispenser of ice water by the towels. And nicely padded loungers. And what are these hang tags on the loungers? Oh…QR codes to order from the bar, right to your seat. And plush towels.
The villa pool was a bit cooler than the Hillside one, and it was WINDY, but it was a gorgeous day, so it was still a really pleasant pool experience. If you stay at Portofino and without young kids who need the music and pool slide, go to the Villa pool.
Now the amusing part came when I got out of the pool. And this isn’t your usual pool embarrassment story. Nope, this is your “usually stays at the Disney value hotel goes deluxe” story. Remember I mentioned those plush towels? Well…they were so plush because they weren’t regular towels. The Villa pool had two types of towels, and I’d failed to notice. So here I was drying myself off not with a typical pool towel but with a towel designed to fit over the top of the lounge chair and be a towel to lay on…chair pocket and all. It worked very well since it was so big and plush but…facepalm moment.
Fortunately everyone was too busy sunning themselves to notice, so I dried off, sat in the sun for a few minutes and then headed back to the room. It was much easier to find my way out of the pool area than it was to find the pool area.
I found Nick snoring when I got back to the room so I put real clothes back on and organized for the evening, then woke him up to go back to the parks. While he was coming back to life, I ate my maple doughnut. This was delicious.
Once we were ready we headed for the boat dock, where a boat came into view just as we passed through the metal detector. Perfect timing again.
It was a quick ride over to CityWalk, and then we headed into Universal, not entirely sure of our plan of attack. When we walked past the Bourne Stunt Spectacular, Nick saw it was starting in just a couple minutes, so he suggested we do that.
This is a show in a large theater with reasonably comfortable seats. I’ve never seen any of the Bourne stuff, so I’m sure there’s a lot I was missing. But it was action-packed, loud, and the in the moment story was reasonably followable. Not really my style, but it wasn’t a terrible use of time.
Next, it was time for some food. First stop? The Brazil booth. This is where we had some comprehension issues, and ended up with…one more cup than we were anticipating. Here we got the picanha, which came with cheese bread. We also got the guava caipirinha (in an additional souvenir cup, because the cashier misheard me when I asked for a refill). Everything here was very good.
Next up? Colombia. Here, we had no comprehension issues (but I did show the cashier our empty cup so…), so we got an actual refill, this time of the Coco Loco. We also got empanadas (one beef, one chicken) and arepas. The drink here was the standout. It was excellent. The food was tasty, and the arepas were definitely better than the arepas at last year’s Flower and Garden Festival in Epcot, but they weren’t my favorite food dishes we had.
After eating, it was time to find a spot for the parade. I wanted a spot fairly close to the start of the parade route, so that we could get on with our evening itinerary quickly after the parade. We found a front row spot not far from where the floats enter the parade route and parked ourselves on the sidewalk.
While waiting, Nick checked on the temperature in our house. We’ve been having furnace issues. They used to be fairly sporadic. They’ve become more frequent. My dad, being the civil and environmental engineer, and knowing the cleaning habits of his offspring, suspects the issue is that the furnace needs cleaning. Nick’s dad, the electrical engineer believes the issue is the control panel on the furnace. Regardless, because the issue isn’t fully resolved, because good luck finding an HVAC person if you have some semblance of heat in your house, even if the thermostat has to regularly be reset, and good luck finding a control panel for a 30 year old furnace, Nick had rigged up a camera in the house right next to a cheap digital thermometer, which he could check with his phone. And…it was COLD. Like the house was in the 40s. So while we waited for the parade, Nick got on the phone with his dad who headed for the house, and I lined up reinforcement for later in the week (Thanks Jessie!).
The parade started promptly and was a lot of fun. From what I’ve learned, Universal actually contracts with the same float makers in New Orleans that make many of the floats for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The floats were impressive, the atmosphere was a freaking party, and even those of us that absolutely cannot catch, ended up with beads, without any of the NOLA Mardi Gras bead catching antics. I highly recommend Mardi Gras at Universal.
When the parade ended, Nick ended up back on the phone with his dad, who had apparently forgotten the entry code for the house door. Because of this, we stayed in our spot for a few minutes. The problem is, we had miscalculated the length of the parade and the compact size of this park. The floats exit the parade route where they enter. So…we caught the parade a second time. This allowed us to see the floats after dark, and catch some more details. But it also messed with my evening timeline.
When the second round of the parade ended, we booked it to the back of the park. We stopped for food (chicken schnitzel) at the Germany food booth. These were really good sized servings for food booths, and the chicken was really good. But damn, Germans like onions huh? The (essentially) mac and cheese that came with the chicken had seemingly more onions than noodles.
Food scarfed, we headed for Diagon Alley. Only I couldn’t find the entrance. So I asked a team member, who thankfully directed me right there, and it was pretty obvious where it was, even though I couldn’t find it. Wow, Diagon Alley is impressive!
My goal was to see the dragon blow fire at night. Thankfully that happened about two minutes after we got to Diagon Alley. Maybe we can make it back to Hogsmeade in time for the light show before the park completely closes after all!
We booked it to Kings Cross station and express passed our way to the Hogwarts Express. This is where Express Pass was particularly helpful. The wait time was close to 45 minutes for standby but the parks were closing in less time than that. We still had to wait a good chunk of time, but we bypassed a significant wait, and made it on the train with timing that worked for my final goal of the night.
I had read that the Hogwarts Express had different scenes going from Hogsmeade to London and vice versa. It was different, yes, but not extremely different.
We made it back to Hogsmeade with a few minutes to spare. YAY! We found a spot along a wall right next to the butterbeer cart by Hogwarts, so I grabbed a frozen butterbeer to enjoy while we watched the light show. We both liked the frozen butterbeer better than the cold butterbeer, and we really enjoyed the light show. They have projections on the castle about every 20 minutes from sunset until park close, with the last show right when the park closes. This is the show we were able to catch. It was excellent, and I definitely recommend catching it.
Once the show was over, we headed for the exit, stopping for a soda refill along the way. It took some effort to find an open refill station at this point in the evening, but we did find one still in Islands of Adventure. Had we not found one there, we would have stopped at the one across from Margaritaville in CityWalk on our way back to the boat.
We made it back to the boat dock and were on our way back to the resort very soon after that. I was really pleasantly surprised by the lack of crowds waiting for a boat to Portofino. The same could not be said for the line for Sapphire Falls.
When we got back to the resort, I took a few pictures of the resort at night, and then it was back to the room to shower and crash. Nick apparently ended up having to use Alexa, through the speaker in the camera at home, to flash the lights in our house to wake up his dad, who had fallen asleep on our couch, but I slept soundly through all that excitement.
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