February 2025: A Central Florida Winter Vacation: Day 6

Day 6: Thursday February 27, 2025

I know we are all surprised that I was awake early so I got up, got ready for the day, and had a granola bar for breakfast.

Pretty soon I woke Nick up and got him moving too. We had places to be today!

I think we were in the car by 7:45. It was an uneventful drive over to Universal and by 8:15 we were parked in the garage in section Kong row 108 and moving along the series of escalators and moving walkways from the parking garage to Citywalk.

Crowds were very light at this point in the morning, so we cruised through Citywalk, reminiscing about the Voodoo doughnuts we’d had two years ago and taking some pictures along our walk over to the gate at Universal.

 
I think they opened the gates between 8:30 and 8:45. This was a process, because for some reason that wasn’t actually explained, everybody’s picture had to be taken by the team member as we scanned in.

Once in the park, we veered to the rope over to the right, near the Bourne stunt show, thinking that would give us a straighter shot to Diagon Alley. The rope was dropped just about 9:00, and spoiler alert, we did not have the most direct route to Diagon Alley. Turns out they weren’t just not opening Simpsons and Men In Black rides until 10, but they also weren’t even opening up that area of the park. But we still were back in Diagon Alley pretty quickly, where we quickly found out that Gringotts was having an extended delayed opening. Of course. So, I took a few pictures.

After checking one more time to confirm that Gringotts was still down, we devised a plan B and headed for the other roller coaster in this park that we will both ride: The Mummy.

This felt a little more like a roller coaster than it did when we rode it two years ago, so I liked it better. Last time it felt more like a weird combination of roller coaster and dark ride.

After Mummy, I checked the app again. Gringotts was STILL down, so we headed for the other ride we would both ride that would build an unreasonable wait. At this point in the day, though, Transformers was close to a walk on. I still don’t understand how little kids are so obsessed with Transformers. Are there two levels of Transformers stuff the way Disney movies are multi-level?

Having saved the world from or escaped from (not sure) the transformers, we then walked the long way around the park to Men in Black, me taking pictures and checking on the status of Gringotts along the way. I think it was during this time frame that it re-opened, but the wait time instantly skyrocketed to over an hour.

 
After some picture taking, we made it to Men in Black. Here we ended up waiting about double the posted wait time, because they were only loading one side, but, our wait was still only like 20 minutes. Get to the parks early people! “Shoot em up” attractions are always fun, so obviously, we had fun with this.

Having shot lots of aliens (I think), we collected our stuff from the lockers and then bought our refillable mugs for the day. Universal’s refillable mug program is a deal, and these mugs were awesome.

Mugs full of sugary coke products from the Freestyle machine, we headed back to Diagon Alley, so that I could get another sugary beverage: a frozen butterbeer. I then explored some of the shops here that I had missed two years ago while Nick watched some wizard singers.

Diagon Alley sufficiently explored, and Gringotts wait time continuing to increase, we decided it was time to start enjoying the Mardi Gras food. It took a few minutes to find it, but we did. We started with chicken gumbo and cajun mac and cheese from a New Orleans booth. The gumbo was basically flavored rice, so pretty meh. The mac and cheese was delicious!

 Then it was off to the bar for a Category 5 and a souvenir cup. This beverage was excellent!

And then one more food item for now: empanadas from the Columbia booth (I think). These were very good, but I forgot to take pictures.

By now, the sun was out and it was warmer than we’d experienced since last summer, so we decided it was time for sustained air conditioning. We made our way to the Bourne Stuntacular show, by way of a Minions photo op.

The Bourne show was good, and a solid way to cool down for a bit. From here, we explored the Mardi Gras tribute store, which was even more well done than two years ago (and it was impressive then!). Since it was 30 years of Universal Mardi Gras, and we’ve now been here twice for Mardi Gras, we picked up a Universal Mardi Gras ornament while in the store.

We decided more air conditioning would be good, and there was a show starting soon, so our next stop was the Horror Makeup show. I think this was a first for both of us. It was hilarious. We both really enjoyed it!

Our tour of the Universal shows complete, we headed back over to Minion Land. They’ve done a great job with this area. We had fun taking in the details.

And then it was time to try the new since we were last hear attraction: Villain Con. This is a continuous load, so there was virtually no wait. It’s a much higher tech shoot em up game. Stand on a dot on a moving walkway and shoot at digital screens as the moving walkway moves you along. We both had a LOT of fun, and when it was done Nick made it clear he wanted to try that again before the end of the day!

Time for a soapbox, because it wouldn’t be a Heather trip without one! Minion Land has a character meet and greet area. Different Illumination characters. They have times listed, but they don’t tell you what characters will be greeting. Since it’s in Minion Land, you assume it’ll be Minion characters. Our first pass by, it WAS Minions. We wanted a picture with a Minion for Nick’s mom, who is Minion obsessed. When we returned to Minion land it was one of the villains meeting so, meh. The next greet was about to start, so we watched from the shade to see who it would be. It was characters from Sing. Thumbs down. A LITTLE more clarification as to who might be meeting and when would be awesome. I don’t need specific Minion or even Villain names, but maybe movie and theme would be nice!

I checked the app, and the wait for Gringotts had dropped to 45 minutes, so we headed for Diagon Alley. Of course when we got there, the wait had increased to 55 minutes. I suggested the single rider line, but Nick was like “eh, we need to kill time, let’s just wait it out”. So we tackled the absolute chaos that is the locker area, stored our stuff, and joined the line.

The wait ended up being somewhere between 45 and 50 minutes. The upside to the wait was it allowed for some picture taking opportunities that we hadn’t taken advantage of two years ago. And thankfully Gringotts was as great a ride as I remembered. It was worth the wait!

Having successfully escaped Gringotts, it was time for more food. We headed back to the Carnaval booths, specifically the Puerto Rico booth. This booth had been getting rave reviews online, and the menu was right up our alley, so we had to try it. I got the pina colada and then we split the plantain fritters and the pork skewer with guava bbq sauce.

 This booth was worthy of every rave review. Our favorite was the pork skewer, but seriously, this booth was fantastic.

Food consumed, we listened to a band for a bit, which included watching the drummer use a drumstick on one side of his drum and a screw driver as his second drumstick.

Then we did a lap around the park, including exploring the new DreamWorks area.

And then it was time to find a spot to watch the parade. We ended up grabbing a spot with probably half an hour until parade time, so that Nick would have a lamp post to lean against and I, the shorty, would have a front row spot.

The Mardi Gras parade was fantastic, and probably even more exciting having been to Mardi Gras World last year, where they build these floats. Nick caught lots of beads for me (and I caught some too), all without the usual NOLA bead catching antics, because this is a family park. And truly, the parade is awesome, AND family friendly. I still very highly recommend visiting Universal during Mardi Gras. It adds a lot to the experience!

When the parade ended, we headed for the exit. Universal had opened up an additional backstage exit, so we followed the crowd toward that. Once out of the park, we headed straight back to the parking garage, kind of amazed by the amount of people still pouring into CityWalk. Apparently it’s free parking after 6 pm, so presumably that’s why.

We made it back to the car and it was an uneventful less than 20 minute drive back to our resort, where we showered and crashed. It had been a good day!