Orlando Adventure

[BigShadowtinytree]

4th August - Islands of Adventure

An early start today as we were planning on riding Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, the queue for this is ridiculously long most of the time, so we decided to get into the park for early ride time at 8am, another perk of staying at a Universal hotel. We got in and headed straight for the ride. It had already amassed a queue of 60 minutes but that was much better than the 120 minute queues we had seen throughout our trip.

We got in line and the time was pretty accurate, although by the time we got to the lockers it was saying 90 minutes, so we were glad we got in when we did. Waiting wasn’t too bad as the queue has lots of theming to look at and the queue was constantly moving. As for the ride itself, well it was brilliant fun with so many twists, turns and surprises along the way. We were in the back 2 rows whilst my partners parents were in the front row of the train behind us, I was in a side car whilst my younger daughter was in the drivers seat. The station was pretty interesting with the slow moving platform, it certainly helps keep things moving which this ride certainly needs given how long the queues for it get as it is. The on board audio really added to the experience as well. Certainly one of my favourite family coasters of the trip, a truly fantastic coaster and once you’ve ridden it you can see why it gets the queues it does.




It was still before the main park opening and forbidden journey had opened at 8.30. We saw that it was only on a 20 minute queue so we decided to give that a go. We hadn’t looked into what this ride was so had no idea what to expect. It wasn’t my favourite ride out of the Harry Potter experiences, but it was certainly a unique experience that takes you on a journey around Hogwarts castle and I was glad to be able to do it without waiting too long. The queue for this was excellently themed, with loads to look at one the way round.



After that it was gone 9 so the park was starting to fill up. We went to queue for Flight of the Hippogriff which was showing as 35 minutes. As we were walking to the end of the line, we wondered if we had wandered into the wrong queue as the fast track line was so long, longer than the stand by queue in fact, but we had in fact gone into the correct line. After reassessing the situation and deciding that due to the amount of fast trackers, the queue wasn’t going to be moving very fast, we decided to abandon that idea for now and head for Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barges which only had a 15 minute queue.

On our way we saw that Skull Island - Reign of Kong only had an advertised queue time of 20 minutes, as it usually got quite high queues of 60+ minutes, we headed there first. We waited around 15 in the end. The ride was decent and I enjoyed a lot of the effects, especially the Kong animatronic towards the end.

Finally it was time for Popeye’s Rapids. It was getting pretty hot so we were looking forward to cooling off. What a soaker this rapids is! We were all dripping wet by the end of it! It’s very well themed too, definitely the best rapids ride I’ve ever done.

We stopped for lunch at Comic Strip Cafe, the food was ok. Not amazing but it filled us up. After that the heat was getting to us a bit, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a few hours. Other Half’s parents took the youngest daughter back, whilst my partner, older daughter and I took a detour towards Velocicoaster to check her height as we had noticed she has shot up recently and wondered if she’d be tall enough to ride.

To our complete surprise, she was tall enough! However the queue at the time was 120 minutes, so we decided we’d come back later when the queue was a little shorter and went back to the hotel for a chill out and the kids went for a swim in the pool.

A few hours later the three of us returned to IOA, the plan was to ride Velocicoaster and then head over to the Studios park to ride Rip Ride Rocket which has the same height restriction. We got in the queue for Velocicoaster which had a 70 minute queue, still fairly long but much better than the 100+ minutes. However, not long after that a storm arrived, so the ride closed. We decided we were going to wait, being under the shelter when the rain helped massively with that decision. After just over an hour the storm passed and the ride reopened. We finally got on for our third ride and our daughters first ever ride on it. We of course loved every second but how did our kid find it? Well she absolutely loved it and went straight into the nearby shop to buy herself a Velocicoaster t-shirt. Fantastic. Sharing this ride with her was a really special experience and I am thrilled she loved it, she preferred it to Iron Gwazi, which puts me in the minority out of the 3 of us as for me, Gwazi has the edge but only just.

The issue we have now is that she now thinks every other coaster is either ‘just okay’ or ‘absolutely terrible’. I’m worried on our next visit to Alton Towers, she will be bored by the likes of 13, Wickerman and Spinball!

Due to the delay it was getting late and the queue for Rip Ride Rocket was long, so we decided to call it a day, go and get some dinner from subway and retire for the evening. Another great day on this fantastic holiday!

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

5th August - SeaWorld Orlando

We arrived at SeaWorld at around 10.25am, as the park was open till 10pm and queues in the days leading up to our visit didn’t seem too bad, we weren’t in a huge rush to get there for opening. Accompanying me today was my other half, his mum and our kids. OH’s dad had a day off from the craziness of this holiday.

Unlike Busch gardens there is only one coaster the kids can ride at SeaWorld, well technically 2, but they weren’t really interested in riding the junior coaster. There are how ever plenty of animals and shows to keep them busy. The plan was to head over to Icebreaker and get that done, so that my partner and I could then go and get the big coasters done whilst the kids spent some time with their nan. Unfortunately this didn’t go completely to plan as when we got to the ride, it was closed! But they were working on getting it open so we headed into the nearby underwater exhibit to see some Belugas and Walrus’s. We were lucky enough to turn up at the Walrus’s feeding time so that was pretty cool to see. By the time we came out of there, Icebreaker had opened and was on a 25minute queue so we got in line whilst OH’s mum held the bags. The app at SeaWorld seems just as useless as it did at Busch, so we were only using it to help navigate around the park.

I’m glad they changed the restraints and no longer have comfort collars, as I can imagine they made the ride quite uncomfortable. I wasn’t a huge fan of the train design, even for me as quite a small person, I found it quite hard to get in and out of, there really isn’t much room at all! But the actual ride was pretty fun with some good pops of airtime.

Before splitting up we stopped for some lunch at the nearby burger place using our dining plan. It was quite convenient having that ‘included’ (I’m sure it was factored into the price when we purchased the tickets from attraction tickets) as like at Busch Gardens, we didn’t have to budget for food for the day.

After that it was time for the other half and I to go and tackle the big coasters. Our first stop was Mako.

Mako had an advertised queue time of 10 minutes but was actually walk on. We sat in the second to last row and it was a phenomenal ride! I felt like I was floating the whole way round! Incredible. We liked it so much we decided to go round for another go, this time going in the front row and it was just as amazing.

Next up was Kraken, the parks b&m floorless coaster, this one had a bit of a wait but only about 15 minutes or so. We sat in the back row and it was a great ride, much more intense than Mako but still really fun.

We went towards Manta but as we approached saw it had a 70mins the advertised queue time. So we went over to Pipeline, the parks new b&m surf coaster.


This was an advertised wait for 35 minutes which turned out to be pretty accurate. The outdoor section of queue for this was slightly annoying, as they have umbrellas every few feet, so instead of moving along when the queue did, people were standing under them in the shade until the next umbrella became free, which made the queue seem longer than it was and caused people behind them to be stood in the sun for longer than necessary. I feel like a canopy covering the whole outdoor queue section would have been a better idea, it would have provided shade for everyone and would have made the line flow better. The metal hand rails on the steps leading up to the station also got incredibly hot in the sun, I couldn’t hold it myself, but I could just be being a wimp.

Anyway as for the ride, we were seated in row 10 and thought this ride was great fun. The launch whilst stood up was certainly a unique experience and the bouncing train, or what ever you’d call it made for some great pops of airtime. My feet weren’t touching the floor for considerable amounts of time whilst riding! I didn’t find it that uncomfortable, just unusual and neither did my OH who is a bloke. The reason I mention this is because I’ve seen reports from a lot of men mentioning how uncomfortable this ride could be on their bits and bobs, but my partner didn’t experience any of this at all.

We then went back over to Manta, the last of the big b&m coasters we had to do at SeaWorld. The queue had gone down to 15minutes which was great. We had made it into the station and were directed to the front row which we were really excited about! Operations weren’t great, they had 2 trains in operation and only one of the stations. Unfortunately whilst we were in the station, Manta, in true b&m flyer fashion had a hissy fit and wouldn’t let the train down into the seated position to let people off so it had to close due to technical difficulties briefly. We waited it out and eventually, passengers were released. In another turn of unfortunate events, the ride along with every other ride in the park then had to close due to a storm in the area, so that was disappointing and we left the queue at that point and went to meet up with the kids & OH’s mum for a bit.

We went around some of the sea creature exhibits for a while waiting for the rides to reopen. There was no sign of a storm but we can only assume there must have been one close enough to be a concern.

Eventually the rides opened up with not a drop of rain in sight so we went back round to Manta. It said 15 minutes, great we thought. The others could wait for us whilst we had a quick ride. Turned out that 15minute queue was actually a 40 minute queue, so it was a bit of a wait for the kids unfortunately. But they were really well behaved whilst we were gone. This time once we got to the station for Manta there was no batcher, the queue for the front row was too long, so we decided to wait for the back row instead which was a bit shorter. As for the ride well it was great, our only experience of a b&m flyer was Galactica, Manta was so much better in my opinion. That pretzel loop was great!


We once again rejoined the others, stopped for hot dogs and chilli fries for dinner, which was okay and then headed over to Journey to Atlantis for our final ride of the day. It was showing as a 120 minute queue but it was more like 30. Bad luck hit us again, as we were about to board the ride broke down for a significant amount of time, we decided to wait and around an hour later it was finally open again. The ride was good, the indoor sections were pretty cool and we got decently wet but not soaked.

We then made our way to the main gift shop by the entrance, which unfortunately was lacking in coaster merch - I should have spent a bit more time looking around the shops near the coasters in hindsight, then got a taxi back to the hotel. I enjoyed my day at SeaWorld, the operations were not great, but on the whole queues weren’t terrible so it wasn’t too noticeable, apart from on Manta. The app was useless for queue times similar to Busch. The kids said their day was ok, but there wasn’t a whole lot for them to do in terms of rides, as they’re a bit old for the Sesame Street area, they mostly looked at the animals and watched a few shows, but my older daughter especially wished she could have gone on more coasters. If only she was 10cm or so taller! They really enjoyed Ice Breaker though. Unfortunately the rapids were closed all day which was a shame as I was looking forward to going on them.

Favourite ride of the day has to be Mako. Definitely one of my favourite rides of the trip so far.

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

6th August - Disney’s Hollywood Studios

The days are really flying by on this trip now. This will be our final new park of the trip. We started the day with a ride on Rock n Roller Coaster. My partners mum & dad decided to sit this one out as it’s a bit intense for their tastes.


It was on a 15 minute queue hence why we headed over here first. It was also another ‘upside down’ ride for my youngest daughter to add to her collection. We were seated in the back two rows. The ride was a bit of a head banger I must admit!

We then headed over to Tower of Terror as this only had a 20 minute queue at the time. We waited slightly less than this time so not bad going really.


The ride is wonderfully themed and very immersive. My youngest daughter wasn’t impressed with this ride though, she found it a little scary and didn’t really like the drops!

The next ride was one we were all really looking forward to. Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway!

This was a longer wait of 50 minutes, but that’s to be expected with it being one of the parks newer rides, the time was pretty accurate. I didn’t really understand why the inside of the queue line and outer building was Chinese themed? It just didn’t seem to really fit with the ride but maybe I’m missing something. The ride itself was great though, a mixture of screens and physical props with some cool special effects. A great family ride and a great addition to the park.

We then headed over to Rise of the Resistance, which was an even longer wait of 95minutes. In my opinion it was well worth the wait, this was a complete immersive experience, not just a ride. The scale of it was really impressive, and the staff played their roles really well. One of the guards even noticing my eldest daughters “I’m just here for the snacks” T-Shirt and then said “there will be NO SNACKS”. Which made us all laugh. This was probably my favourite ride of the day, despite not being a huge Star Wars fan.




After that brilliant experience, we had some lunch at Backlot Express, at which point a storm arrived. We could only find seating in the covered outdoor area, so due to the wind blowing the rain in we did get a bit wet. We didn’t let this dampen our mood though.

We headed to Star Tours which was just next door and was only a 10 minute wait to get some shelter from the rain. I’ve done the one at Disneyland Paris and although that was some years ago now and I can’t quite remember it fully, it seems pretty similar if not identical to that. My youngest daughter was the spy the enemy was after, so that gave us a good laugh when her photo appeared on the screen.

By the time we came out the rain had passed thankfully and we fancied watching a show as we haven’t really done any on this trip, so headed towards Muppet Vision 3D, another classic attraction along with Star Tours. We waited around 15 minutes for the show to begin and although slightly dated, it was still very funny.


We then headed towards Toy Story land via the Star Wars area, which is very impressive. We really wanted to get on Slinky Dog Dash, but unfortunately it was having some major issues and had been closed for some time but we thought we’d have a look anyway. Unfortunately it wasn’t showing any signs of opening any time soon, so we got in line for Toy Story Mania, which had an advertised queue of 70 minutes.


This is where unfortunately the day started to sour a bit. When we first joined the line, the queue was moving at a decent pace. As we got further in it pretty much ground to a halt and at points it didn’t move for ages. I had a feeling it was down to the lightening lane, and once we eventually got to the merge point my suspicions were correct. I’m not exaggerating when I say, they let close to 100 lightening lane people in, before letting only 10 to 20 people in from the standby queue. No wonder the queue was barely moving! It was incredibly frustrating to watch. Now I know people have paid to use the lightening lane, but this just seemed a little excessive and it did put a bit of a dampener on things. The fact that the trip so far had been really full on, and we are all starting to feel a bit tired at this point probably didn’t help matters, but after waiting considerably longer than the advertised wait time and seeing the sheer number of lightening lane people being let in whilst the stand by line was so long, I feel our frustrations were understandable. We weren’t the only ones to comment on the amount of fast trackers being let in and how slow moving the queue was either, people around us were talking about it too. I feel the whole thing could have been a little more balanced. After all everyone has paid a lot of money to be there, not just the fast track users.

Anyway we did eventually get to ride and it was decent fun, but I feel like the amount of lightening lane users takes the magic away from the park somewhat.

We came off the ride and Slinky Dog Dash was still closed. Disappointing but these things happen sometimes. It was at this point, at around 4.45pm we decide to leave the park. Slinky remained closed for the rest of the day. On the whole I really enjoyed this park and did feel we got a decent amount of rides in, but it does get frustrating when you’re in a long queue that doesn’t move.

We had discussed the idea of doing a bit of park hopping tomorrow, with the plan being to visit magic kingdom in the morning and then head back to Hollywood Studios to tick off Slinky, then off to Epcot at around 2ish to do the one or two rides we missed there and then watch their evening show. This ended up not happening but I’ll explain I’m more detail in the next update. Thanks for reading my reports so far. I appreciate they may not be the most interesting reads and I can go on a bit, but I’m glad to be able to share my thoughts on here with you all.

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

7th August - Magic Kingdom


I slept through my alarm to book Tron, but fortunately my partner was already awake so he sorted it and we managed to get a fairly early slot as we were in group 25. Great as we’d originally planned to do some park hopping so didn’t want to be hanging around Magic Kingdom all day.

We got to the park for around 9.20 and started making our way towards Tron as we were expecting the call very soon. On our way we went on Buzz Lightyears Space Ranger Spin which had an advertised queue of 25 minutes but we only waited 15 minutes. We got our call to get on Tron whilst we were waiting but you have an hour to get there and since the line was moving fast we had plenty of time. This shooter ride was pretty good! I liked how you could control the direction of the car using the stick.



Next up it was Tron time! My partners parents decided to sit this one out so we’d only booked a slot for the 4 of us and they held the bags.

Walking up to this ride you see a very impressive structure with some of the coaster track running through it. We waited maybe 30 minutes or so to get on, the trains are very unusual unlike nothing I’ve been on before. You lean forwards and pull the handlebars towards you and as you do this the restraint goes onto your back. I found it reasonably comfortable to sit in. The ride itself was good but not as amazing as I’d hoped. If anything I thought it was quite a short ride that was over too soon. Glad we got to go on it as it was certainly a unique experience. But out of the two virtual queue coasters at Disney, I definitely preferred Cosmic Rewind for the overall experience.

We decided to do Space Mountain next seeing as we were in the area, this had a 45 minute wait, again OH’s parents decided to sit this one out and went on some of the more gentler rides in Tomorrowland whilst they waited. Unfortunately whilst we were waiting, Space Mountain broke down and going by the announcements being made, people were having to be evacuated from it, it didn’t seem like this was going to be a quick stop so we left the queue. It remained broken down for a good hour.

Despite it having a 90minute advertised queue time, we headed over to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train as this was one we had all said we wanted to do, it always seemed to have a long queue so we thought why not just suck it up. This might have been a mistake.

Whilst the queue did seem to be moving at a steady pace to begin with, unfortunately it turned out to be very much like our experience on Toy Story Midway Mania, where the queue would become really slow and/or stop for extended periods of time. As the majority of the queue is outdoors, and those overhead fans in the covered section of the queue are utterly pointless, we all ended up becoming a bit hot and bothered during this wait in the 35° heat. It got better once we got to the indoor portion of the queue, however we could then see just how many lightening lane users were being let through, which just added to our frustrations. We ended up waiting 120 minutes in total, so not great really.

As for the ride itself well it was ok, good fun in fact. Although it did break down briefly for a few minutes whilst we were in the indoor mine section, which kind of upset the flow of the ride, that along with the long, frustrating wait meant that we didn’t really enjoy the ride as much as we could have. Upon leaving the ride, the lightening lane was absolutely full of people, it went along the length of the exit path, no wonder the stand by queue was taking so long. Disney seem to be overselling their version of fast track to an extreme degree. Not a fan of this approach at all personally.

I checked out the app after coming off and 4 rides were listed as temporarily closed. Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and I think Peter Pan but I can’t be sure, there were definitely 4 big attractions closed at once though, not a great afternoon for Magic Kingdom! Plus the fact that Haunted Mansion had closed for a few days for maintenance (we should have ridden it on our first MK visit as it was open then), ride availability had become a slight issue for a while there.

It was at this point that we decided to forget our idea of park hopping to Epcot and possibly Hollywood Studios to ride Slinky Dog (which was showing as a 100+ minute queue all day anyway) and make our way back to the hotel. We all unanimously agreed that this was to be our last Disney park visit of the trip and that we were going to stick to the Universal parks for our final days in Florida. The queues seemed much more manageable going by the app, and although they do use a fast track system, it doesn’t seem to be used anywhere near as much as genie+/lightening lane.

A slightly disappointing second day at Magic Kingdom I must admit. Tron was probably the highlight, but even that wasn’t all I’d hoped, I think the bar was set by Cosmic Rewind, imo the superior ride.

Edit; something else I forgot to mention that happened on our visit. Not long after we got in the queue for Seven Dwarfs, some fireworks around the castle went off, around 8 in total I reckon. I don’t think this was meant to happen as not long after that, the area we were in was all Smokey and bits of ash was falling from the sky from the fireworks.

That’s the sort of blunder I’d expect at a merlin park, not Disney

 

[Alastair]

The next ride was one we were all really looking forward to. Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway!

This was a longer wait of 50 minutes, but that’s to be expected with it being one of the parks newer rides, the time was pretty accurate. I didn’t really understand why the inside of the queue line and outer building was Chinese themed? It just didn’t seem to really fit with the ride but maybe I’m missing something.

In a past life (not that long ago - before retheming!) this was the entrance to The Great Movie Ride - the frontage is therefore a replica of the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. I assume they left it like that because...budget? Can see how it is confusing nowadays though!

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

In a past life (not that long ago - before retheming!) this was the entrance to The Great Movie Ride - the frontage is therefore a replica of the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. I assume they left it like that because...budget? Can see how it is confusing nowadays though!

I did wonder if this was another attraction in a previous life. Shame really as the new attraction is really good. It just doesn’t quite fit with its surroundings.

Maybe Disney will use all their profits from genie+ sales to finish the job!

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

8th August - Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure

Today is our second to last day of our trip before we travel home on Thursday/Friday We arrived at the Universal Studios park at just before 11am and it was a hot one today, reaching highs of 36°! Our first ride of the day was Rip Ride Rockit. My partner, eldest daughter and I went off to ride it whilst the others went to have a ride on Escape From Gringotts.

We put our stuff in a paid locker, then the other half forgot to put his phone in so he went to put it in a small free one. There was an issue though as non of our park tickets would scan to open a locker so we had to get a ticket from the host at the front of the queue. The queue was advertised as 20 minutes and was pretty spot on. As for the ride it was alright, not the most comfortable seats particularly if you don’t have long legs, and the ride was a little rough but not unbearable. I liked how you could choose a song to play as you went round, I chose Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’! But overall we all enjoyed it, it was different.

We went to get our stuff out the lockers but they wouldn’t open so we went to get help and they had to manually open both lockers for us. Apparently they had been having lots of issues with them this morning, the system had updated overnight and thrown a spanner in the works, the rest of our group had a similar problem with their locker over at Gringotts too. I must admit I did find the whole locker system a bit of a pain. I just found the locker area chaotic with people coming and going, standing in the way of the scanners or your locker, faffing about getting or putting away their stuff etc. It might just be because I’m used to either leaving my stuff in the station whilst I ride or having access to a manned baggage hold. Having to pay for a bigger locker if you have a backpack is a bit of a pain too. But enough of my complaining!

The three of us started making our way over to Diagon Alley, on the way we passed Revenge of the Mummy, and decided to give the single rider queue a go. It only took about 15 minutes for the 3 of us to get on vs a 35 minute stand by queue. My partner went on first then my daughter and I were seated together on the next train, which was lucky! This is a great ride with some fantastic special effects, thoroughly enjoyed it.

We met up with the others outside of Gringotts and since it was on a 30 minute queue, my partner and I decided to ride with the kids. His parents decided to sit this one out so we left them with the bags. The 30 minute queue was more like 15 minutes so that was good. The ride was great, I feel like Gringotts is more of a dark ride experience, where as Mummy has a bit more of a coaster element to it. Both fantastic rides that offer different experiences regardless.


My partners parents hadn’t ridden Revenge of the Mummy yet but they wanted to, so we headed back over there as it only had a 20 minute queue. My partner decided to sit this one out so we left him with the bags. The wait time was pretty accurate, the short queues today have been great, a much nicer experience than our previous days at Disney. Another great ride on Mummy was had, and everyone enjoyed it.

We decided it was time to head to Islands of Adventure so we got the Hogwarts express over, it had been delayed for the last hour, but had not long opened up and had a 25 minute queue which wasn’t too bad. We were happy to be able to ride it in both directions. It might have been quicker to just walk across City Walk but it was a very hot day and it’s such a cool way to switch between the two parks that we didn’t mind the wait.


We got into Islands of Adventure and was about to queue up for The Three Broomsticks for lunch, however the heat was getting to my partners parents a bit, so we had a change of plan. They headed back to the hotel with the kids, we followed not long after. But not before having a ride on The Hulk, as we had yet to ride it and it was only a 15minute wait.

We thought the ride was pretty good! We were seated in the back row, the launch up the tunnel was good fun and the mist part way through the ride was very much welcome. We did find the latter part of the ride to be lacking a bit, it sort of lumbered through into the station. I don’t think it was one of our top coasters of the trip but it wasn’t a bad ride at all.

We saw that Doctor Doom’s Fearfall was only a 10 minute wait, so we thought we might as well tick that off before heading back. The other half gets a bit nervous when it comes to drop/launch towers but the lack of a wait meant he didn’t have much time to over think it and in the end he didn’t find it so bad. The ride was good fun with a punchy upwards launch and some good views of the park, we spotted our hotel whilst riding.

We got back to the hotel and had a late lunch there, it was slightly cheaper than food in the park anyway and it was pretty nice! The kids went in the pool for a bit.

At around 5pm my partner and I headed back into Islands of Adventure, it was still very hot so we got in the queue for The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man which was a 25 minute wait but we actually waited about 15! We hadn’t done this ride yet, I thought it was fantastic. The water spray was unexpected but very welcome.

With it still being warm out, we then headed over to Jurassic Park River Adventure. The queue was only 25 minutes but we’d only waited 15 by the time we’d got to the front of the queue. Unfortunately as we were waiting to board, the ride broke down. One set of gates wouldn’t close after letting people through from what we could gather, so after a bit they decided to just run the ride on one set of gates. Luckily the gates that were playing up weren’t the ones we were waiting at. We were straight on and in the front row after it reopened and got pretty soaked from that huge drop! I also somehow ended up smacking my knees off the boat at the end of that drop which hurt a bit!

After that we met up with my partners mum, who had brought our eldest daughter to the park so she could go on Velocicoaster with us! She had wanted to stay in the pool for another hour when we left the hotel earlier, so she had offered to come and meet us later, bless her heart.

We got into the queue for Velocicoaster which was showing as a 35 minute advertised wait. This was pretty accurate. We were in the back two rows and it was fantastic. We then went round for another go, this time the wait was 45 minutes which isn’t too bad. The fast track queue was so full by this time, the fullest I’d seen it the entire trip, they had to open a couple of extensions for it. However the stand by queue was still moving at a decent pace and it didn’t seem to delay it too much, so it wasn’t a huge issue, although there were a lot of announcements about fast trackers having their quick queue tickets ready. This was to be our last ride of the evening and again we got the back two rows. It was dark by this point too, yay night ride! It was an amazing ride.

 

[Zeock]

I am pleased that you enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man! I like your new profile picture!

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

9th August - Islands of Adventure

Our last park visit of the trip. We started off with a ride on Spider-Man, as only my partner and I had ridden it so far. The queue was advertised at 40 minutes but we only waited 25.

After that we headed over to the Dr. Seuss area to ride Cat in the Hat which only had a 5 minute queue.

This was was ok, not as mind blowing when it comes to special effects as some of the other dark rides in the park but a nice enough ride regardless and one that you don’t mind waiting 5 minutes for.

We decided to stick around this area and ride the Caro-Seuss-el. Just me and the kids for this one. You can’t really go wrong with a ride on a carousel!


Our last ride in this area was The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Ride.

We waited about 25 minutes and it was a nice relaxing ride where you get some good views of the park, I got a couple of good photos of Velocicoaster and The Hulk whilst riding.

After that we had a quick stop for lunch at Fire Eaters Grill, I had the crispy chicken gyro and it was really tasty. We then headed over to The Flight of the Hippogriff as we had yet to ride this coaster. It was to be the last new coaster of the trip. We waited around 30 minutes, which was quite hard going in the heat, especially as the queue line doesn’t have much shade or fans to keep cool. We finally got on and as far as junior coasters go this was good fun. It went faster than it looks and had some decent force to it. I’m glad we got to ride all the rides in the Harry Potter area over the course of this trip.

At this point the temperature was hitting its peak so we decided to retire back to the hotel for a few hours before heading back at around 5.30pm for some final rides of the trip. OH’s dad decided to stay back at the hotel and start packing whilst me, the other half, his mum and the kids headed back into Islands of Adventure.

We headed towards Jurassic Park River Adventure. I didn’t fancy riding this again and neither did my partners mum, so we went and had a sit down whilst they went in the 10 minute queue for it.


Next, we split up. My partner, eldest daughter and I headed towards Velocicoaster for our final ride on this fantastic coaster. The advertised wait was 40 minutes but we were off collecting our things from the lockers after just 35 minutes. We were seated near the front of the train on rows 3 and 4, on all our previous rides we wear near the back so this was a slightly different experience but still very enjoyable. I kind of wish I had queued up for a front row ride at some point now!

Whilst we were doing that, my partners mum and youngest daughter had a ride on Pteranodon Flyers and they said it was a good ride, I wish I had managed to get on this myself but oh well. We then met up with them in the Discovery Centre and then headed towards Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure for our second ride on it of the trip. Partners mum decided to sit this one out so we left her with the bags and got into the queue for our final ride of the trip. It had an advertised queue of 60 minutes but we only waited 45. It was dark by the time we got on and this time I sat in the motorbike seat and what a fantastic ride this is, riding it at night was a very special experience. What a way to end our trip.

The rides has closed by the time we got off so we made our way back through the park, enjoying the ambience of the park at night, it truly is a beautiful place with so much immersive theming.


We stopped off in the main Universal gift shop in city walk and spent a small fortune on souvenirs before heading back to the hotel to pack.

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

10th/11th August - Travel Day and Final Thoughts
We are finally home after a long day of travelling, I feel a bit all over the place with the time difference and I think I’m coming up to 24 hours straight of being awake so I do apologise if this final instalment doesn’t make sense in places.

We started the day with breakfast in the hotel, it was actually our first and only time getting breakfast from the hotel restaurant as we’d been having cereal or pastries in our room for most of the holiday, apart from the one day we went to IHOP. I had French toast which i’d never had before and it was lovely.

Our coach transfer came to pick us up from Dockside Hotel at around 11.45am on the Thursday morning, and after a couple more pick ups at other hotels nearby we were on our way back to Melbourne Orlando International Airport, it took around an hour an 15 minutes to get there. Check in went smoothly, the great thing about this airport is that it’s very small and not busy at all so
It’s much less stressful than busier airports. Tui are the only airline doing international flights from there, the rest seem to be domestic flights across the USA, from what I saw anyway. Our 4.50pm flight to Birmingham International seemed to be the only international flight that day. We headed to security and I always find this part of the airport experience to be stressful, even at a quiet airport like Melbourne. We had to remove shoes and jumpers, and I got pulled to one side to get my hands swabbed which was certainly an experience! Obviously nothing untoward came up so that was fine.

Once we got into the departure lounge it was a nice relaxing wait until our gate opened.


We boarded the Boeing 787 Tui Dreamliner slightly later than expected but the pilot didn’t seem to know why that was and apologised before take off for the slight delay, not a huge issue anyway. The flight went smoothly and took about 7.5hours, which was slightly shorter than our flight out. The on board entertainment was working perfectly this time too which certainly helped pass the time, I couldn’t sleep on the plane unfortunately but at least I could watch a few films. Our trays were a bit dirty, so I certainly don’t think the delay was due to cleaning! Bit grim but we had some wipes with us so not to worry.

We landed at around 5.30am and had to get a bus round to passport control. Arrivals at BHX didn’t seem too busy at that time, and our checked luggage came out on the carousel fairly quickly once we got through passport control. We were home by 6.45am, the joys of living a 15minute car journey from the airport. There were lots of northerners on our flight and I didn’t envy them having to then drive a couple of hours home after a long flight.

Final Thoughts
This holiday has been a fantastic experience. It was mine and the kids first time visiting Orlando. Whilst it was my partners and his parents third visit, although their last visit was 20 years ago so a lot has changed since then.

Our hotel, Universals Endless Summer Dockside was brilliant and had everything we needed in terms of facilities. Two swimming pools, a quick service style canteen with some pretty decent food on offer and not too badly priced either, laundry facilities, a kitchenette with fridge, sink and microwave in the room which came in handy, the aircon in the room was great, it was clean and the beds were pretty comfortable too. Although I did miss having a proper duvet. The free shuttle bus to and from the Universal parks was invaluable and meant we could easily pop back to the hotel when ever it got a bit much and then go back to the parks later. The early ride time was also a nice perk; although we only really made use of it once over our stay. Overall I felt it was well worth staying at a resort hotel. One other thing was that we got a couple of hotel freestyle cups which we could use for the length of our stay for $19.99 each plus tax, which is a bargain really especially when you compare it to how much the cups in the park cost per day and how much a single bottle of coke or sprite or what ever cost. It saved us loads on soft drinks whilst we were at the hotel (it couldn’t be used in the parks).

The only slight disappointment was the utter madness that was genie+/lightening line at the Disney parks. Which at times caused the stand by line to grind to a halt for significant periods. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said they were letting around 100 people in through the lightening line on Midway Mania vs just 10-20 people from the stand by line. A total contrast from our experience at the universal parks, where they have their own fast track system. Even when the Velocicoaster quick queue was very busy, the main queue still moved at a decent pace. Whilst I don’t claim to know the ins and outs, the way Disney and universal implement their fast track systems is obviously very different and from a ‘peasant queue’ as I like to jokingly call it, point of view, Universal’s implementation is much better and makes for a much more pleasant experience for those of us who choose not to or can’t afford to spend extra on fast track.

I rode a total of 24 roller coasters during this trip, bringing my total coaster count to 85. There were two coasters we wanted to get on but couldn’t ride due to breakdowns, those were Slinky Dog Dash and Space Mountain. My top 5 coasters from my trip are as follows:
1. Iron Gwazi
2. Velocicoaster
3. Mako
4. Montu
5. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind

I don’t think I rode a bad coaster on this trip, all of them were great to experience, but these are the ones that stood out to me the most. I just wish I’d managed to get a second ride on Iron Gwazi, but I’ll settle for getting multiple rides on Velocicoaster and getting to ride with my eldest daughter, who absolutely loved it.

We also did a number of dark rides throughout this trip. My top 5 are:
1. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
2. Avatar Flight of Passage
3. Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts
4. Mickey and Minnies Runaway Railway
5. The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman

We visited 8 theme parks, they were all great in their own way. My best to worst list is as follows:
1. Islands of Adventure
2. Universal Studios
3. Disney’s Hollywood Studios
4. Epcot
5. Seaworld Orlando
6. Animal Kingdom
7. Magic Kingdom
8. Busch Gardens Tampa
The parks that ranked lower weren’t necessarily bad parks, they were all brilliant in their own way. Just if I had to put them in order this is how I’d rank them. It was very close!

Out of the two water parks we did, Volcano Bay and Typhoon Lagoon, I preferred Typhoon Lagoon. Volcano Bay was great and had some brilliant attractions, but queues were much shorter at Typhoon and there was no virtual queueing, which I’m not a great fan of, although it did seem to work decently well at Volcano Bay as there was plenty to do whilst you waited including a couple of slides which didn’t require you to queue virtually, and the human rapids was amazing fun.

I think that’s about it for my Florida Adventure. Thanks for reading my posts on this incredible, possibly, but hopefully not a once in a lifetime trip. It was probably the most exhausting holiday I’ve been on, with not much time to breathe in between parks! I hope you’ve found my ramblings over the last 2 weeks at least somewhat interesting. Thank you for reading.