Monday 8/23
And the adventure begins
We woke up around 3:40am
Car service to airport arrived at 4:30am and we arrived at Boston Logan airport at 5:10am.....2 hours before our take off time.
We checked-in to Delta last night, and had boarding passes saved to my phone.
(check those carefully- more to come)
I also prepaid for our checked bag, and was ready to use Delta's Curbside luggage drop off service.
A few months previous to the trip, during the planning stage I made it a point to get TSA precheck….and wow what a difference that makes
WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING.
Which leads to my first Recommendation
Recommendation #1:TSA precheck is the best in airport pre-planning upgrade one can have, I had 1 person in front of me in the security line, don’t have to take out liquids, don’t have to remove shoes.
One caveat, one must ensure the boarding pass has the “TSA check-in” written on the boarding pass, luckily this morning I noticed that 1 of 3 tickets was missing this on the boarding pass and I was able to quickly log in to the delta website, and re-add the TSA number, luckily it immediately was added and the new boarding pass was generated.
Leading up the trip were concerns was hurricane Henri and it’s impact to the Boston area, luckily we were fortunate that hurricane Henri missed eastern Massachusetts and we had no impact flying out of Boston… (Prayers for all those effect)
7am Before jumping on our flight it was time to text Tony to alert him that our flight was rescheduled 20 min later than what I sent him a couple weeks ago…but I’m sure he already knew as he had the flight information and track on his end.
goodbye Boston and the AM fog
The flight was nice, we did not have seat assigned on our tickets and being at the airport so early, we were first to talk to the gate crew. We were able to get exit row seats for the 3 of us.
In MCO….
Before the flight, Tony mentioned to call/text him the location number when we walked out of the airport and in less than 5 min Tony showed up to the pick-up location and we were off to PB. Tony was nice to talk to you and got us to the hotel in 18 minutes.
So landed at MCO at 10:10, grabbed one checked bag, contacted Tony and was at PB at 11:00.
There was no line to check in at PB, and we asked for a balcony room but there was none. However, a room was ready and we ended up in room 2681 partially over looking the main pool with the sandy beach.
A quick unpack and a quick change of clothes and we were off to to look for food at the Club level......being our first time with a Club level room and not knowing the schedule we arrived before 12:00pm and there was only fruit, water and soda.
So off to UIO
With only a handful of people in line to buy tickets I figured it was a good time to upgrade my 2 day + 2 days park-to-park to the cheapest annual pass. And for an additional $48, I was upgraded. (It did take the employee a good 20 min to figure how to upgrade the pass, so not as quick as I liked....and it was HOTT)
The upgrade caused issues when we were at the gate to enter into the park for the first time and in scanning our fingerprints.
My universal wallet took a few min to register the change in ticket and we had a hard time figuring out what tickets were whos.
(I made the mistake of scanning everyone’s tickets into my universal wallet earlier in the week and in doing so, they are locked to my account and no one else could have their ticket in their own universal wallet. So, I had to take a screen shot of each ticket and text them to the family).
It took a good 10 minutes to figure out the issue......
Off to Hagrid’s motorbike and it’s 45 min wait…
Hagrid’s I knew would be one of the hardest and or longest rides to get on or wait for…..and today I found out why…..the girls rode on the bike in front of me with the wife in the sidecar and daughter on the bike…..I got my choice and got paired up with the single rider directly behind me….I chose the bike….but WOW what a ride….2 unexpected twists I did not see or read about and loved them…
#1 ride of the park.
Next we decided on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey…..this one was not good for someone who gets migraines and motion sickness. I enjoyed it but it did not make my top 5
1:50pm now
Honestly when we walked in the castle we thought we were going to ride flight of the hippogriff and a lot of people walking out was thinking the same. The motion made a little sick and we sat outside and took a break. So as the wife was recovering, the daughter and I walked on Flight of Hippogriff and was surprised at how tame and short it was. Might be the least memorable ride of the day
Making our way out of HP we saw VeloCicoaster and the 25 min wait…
I was really expecting to ride this alone but the daughter said she was told this was awesome by her boyfriend’s mother, so I think she did not want to go back home without going on this. I was surprise that my daughter was excited about this roller coaster and if she was able to this, I knew I was not going to being ride a lot of rides by myself, like i did 10 years ago. it was an excellent ride and we were out in 20 min.
We decided it was a good idea to eat and it was 2:29pm…..none of us ate all day. One of the wants of the daughter was to eat at Three Broomsticks. This turned out to be one of the worst decisions of the trip. The line was a little longer than we expected, when we arrived with the line wrapped to inside of the front door and not knowing how far it wrapped around we thought we were ok. Besides the longer wait than we had expected, issue #1: the wife, whom added her credit card to the universal app…tried to pay….the cashier was confused and did not how to process this payment…eventually help came over after here pressing a few buttons….issue #2 the payment got denied…so thinking the code timed out, the cashier tried again only for the card to be denied again…finally I pulled up my wallet and the code I had with my credit card and paid ......we ordered Fish and Chips and the smoked chicken…not sure what happened in the kitchen and servers (well the server did spill a drink onto food…not once but twice….multiple parties in our line that were behind us, received there food before us…..whatever this place gets 1 star recommendations from me, due to the decor (but the service, dry chicken and fish was blah it was a zero)….The whole experience took 1 hour
After we made our way and walked on Jurassic Park River Adventure
It was 4:05pm now
We continued on our counter-clockwise way around the park and saw RIpSaw Falls.
We were bewildered that this ride did not have free lockers so we paid the $4 I think and rented a small locker which gets us to recommendation #2 if going to UIO it will be hard to pass up the water rides, PLAN what you will wear on your feet accordingly. It will take 1-2 days for sneakers to dry, so plan accordingly…you do not want to spend the next day walking in wet sneakers
Since soaking wet and had a locker paid for, it only made sense to go on Popeye and Bluto’s Barges…at this point we were wet but after this ride we were, well nothing was dry now…Now we understood why it is recommended to bring a change of clothes, or to make these 2 rides the last rides of the day, cause it was back to the lockers and time to make our way back to PB.
4:49pm
But before leaving we walked on Spider-Man…this is one of my favorite rides
and since Doctor Doom’s free fall had no wait, we walked right on….wish the ride went up more than just one
Well Hulk was on the way out too and was a walk on so why not….maybe the spin and acceleration would dry us off…
5:33pm exit from the park
We took the boat back to PB, left with the boat 1/3 full and headed back room to peel off all of the wet clothes…the worst being the socks…
Showered and debated what to eat…we originally planned to eat at Mama Delles at the hotel but decided on the daughter and myself split a pizza back at Red Oven Pizza in City Walk,
The women who seated us did not tell us to do counter service ordering or online ordering so took us overhearing a nearby table that were doing this and that’s how we figured out we needed to do that.
Pizza was a 6.7 out of 10.
We grabbed a Cinnabon to split and headed back for the hotel
Again boat was 1/3 full.
Btw zero rain for the day!
recommendation #3. Buy/wear UPF50+ and quick dry shirt and shorts, they are great in the sun and the wet
We took approximately 9,000 steps this day.
And the adventure begins
We woke up around 3:40am
Car service to airport arrived at 4:30am and we arrived at Boston Logan airport at 5:10am.....2 hours before our take off time.
We checked-in to Delta last night, and had boarding passes saved to my phone.
(check those carefully- more to come)
I also prepaid for our checked bag, and was ready to use Delta's Curbside luggage drop off service.
A few months previous to the trip, during the planning stage I made it a point to get TSA precheck….and wow what a difference that makes
WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING.
Which leads to my first Recommendation
Recommendation #1:TSA precheck is the best in airport pre-planning upgrade one can have, I had 1 person in front of me in the security line, don’t have to take out liquids, don’t have to remove shoes.
One caveat, one must ensure the boarding pass has the “TSA check-in” written on the boarding pass, luckily this morning I noticed that 1 of 3 tickets was missing this on the boarding pass and I was able to quickly log in to the delta website, and re-add the TSA number, luckily it immediately was added and the new boarding pass was generated.
Leading up the trip were concerns was hurricane Henri and it’s impact to the Boston area, luckily we were fortunate that hurricane Henri missed eastern Massachusetts and we had no impact flying out of Boston… (Prayers for all those effect)
7am Before jumping on our flight it was time to text Tony to alert him that our flight was rescheduled 20 min later than what I sent him a couple weeks ago…but I’m sure he already knew as he had the flight information and track on his end.
goodbye Boston and the AM fog
The flight was nice, we did not have seat assigned on our tickets and being at the airport so early, we were first to talk to the gate crew. We were able to get exit row seats for the 3 of us.
In MCO….
Before the flight, Tony mentioned to call/text him the location number when we walked out of the airport and in less than 5 min Tony showed up to the pick-up location and we were off to PB. Tony was nice to talk to you and got us to the hotel in 18 minutes.
So landed at MCO at 10:10, grabbed one checked bag, contacted Tony and was at PB at 11:00.
There was no line to check in at PB, and we asked for a balcony room but there was none. However, a room was ready and we ended up in room 2681 partially over looking the main pool with the sandy beach.
A quick unpack and a quick change of clothes and we were off to to look for food at the Club level......being our first time with a Club level room and not knowing the schedule we arrived before 12:00pm and there was only fruit, water and soda.
So off to UIO
With only a handful of people in line to buy tickets I figured it was a good time to upgrade my 2 day + 2 days park-to-park to the cheapest annual pass. And for an additional $48, I was upgraded. (It did take the employee a good 20 min to figure how to upgrade the pass, so not as quick as I liked....and it was HOTT)
The upgrade caused issues when we were at the gate to enter into the park for the first time and in scanning our fingerprints.
My universal wallet took a few min to register the change in ticket and we had a hard time figuring out what tickets were whos.
(I made the mistake of scanning everyone’s tickets into my universal wallet earlier in the week and in doing so, they are locked to my account and no one else could have their ticket in their own universal wallet. So, I had to take a screen shot of each ticket and text them to the family).
It took a good 10 minutes to figure out the issue......
Off to Hagrid’s motorbike and it’s 45 min wait…
Hagrid’s I knew would be one of the hardest and or longest rides to get on or wait for…..and today I found out why…..the girls rode on the bike in front of me with the wife in the sidecar and daughter on the bike…..I got my choice and got paired up with the single rider directly behind me….I chose the bike….but WOW what a ride….2 unexpected twists I did not see or read about and loved them…
#1 ride of the park.
Next we decided on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey…..this one was not good for someone who gets migraines and motion sickness. I enjoyed it but it did not make my top 5
1:50pm now
Honestly when we walked in the castle we thought we were going to ride flight of the hippogriff and a lot of people walking out was thinking the same. The motion made a little sick and we sat outside and took a break. So as the wife was recovering, the daughter and I walked on Flight of Hippogriff and was surprised at how tame and short it was. Might be the least memorable ride of the day
Making our way out of HP we saw VeloCicoaster and the 25 min wait…
I was really expecting to ride this alone but the daughter said she was told this was awesome by her boyfriend’s mother, so I think she did not want to go back home without going on this. I was surprise that my daughter was excited about this roller coaster and if she was able to this, I knew I was not going to being ride a lot of rides by myself, like i did 10 years ago. it was an excellent ride and we were out in 20 min.
We decided it was a good idea to eat and it was 2:29pm…..none of us ate all day. One of the wants of the daughter was to eat at Three Broomsticks. This turned out to be one of the worst decisions of the trip. The line was a little longer than we expected, when we arrived with the line wrapped to inside of the front door and not knowing how far it wrapped around we thought we were ok. Besides the longer wait than we had expected, issue #1: the wife, whom added her credit card to the universal app…tried to pay….the cashier was confused and did not how to process this payment…eventually help came over after here pressing a few buttons….issue #2 the payment got denied…so thinking the code timed out, the cashier tried again only for the card to be denied again…finally I pulled up my wallet and the code I had with my credit card and paid ......we ordered Fish and Chips and the smoked chicken…not sure what happened in the kitchen and servers (well the server did spill a drink onto food…not once but twice….multiple parties in our line that were behind us, received there food before us…..whatever this place gets 1 star recommendations from me, due to the decor (but the service, dry chicken and fish was blah it was a zero)….The whole experience took 1 hour
After we made our way and walked on Jurassic Park River Adventure
It was 4:05pm now
We continued on our counter-clockwise way around the park and saw RIpSaw Falls.
We were bewildered that this ride did not have free lockers so we paid the $4 I think and rented a small locker which gets us to recommendation #2 if going to UIO it will be hard to pass up the water rides, PLAN what you will wear on your feet accordingly. It will take 1-2 days for sneakers to dry, so plan accordingly…you do not want to spend the next day walking in wet sneakers
Since soaking wet and had a locker paid for, it only made sense to go on Popeye and Bluto’s Barges…at this point we were wet but after this ride we were, well nothing was dry now…Now we understood why it is recommended to bring a change of clothes, or to make these 2 rides the last rides of the day, cause it was back to the lockers and time to make our way back to PB.
4:49pm
But before leaving we walked on Spider-Man…this is one of my favorite rides
and since Doctor Doom’s free fall had no wait, we walked right on….wish the ride went up more than just one
Well Hulk was on the way out too and was a walk on so why not….maybe the spin and acceleration would dry us off…
5:33pm exit from the park
We took the boat back to PB, left with the boat 1/3 full and headed back room to peel off all of the wet clothes…the worst being the socks…
Showered and debated what to eat…we originally planned to eat at Mama Delles at the hotel but decided on the daughter and myself split a pizza back at Red Oven Pizza in City Walk,
The women who seated us did not tell us to do counter service ordering or online ordering so took us overhearing a nearby table that were doing this and that’s how we figured out we needed to do that.
Pizza was a 6.7 out of 10.
We grabbed a Cinnabon to split and headed back for the hotel
Again boat was 1/3 full.
Btw zero rain for the day!
recommendation #3. Buy/wear UPF50+ and quick dry shirt and shorts, they are great in the sun and the wet
We took approximately 9,000 steps this day.
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