2BoysMum&Dad
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2004
In my hand-written notes I made at the end of Friday 23rd July, I spookily gave the days report the heading The Calm Before The Storm, only because it was the day before we flew out to Florida and didnt think at the time it was really a very good or apt title. I have decided to name all the parts of my trip report The Calm Before The Storm Tour, in honour of the climax of our trip - Hurricane Charley which gave us an extra day in Florida.
Friday 30th July (A Universal Day)
THE CAST
Sergeant Major Zoe You WILL enjoy yourselves
DH Trevor I am NOT going to like this
Birthday Boy Michael (aged 10 to 11)
Why to everything Piers (aged 8 and a bit)
We slept well last night and didnt particularly hurry to get up then had breakfast in the room. A full day planned at Universal Studios, but still didnt manage to get there before 10.15am
. We noticed U.S. seemed to be more crowded and have more attractions with huge queues than anywhere else we had visited so far. It really is a good idea to get to the parks when they open if you can and reading up as much as possible beforehand to save yourself valuable time when you arrive. The first two attractions we aimed for were Shrek4D and Jimmy Neutron, both of which had horrendous queues (at this time of the morning not really surprising!). Shrek4D has no Express system and Jimmy Neutrons return time was quite late on in the day when we think we would have gone for our daily rest elsewhere.
Next stop the Revenge of the Mummy. There were signs saying no carry on bags so queued up at the lockers. These are almost an attraction in themselves computer controlled, plenty of people queuing and a CM to help you out! Almost everyone had problems getting the system to work in one way or another. Finally we got sorted and went into the building. We were surprised to find the queue didnt look horrendous, but this might just be because you can never see many people ahead of you because of the maze of rooms and corridors. After ten or 15 minutes or so, I saw a sign which had a rather worrying message to the effect that this was a high thrill ride, my stomach was now doing strange things and I wanted OUT! Why wasnt this on my rides to avoid at all costs list?
We found the emergency exit and ran! (Well, almost! Didnt want to draw too much attention to ourselves! ). Time for our next attraction, getting our bags back out of the fancy lockers!
Time for lunch and we hadnt even done a proper ride yet! We ate in the Monster Cafe. The food was ok but the portion sizes were definitely not wonderful, making it a bit expensive for what you get.
Straight after lunch we headed for the Terminator 3D Battle Across Time and got Express tickets for this for a later time slot. This was a great show, brilliant how they interweave real actors and the film on three large screens in front of you. Trevor bought the t-shirt and the kids bought toys from the obligatory attached gift shop you get with every attraction. Then we headed off passed the jetski show and were about to settle ourselves down to watch it. Suddenly coming to our senses, we soon realised there were an awful lot of people watching this and it would be a perfect time to do some more rides and headed towards Kidzone. First, we got Express passes for the Animal Planet Live show and let the boys play in Fievels Playland (for about half an hour). So much for doing loads more attractions, never mind! The Animal Planet Live show was fun but we didnt feel was half as good as the Flights of Wonder show in the Animal Kingdom.
Piers and Crash Bash, but which is which! LOL
By around 5pm we were quite tired and decided to head back to CBR, passing Shrek4D on the way in the hope that thered be no queue hahaha! The nice chatty C.M. guy told us the queue was about an hour long and thought we should try coming later during the fireworks display this evening.
On the way through Citywalk, we spotted an ice cream parlour with a surf board and wave outside. Obviously a great way to draw in the customers. I have also noticed that next to the Castle in MK, this is just about one of the most photographed spots in Florida!
Look Mum, arent we clever!
Michael, Piers and myself had some nice sensible ice creams while Trevor had some strange coffee and chocolate drink thing with a load of whipped cream stuff on the top! Back to the car, along a lot of moving walkways must have been around five of them to our car, King Kong, line 411. The plan was to go back to CBR, have a swim and something to eat then back to either Universal Studios or IoA for a couple of hours or so. When we arrived at the resort, we managed the swim and food part but realised it was getting a bit late and had to give up on the idea of going back again to U.S. this evening. We headed over to Old Port Royale and refilled our mugs and wrote some postcards, I sent one to Princess_Anita who had given me her address in New Jersey. I used the internet payphone machine again to access my favourite website. I sent barrysprot36 a message, giving him our room number and said phone me! in the hope he would might use the machine too and we could finally make contact. Hope he does!
We finished all our jobs in OPR and headed back to our room. Just before getting to the door, Michael spotted a little frog jumping up the trellis on the wall. When we got into the room Trevor went back with the camera, but unfortunately it had disappeared probably died of fright after seeing us!
My notes said (as a p.s.) it didnt rain today. This was a truly rare occurrence and worthy of note! See you tomorrow in Disney MGM! Goodnight.
Friday 30th July (A Universal Day)
THE CAST
Sergeant Major Zoe You WILL enjoy yourselves
DH Trevor I am NOT going to like this
Birthday Boy Michael (aged 10 to 11)
Why to everything Piers (aged 8 and a bit)
We slept well last night and didnt particularly hurry to get up then had breakfast in the room. A full day planned at Universal Studios, but still didnt manage to get there before 10.15am
. We noticed U.S. seemed to be more crowded and have more attractions with huge queues than anywhere else we had visited so far. It really is a good idea to get to the parks when they open if you can and reading up as much as possible beforehand to save yourself valuable time when you arrive. The first two attractions we aimed for were Shrek4D and Jimmy Neutron, both of which had horrendous queues (at this time of the morning not really surprising!). Shrek4D has no Express system and Jimmy Neutrons return time was quite late on in the day when we think we would have gone for our daily rest elsewhere.Next stop the Revenge of the Mummy. There were signs saying no carry on bags so queued up at the lockers. These are almost an attraction in themselves computer controlled, plenty of people queuing and a CM to help you out! Almost everyone had problems getting the system to work in one way or another. Finally we got sorted and went into the building. We were surprised to find the queue didnt look horrendous, but this might just be because you can never see many people ahead of you because of the maze of rooms and corridors. After ten or 15 minutes or so, I saw a sign which had a rather worrying message to the effect that this was a high thrill ride, my stomach was now doing strange things and I wanted OUT! Why wasnt this on my rides to avoid at all costs list?
We found the emergency exit and ran! (Well, almost! Didnt want to draw too much attention to ourselves! ). Time for our next attraction, getting our bags back out of the fancy lockers!Time for lunch and we hadnt even done a proper ride yet! We ate in the Monster Cafe. The food was ok but the portion sizes were definitely not wonderful, making it a bit expensive for what you get.
Straight after lunch we headed for the Terminator 3D Battle Across Time and got Express tickets for this for a later time slot. This was a great show, brilliant how they interweave real actors and the film on three large screens in front of you. Trevor bought the t-shirt and the kids bought toys from the obligatory attached gift shop you get with every attraction. Then we headed off passed the jetski show and were about to settle ourselves down to watch it. Suddenly coming to our senses, we soon realised there were an awful lot of people watching this and it would be a perfect time to do some more rides and headed towards Kidzone. First, we got Express passes for the Animal Planet Live show and let the boys play in Fievels Playland (for about half an hour). So much for doing loads more attractions, never mind! The Animal Planet Live show was fun but we didnt feel was half as good as the Flights of Wonder show in the Animal Kingdom.
Piers and Crash Bash, but which is which! LOL
By around 5pm we were quite tired and decided to head back to CBR, passing Shrek4D on the way in the hope that thered be no queue hahaha! The nice chatty C.M. guy told us the queue was about an hour long and thought we should try coming later during the fireworks display this evening.
On the way through Citywalk, we spotted an ice cream parlour with a surf board and wave outside. Obviously a great way to draw in the customers. I have also noticed that next to the Castle in MK, this is just about one of the most photographed spots in Florida!
Look Mum, arent we clever!
Michael, Piers and myself had some nice sensible ice creams while Trevor had some strange coffee and chocolate drink thing with a load of whipped cream stuff on the top! Back to the car, along a lot of moving walkways must have been around five of them to our car, King Kong, line 411. The plan was to go back to CBR, have a swim and something to eat then back to either Universal Studios or IoA for a couple of hours or so. When we arrived at the resort, we managed the swim and food part but realised it was getting a bit late and had to give up on the idea of going back again to U.S. this evening. We headed over to Old Port Royale and refilled our mugs and wrote some postcards, I sent one to Princess_Anita who had given me her address in New Jersey. I used the internet payphone machine again to access my favourite website. I sent barrysprot36 a message, giving him our room number and said phone me! in the hope he would might use the machine too and we could finally make contact. Hope he does!
We finished all our jobs in OPR and headed back to our room. Just before getting to the door, Michael spotted a little frog jumping up the trellis on the wall. When we got into the room Trevor went back with the camera, but unfortunately it had disappeared probably died of fright after seeing us!
My notes said (as a p.s.) it didnt rain today. This was a truly rare occurrence and worthy of note! See you tomorrow in Disney MGM! Goodnight.
