MeghanEmily
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2016
Excellent point!! Wouldn't that be hilarious if she was reading Order of the Phoenix or something in the movie. lol
I love that idea!
Excellent point!! Wouldn't that be hilarious if she was reading Order of the Phoenix or something in the movie. lol
But we had special plans that night that would be keeping us away from the parks, and as we walked we started talking about how if we went back to the room right now, we really wouldn’t have time to go back to the parks before heading offsite later that evening. So we made a detour into Studios and decided to do a few more attractions before calling it a day.
After dinner, we headed over to the Cinemark theater for the reason for our offsite evening…a 25th anniversary showing of Jurassic Park!
The fan-submitted bit sounds really neat, it's so cool that they did that!
These milkshakes are ridiculous!! But they look amazing.
I love that everything is so close here that you can change your plans on the fly and walk wherever you want to go.
What a cool evening! Glad you all had fun.
Thanks for doing this trip report! Our eldest son is the same age as yours so reading this has been helpful in thinking about whether this is the right time for his first trip to Universal.
And those milkshakes are, as my 2 year old would say, “ ‘diculous”
Toothsome looks fantastic. Although we chose to skip universal in August, I was tempted to go over to Citywalk for a night to eat there. I kind of regret now that we didn't. If my family likes one thing, it's ridiculous over the top sweets. My girls would have been quite happy with one of those milkshakes
Toothsome was a great lunch choice; those milkshakes are delicious! Glad the appetizers filled you up and gave you a break from the heat for a bit.
Agh, it's always super awkward when you bump into housekeepers in your room. Do you leave? Do you stick around and just watch them work?
What awesome timing! I bet taking DS to the showing of Jurassic Park was the perfect addition to your Universal trip. Not to mention, it had to be pretty fun to see the movie on the big screen! (I was too young to do that when it originally came out, so I missed that opportunity.)
Sounds like a good choice heading to Toothsomes for lunch! And a nice time squeezing in some rides at Universal!
FINALLY you got your pic with Bumblebee! Yay!
Very cool getting to see a showing of Jurassic Park! Perfectly timed!
Because of school schedule, and her birthday is in May and we are trying not to take her out of school - we are looking at Memorial Day weekend. The killer is because we couldn't book when the fares came out on SWA, we are looking at $1000 for the flights alone - so really looking to save money whenever we can.
Figure I'd pose a couple questions:
- How is weather in end of May down there - you've been down around then right? Is it as brutal hot as August/September? (I'm sure it'll be too hot for us, but it was in February.)
-Waffling between staying nearby on-site cheap or staying off-site cheaper. Price difference for 3 nights is $375 less at Doubletree nearby vs Cabana Bay. I know you guys stay on site mostly, but have you tried Cabana Bay? We can't swing one of the FOTL resorts at nearly $450 a night. Cabana Bay still $225 a night - which is pushing affordability, but it's only 3 nights so maybe not a deal-killer. Just not sure if it is worth it when you can't use the boats and can't get FOTL. Hoping for your opinion.
Already convinced her it is OK if we can save money doing one park per day and they have a 4 days for the price of 2 deal as well. I just can't justify $250 extra to ride Hogwarts express - which after the first time on it I found to be a smelly bore. But do we upgrade to do the water park? DD doesn't do any of the rides, so what's the point. You guys haven't done it, right? Just curious if you've heard much about it. Again, $175 extra to add the water park doesn't seem worth it to me.
My DD was obsessed with this ride on our 2014 trip (last one I did to Universal). She loved going through the restaurant and we had to as the TMs if we could do that track ever time. I think we rode 5 or 6 times in the 2 days.Then we went on the Seuss Trolley Train Ride and got to do the opposite track for the first time in awhile, the one that takes you through the Circus McGurkus restaurant.
Have they cut down on the choir? I seem to remember it being bigger, maybe 12 people and 4 frogs.We decided we wanted to ride Kong, so we headed back towards the bridge to Jurassic Park and came across the Frog Choir performing.
I like these new things they added to the Jurassic Park area, like the Raptor encounter and this baby triceratops which looks really cool.
All your donut selections looked delicious! I can definitely see where one would be enough to fill you for the morning.
It's amazing how kids are impervious to the heat. All they see is a playground and want to enjoy it, no matter if it's a million degrees outside!
My DD was obsessed with this ride on our 2014 trip (last one I did to Universal). She loved going through the restaurant and we had to as the TMs if we could do that track ever time. I think we rode 5 or 6 times in the 2 days.
Have they cut down on the choir? I seem to remember it being bigger, maybe 12 people and 4 frogs.
I suppose cost cutting isn't just a Disney thing.
I like these new things they added to the Jurassic Park area, like the Raptor encounter and this baby triceratops which looks really cool.
It's actually enticing me to want to go back to Universal.
Since we are now planning a "last minute" trip to Universal (does 4.5 months advance notice qualify for "last minute"?) I'm reading your thread with slightly more attention to detail. There's a few things that we managed to not do in our last two trips that we will hopefully get to in one of these - the Raptor encounter in particular. We're (fortunately) too old for Camp Jurassic.
We really love Toothsome's - especially when so much of the food in US/IOA is pretty mediocre it's definitely really good. We even ate there in October when we went to a show at the Hard Rock. And DD said she wants to go there for sure in May. I do think that food quality/selection sets Disney above Universal - I can think of dozens of places at Disney we love to eat, and at Universal so far I can only pick this one.
I really want to get on Dudley Do-Right in May...not sure we can get DD to do it since she is really adverse to walking around the park all wet. She has burned into her memory in 2012 when we went on Splash mountain in DL and we got absolutely soaked on one of the short inside drops - and she was just crying the entire way back to the hotel afterwards. I think that's her memory of being wet in a theme park and now she really doesn't want to. In 2016 we did Bluto's (which I like a lot) and got drenched, but we planned the day around just doing the water rides and then back to the hotel. I am not sure how we will handle the water rides in May with us having to go all the way back to an off-site hotel via Uber. Still might plan a day where we wear our swimsuits and hit those water rides right before heading back.