Universal Resort Orlando – a quickie!

This vacation recap has taken me forever to find the time to sit down and put it together!  Especially since there are lot of pictures are involved!  I’m going to try to keep it to a minimum, otherwise there would be pages and page of this post (which is already starting out too long…)

Our trip to Orlando was a crazy “long weekend” trip.  We flew in on Friday morning, and left on Monday afternoon.  It didn’t feel too rushed though because 1) we flew from our local airport, which is 10 mins from our house instead of 1 1/2 hours!  2) we picked up a rental car at the airport instead of taking a shuttle to get it offsite and 3) our hotel was super conveniently located right outside Universal Resort!

Our local airport rules.  Check out these crowds!

We stayed at the Cabana Bay resort, which was great because it was reasonably priced and had a shuttle bus that ran continuously.  I think it was a 7 min ride to the park, just 1.2 miles to walk there!  If you missed my exciting story about Zack at the hotel, check this out.  We tried walking once, but the shuttle bus was faster.

Our hotel overlooked a new water park that was being built.  It’s going to be pretty amazing when it’s done!  Many people were using our hotel pool.  We just watched from our hotel window.  Too chilly for us!

We made a pitstop at McDonalds for lunch and were all amazed by the technology they had there.  Look at the cool “iPad ordering screen”!  We don’t have those in Ohio!  Yes, we are easily impressed.

We went to the park on Friday night.  It was still warm enough to wear shorts!  I have never been to Florida in November, but I was digging the weather!  The lines for the rides were very good.  We didn’t wait more than 15 mins to go on anything!  Hogsmeade & Hogswart looked pretty cool in the darkness too.

Given the high price of amusement park tickets, we were going budget on the food plans, so we waited until after we left the park to have some Chipotle.  Oh my, such deliciousness!!!

Saturday morning was a tad chillier, but not too bad.  We tried really hard to get there early because our hotel offered one hour early entrance to the park, but apparently so did a zillion other people.  Even with the line to get in, the park was not overcrowded and again we didn’t spend more than 30 mins waiting on rides.  I have never been to a Florida park where it wasn’t 90 degrees and crowded.  Loving it!

Here’s our budget plan for breakfast – we went grocery shopping for cereal and bagels.  If you have a mini fridge you are all set.  Great idea!!

The great thing about amusement parks in Florida is that they create the waiting area as part of the attraction, and most of it is all indoors.  Back in Ohio, we just bake in the sun standing in line.  Also, they offered free lockers to put your stuff in while riding.  At Cedar Point, we have to pay for a locker!  (which is why we usually just stuff our drink cup under a bush near the ride.  Just saying, it’s a rip off)   This is our favorite ride – the Rip Ride Rockit.  You got to pick out a song which played from the headrest during the whole ride.  Very cool!!

The parks were decorated for the holidays.  Very pretty!  (random employee joined us for a picture!)

This was my favorite though… no Christmas happening for me prior to Thanksgiving!!

We were all about everything Harry Potter.

Especially the Butter Beer!

We also went to the park on Monday morning before we left.  So all in all, we had almost three full days day.  Just the perfect amount of time to do it all.  I think our kids are a great age for this park.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this random mish mash of my vacation pictures.  I’ll move on to more thought out posts from here!! 🙂

**********************************************