Welcome to my first US/IOA trip report! I'm so excited to start.
This trip report will consist of our 1 day trip to US and IOA. We had 1 day/2 park tickets. We went for DH's birthday. This was DD4's, my brother's and my 1st trip there and DH's 3rd trip. We also did the Ringling brothers and Barnum bailey circus (my brother skipped out on the circus but did everything else), visited Old town and did the medieval times dinner show. I won't go too much into depth with those but I'll share my pics and small reviews for those who are interested. We did the circus on Friday, Jan. 18th here where I live in Jacksonville. We did US/IOA on Saturday, Jan. 19th and we did Old town and the dinner show on Sunday, Jan 20th.
Let me start off by saying I have NEVER been a Universal Stuidos or IOA fan. I have always been close minded about it and didn't think I would like it at all because of the thrill rides which I don't care for. I am more for theme, DH is for thrills thus I kept avoiding US/IOA and kept going back to Disney. Well, it was DH's birthday weekend and I figured It would be nice to surprise him with tickets! I barely know anything about US or IOA so I pretty much went without any prior knowledge. ( I basically studied the unofficial guide and browsed the boards the night before). I did not like this as I always go to Disney prepared well in advance. I just decided to do this trip at the last minute so I didn't have time to really plan this trip out.
Just so you could put faces to the people in my TR, I'll share some pics of us.
This is me: Huge disney fan, the planner, organizer, and the one who made this trip happen!
Here is DH: the clown of all of us, the one who tries to make everyone laugh but also has a short temper and likes to get his way.
DD4: The princess, loves rides, loves characters and is sometimes too smart for her age.
Bro: My 21 year old brother. He loves to tell everyone that he's not scared of anything, but as we see in this trip and the previous trip to disney, that it is far from true.
Here is one more picture of the all the tickets we purchased for this birthday weekend laid out on my dining table.
I'll stop for now. Coming up..............A mini review and a bunch of pictures from the ringling bros. circus. Thanks for reading!
Great start! Im a Disney fan but Im also a US/IOA fan "eventhough" I don't like thrill rides either, uhmm, strange isn't it, but I alway have a good time. Love the pictures, cant wait to read more.
Love the beginning...Keep it coming...I, too, am a great Disney Lover... And...we are all going to Universal next month! Ten out of twelve of us have never been before....
OK. So I promised some pictures from the Ringling bros. and barnum bailey circus and I'll get to those soon. First I just wanted to share how I got the tickets and gave them to DH.
It's very very hard to surprise DH. First of all, he always gets himself whatever he wants unless its something big - for example, he wants a motorcycle and that would be considered something big so he can't just go out and get it, but if he wants something a little more affordable, he gets it right away therefore making it very difficult for someone to get a him a birthday gift or christmas gift that he would like since he probably already got it for himself. Well, I was one of those people having a very hard time deciding what to get him for his birthday. Over the past few years, he's always mentioned he wanted to go to medieval times but we've never made it so I made sure that was one of the first gifts I got for him....but I still needed something to do during the day since the dinner show was at night. That's when I came up with the Universal studios/IOA passes, but I knew it would take more than a few hours to tour so instead of getting the passes for the same day as the dinner show, I got them for the day before and Prayed that our jobs would let us both have off for the weekend.
After getting tickets to the dinner show and the parks, everyone kept telling me I should have got him circus tickets, because he most likely would figure out the dinner show and universal tickets but he would be totally surprised about the circus, so I decided to go with all 3 and just have a long birthday weekend. I didn't even know the circus would be in my area until I saw the commercial on TV and it looked really cool!!!
So I ordered the circus tickets online at ticketmaster just a few days before we were scheduled to go and paid extra cash to get them mailed on time. Our jobs all agreed to give us the weekend off and we were set.
Fast forward 3 days later: I get the circus tickets from the UPS guy and DH is sitting right there in the living room when they are delivered. He wanted to know what was in the package and I told him he'd have to wait and see tomorrow for his birthday. Now, I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but DH is very immature and childish at times and he didn't want to wait until tomorrow so he decided it would be fun to start tickling me and wrestling me to hand him over the package which I refused to do. I hung on for dear life and believe me, it wasn't easy because I'm very ticklish but I wouldn't have it so I passed the envelope over to my 4 year old and told her to run and hide it somewhere in the house while I hold daddy down.
Luckily, my DD hid it and told me where it was later and DH never got it until his birthday.
So, his birthday comes along and he had to go to work, but of course, not before asking me if he could have his gifts. I told him No, and that he had to wait until after he got out of work to get them. By now, he's figured out that I've gotten him tickets to Universal and he was almost sure of the dinner show but he had no idea about the circus. When he got home from work, I presented him with the tickets and he was happy that I was actually able to get him things he didn't already have.
The next day was circus day!!! It started around 7:30, but we were allowed to get there early for the preshow. We left our house around 5:30. Even though it wasn't that far from home, we ALWAYS get lost even though we have a GPS navigation system in the car! Go figure
We got there around 6:30 because, yes, we did get lost and entered the arena after waiting on a long line. DH bought DD a coloring book, a huge lollipop, and a red glowing clown nose which cost $12 total.
Finally, we made it inside and it looked like the place was already packed. They were doing a preshow so we were allowed to go down and watch the preshow acts so we did. Here is a pic of DD with the goodies:
One of the acts (a bunch of young asian guys in tights doing some gymnastics and then juggling)
and clown and his assistnat juggling around a teenager chosen from the audience
coming up.......the rest of the circus pics and what we thought of it.
Ok. So after the preshow thingy, we all got into our seats and I think our seats had a lot to do with what I thought of the show. If you guys ever go see one of their shows, please take my advice and get good seats towards the bottom. Our seats were towards the back- row U. I wasn't trying to be cheap with the tickets when I bought them. Its just that I purchased them late because I wasn't sure if my brother was going to attend and if he did, I wanted to make sure he got to sit with us. When he finally found out from work that he couldn't have off, I got the tickets and row U was the next best available seats.
The arena was really big and the clowns, perfomers, animals looked far away and our pictures weren't the best. I'm not saying I didn't like the show, I just think it would be better if we got closer seats to the action. Anyway, as promised, here are some more pics of the circus:
So, this was the opening act where all the performers got on stage and sang a song. You can get an idea of how far back our seats were.
This was the best part of the whole show. A bunch of motorcyclists got into this ball thing which wasn't that big and they kept racing around in there. We all thought they would crash into eachother, but of course they didn't. I was on the edge of my seat. It was AMAZING. They were incredible. At one point, there were about 8 guys in there on their motorcycles and they were going very fast.
Here is DH and DD enjoying the show and the lollipop:
The tigers:
The elephants. They did some pretty cool tricks:
I don't think I would pay to see the show again. Maybe if I had better seats, I would have liked it more. The best part was the motorcycle acts in the ball thingy. I wonder if there's a show that just does cool motorcycle acts. It's wierd though. I'm not into motorcycles at all.
The singing was kind of borring as were some of the acts. I guess I'm just used to the high quality of disney entertainment. I'm spoiled. What can I say? My DD also looked very bored and I thought the circus would keep her attention especially since Cirque du soleil in Downtown Disney kept her full attention for 90 minutes with no intermission, but this didn't do it. DH said he liked it, but wasn't crazy about it. Not good.....this is part of your birthday present. Oh well, I guess he'll probably like US and IOA, and the dinner show better. I hope!
Well, I guess I'll leave it at that. Coming up.............Universal studios!
I woke up around 5:45. Thank goodness I was able to get some sleep. The only problem is that on normal weekdays, I don't get up until 10am so I wasn't used to this early business. See, my DD starts school August 2008, so up until this point, its been okay with us for her to go to bed a little later than a normal 4 year old's bedtime and let her sleep in every morning because that's what we prefer, but of course, this morning, we weren't sleeping in so it was tough for us to all get up and get started.
I woke up first and I immediately realized that it was pouring outside. Not good! In August, we went to the Pirate and Princess Party in Disney and it rained all night. In fact, it wasn't just rain. It was a horrible storm with thunder, lighting and even reports of tornadoes in the area. We had a really bad time and I was hoping for nice weather today plus I really don't like when we drive in the rain on the highway. My only luck would be that it was just raining where I live (in Jacksonville) and that the weather would be okay in Orlando so what did I do?
I ran to my computer where I looked up the weather for the Disney area. This is what it said:
Today-
cloudy, 40 % chance of rain
Sunday-
Partly cloudy, chance of rain
OH NO! Not sure about where everyone else lives, but where I live, 40% is a pretty good chance of rain and usually means it will rain. So, now I had to make a decision. Our tickets were good for any day but DH has to work on the weekdays so we could only use them today or tomorrow. If we used them today, we'd have the whole day, but if we used them tomorrow, we only had 9am to 5:30 to do both parks and I'm a first timer but it probably wouldn't be raining tomorrow.
I woke up DH and asked him what we should do and without hesitation said, "We're going now".
Ok.
So, we packed up the car with our bags and stroller and took off. Here is a pic of the bag I used to carry around with me in the park. DD likes scooby doo and I thought it would be cute to bring this one:
and here is a pic of what it looked like outside:
We left the house at 6:30 hoping to get there at opening, but the rain slowed us down and by the time we parked the car, and walked to Universal, it was almost 9:30.
The first problem we encountered was that we couldn't even find the parking lot. We ended up in the employee parking lot and had to ask for directions to the actual guest parking lot. It turns out we weren't too far and had just made a wrong turn.
We finally parked and by now, it was just a misty rain, but it was a bit cold.
We made our way towards Universal by walking through citywalk and I was able to get some pics.
I also noticed that crowds were very manageable. Maybe the rain is helping us in a way!
We went inside and I grabbed a guidemap. Even with the map, we had some trouble finding our way around so it may help to study the map ahead of time.
As we were deciding what to do first, I noticed that we were being one of those families who stand around and block the way for everyone else to get by as we were looking at the map. So, I told everyone to move over to the side. (This would never have happened at Disney!)
As we were trying to decide, DH spotted Scooby and Shaggy and we went over for a visit.
I'm not sure who this guy is (anyone know?) but he was directing traffic and then he bent down and gave DD a kiss while she was in her stroller.
We saw this (the Jimmy Neutron ride) and decided to skip it since DD would have to sit with me in the stationary seats and DH doesn't like simulators much anyway so I just took a pic:
I then remembered someone on the boards saying that we could meet spongebob in the store outside of Jimmy Neutron so we went in, and found the spongebob meet and greet area, but.............No spongebob!
Spongebob is DD's very favorite show on TV so I knew it was a MUST for her to meet him. We asked the lady at the cash register if she knew when he would be back and she told us he would be back in a few minutes and that we could line up now.
Yayyyyyyyy!!! There was no line so we got in first. As we waited, we took a pic by the background.
Then the one and only spongebob came out! DD was so happy to meet him.
DD was in heaven and as you can see, she was still wearing the clown nose in the pics which I couldn't make her take off since the night before. Oh well.
Coming up next:
Shrek 4D, The mummy, and our lunch costs WHAT?
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I have always been close minded about it and didn't think I would like it at all because of the thrill rides which I don't care for. I am more for theme, DH is for thrills thus I kept avoiding US/IOA and kept going back to Disney. Well, it was DH's birthday weekend and I figured It would be nice to surprise him with tickets!
I barely know anything about US or IOA so I pretty much went without any prior knowledge. 
( I basically studied the unofficial guide and browsed the boards the night before). I did not like this as I always go to Disney prepared well in advance. I just decided to do this trip at the last minute so I didn't have time to really plan this trip out.
Im a Disney 
fan but Im also a US/IOA fan "eventhough" I don't like thrill rides either, uhmm, strange isn't it, but I alway have a good time. Love the pictures, cant wait to read more. 
And...we are all going to Universal next month! Ten out of twelve of us have never been before....
First of all, he always gets himself whatever he wants unless its something big - for example, he wants a motorcycle and that would be considered something big so he can't just go out and get it, but if he wants something a little more affordable, he gets it right away therefore making it very difficult for someone to get a him a birthday gift or christmas gift that he would like since he probably already got it for himself.
I hung on for dear life and believe me, it wasn't easy because I'm very ticklish but I wouldn't have it so I passed the envelope over to my 4 year old and told her to run and hide it somewhere in the house while I hold daddy down.
Go figure 
At one point, there were about 8 guys in there on their motorcycles and they were going very fast. 
