Lebeau Family Trip Report 2017: Universal Orlando - Completed

Volcano Bay -- we went there about a week after it was open. We were lucky enough to have the express passes, but even with them, we had some quite long waits the later it got. They were some of my favorite rides though. I hope they figure out how to manage the crowds soon!

I was fortunate in that riding the slides was not a priority during our day at Volcano Bay. We never even noticed the waits because we spent most of our time doing things that didn't require waiting in line. It was a terrific break from the theme parks, but I know most people are going to a water park because they want to ride the attractions. Universal dropped the ball big time in the short term, but I think they will get their act together and when they do Volcano Bay will be a wonderful addition to the resort.
 
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I hadn’t slept very well that night. My throat was feeling better, but I was very congested. That suggested to me that at least I didn’t have strep. So, that was a good thing.

When Josie got up, she told me she wanted to get a Big Pink Donut from Springfield. Yesterday, while Kara and I had been at Volcano Bay, Mindy and Josie went to the hotel gift shop looking for a Big Pink. Usually, they have them in stock but as it turns out they were all out. So this morning, Josie and I were going to the park to get one.

Mindy and Kara decided to hang back at the hotel. They might join us later, they weren’t sure. Mindy has family in Florida and her cousin Becky wanted to meet up with us. She has an annual pass to Universal, but without Express Pass it would be difficult to hang out in the parks. Eventually we settled on meeting up in Citywalk for lunch.

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That morning, Josie and I had a funny captain on our water taxi. Most of the captains stuck to just driving the boat. A few offered commentary and a couple told jokes. This was by far the silliest captain we encountered. He played music and lead cheers. When we passed another boat, the captain insisted all of his passengers chant “We’re number one!” Josie thought he was hysterical.

We arrived at the park entrance just as they were starting to let people in. There was a big crowd, but I assured Josie that the vast majority of them would be headed to Diagon Alley. Since we weren’t, we would have the rest of the park mostly to ourselves. That turned out to be true as you can see from the pictures above.

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I asked Josie what she wanted to do today. This would be our last day at the parks, so I wanted to make sure she had seen and done everything that interested her. At the top of her list was reriding Revenge of the Mummy. So we headed that way first figuring it would be better to eat afterwards.

We walked right on to the ride. As you can see from our ride photo, our vehicle wasn’t even half full. The second ride through cemented my opinion that The Mummy is a really fun attraction that serves an important function. We were starting to suffer motion simulator fatigue and The Mummy was the perfect antidote.

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Another old fashioned ride was E.T. Adventure. This attraction had been closed for refurbishment for most of our stay. Mindy and the girls weren’t especially impressed when we rode it in 2015, but I wanted to give it a second try. So Josie and I stopped in on our way to Springfield.

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E.T. is a strange ride that relies heavily on nostalgia for a movie that has fallen out of cultural relevance. The highlight of the ride, for me, is the first half in which you ride a bicycle over a Spielbergian suburb and soar past the moon. Once we get to E.T.’s planet, it’s all pretty weird.

This isn’t a ride you should wait in a long line to experience. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait at all. Josie got to sit in the bike with E.T. on the handlebars which is always fun. Since we had prepurchased the photo package, we stopped posed for pictures with E.T. afterwards. Josie was mostly humoring me so we could try to get some value out of the expensive package.

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After E.T., we went to Lard Lads in Springfield. I was impressed by the variety of donuts offered. Mindy wanted a maple-bacon donut which you can see back in the back. I texted her this picture to let her know they had them. Time permitting, I promised to swing back around and pick some up for her. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

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Josie got her Big Pink Donut which we managed to finish off between the two of us. The glaze is a bit too thick and sweet for me, but it was a good donut. A Homer-sized pink donut is undeniably fun.

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After we finished, we decided to hop on the Hogwarts Express and ride over to Islands of Adventure. Diagon Alley was busy, but people weren’t ready to go to Hogsmeade yet so the train station was empty.

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We were able to walk right on to the train with no wait whatsoever. It’s really amazing what you can do when you tour against the flow of traffic. Crowds flow in predictable patterns. If you know where the crowds are going to be, you can cut down on your overall wait times by going where the crowds aren’t.

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When we passed Hogwarts, we saw the wait time for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey was non-existent. I asked Josie if she wanted to give it a try and to my surprise she was game. We walked through the queue and right on to the attraction.

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In 2015, I had experienced some motion sickness on this attraction. But this time, I was fine. I was glad we revisited this ride because it’s really spectacular. The blending of the physical effects with the screens is mostly seamless. As a result, you don’t need the 3-D glasses to feel like you’re actually soaring around Hogwarts.

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Afterwards, we tried out Flight of the Hippogriff. This is one I really hoped Kara would get to ride since it seems like it is exactly her speed. Josie thought it was a kind of lame, though she liked seeing Buckbeak. It’s a solid kid’s coaster for guests who aren’t quite ready to tackle some of the bigger rides yet.

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Our next stop was Fury of Poseidon. This is an odd attractions in that it’s not a ride, I guess it’s a show. You walk through what is supposed to be ancient ruins guided by an archaeologist. There is a storyline involving Poseidon and an evil wizard. It’s all pretty cheesy, but it’s air-conditioned and there are a few neat effects. If you’re looking to get off your feet, Poseidon’s Fury won’t help you. But it will get you out of the heat for a while and it offers a change of pace from motion simulators. It’s strictly filler and I probably wouldn’t do it a second time, but I was glad I experienced it once.

Next: Mutants and Cowfish
 
Really enjoying your report! We leave for our first ever UO trip in 16 days. Thanks for sharing!
 


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We were getting close to lunchtime and I had a couple things I wanted to do in Marvel Superhero Island before we left. I was hoping Captain America would be out for meet and greets. We had seen a lot of characters out this morning, so I thought the chances were pretty good.

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As we walked through the area, all of the X-Men were out; Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Cyclops. That boded well for my quest to meet Cap. They all came out at the same time. I knew Cap tended to appear by the diner that is named after him, so I lead Josie in that direction.

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When I saw that Captain America was there, I got entirely too excited for a middle-aged man. There wasn’t much of a line, so I queued up to meet my favorite Marvel hero. For the person in front of me, he did a pose where he settled in behind his shield like he was preparing for battle. I thought it was a really cool pose. But for mine, he did the Uncle Sam “I want you” finger point. I followed suit, but unlike Cap I hadn’t done this pose a million times. Once I saw the picture, I realized you need to bend a little at the elbow to avoid blocking half your face. Still, I got to meet Captain America which was definitely on my must-do list for the trip.

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Afterwards, we decided to use our remaining time to reride Spider-man one more time. As we exited, Josie spotted the Green Goblin hanging out by the single rider line.

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We also passed Dr. Doom near his Fear Fall attraction. All the Marvel characters were out, but we were in a hurry to get to Citywalk for lunch.

I had hoped I could talk Josie into riding The Incredible Hulk coaster as our last ride, but she wasn’t having it. She offered to let me ride alone, but there was no way I could enjoy the ride while leaving her unattended. So instead, we decided to check out Storm Force Accelatron.

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This is basically the Tea Cups with an X-Men overlay. Hey, it’s a fun ride. That’s why you will find attractions like this at amusement parks across the country. The Universal version includes some mutant flourishes, but at the end of the day it’s all about spinning. The girls enjoy trying to spin me as hard as they can and I always play it up.

On our way out, Josie told me that if we came back after lunch, she would ride the Hulk with me. But we didn’t end up making it back to the parks. Oh well. That gives us something to look forward to next time.

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For lunch, we decided to try out Cowfish. This chain restaurants serves burgers, sushi and dishes that fuse the two.

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None of us are sushi-eaters, but we had reviewed the menu and found things we wanted to try out. I ordered the High Class Hillbilly which is basically a big pile of barbequed pork served with curly fries and cole slaw made up to look like sushi. It was good, but I was too congested to fully enjoy it.

The table shared an order of edamame as an appetizer. The girls had too much fun popping beans out of pods into their mouths. I think about half of Kara’s ended up on the floor.

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Mindy ordered the Burgerushi at the recommendation of our waitress. It looks like sushi, but tastes like a Big Mac. She really loved this dish partially because it was lighter than eating an actual burger.

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The kids’ meals were served like a bento box. Kara got brave and ordered the vegetable sushi. She wanted to eat healthy so she got apples and orange slices as sides. Josie got her standards, mac and cheese and french fries. Both meals came with dessert sushi which consists of a rice krispie treat topped with a Swedish fish. Those Cowfish guys are clever.

After lunch, the girls hung out with Mindy’s cousin. They did some shopping and got frozen yogurt. I went back to the hotel room and napped some more. For dinner, we went back to room service since it was raining again. I went to the hotel gift shop and paid entirely too much money for NyQuil so I could get a good night’s sleep. I also picked up a Big Pink Donut for breakfast the next morning.

As you can imagine, the packaged donuts aren’t nearly as fresh as the ones served in the park. This was not quite stale, but not nearly as good as the one Josie and I had in Springfield. Once we had packed our bags, we dropped them off at the luggage service, checked out of our room and took a water taxi to Citywalk. We did a little souvenir shopping and then grabbed lunch before our flight.

Originally, the plan was to eat at Vivo Italian Kitchen which is right nextdoor to Cowfish. I sensed some apprehension, so I told everyone to look over the menu and make sure that’s what they wanted. No one said anything, but I could tell they wanted to go to Cowfish again instead. When I floated the idea, they all immediately jumped on it.

The girls all repeated their orders from the day before. I went with the Single Hunka Love which is a scaled down version of The Cowfish Has Offically Left The Building (A.K.A. The Hunka, Hunka). As the name implies, it’s an Elvis-inspired dish with peanut butter and a friend banana. The full pound burger sounded like too much for me, so I got a single half-pound patty which was quite filling.

After lunch, we went back to our hotel to await our driver. I got a text message from Pierre letting me know he was ready to pick us up. On the way to the airport, Pierre was very chatty. He’s a comic book collector and he was really excited about having met Stan Lee at a convention recently. When we started talking about theme parks, he mentioned that his girlfriend’s mother was a bartender at Pandora in Animal Kingdom. Turns out, Pierre was dating Ashley, the girl who drove us to our hotel at the beginning of our trip. I told you that would come back around.

So that was it. Another vacation in the books. We faced some obstacles which could have derailed the trip, but we were able to manage them. Mindy has since proclaimed this to be one of her favorite vacations of all times and says she can’t wait to go back. I figure we’ll probably wait a little while for Kara to grow into some of the bigger attractions. That will also give Universal some time to make some new additions as well. But I can say with some degree of confidence that we will be back. Hopefully it will rain less next time.
 
I read each installment of your trip and anxious for the next one

I just posted the final installment. Thanks for reading along. For those who are interested, I am going to post links to previous trip reports. think of them as prequels. ;)
 


Thanks to everyone who has been reading along. If you're interested in reading more, here are some links to previous trip reports:

2015: A Day at Universal - We stay at Cabana Bay Beach Resort and hit the highlights of both parks.
2015: Disney Dream Cruise - A 5-day/4-night Bahamas cruise in the concierge level
2014: Disney World - We stay in a Princess room at Port Orleans, check out New Fantasyland and Star Wars Weekend
2012: Disney World - My mom comes along for a Fall trip. This time we had a Lion King suite at Art of Animation
2010: Disney World - Kara's first trip. We stayed at Port Orleans for the first time. The kids were so little!
 
Thank you for a wonderful trip report!

I love that you all went back to Cowfish on same day.........it does serve good food!

Really enjoyed reading along, and don't worry.....this almost 50 year old loves seeing and meeting the characters.......

Thanks for writing it, really enjoyed reading along :)
 

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