The boys were told of the travel plans the morning before we left. A delivery owl brought the announcment. They were excited though Henry wasn't the most excited about going on a plane again he was still excited. We left on Saturday, October 14 and returned on Wednesday, October 18.
Our flights to Orlando had mild excitement as we landed in Chicago - we had to circle around the city due to weather and the plane almost came to a screeching halt when it landed. Our layover wasn't as long as it should have been so we didn't have a lot of time to grab lunch but at least we got something. The flight to Orlando started off a bit rocky as we got through some weather but then was fine.
We landed in Orlando, picked up the rental car, stopped at Walmart and finally made it to the Hotel!
We stayed at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort which is on the Universal Studios property. Because we stayed at Universal Studios property we were able to enter Universal Studios an hour early each day (which meant at 7 am!) and we were given express passes as a benefit of staying at this resort which greatly helped in avoiding a lot of time waiting in lines. The lines were not the worst they could have been but it was still nice to bypass most of the waiting. We could get to the parks by the taking the water taxi, taking a 10-15 minute walk, or taking the bus which would not have gotten us any closer than the water taxi.
Each morning we would be the only ones from our hotel on the water taxi at 6:30 am and would be at the park gates by 6:40 am. Once the gates opened we would make the long walk to the other end of the park to ride Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts. All four of us rode it the first day - after that it was just Ralph and I. After a few other stops around Diagon Alley, we were more focused on the attractions the first day - hitting the majority of attractions in Universal Studios then heading over to Islands of Adventures via the Hogwarts Express. The highlights at Universal Studios were the Descpicalbe Me Attraction and Men in Black Alien Attack. Islands of Adventure had THE raft ride . . otherwise known as Popeye's & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges. I rode it twice with the boys then they rode it themselves a few times. There was also a flume ride (Dudley Do Right's Ripsaw Falls) - Ralph actually went on it first by himself then Henry and I. We didn't hit all the attractions at Islands of Adventures we would "ride" the first day but did finished up the ones we wanted to on day #2. Day #2 and day #3 were mostly spend doing favorite rides - sometimes multiple times. On day #3 we went to a few shows - one of which was Universal Orlando's Horror Make-Up Show. This show demonstrated how some of the horror make-up is done in the movies. We ended up sitting in the middle of the front row - the hosts picked on the boys throughout the show.
The trip home wasn't without delays. Our 8 am departure left Orlando just after noon. Our initial departure time would have gone on without a hitch if the left enginge of the plane would have started. We were on the runaway and had to taxi back to the gate . . and then we all had to deboard and wait. Instead of getting back to Omaha before noon we landed around 3:15 pm.
A few people have asked if it was better than Disney. I appreciate it was only two parks, I appreciate we were there for 3 days and there were only two parks, I appreciate we stayed on property and everything was relatively close to each other. . . .but Disney is Disney and there is no comparison. It was a great trip!
