Universal

Bob started feeling bad yesterday so it wasn't a surprise this morning when he told me he wasn't going with us today. After several attempts to be on our way, we finally made it and arrived at the park about 10:15. I know we've been doing this all week, but it still blows my mind that it costs $14/$15 to park your car for the day. WTH? In my simple logical mind I deduce that if you pay these exhorbitant prices for park tickets, said tickets should include parking ... because how can one attend the park without driving to it - and it you drive to it you have to park your car somewhere! It irks my nerve - my last nerve no less. AND, my point in sharing that was that by the 5th day of walking parks we are nearly walked out. So, ... we paid even more to park! Another $5 on top of the $15 parking fee (which brings it to a grand total of $20) for "Preferred Parking." You'd think that meant up close and personal wouldn't you? Me too. Let me just tell you how far away we still were from either entrance. Well, I guess I can't. I don't know exactly but I can tell you it was a long walk. You know those moving walk ways airports have? Well we had four of those on our journey from our parking space to the front gate. Islands of Adventure was first on our list because Harry Potter World is there. Even if we didn't get to anything else we knew we wanted to see that part of the park. None of us had eaten much breakfast because we had purchased the Dining Plan and were just going to eat in the park. By the time we got through the gate and anywhere to eat it was around 11:00 - so we decided to just find somewhere for lunch. I haven't talked about this but we've also been collecting pressed pennies throughout the park. When we saw this Suess Landing penny we immediately started pulling quarters and pennies out.

Seuss Landing was the first section in our path and we were simply delighted to see so many of the Dr. Suess characters sort of come to life before our eyes. It was just beautiful, cute, adorable and amazing. It seemed at every turn we saw something else better than before. Even knowing Harry Potter World was around the corner (and we were pretty damn excited about that) we just couldn't drag ourselves out of Suess Landing. It was, by far, one of our favorite places.

 We rode The Cat in the Hat, which is a ride through the pages of said book. I think we all could've done without the spinning but other than that it was delightful!

 After going through some of the other shops (and trying on various hats just for fun) we found the Trolley Train Ride. It was just plain cute.

See? Isn't it adorable?

 You know we had to ride it. Amazingly, there weren't that many people there. It was nothing like Magic Kingdom - you were packed like sardines in that place. I took this picture as we wound our way through the line - you can see us in the mirror:

 When we took our place in the "shoot" Mom noticed the following sign:

Fro? No photography? I'm sorry but I just don't understand. This ride didn't take you into a performance, or theater, or anywhere else we hadn't already seen - and photographed. This ride just took you high above the rides and attractions. So what, we can't take pictures of these same things just because we're 12' in the air? Makes no sense to me. And since my camera was attached to my hands at all times, my index finger must have had a muscle spasm or something because here are a few of the photographs I didn't take:

See the coaster in the background? That's The Incredible Hulk!

And look way back there - that's our first glimpse of Hogwarts!!!

All the rides wind you through their gift shop before leaving so you know we had to have a bit more fun shopping and looking at all the fun stuff. Sadly, we knew we had to move on even though we could've spent a lot more time in Suess Landing.

The Lost Continent was next and we walked right into Poseidon's Fury. The line for the show has you winding through the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon towards and under sea battlefield for a spectacular special effects display between Poseidon and the evil Lord Darkenon. The show begins in theater #1. To enter theater #2 you have to walk through a tunnel of swirling water. It was incredible! This particular feature was not an effect, it was real. You could feel the mist from the water. Of course Poseidon prevails and the prisoners (us) are released from the underworld. As much as we wanted to explore the other attractions, the clock was ticking and Harry Potter was just around the corner.

It was so worth the wait! All we could say is "Wow!" over and over again. It felt like you were in the middle of one of the movies in Hogsmeade. They did such an awesome job of reproducing the village. Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the places inside the park, Harry Potter World was elbow to elbow. We would've loved to go into more of the shops and just browse but it was way too crowded. So we just moseyed along and enjoyed it from the streets. We got in line to ride the Flight of the Hippogriff, a mild roller coaster. I think the longest we stood in line to do anything was this ride. I even took a few shots from the coaster. The ride inside of Hogwarts was a simulation and we didn't want to risk feeling sick the rest of the day so we didn't do that. But before leaving Hogsmeade we had to have a Butterbeer. It has the flavors of a shortbread cookie and butterscotch and was so yummy! The guy who poured them for us said that J. K. Rowling sampled over 75 different flavor combinations before approving this one. They still don't have a hot Butterbeer yet because she hasn't found any she likes. We walked through to Jurassic Park, found a bench and sat down to rest our aching feet (my neck and back) and enjoy our Butterbeer. That was definitely one of the highlights of my week.

Flight of the Hippogriff

Buckbeak (the Hippogriff)

View of Hogsmeade from the coaster

 There were a few things in Jurassic Park we may have checked out if it wasn't as cool as it was and we weren't getting tired. The river raft ride looked like lots of fun but people were wearing ponchos and getting wet. It was in the 60's and we just weren't up for that, so we moved on. From there we walked through Toon Town, saw some familiar characters and some unfamiliar. Broom Hilda was one of the characters milling about. She was so cute!! One of the funniest moments was when she sneaked up on this unsuspecting woman resting her eyes. A small crowd of passersby gathered waiting for her to realized Broom Hilda was there. It was priceless! I wish I had kept shooting to capture her expression. Thankfully, she was good-natured about it and laughed right along with the rest of us.

 The Incredible Hulk Coaster loomed in front of us as the last ride before leaving the park. Cari and I looked at each other and grinned. Mom said, "Go ahead, I'll watch your stuff." So we did. What fun! I timed it. It took us 14 minutes from the time we got in line to walking away from the ride. And it was awesome. Both Cari and I said it's the best coaster we've ever ridden. We found Mom chillin' with her iPod when we got back. She was enjoying her new Disney music. She's so cute. If we hadn't been leaving the park I'm sure we'd have ridden it again ... but we still had Universal Studios to try and cram in before heading back to the condo.

Off to start the trek to Universal Studios we left Suess and HP behind. Since we had eaten lunch early, an early dinner sounded good. We walked through the streets, found a little Italian place and got some spaghetti - not good spaghetti but it filled a void. Probably not the smartest idea, but we ended up getting in line to ride Twister. It lets you experience what it would be like to be a storm chaser, showing and reproducing clips from the movie, "Twister." It was quite interesting and informative. Thankfully, it was pretty mild too.

We had walked past Shrek 4-D on the way in but were too hungry to stop then. Since we knew for sure that was something we wanted to do, we started walking. It was worth it. In fact it was one of our favorite things of the day. The 3-D movie puts the you right in the middle of the story where you experience water, wind, moving seats and other special effects.

Mom with Dora

I'm sorry Bob missed Universal and the Islands of Adventure. I'll look forward to going there again and exploring both parks in more detail. There were so many things left we wanted to do and experience. But you can only do so much in a day.

On the way out we stopped here and there to do some more shopping - found a couple of good bargains and started the long haul back to the car - the car parked in preferred parking - the car parked in preferred parking that was still a L-O-N-G way away. Since "Pubix" is next to the condo we stopped and bought some fresh blueberries, strawberries, cheese and crackers. The food options this week had not been the healthiest and we wanted some good food. Bob was feeling some better and joined us at the table for our feast. Exhaustion was rampant. This was our fifth park in as many days and we could feel it. We all were in bed early.

Top 3:
Mom - Suess Landing, Harry Potter / Butterbeer, Shrek
Cari - The Hulk, Harry Potter / Butterbeer, Suess Landing
Me - Harry Potter / Butterbeer, The Hulk, Suess Landing

Loot List:
Mom - Dr. Suess t-shirt, Mug
Me - t-shirt, mug, photo album (Publix)
Cari - hat & Disney cards (Publix), Universal cards, Harry Potter cards