Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure- Wednesday

Wednesday-  For a lot of reasons, Universal Studios/ Islands of Adventure deserves its own post.  Our expectations for this day were the lowest based on the age of our kids, but it was without a doubt one of the very best days of the week! (Really the best single day if I'm not allowed to count all 3 Magic Kingdom days as one).

First of all, Ryan came through with a great connection!  A friend Ryan knows through work is always offering things that we can never actually accept (bring your family to my beach house in Myrtle Beach, for example).  But when he heard we were going to Disney World, he said Universal Studios is one of his biggest clients and he could get us free tickets.  This sounded great, and I was a little afraid it was too good to be true.  I wasn't too worried about it, though, because if it fell through we would just have an "off" day at the resort.  A couple of weeks before the trip, it really became too good to be true.  Since he himself would be in Orlando that day, as well, Ryan's friend had arranged for us to have his good friend's "Executive Pass" for the day.  Meaning free access to both parks, free express pass (skip all lines), free valet parking, and some sort of merchandise discount, he thought 10% (turns out it was 35% off some stores and 50% of others).  And he totally came through!  We met him in his swanky hotel lobby Wednesday morning like we had planned, and not only did the pass do everything he had said, lots of people looked at us like we must be important.  Ha!  It was quickly going to our heads. ;)  Truth be told, Universal wasn't as busy as Disney, so lines wouldn't have been an issue either way.  But instead of waiting 10 minutes for rides, we were waiting 2 minutes, and that was still fun!

The highlights for us were...

-Walking in the atmosphere was great, and there were all of these fun places to stop and take pictures.  Everyone was in a great mood, weather was perfect, so we took advantage of the chance to play and take pics:

Anderson spotted this on the way in and was all about it!

Brady rocking the two-year-old "happy face" ;-)

Per Anderson's request.

I'm always optimistic for a good family photo...  we try.

Dimples!

Brady loves to ride on animals! He was excited!

Like the big boys 

Drums!  Happy boy.

Love the real smiles we got in this one!!

-Briefly visiting the Marvel area.  No rides for the little guys here, but plenty to see!

They let you use your own camera, but all you get is a green screen.  Ha! Still cute. :)  And Spider Man was super nice.

 - The Dr. Seuss area.  We started out with the free play/ water area, and the boys would've stayed for hours if we let them.

There were quite a few fun rides in this area, too.  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish, The Cat in the Hat, a cute carousel, and then a train ride that for some unknown reason Brady wasn't tall enough to ride.

We rode this one a lot :)  As you can see, not busy!

My mom went a little crazy in the souvenir shop (35% off!) and got all of us cute shirts that Anderson was very eager for us all to change in to.

This is after a yummy Mexican food dinner at City Walk, but you can see our shirts, more or less.

We had lunch at a fancy restaurant called "Myths", I think.  Compared to Disney prices, very reasonably priced.

Brady's animals went with him for most of the trip, including this lunch.

Then we headed to Hogsmeade in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  It is AMAZING!  I didn't take many pictures, but my mom got some good ones on her phone.  I guess we had put our camera away at this point, which is too bad.  It looked beautiful and so realistic, and you could buy wands among tons of other things from the books and movies.  I can't wait to read the books with the boys when they are older and then go back.

 We took the super realistic train from Hogsmeade (in Islands of Adventure) to Daigon Alley in London (Universal Studios).  You can only do this if you have park-hopper tickets.  Woo hoo!  :)  We sat in real train cars and the windows were ridiculously realistic screens so it looks like you're driving through a scene in the movies; you see characters and all.  Even the door to our train had a screen so it looked like characters were walking by, peeking in, frogs got loose and hopped on the door, etc. So cool!

Once in Diagon Alley, we did decide to give the adults a chance to ride the Escape from Gringotts ride.  This was an awesome ride.  The only problem was, Dad and I stayed with the boys in the middle of the (quite crowded, but beautiful) street while Mom and Ryan rode the rather long ride.  The boys were all desperately trying to nap; meanwhile, the amazing-looking dragon on top of Gringotts lets out a reallly loud roar and fire every 10 minutes or so making it REALLY hard for my super-tired boys to nap.  I was a little cranky about this.  Especially because with all of the intro to the ride, it took almost 30 minutes.  And I had both my mom and Ryan's phones, so if we had left the super-loud area, who knows when we would find each other.  We did our best and the boys kind of slept.  Once we reunited, we moved the boys to a much quieter area and my parents stayed with them while Ryan took me on the ride.  It was amazing!

This is inside Gringotts, where normally the line would be.  There was a bit of a line, but not nearly like it gets during busy weeks.

Going about their business...

 After the boys woke back up, we watched the show with the animal "actors" (it was a little disappointing for sure.)  It was starting to rain, so we started thinking about heading back to Hogsmeade (we wanted to ride the train again).  The evening turned out cooler and foggy but the rain didn't last long.  Here's Hogsmeade at night.

Disney World is already so expensive, and they make it so much less expensive to add a 4th or 5th day, so I COMPLETELY get why a lot of people do just Disney.  We had a really fortunate circumstance otherwise we weren't planning on Universal at all.  With all of that said, it is such a shame to be so close to Universal and not experience it! When we go back one day and our boys are older, I want to do 3 days at Disney and definitely 2 at Universal.  In a lot of ways they're doing things that Disney isn't.  I guess Disney doesn't have to improve as much because as it is, they were definitely the busier of the two (although the folks at Universal said we had picked the perfect week and it would be a lot busier the following week when "Christmas" starts there.)

Anyways, I can't say enough about what a pleasant surprise our day at Universal was.  Ryan must never lose touch with our new favorite friend. ;-)