Universal/Islands of Adventure: Day One

When we go to Orlando, which seems to be every other year, we do all things Disney. We heard Universal was for older kids and since our kids were young, we passed on Universal. Now that my two oldest are 13 and 11, we thought it was time for Universal and since we had done Disney LAST year (really wasn’t planning on coming back so soon…) we thought everyone would had fun.

So we checked the weather, we packed the rain ponchos, and headed out with my dad and brother (16.) We started at Islands of Adventure since it was supposed to rain in the afternoon and most of Universal is inside. I went with my dad and Grace to Dr. Seuss Land while my hubby, popping Dramamine, took the boys on the rollercoasters. Thanks to fairly short lines, we did Dr. Seuss Land in an hour. Unfortunately, there were only four rides. The carosell, One Fish, Two Fish ride strangely familiar to Dumbo in the Magic Kindgom, an over head train trolley (which had the longest line and we passed on,) and the Cat and the Hat ride.

When we were done, we met the boys at the Sinbad show. It was a little loud and scary for Grace, but she huddled close to her daddy. The boys told us about the Deuling Dragons and how Timmy was too small to ride. I really wanted to ride, but knew we would be back another day and everyone was hungry.

We ate pizza at the Fantastic Four Cafe and shared our refill cup between us. By then my dad had gone home and we headed to Universal as the rain started to fall.

We pulled out our rain ponchos and made our way to Shrek 4-D. It was something the entire family could do. Then Grace and I went to Jimmy Neutron and the boys went to The Mummy. Waiting for the boys, Grace spied a rock climbing brick wall and begged me to let her climb. For $5 she got to climb three times (it was only supposed to be two, but she later told me she asked the lady if she could climb again) and I got one happy little girl. The boys found us and tried their spiderman skills as well.

Next was Jaws. It wasn’t too scary for the kids! Then off to Fievel’s play ground and water slide and Woody Woodpecker’s rollercoaster. It was pretty fun for a kiddie rollercoaster. We somehow made it out of the park without buying a souvenir. Probably because I told them we could look on the last day.

By the time we left the park, half of us had sore feet, and all of us were exhausted. But we had fun and got to scope out the good rides for when we’d return the next day.

I woke at the crack of dawn, showered, dressed and started waking everyone up only to hear the familiar groans of kiddos complaining about being too tired and wanting to stay home! I almost didn’t believe my ears. Kids NOT wanting to go to an amusement park and me, mom, begging, for them to go so I could ride the rollercoasters. But in the end the majority ruled and we decided to go back our last day.

I was a little leery of the plan. What if something came up? And it did! My husband woke and informed me he wouldn’t be able to go with me. He had spent the entire night battling vertigo. I would have to take my four kids, two cousins and one brother to the park. By. My. Self.

But I’ll save that story for another day!