I’m not going to go day by day for this part of the adventure. We were in Orlando for five days, and no one needs five more blog posts about this trip.
However, it should be noted that Monkey Girl was our tour guide, despite never having been to Universal before.
If we needed to know where to go, we’d simply call out her name and she would guide us.
She called up the app on her phone and gave us real-time line wait times so we knew where to skip and where to run.
Coming into the parking garage, the attendants would ask where we were from and what we were visiting and direct us on our way.
We got a chuckle out of a woman I named “Gina” (because that’s what I do) who was dancing and motioning and getting everyone to the right spots in the parking lot, and it was evident, right from the get-go, that this was going to be a good day.
We decided on Universal Studios before Islands of Adventure, and our very first ride was Jimmy Fallon’s Race Through New York.
Because why not travel 20 hours to ride on something we could do 30 minutes from home?
This ride I recommend to everyone.
Much of Universal and Islands of Adventure is made up of 4D motion simulators. There are very few actual, old school, rides.
Many of the rides are a mix of motion simulator and short bursts of movement within the car.
All six of us LOVED the Jimmy Fallon ride. From the waiting area where riders were treated to clips of his funniest moments, to live performances by the barbershop quartet and Hashtage the Panda, to the actual ride itself, it is entertaining all the way through.
As an aside, lines are something that Universal does well.
Yes, you may need to wait for an hour to get on a ride, however, there are fans and mist and tv screens that suck you in to the story that goes along with each ride.
And while I won’t spoil the stories and surprises of each line, I will say, Universal keeps you entertained while you wait.
And, in the areas where they don’t, there are ways to entertain yourself.
For example, the six of us played Rock, Paper, Scissors, or another hand game called Shotgun, or Heads Up on my phone to keep busy.
Heads Up kept us AND the people around highly entertained.
I’m a little competitive and I yell when I play games, and several times as I was trying to guess what my screen said I was, the kids said “Mom…you don’t have to yell! People are staring!”
Which did not make me stop yelling.
Anyway, from Jimmy Fallon, we moved to The Mummy.
I’m a sucker for all things Egyptian history, and I love all the Mummy movies.
Five of us loved this ride intensely.
One of us, who is seven, most intensely did not.
It was a little scary if you’re little.
And this, my friends, was a rookie mistake of ours.
Because Tiny spent the next four days being afraid of rides.
And so we took turns sitting out the rides with him while everyone else went on.
Which is fine. Because it’s what parents do.
But, if we could do it again, that boy would not have ridden The Mummy.
I don’t remember the order of everything we did, but I’ll tell you some of our favorite things we rode and saw.
In Universal Studios, Real Man, Monkey in the Middle and Monkey girl rode the Rip Ride Rock-It, which is a large, loopy coaster that they all deemed amazing.
The highlight of the ride, for Monkey Girl, was that you were able to program your head seat with your choice of music for the ride.
The Shrek 4D ride had the potential to be fun, but no one’s 3D glasses were working, so, as Real Man said, it was more like a 2.5D show.
The Men In Black ride brings you on as a trainee for the program, and as you ride the ride, you are responsible for shooting aliens with your laser gun.
At the end, your cart is graded as to how many aliens you killed, and although Real Man and Monkey in the Middle were highly accurate with their shots (according to their personal scores) the rest of the cart brought our score down to “Bug Bait.”
Throughout Universal Studios, there are shows to watch, impromptu and planned, and we enjoyed the fish throwing acrobatic show that took place in the middle of the park, and Tiny and I enjoyed the 3:00 parade through the lot while everyone else rode the Transformers ride.
Transformers was a good ride, as per Baby Monkey who has seen every movie and knows every robot/car/and character.
Meanwhile, I enjoyed watching the parade characters try to elicit a smile out of Tiny, who apparently feels that smiling at strangers is not allowed, and stared them down.
And while we were enjoying the parade, Real Man and the big monkeys were watching their own drama, in the Transformers line, where the woman behind them was on her cell phone, with her boyfriend, who was giving her the news that something or someone had killed her cat the night before.
Because why wouldn’t you give someone that information while they are on line at a theme park?
At Islands of Adventure, the park is broken into “lands” that are themed. There is Toon Town, Superhero Way, Harry Potter’s Wizarding World, Dr. Seuss Land, The Forgotten City, Kong’s Island, and Jurassic Park.
We spent the next three days at Islands of Adventure, running back to Universal once or twice along the way.
The first ride we hit was the Hulk ride (pronounced ‘Hoke” in our family, because Tiny commonly mispronounces things, and those then because the official pronounciations for our squad.)
Monkey Girl and her parents decided to ride this, and with a 30 minute wait, Monkey in the Middle offered to stay in the shade across from the entrance with the younger boys.
Unfortunately, about 30 minutes into our wait, the ride had a bit of a malfunction, and the wait time became over an hour and thirty minutes.
But, we were in it, and had already waited 30 and didn’t know how long the rest of the wait would be, so we stayed.
With no phones to contact the boys, because you had to check your belongings.
Side note: Another thing that Universal does well, is offer free lockers to store your belongings while you ride the rides.
The digital locks are updated with the wait times for the rides, and it is free for approximately 30 minutes longer than the line time plus the actual ride time.
Locks are unlocked with a fingerprint.
Which, by the way, is also how you enter the park with the Park to Park pass. With your finger print.
Real Man noted that the CIA has nothing on Universal with regards to a database of the fingerprints of people traveling in the US.
And, I should mention that we are not entirely sure that Monkey Girl IS, in fact, Monkey Girl, as her fingerprint didn’t work in either park after the first day.
She had to show her driver’s license every time, as the scan of her finger came up with a big, red X.
When we finally got onto the Hoke, it was a quick, but super fun ride with loops and twists and speed.
I probably wouldn’t have ridden it if I had known the line would be that long, but I’m glad I did.
In Toon Town we rode the Simpson’s 4D ride/simulator, and those of us who were fans of the show enjoyed every second of it.
It actually made me want to go back and binge-watch from the beginning.
The Spider-Man ride was another favorite of mine. Another mix of 4D movie/short bursts of track/and motion simulator. Really a cool one.
Tiny wanted his picture taken with just about everyone and everything he saw, and why not?
While Real Man and the big kids went to ride Kong (which they deemed HIGHLY entertaining) I took Tiny to Seuss World.
We rode the Carousel and the Seuss sky train and One Fish, Two Fish (in the rain)
Perfect for a little boy who was afraid to ride everything else.
Speaking of a little boy…
This kid kept us in stitches the entire trip.
For example, as the youngest of four who is much younger than the other three, he hears a lot of teenage talk that he doesn’t necessarily understand.
But, he wants to desperately to be like his siblings, and so he repeats things in the way that HE understands them.
Like “Roasted!”
You know, which is said when you verbally burn someone.
Except, Tiny says things like “Hey Dad! The Giants are gonna win the Super Bowl this year! ROASTED!”
And then he does this thing with his hands and his leg and his face and it’s freaking hilarious.
So, the week was spent with the rest of us saying things like “Hey Monkey Girl…your hair looks really pretty today! ROASTED!”
Or
“Mom…thanks for remembering to pack my retainer. ROASTED!”
Here is Tiny and Monkey Girl in full Roasted form.
Back to the fun…
We basically rode every single ride there was in the park. The only thing we missed was the ET ride.
But I need to talk about my favorite two lands in Islands of Adventure.
Because I need to.
Monkey Girl and I read the Harry Potter books together when she was a little girl.
Correction: We devoured those books.
Read. Re-read. Couldn’t put them down.
And when Baby Monkey was old enough, we introduced him to the story. And he, too, fell in love.
So, she and I have been waiting to visit Harry Potter Wizarding World since it was built.
And as we walked through the gates, into Diagon Alley, we held hands and gasped.
In Universal Studios, they have Diagon Alley, and you can take the train to Hogsmeade, (with the Park to Park pass) which is in Islands of Adventure.
Both are exact replicas of these locations in the movies, and the music from the movies are being piped through the park.
The stores are the same, some are just store fronts and some you can enter.
You can buy a wand from Olivander’s and there are places you can use that wand to make things happen in the shop windows.
We bought Butterbeer (loved by Monkey in the Middle and Tiny, but getting an “Eh” from the rest of us), rode the Escape from Gringott’s ride, and just soaked in all of the Harry Potter essence we could.
Monkey Girl and I agreed that it was cool, but it was the most packed part of the entire park, and it was too easy to lose the magic of the place as you were jostled around and turned around.
So, while it gets a thumbs up from both of us, we also felt a little disappointed in that particular part of the experience.
As a segue into the last part of the park that we visited, I need to explain that my #1 favorite movie of all time is Jurassic Park.
Not Jurassic World (although that is definitely in my top 10) but the original Jurassic Park.
That movie captivated me in a way that I cannot explain.
It is perfection.
I read the book, loved the book, but the movie?
Yes, please.
And, I should qualify this statement by saying that I was never a dinosaur kid. I don’t really even like dinosaurs, and was pretty grateful that none of my kids were ever really into dinosaurs either.
I have no idea what the difference between a brontosaurus and an apatosaurus are, nor do I care to know.
So, it’s really the story of Jurassic Park that captured me.
And as we walked through the gates of Jurassic Park, my heart started to beat faster.
It’s the sounds of the rainforest mixed in with the occasional, faint growl or thump of an unseen beast in the wild.
On our first day at Islands of Adventure, Real Man and the big kids went on the Jurassic Park river ride, and the kids got off and said that I would love it.
So, on our last day at the park, I got my turn.
And I loved it.
To be more clear, I actually started to cry a little as the boat began to move through the ride, because damn…I love me some Jurassic Park.
We needed some lunch, and entered one of the Jurassic Cafe’s (and ran into people from home while we ate!) and when we were finished, Baby Monkey said “Are we leaving? Why aren’t we going downstairs?”
I had no idea there was a downstairs, but he led the way, down the stairs and into the interactive discovery center.
By far, one of my favorite parts of the trip.
This discovery center had a lab that was a replica of the lab in the movie where they stop the tour and jump out of their seats to go in and look at the dinosaur eggs.
The kids got called over to see a baby dinosaur being hatched, and they thought that was supremely cool, even though they were aware it was just a puppet.
We x-rayed dinosaur eggs, we created our own species, we looked at fossils, and made a dinosaur talk.
An hour later when we re-entered the real world, we decided to do the Raptor Experience, where your family could interact with and have your picture taken with a “trained” velociraptor.
As we waited in line, one of the guides came over to tell everyone that this was not a ride, or a game, but a photo experience with a raptor, complete with hand motions that quickly became another integral part of our family’s language.
As we watched family after family have their photo taken with the raptor, a few things became clear.
- Tiny needed to be told that it was a person in a suit, and not a real raptor in the cage, in order for him to stand for that picture
- My hair was going in that raptor’s mouth
We had a family shot and a kid shot, and it was awesome…
In general, I can’t say enough about how much we enjoyed the parks, and the staff and the entire Universal experience.
At the end of the day, we would leave the park, find a local place to eat, then hit the hotel, maybe swim, maybe pass out, or maybe watch some tv. But every day, we were ready to go back.
Universal gets twelve thumbs up from this crew.
It needs to be noted that throughout the trip, everyone got sick.
Except me.
There were 101.2 degree fevers, sinus infections, upset stomachs, and coughs.
But I kept everyone medicated and they all powered through like troopers.
So, on day five, it was evident that what was needed was rest.
So, we visited Wonderworks Orlando, which my three road-trippers and I visited in Syracuse and loved, and this one did not disappoint, either.
We spent four hours exploring all of the hands-on fun, and then headed for the theater where we saw Ready, Player One.
This movie might deserve it’s own post.
It’s my favorite YA novel, and they did a wonderful job bringing it to the screen.
When the movie ended, we went back to the hotel, packed, and hit the hay.
The trip home was uneventful and we decided to do it in two days instead of three so we would have a full day at home to recuperate and shop and do laundry before a full week of school.
I’ve always tried to be truthful on this blog. I’ve tried to make sure that I share the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So, believe me when I say that despite the illness and the waits and the achy feet and legs and sibling fights (which amazingly were few and far between) this was probably my favorite trip I have ever taken with these people.
They all embraced the car ride, took care of each other, showed empathy to a 12 year old who was vomiting into baggies for 10 hours in the car, rolled with the lines in the parks, made sure everyone got to do what they wanted to do and see and ride.
Real Man’s feet and legs were killing him all day, every day. But he walked and stood and never complained. Even when his own stomach was hurting or his sneezes were so powerful they were almost throwing out his back with the force. He kept us laughing in the car, like when I started to cry while, listening to the Hamilton soundtrack, explaining that Eliza Hamilton opened up an orphanage after Alexander died, and how she saved all those little babies and children (I’ve got a thing about kids) and he asked “Oh, so Hamilton is the prequel to Annie?” Which immediately broke the car into hysterical laugher, cuz that’s how we roll.
Monkey Girl shared her joy and wonder with her little brothers and kept us on track and not lost and reminded us when there was something we had wanted to do but hadn’t gotten to yet, making sure that nothing was missed or left out.
Monkey in the Middle stepped it up and went to the front desk to get things we needed, spoke to waiters and adults to get things done for us, and basically acted (sometimes…not all the time) like a third adult on the trip and warmed our hearts and gave us glimpses of the man he is becoming.
Baby Monkey powered through some really crappy circumstances, and kept Tiny entertained, and rolled with the punches more than anyone else. He cracked jokes while he puked and when he was better, “Wherever you guys want to eat is fine,” or “Whatever you guys want to ride is okay with me” were his most-used phrases, and he showed a patience that we all needed to remind ourselves to use, at times.
And Tiny…he just kept us in stitches the whole time.
Again, I try to keep it real here, but aside from the usual family BS, this trip…this trip was it.
