We just returned from a fantastic trip to Orlando Florida where we spent 3 days at Disney World and 2 days at Universal Studios Orlando. If you or anyone you know is planning a similar trip, I will soon be posting about all the tips and inside info we learned. But, for now—I just wanted to share our adventures. We sure had fun!
Day 1. We got to start our vacation at the Disney World Epcot park and enjoyed several fun rides. The Mission: Space was our favorite. They have two choices—one to Mars and one around Earth. I giggled and nudged Super Rockstar when I spied the barf bags–thinking it was a nice decorative touch. Little did I know that seconds later, I seriously wanted to reach for one. The Mars Mission take off was pretty intense. We also enjoyed a ride called Soarin’ Around the World. This one simulates flying around the world complete with ocean spray on your face and various scents from the places you fly over. I loved it! The last one we did at Epcot, was one called Test Track. The line was REALLY long. So, maybe it was because of that or maybe it was because we starting to get hungry, but none of us thought the wait was worth it. Basically, it’s where you get to design your own race car and then simulates “testing” it on a race track. To me, it was a lot of hype without much follow through. Oh well. I’m glad we at least tried it.
After Epcot, we moved on to the Animal Kingdom park. The boys were very anxious to check out the Pandora—World of Avatar area and it was so worth it. They have an entire section of the park that looks like you landed on the planet Pandora. Our favorite ride was one called the Avatar Flight of Passage ride. It simulates riding the Pandora mountain banshee’s and was spectacular. It had a long wait to ride too, but it was such a unique and beautiful setting—we didn’t mind. There is also a cool Na’vi River Journey. It’s basically riding a boat through a night time glowing Pandora rainforest. I liked it because it was relaxing to just sit and cruise along in a boat. We found out that the Animal Kingdom park closes at 6, so we decided to jump in line for the Flight of Passage ride one more time—so worth it.
Day 2: For this day, we got to begin at Hollywood Studios park. This is the one with all the hype because it has the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area. We had to schedule one of our Star Wars rides ahead of time and since we had some time to kill, we decided to try out the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride that’s in another section of the park. It’s one of those “elevator” type rides that drops way down fast and then bounces you back up. None of us enjoyed this much, but hey—it’s Disney—you gotta at least try. As soon as we were done, we headed straight to the Star Wars area and spent most of our day there.
It is absolutely and indescribably amazing–like being on a movie set. There are Star Wars characters everywhere, the whole place was like visiting a distant planet, and we explored it all–including trying out the “blue milk”. The highlight for me was a full size Millennium Falcon. The line for that ride– called Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run– is particularly long, but with being in the Star Wars environment with so many cool things to look at, the time flew by. The boys enjoyed shopping and loading up on souvenirs while we held their place in line. We absolutely loved it.
Another highlight was an “experience” ride called Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. This is the one we had to reserve a time slot for. I’m so glad we found out about that ahead of time, because otherwise we would have missed out and there would have been great sadness in the Glenn family. It was a blast!
By late afternoon, we decided to venture back over to the regular section of the park and try out the Rock n Roll Coaster Starring Aerosmith. This coaster goes super fast and is mostly in the dark—very fun!
We then decided to head over to the Magic Kingdom park. It’s almost identical to Disney Land in California which we visited about 4 years ago. We knew exactly which rides we wanted to experience and did them all: Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and Pirates of the Caribbean. We really wanted to try the new Jungle Cruise boat ride too, but inclement weather shut it down for the night. Oh well–we definitely enjoyed all the others.
Day 3: We again got to start our day at Hollywood Studios. Since this was our last day in the Disney parks we knew we wanted to enjoy all Hollywood Studios had to offer as well as head back to the Animal Kingdom park to try out some of the things we missed on our first visit. After a whirlwind morning of trying to see as much of the Hollywood Studios park as possible, including breezing through Toy Story Land, and heading back to Galaxy’s Edge to do the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride, the Rise of the Resistance experience, and then back to do the Aerosmith coaster again–we made it over to Animal Kingdom and tried out a very fun roller coaster called Expedition Everest—Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. It has a being chased by Big Foot element to it which the boys loved. Then, we headed back to the Pandora area and the Avatar Flight of Passage ride again (I think we did this one 3 times all told).
After that, we were pretty tired from all of the line standing and the heat of the day was starting to get to us, so I looked on the map and found out they had a “Safari” ride that takes you out to see a lot of animals. It’s basically riding in a big car for 20 minutes. Perfect. It was just what we needed and we got to see some hippos, zebras, elephants and many other animals along the way. After that we headed to the Kali River Rapids. Every theme park has this one—where you sit in a big round raft and get to do a big splash down a “water fall” and everyone gets wet. Only…we didn’t get wet. So, we decided to go one more time and on this time around we got soaked.
Day 4: This was our first day at Universal Studios. Wow. This place is NUTS! I have never seen so many folks packed into such an enormous place. It was over the top in every way you can imagine. There are two parks that you can hop back and forth to and we started at the Universal Studios one. Our first ride was Transformers: The Ride 3D. Both Morgan and Grayson are huge Transformers fans and this ride did not disappoint—the 3D was amazing and we had a blast!
Next, we headed over to the Harry Potter Diagon Alley area. This was INCREDIBLE. The entire area was like being inside the movie— there was a wand shop with stacks of wands from floor to ceiling, butter beer carts set up here and there and even a giant dragon perched on top one of the buildings that blew fire every few minutes. We loved the Harry Potter and Escape From Gringotts ride a lot. Before leaving the Universal park, we decided to try out the Men in Black Alien Attack ride that is over in another section. It’s not as thrilling or impressive as some of the other ones we experienced, but it was still fun.
We then took the Hogwarts’s Express: Kings Cross Station over to the Universal Island of Adventure park. This takes you to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Hogsmeade. It was just as over the top amazing as the one we had just visited. In this Harry Potter area there are so many rides to enjoy, but we opted to try out the Jurassic World–which is in another area of the park–first. There was a river type ride called Jurassic Park River Adventure. It had so many wonderful animatronic dinosaurs including a giant T-Rex right right before you head down a big waterfall. There is also the most fun roller coaster I’ve ever been on called the VelociCoaster. If you love a thrilling, scream the whole time roller coaster—this one is perfect. By this time, some thunderstorms had rolled in and all of the other outdoor roller coasters and rides were closed down. So we ended our day on the Skull Island: Reign of Kong ride. After the VelociCoaster—anything was going to seem pretty lame, but even though this ride had a pretty cool environment leading up to it—it wasn’t all that great. That’s ok, it had started pouring rain by this point, so we headed back to our hotel.
Day 5: For our second day at Universal we went straight to one of the rides we absolutely wanted to try: Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. This is in the Island of Adventure Harry Potter area and was probably #2 in my list of favorite rides. We also tried a butter beer while we waited to go on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride—also very fun. Then went back to the Jurassic World River Adventure and then ended our day on the VelociCoaster. There are so many other places to explore in this park–a Marvel Universe–which had a pretty cool looking Hulk roller coaster, a Dr. Seuss themed area (it was geared more for little ones), and a cool what I would call the Sunday funnies comic book area. Unfortunately the bad weather had started to move in again and we were just plain exhausted, so we decided to call it a day and a done vacation.
I don’t know if it’s possible to see and do it all at these places, but we definitely got to do all that we wanted to. My favorite part, was being with my family–we just enjoyed it so much together. Even though our feet ached and sometimes we were hot or hungry–we couldn’t stop smiling. I noticed that it was that way with just about everyone we encountered too. Just families out having fun–so happy to be there. It was worth it in every way and I would do it again in a heart beat.