We had breakfast in our room today, cereal and muffins. We packed up some meal replacement bars, beef jerky, slimfast shakes, pudding, and other snacks for in the park today and headed off for Islands of Adventure in Universal.
Stopped and took pictures of the kids at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. Ahh, this is the life, Kelsey said.
We went straight to the Pterodactyl flyers this time as we didn’t get to ride them last time due to the 45 minute wait. On the way, Jorden saw a sign he thought was funny:
The flyers were great, it felt like being a bird flying up high in the sky, and took some fast banking turns. Here’s some pics of the park from up high, and a photo of the flyers:
After we played in the Jurassic play area for awhile, pretending we were dinosaur hunters being chased by T-Rex through the nets and stairs and mazes. It was a really cool area, actually.
Then we found the water cannons, where you can shoot unsuspecting people who are walking by in the area below with great gusts of water, but unfortunately noone walked by while we were lying in wait!
We left here and went on a few other rides and made our way over to the Dueling Dragons coasters. Kelsey wanted to go on this time, she’s so brave about these coasters, so her and Dad went on, but Jorden didn’t want to and neither did I, so we just watched.
They went on another time after that, and then we made our way along going on a few other rides. I got another good photo of the Triton outside Poseidon’s Fury:
We went into Seussland again, where I took some more photos of this neat place.
We then came across a couple of characters we had to get the kids’ picture with, as it happens to be a nickname we had taken to calling our children……thing 1 and thing 2…hee hee…
We then decided to go back to Toon Lagoon and let the kids get all wet before we returned to our hotel. This is another thing we really like about these two parks at Universal is that they have a lot of places for people or kids to get really WET in order to cool off. So you can bring a change of clothes and let the kids get soaked. We went on the Bilge Rat Barges, and we soon found out that you get completely soaked from head to toe on this ride! Feet included. I mean DRIPPING wet. We rode a couple of times, and then we decided we’d better head home. On our way, we passed through more wet-getting areas.
Just as we were leaving, we saw Spiderman, and John and the kids posed for a photo with him. John had to get in on this one!
Spiderman even spent a few minutes talking to the kids, which was cool.
We returned to the hotel and went to the biggest pool. This hotel has three pools, which is great. After the pool we went back to the room for some ordered in dinner, and then the kids did some schoolwork, much to their chagrin! Tomorrow will be our last day at Universal, I don’t think we’ll spend the whole day, we’ve done and seen everything their is to see and do.
November 4th
Well, today will be short and boring. We went to the breakfast buffet at Angel’s this morning, which is the restaurant in our hotel. It’s a neat restaurant, made out like a 50′s style restaurant. But the food is just not good. The breakfast buffet was cheap, and I guess you get what you pay for, but what we got really wasn’t even worth the $25 we paid for it (kids ate free). A lot of it was old and stale, and you could tell the bacon was yesterday’s bacon just reheated, that type of thing. Oh well, we just know not to go there again!
We went to Universal for our last day there, went on all the same rides we have already been on. We went on Men in Black another five or six times while John tried desperately to beat my high score…ha ha! We ended up leaving early, around 1pm, because we had just run out of things to do. We went back to the hotel to hang out by the pool. Our hotel had three pools, which was pretty cool. We hung out there for the rest of the afternoon, and it felt really good just to relax!
We had some dinner in our room tonight, just some frozen meals heated in the microwave, and some salad. Then there was time to get the kids up to date on some schoolwork. I didn’t even take any photos today! See? Boring! Well, tomorrow we are going to go to Typhoon Lagoon, which is one of the largest water parks in the world, so it’ll be a nice day of relaxing in the sun and sliding down waterslides! And I’ll take pictures, I promise.
November 5th
Today was Typhoon Lagoon. We had purchased 5 day park hopper Plus passes, which gave us 2 extra days besides the 5 Disney days at our choice of Typhoon Lagoon (Blizzard Beach is closed for refurbishment), Wide World of Sports, or Pleasure Island. Of course we’ll choose to spend them both at Typhoon Lagoon. I don’t think there’s too much to do at Wide World of Sports, and we’re not into partying all night at Pleasure Island this trip!
We had breaky in our room again, and we lazed about a bit this morning. Typhoon opened at 10am, so we left around 9:45, and we arrived just as it opened. We brought it our cooler with a lunch and drinks so we wouldn’t have to buy anything in there. Aren’t we cheap?! LOL!
Typhoon Lagoon is a really cool water park, the theme is supposed to be that a Typhoon had hit, and this is the remnants of what happened after. Here are some pics of the surroundings:
The last time we were here on our last trip, it was completely packed and hard to find a chair, today you could hardly believe that when looking at the sea of empty lawn chairs.
We grabbed three chairs, knowing we probably would only end up needing two as the kids would probably never even come out of the water. The kids wanted to play in the giant wave pool first. Every so often an alarm sounds, and then the big waves come. These are about 8 foot waves, great for body surfing.
After an hour or so, Kelsey and Jorden came running out of the water with a gecko in Jorden’s hand. They said they saved it and it was drowning in the water. They put it on a rock beside us, and they said it was still breathing. They turned it right side up and watched it for awhile to make sure it was okay, and then we all decided to do the lazy river which is a river which winds around the whole park and travels really slowly. It’s fun and relaxing. So Kelsey first took the gecko to put in onto a different rock further away from the water and all the people where it could still soak up the sun to heat up and dry off some more. In the river, Kelsey practiced her snorkeling while we all floated along on the tubes. In certain areas along the river you get sprayed with cold water, yikes.
We got out at the same place we hopped in, and dropped Kelsey’s snorkel and mask off at our chairs. Kelsey checked on the gecko quickly and he was still soaking up sun in the same spot, and was still breathing. Then we went to ride the waterslides. We first went all the way up the stairs to the Kowabunga slides, and when it was Kelsey and my turn, we stepped up and looked down the slide, and it was straight down to the bottom, and I chickened out and said NO WAY, and then so did Kelsey. Everyone behind us laughed, and the lifeguard called us chickens! We walked down the stairs, and John was laughing at us at the bottom. We went on the other regular waterslides instead!
After that we decided to go on the river rapid rides, one is a family ride where you all ride together in a big tube, and the other two are single rider ones. They are both pretty tame. The kids rode them both a couple more times, then we went back to our chairs and the kids played in the wave pool again. John and I just enjoyed relaxing in the sun! We went in a few times and played around with the kids, too.
We rode the lazy river another time, and hung out in the kiddie water park area for a little while too. We saw the same lifeguard a few times in different areas, and each time we saw her she would look at me and Kelsey and “bawk” like a chicken at us. It was quite humorous.
We stayed until about 3:30, and then Kelsey wasn’t feeling well. She has a cold, Jorden had it first, but as usual he got over it really quick and it seems to be hitting her a lot harder. It’s a head cold, stuffy nose, sore throat, coughing, poor kid. So we got changed, and got everything out of our locker. Lockers here cost $5.00 to rent a small one, $7.00 to rent a large one. I thought this was a bit much. At least parking was free.
We went back to the hotel, and we got everything packed up and ready to change hotels in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll be going to our nicest place, Westgate Villas. This is the timeshare place. Last time we were here we went to a timeshare presentation, and we ended up buying just a single week at Westgate, which is what this is. It came to about $500 or so in US dollars, and that’s for a one bedroom suite with full kitchen. It’s quite a nice place.
The kids and I went to the lobby restaurant where they have Pizza Hut to grab a pizza and some pop for dinner. While waiting for the pizza to be ready, they kids each bought a watch with their own money from the lobby shop. Jorden bought a nice Shrek character watch for $20 US and kelsey bought a nice Eeyore watch for $25 US. They were both quite nice watches, and supposedly they were both on sale half off, but perhaps that was just a ruse. Anyway, now they could stop asking me every five minutes “what time is it??”.
Well, time for bed! Tomorrow we go to MGM Studios in Disneyworld.
November 6th
This morning we woke up and packed the van up and checked out of the Holiday Inn. We had to pay $5 for phone calls, which was just for my dialing up my Internet.
We went to MGM Studios today. In case you don’t know Walt Disney World very well, it is actually four theme parks in one. There is Magic Kingdom, which is a replica of Disneyland, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Epcot. When we first arrived they were letting people in right away and it was only 8:30, so we thought they had opened the park early, but it turned out it was just for people who were staying in Disney hotels. All other guests had to wait behind the ropes until 9am. This didn’t please a lot of people! We didn’t mind, we sat behind the ropes and waited, and people watched for awhile, witnessing numerous public displays of loud marital spats, as John and I marveled at how people would just scream at each other so publicly! Fighting over who was supposed to bring the tickets, who should be disciplining the children, who should be carrying the cooler, who’s walking too fast, yadda, yadda, yadda. Not that John and I don’t fight, but all of these people were LOUD. Was it a full moon today??
We finally got into the park, and took a picture of the big sorcerer’s hat.
Now John was walking too fast for me to get a photo of the kids in front of it, so I jokingly started yelling, “you’re going too fast!! Slow down!!” like the fighting folks we had just rolled eyes at, and we had a good laughing fit. We then stopped for a photo in front of the replica Mann’s Chinese Theatre.
The kids then saw Pooh and Tigger and got a photo with them.
We went on the Great Movie Ride, then we went to the Indiana Jones Stunt show, which was great as always.
After that, we took at photo of the kids with the ATAT Walker, then John and Jorden went to blow up the Death Star, while Kelsey and I waited outside.
When they were done, we went to the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? game, which none of us did very well on, I think it threw us off on the first question which was about American presidents..doh!
After that, we went to the Animation show, and the kids got a photo with the newest of the Disney characters, the Incredibles.
We then went to the Tower of Terror. Jorden rode this ride two years ago, three or four times. For some reason he isn’t as brave this time, we don’t know why, but he didn’t want to go. So John and Kelsey went and Jorden and I waited.
After that, the same thing happened with the Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster, so John and Kelsey rode, and I stayed with Jorden. Okay by me!
After that, both the kids were tired, they both still had their head colds and I think weren’t feeling 100%. It was 3:30 and they both just wanted to check into our next hotel. So we decided to leave and go check in. We arrived at Westgate and checked in with no problems. We were a little worried that they would give us a whole new time-share spiel when we arrived again, but they didn’t. Who knows, thought, they may try to before we leave. They took us to our room, and the kids were in heaven and so were we! This place is definitely a notch up from the Motel 6′s and Holiday Inn’s we’ve been staying in. The best part is the jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom! It’s a one bedroom, with a sofa bed in the livingroom, where the kids will be sleeping. John and I will have the bedroom with the jacuzzi tub! It also has a full kitchen, dishwasher, fridge, stove, washer, dryer, two restrooms, two showers, 50 inch TV, dvd player, VCR, enclosed patio, 13 pools on the property. Here’s some pics:
We ordered in chinese for dinner, and the kids couldn’t wait to get into the jacuzzi tub. They went in together. John went out and picked up a bottle of wine, and we decided that we’ll put the kids to bed early tonight in the other room so we can have some romantic time alone to test out the jacuzzi tonight. What can I say, it’s been over two weeks of living in the same room with the kids, we need some time alone!! =)