Our Travel Blog: 9th May - Orlando (Universal)

We finally made it to Orlando on Wednesday after 2 long flights and very little sleep. After checking in, we ended up heading to a nearby mall to see what was there, then we grabbed some dinner, came back to the hotel and went to bed. At this point sleep was much needed as we had been up for about 30 hours.

Today we hit the ground running (as you do when you travel with Wade), and at 8.20 caught the shuttle across to Universal Studios. There are two parks here, so we hit the main Universal Studios park first. This ended up being a great idea, because there was hardly anyone in the park, and we pretty much went on everything we wanted in the first 2 1/2 hours, with no waiting in any lines! First stop was the Rip Ride Rock It roller coaster. This coaster was still being built last time we were here, and Wade had been itching to go on it. It definitely didn't disappoint. One cool thing about this ride was that you each got to pick what music you wanted to listen to throughout the ride. After this we headed towards the Mummy ride (another coaster). Last time we went on this it broke down - thankfully it didn't this time :-) We were the only people in the line for this one, so ended up having our own private car! Around this area were all the movie set facades, so we wandered around here for a while checking these out. We then decided it was time to get some breakfast, but on the way to getting this got distracted by the fact that there wasn't anyone lined up for the Rip Ride Rock It roller coaster, so we went back on this a second time!! After this we finally picked up some breakfast (2 x churros and Powerade - super healthy)! Next on the list was the ET ride, then Wade jumped straight on the Simpsons Ride (this ride made me feel ill last time I went on it so figured it was best to avoid it this trip!). While waiting I made friends with a squirrel :-) In the same area was the Men in Black ride, so we did this next. It is a laser shooting ride where you earn points for shooting the aliens! Wade always gets great pleasure in beating my on these types of rides! We decided to head out of the park at this point and grab some lunch (but not before going on the Mummy ride for a second time)!

After lunch we headed over to the other park - Islands of Adventure. The Harry Potter area was being built last time we were here, so this was to be our first stop in this park. Once inside we discovered that this park was much busier than Universal Studios - so we headed straight to Harry Potter, wandered around taking pictures for a while and then jumped on one of the roller coasters - Dragon Challenge. There were a couple of other rides in this area that we wanted to go on, but decided that we weren't up for a 45 minute wait so have decided we will go back there tomorrow to ride some of the rides with longer wait times today.

At this point, we decided to head back to the hotel. We kind of got a little lost trying to get out, so it ended up being a slightly longer walk than it should have been!! Once we got back to the hotel, there was no resting like I was hoping for, instead we jumped in the car and headed over to the Orlando Premium Outlets. We spent a couple of hours here and both bought a few things (and got some ideas of a few more things we might like). On the way back to the hotel we dropped in at Walgreens for some supplies. Connected to this was an alcohol shop, so we went in to check out what was there. The first thing we saw was a 1.75L bottle of Vodka for less than $20 - it is insane how cheap alcohol is here! I finally got a bit of a rest in when we got back to the hotel - but not for long - it was then dinner time. We were going to head back over to the Universal City Walk area for dinner, but decided to save our legs the walk and ended up at TGI Fridays, which was just across from our hotel (and the meal was actually pretty good)!

Here are some photos from the trip to date

Leaving Brisbane