Day 8 - Universal Studios (take 2)

We booked our shuttle to Universal for 9:25 am with a return at 8:15 pm. We knew this would be more than enough time to wrap up our time at Universal!

We started out with breakfast at our hotel. On this meal plan that we are on, we get 9 snacks, 9 counter service meals and 9 sit down meals at participating Disney hotels. Well since not all our days were at Disney we did book some places that were extra fancy and used two of the meals. As a result, we'll have just enough sit down meals, and probably 4 too many counter service meals! We might be stuffing our faces the next two days trying to use them all up. Not sure why I just can't let things go to waste... seriously! We'll just know for next time to plan out our counter service meals with the same organization that we did for our sit down meals. The food has been incredible. I think next week is back to reality and back to healthy eating!! Nothing like vacation photos to make you realize how much work you have ahead of you!

So - we hit the 9:25 bus and arrived just before 10 am. As I said last time we went to Universal we decided to do the Universal Studios theme park completely on our first day and save Islands of Adventure for the second day. I'm glad we did it that way as there was MUCH more to see and do here today at Islands of Adventure and I think had we done it in the other order we would have felt disappointed with Universal Studios.

So our first stop was the Incredible Hulk roller coaster ride. I think breakfast was not far enough of a memory for me when we hit that ride just after 10 am. Ohhhh my stomach. Abbey's head. We were a dizzy, spinning mess when we got off that ride. It was the biggest and baddest roller coaster we've been on this trip yet. It was massive, and it had a lot of loops and twisted you upside down and all around... and ugg.... no more coasters for me. For today at least. Maybe tomorrow. :)

After that we were off to Seuss Landing! Yes, everything Dr. Seuss you can imagine! It was as bright and colourful and creative as you'd imagine it would be. We did a Cat in the Hat ride, went on a Carousel (Car-o-Seuss-el!), went on the One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish flying fish ride, went through a bunch of play areas, tried to go on a little coaster for kids but Oakley was just too small yet, went to a candy store, book store, everything in Dr. Seuss style! My Mom would be in her glory!

From Seuss Landing we went off to another area of the park called The Lost Continent. We went to a show called "Poseidon's Fury" and it truly reaffirmed that our baby has no fear. It was a bit of a scary show, with lots of darkness, and then shooting fire, and gushing water... and Oakley just sat in my arms and watched.

It was then lunch time so we stopped at this restaurant called Mythos (I think!) that was right outside of the last ride and boasted that it was the #1 theme park restaurant from 2002-2008. So in we went. It was not bad but not great - we could assume why it didn't make it in 2009. Service was friendly but slow, and the food was just ok.

Off we went again down the path. We got to the Mystic Fountain which was right outside of a show at 2 pm we wanted to go see - but no strollers allowed and Oakley was just nicely falling asleep. Anyway this fountain was hilarious. It had a camera in the eye of the face in the fountain, with a speaker and a microphone. The controller guy noticed Oakley and started talking to her, and talking baby talk, asking us where we were from, how old Oakley was, spitting water out of the fountain. Oakley wasn't sure what to make of it - but I thought that guy had the best job at Universal. Sitting in some air-conditioned control room somewhere, freaking people out by talking to them through a fountain and spraying water anywhere he wanted. Yup that would be my job at Universal. :)

Oakley fell asleep shortly after that and so we kept on walking. Right beside the Lost Continent is where the Harry Potter park is going to be. We could see some of the building tops and took some pictures - it's going to be huge and very exciting. We are sad we missed it - it was supposed to be open by the time we got here!!

Off we went to Jurassic Park, and Jason and Abbey went into the Jurassic Park River Adventure Ride, which was a ton of fun and they both got soaking wet. I got video of them flying off the ride at the end into the water! Abbey was going to go again with me while Jason hung out with sleeping Oakley - but a huge cloud rolled in and lightening was spotted so all those rides that involved water and electricity were shut down. So we wandered. We went through every gift shop, looked for indoor rides, and finally found the Spiderman show/ride that was indoors and still open, so J&A went in that while Oakley and I wandered. By the time they got out, everything was open again so Abbey and I went back on the Jurassic Park ride and then did the Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls ride, another soaker! Well wouldn't you know it, after that ride was done we were on our way to the Popeye & Bluto's Blige-rate Barges, a river rafting ride, when the skies opened up and it POURED. The park was closing in one hour and there was no way we were going to be able to go on any more rides. Awwww.....

So we walked back through the park in the warm rain, picked up the things we wanted to buy and went out of the park back to CityWalk for supper. It was pretty close to 6 pm and we decided on Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for supper. We were stepping up onto the patio when the rain came down HARD. Made the rain for the last hour look like a sprinkle. It just poured! We were sure happy to be where we were!

We had a nice supper (and a margarita, of course) although Oakley ate two bites and was an absolute holy terror. There was live entertainment, a one-man band who was very talented and a young lady on stilts that made everyone balloon animals (Tammy you should add stilts to your Sweet Pea performances... but maybe not during pregnancy!)

We had another hour to wander before catching our bus - but we were all shopped out and all walked out! So we ended up sitting for a half hour waiting for our bus. Caught our 8:15 bus back and had Oakley in the tub before 9pm!

Tomorrow is our last day. We will be at Magic Kingdom all day (eating to use up our meal plan all day too!) and plan to make the most of it. No more rain the forecast so it will be a hot one again. Might as well get some sun in before we head back to the snow!