Florida Vacation Part 2- Island of Adventures and Universal Studios Florida

Tuesday morning we were up and at it early again. We hopped on the shuttle from our resort and got to Island of Adventures early again for the early park hours.

 

We entered the park and split up. The big kids went with Uncle Phillip to ride "Velocicoaster" and Stephanie and I took the other kids back to the hippogriff ride and Tucker and I rode Hagrid's Motorbike together again. 

All the younger kids loved the hippogriff ride and we loved seeing "Buckbeak".

I loved "Hagrid's Motorbike adventure" ride. It was my favorite and I could have ridden it over and over, except for the long lines after the early park hours were over. 

Then we met back up with everyone and explored Jurassic World. It was awesome. 

I took the kids to ride the pteradon flyers. This was a ride only for kids, unless you had a little one that required a bigger rider. I got to go with Benson and the other kids paired up to ride together. 

After that we all went to ride "Skull Island, Reign of Kong"
This was a fan favorite and we rode it twice in a row.

We loved the 3D effects. It was so fun.  

 

Then it was off to Marvel Island. We loved this part of the park. There were Marvel Characters every where and the rides were so fun. 

 

We got to meet Cyclops, Wolverine, Spiderman and Captain America. 

The kids were a little afraid of Wolverine. 

Captain America was as nice and polite as you would expect. 

 

We all rode the spiderman ride together and it was pretty awesome. It was so nice that everyone was tall enough for this one.

Benson decided he really wanted a spiderman stuffy after the ride. He spent his money on that and he had no regrets. 

This picture doesn't look like it's the real spiderman, but it is. We got to talk to him and Benson showed him his new stuffy. 

Then the bigger kids rode the Dr. Doom's Fearfall and we ate lunch at Captain America Cafe. 

Then we decided it was time to cool off. We went over to Toon Lagoon and Stephanie and I took the kids to ride "Barge bilge Rats". We got soaked but it did feel nice to cool off. 

 

Here's the whole soaked crew. 

Then the big kids went to ride "The Hulk" while the rest of us played. We went to "Me Ship, The Olive" and let the kids play. Then we went back over to the "Camp Jurassic" area and they played some more. 
The kids loved the playground at Camp Jurassic. The kids loved it. 

 

Then we went all met back up and went to do the "Raptor Encounter".

Here are all the kiddos waiting for our turn. 

This was so fun. The cast members who run this are hilarious and the reactions were awesome. 

It started off as us just getting a picture with "Blue" the raptor. 

But then the raptor "attacked" and we had to run for it. It was so funny. 

 

 

We loved Jurassic World and it was had so much fun playing there.

 We had to take a picture with the T-Rex. 

We split up again after this, Uncle Phillip took the big boys to ride some more big rides again and the rest of up went to "Seuss Landing" to play. Benson had been waiting to visit this area of the park for two days. We had to walk through it each morning to get to the other ends of the park and Benson was so excited to play there. 

Our first stop was to get ice cream though because we were so hot. We ate our ice cream while we watched one of the Dr. Seuss shows. 

 

Thing 2 really enjoyed interacting with Benson and Paige. It was pretty funny to watch. 

 

We stuck around to meet all the characters. 

 

Then we rode some rides. 
We rode "One Fish, Two Fish"

We also rode the "Sky High Trolley". While waiting, Benson passed out on his Dad's shoulder. It was so cute. He tried so hard, but he just couldn't hang. 

 

 

 

Eventually we made our way home. We left the park around 5:45 pm. It was a long full day but we had a blast. The big boys and Uncle Phillip didn't leave until the park closed at 9 pm. They had a blast and rode all the rides they wanted. It was a very full day 2 at Universal!!

We had a later start to our third day at Universal. We spent the day on the Universal Studios side of the park and we didn't have early park hours so we didn't have to get there as early. We still arrived at the park early enough for rope drop.  

Once we were inside the park, Uncle Phillip took the older kids to ride "Hollywood Rip Rocket" while the rest of went to ride the minions ride. 

We also passed "Donkey" from "Shrek" and talked to him for a while. He was so funny and the kids were laughing so hard. 

Then we all meet back up together to meet some Transformers and ride the transformer ride. 

We all loved the transformer ride. Benson was big enough to ride it too so it was fun for the whole group to ride together.  From there we rode the  "Men in Black, Alien Attack" ride. 

Then we headed over to "Simpson" land and rode those rides. The other adults didn't want to go on the rides but Benson did, so I went with them and regretted it. All the 3D rides were making me sick. But the kids loved it. 

After the Simpson rides we went to ride "ET". This was probably the slowest paced ride in the whole park, but everyone could ride it and it was nostalgic for the 80's babies in the group. 

At this point we split up by family. The cousins wanted to ride the "Escape from Gringotts" ride again and we wanted to go to cool off at the water area. So we split up and met back up later. 

We headed to "Curios George Town" and let the kids play. We also rode "Woody Woodpecker's Nuthouse coaster". It was fun and the kids loved the play areas. 

We also went to the "KidZone" and met some other fun characters like "King Julian" and one of the Penguins. 

 

We also ran into "Fiona" near Donkey and got to talk to her. 

Benson was feeling too shy for a picture though.

Then we ate lunch at the "Monster Cafe" and it was yummy. Then we ran over to watch the "Bourne Stuntacular Show". Our kids haven't seen the the Bourne Identity movies, but the stunt show was still pretty cool. 

After the show we met Scooby Doo and some of his friends. Velma and Shaggy were so funny and totally in character. 

We also took a picture in front of the mystery machine. 

Then we met back up with the cousins. We decided we were about ready to head back to the resort but first we needed some ice cream. Chris decided that him and Benson would head back to the hotel, since Benson was exhausted and they grabbed some ice cream on the way back. The rest of my kids, Paige, Aunt Stephanie and I walked back over to Diagon Alley to get some butterbeer ice cream. It was so delicious and totally worth the walk. 

 

We did a little more exploring and spell casting in Diagon Alley and then we headed back to the hotel. 

We also went down "Knockturn Alley" and let the kids explore there. 

When we got back to the resort, we went to the pool to relax and we ate some dinner in our room. 

Then we got ready and went back to Island of Adventures to watch the light show at Hogwarts. 

It was amazing and I'm so glad we went back for it. We were debating whether we wanted to brave the crowds again, but it was so cool and one of our favorite parts of the trip. 

It was the perfect way to end our time at Universal. We had three very fun filled days and we were exhausted but I can't believe how smoothly our days went. All those hours of planning really did make it a great trip. We got to do everything we wanted. We rode all the rides we wanted to ride and some of them we got to ride more than once. It was such a great trip. I loved all our matching shirts and I loved seeing the kids get to enjoy the parks together. 

Stephanie and I stayed a little later at the park and shopped for Christmas ornaments and then went back to our hotel. The next day we had to check out but we did get to sleep in. We left the hotel around 10:30 am and drove down to Winter Haven, FL so we could check in to the Legoland Hotel. 

Stay tuned for that fun!