It was Day 3 where we woke up realizing how difficult it was going to be to continue walking like we had done the last two days. Our feet ached & I had to drag my kids out of their beds.
Canyon bought a HUGE sucker at Honeydukes & got his daily energy by licking it continuously after breakfast before we left for day 2 in Universal. He was too lazy to hold it, so he engineered a way to enjoy it without the work. Silly kid.
On our way home from Universal the night before, our van broke down. (Of course it did!) Always an adventure, right?
The van worked well enough to get us to the park, so Trek dropped us all off, & took the van into the service station THERE at the park. (Brilliant right? They have service stations both at Universal & at Disney!) Once it was fixed, they'd leave it in the parking lot & I could pick it up. Easy peasy. I was very pleased at how they made something that could have been a complete nightmare -- easy so that we could still enjoy the park.
Day 2 at Universal was a lot more laid back than day 1. We no longer had the front of the line express passes so we mostly walked around & looked at things & shopped. But we did ride a few rides.
The Minion ride was Canyon's favorite. He loved how silly it was & he loved that he got to meet a REAL minion afterward.
The adults opted to ride The Mummy ride next. Cari & I took Taya, Canyon, & Kylie for a walk while everyone else rode the ride. It was somewhat of a scary ride so we thought those 3 would enjoy a walk through London more than being scared. But we had fun. We visited the knight bus again, which the kids enjoyed.
And we crossed over into Diagon Alley & shopped until everyone else was finished with the mummy ride. It gave us a chance to relax, see the nooks & crannies of Diagon Ally, & be ready to show everyone else the cool stuff when they arrived.
Once again, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes was the favorite store & my kids spent WAY too much time inside buying all sorts of trinkets with their allowance money.
We ate lunch (we packed lunch every day of our trip to save a little money) on some steps in Diagon Alley & then continued to shop. I bought a really cool "fire potion" at an apothecary shop. You mix it with "gillly water" & you have a whole new "potion" to drink. (It was basically like watermelon kool-aid, but I'm a sucker for anything HP looking)
We all also got more butterbeer since we wouldn't be back again. Again, we had cold, frozen, & hot. It was 90 degrees outside & that hot butterbeer was just amazing, even if we were sweating.
The coolest part of Diagon Alley was the dragon on top of Gringott's. The kids loved watching it waiting for it to growl & breathe fire on everyone below.
When we were officially done with Diagon Alley for the day, we took the Hogwarts Express one more time to the Hogsmeade/Hogwarts side of Universal. But THIS time was different! Since we were going from London to Hogsmeade, we actually got to go to platform 9 3/4 & run through the barrier. If you go to Universal Orlando, you can ONLY do this from this side so be sure not to miss it. It's pretty cool.
After arriving at Hogsmeade, Trek had to say his goodbyes & had to head back to Alabama for school. He originally was given the entire week off, but a special class popped up that his leadership would not allow him to miss so he had to go home for the last few days of our vacation. I felt SO bad for him. He flew home, but would fly back the last day of our vacation, so we looked forward to Saturday so we could be a full family again.
Having Trek gone made me a little emotional. Trying to chase around 6 very active & curious kids around these HUGE theme parks by myself was quite difficult, & I'm not going to lie, part of this trip is a little of a blur because I was just so worried about keeping them with me & not losing anyone. But we still had a blast & made the most of it.
After playing in Hogsmeade one more time, we worked our way back to the Jurassic Park part of Islands of Adventure. My boys wanted a little more time with dinosaurs.
Their favorite part of the day was one on one time with a "baby dinosaur." They had so much fun talking to the ranger & petting the cute little dino.
On our way back around the park we ran into Popeye & Olive Oil. My kids had no idea who that was or why he had "scary arms." I explained it was Popeye & referenced our "favorite ride" from the previous day & they begged that we didn't ride his ride again. We laughed.
So, what did we do? We went back to the Popeye ride, found seats next to the exit of the ride, & literally laughed our heads off watching family after family after family get off the ride soaking wet. I don't know why we thought it was so funny, but we laughed & laughed & laughed until our sides hurt. The best part is that most of those families who got off, joined us shortly after & did the same thing. It was like the circle of life. You go on happy, get off wet, laugh at the circumstance, then watch others go through the same process.
After Popeye, we went back to Dr. Suess land & decided to ride the train. It was probably the longest line we had waited in that day, but the kids loved it.
We visited a few more shops, & a few more "lands" before we headed back out of the park for dinner.
Both nights at Universal we ate on the city walk because Burger King, Panda Express, & Moe's was a whole lot cheaper than food inside the park. We were grateful we had those options.
By the time we left the park that night, we were EXHAUSTED. We had blisters on our feet & we could barely lift our legs anymore. . .
How on earth would we do 3 days at Disney? (EASY!! It was so magical, we pushed through the pain & LOVED every second of it!)
Universal was great. I'm SO glad we got to spend 2 full days there. One day just isn't enough. We saw everything we wanted to see, we rode almost every ride, it was fantastic.
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