@SouthFayetteFan's Brief Universal Trip:
We had a nice trip - our flight into Orlando landed at noon on Saturday. Our flight home landed back in Pittsburgh at 9:30 this morning. So we did not even spend 72 full hours on the ground in Florida. Despite that it was a great trip - to my any trip where I focus and spend time with my girls is a great trip!
As you may recall - we stayed in a Future Rock Star Suite at the Hard Rock Hotel booked with AA miles (129,200 of them to be exact). The room featured a King bed, a couch & 2 chair seating area, separate tub/toilet/sink and shower/sink bathroom areas, and a separate bedroom for the kids with 2 twin beds sprawled across 800 square feet. It was pretty amazing! My younger daughter (whose career goal at 6 yrs old currently is pop star) was so excited when she saw it!! My parents, sister and brother in law were in a separate room a few doors down in a 2 queen room. They came down to visit one night and watch the football game.
At $735 a night, this room was NOT cheap (but I had AA miles to burn so to me it cost nothing). It would be hard to recommend paying
that price for this but if you want space it was very nice. We did not experience any dining options (other than coffee for some of the folks in our travel party) at the hotel. We made a quick run to the food mart at the Shell Station for cereal and milk
and POP TARTS to expedite our park departure each morning.
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My (scattered) thoughts about Universal:
- I should preface this by saying, I'm not a huge fan of Universal...I enjoy it, but it's NOT Disney to me
- My general thought on Universal has always been that when I get home from a Uni trip I never say "I wish I could go back there NOW!" When I go to Disney, I could literally get on a plane back to Orlando when we get home...I don't feel that way with Universal.
- This trip did not change that for me... (I'm not surprised)
- This was my first trip where I had seen the Harry Potter movies (I never read the books) so that helped tremendously in my understanding of the Gringotts and Forbidden Journey rides.
- Harry Potter again did not disappoint... LOVE the theming, Hagrid's was awesome (more on that in a moment), got to ride Hogwart's Express (both ways) after not getting a P2P ticket on our last visit and truthfully all the rides and shops there are amazing. Jurassic Park area has always had great theming to me but was behind a lot of construction walls this time (which I knew going in). Aside from that, I'm not crazy about the theming anywhere else in the park. It just feels shoddy to me...
- Hulk is an ok coaster but I'm not a fan of banging my ears anymore and Rip Ride Rockit is not a very enjoyable experience after the first loop. Again too much jostling and banging.
- I don't find much of the screen based stuff to be re-ride-able, it's all "1 and done" for me and some of it (namely Simpsons) have the potential to ruin my day by making me dizzy/disoriented for hours thereafter.
- They took out 3D on Minions which made that SO much more enjoyable! It truly was a great change!!
- As for things we did re-ride, we did Hulk 3x, Hagrid's 2x, Dr. Doom 2x, Forbidden Journey 2x, Hippogriff 4x, E.T. 2x, Gringott's 2x, The Mummy 2x.
- The Mummy and Hagrid's are both PHENOMENAL coasters to me! I could ride them both over and over again! I like Gringott's but I wish it had a bigger finish with a couple more drops/fast section, I feel like that would make for a better ending.
- We missed the Raptor encounter on the first 2 days and it was down the last day. I'm not exactly sure how the Raptor encounter goes down...but it did...it felt very odd/frustrating that basically a "character meet" was not operating...we really wanted to do that too.
- I'm not sure I can ever go back to Universal without Express pass now. It was awesome to not wait in any lines...
- We saw the Dark Arts projection show - that was neat but had no cohesive story-line so it didn't really create anything memorable for me unlike Disney's nighttime projection shows.
- I do not like the eating situation at Universal. Maybe it's just my lack of knowledge of the in park options but we do not have good meals there. And every restaurant we've chosen at City Walk has had terrible (slow) service. We hit up Hard Rock and NBC Grill on this trip and both were way too slow for us. Toothsome was quoting an hour wait so we walked away from there. And priority seating as an on-site guest got us nothing. Our best meal of the trip was at Perkins last night, lol! We're just simple people. I think in the future we'll head off-site for dinner to something simpler and less expensive, it just fits our tastes better, haha!
- So in general my 2019 trip was very much like my 2017 and 2015 trips. I enjoyed the time together as a family, the rides were ok and kept us entertained, and we'll probably look to go back in 2-3 years. I could not envision buying an AP to Universal despite it's relatively low price point. I can't imagine wanting to go back multiple times in a 12 month span.
Hagrid's Rope Drop Information: (
@CyndiLouWho - if you want a detailed explanation here you go)
Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure on both
Sunday Nov 3rd and
Monday Nov 4th. Here is a detail of our experiences on both days:
-
Sunday Nov 3rd
- 8:15 am - Arrived at Park entrance. We were approx. 3/4 of the way back from the entrance to the ticket booths
- 8:40 am - gates opened, people began full out sprinting to the coaster after scanning their tickets. There was no crowd control whatsoever to slow people down.
- 8:45 am - (approx.) we got through the turnstiles after scanning our tickets and briskly walked to the coaster. We were passed up by a bunch of runners and I had to really protect my short 9 year old from a few folks who were darting in an out of groups.
- 8:50 am - (approx.) we entered the extended queue for the ride and could hear people on it already, we continued to slowly move forward without stopping, we went past the lockers (which was a cluster of people separating from groups then pushing their way to join back up...) They DO NOT make you leave your cell phone in a locker and DO NOT have metal detectors. You just need to put bags in the lockers.
- 9:05 am - we stopped moving finally. We already were past the pre-show movie at this point. They were not showing the pre-show movie this early which was super dumb because we still were going to wait 25 minutes from this point...a 5 minute movie would have been nice to watch...
- 9:29 am - we boarded the ride - IT WAS AMAZING. Very well done in every way imaginable. I literally have no criticisms whatsoever of this ride.
- 9:34 am - on our way to meet up with my wife and younger daughter who wouldn't (wife) and couldn't (daughter) ride.
-
Monday Nov 4th
- 8:15 am - Arrived at Park entrance. We were approx. 3/4 of the way back from the entrance to the ticket booths again.
- 8:40 am - gates opened, sprinting occured again. We picked a bad line where EVERYBODY in the first group had ticket issues. We managed to merge in with the line beside us instead but got moving a little slower than the day before. There was again no crowd control whatsoever to slow people down.
- 8:55 am - (approx.) we entered the extended queue for the ride and were told that it was experiencing a delay. We continued to meander forwards at a much slower pace than the day before.
- 9:05 am - we heard the first people go by on the ride. This indicated to me that we were at least 15 minutes behind schedule from the day prior (plus we took awhile to get in the park due to the stupid ticket issues).
- 9:24 am - NO PRESHOW MOVIE AGAIN! I seriously was angry about this. We literally were not going anywhere in the midst of 30 more minutes of line and yet no preshow movie for us.
- 9:48 am - we boarded the ride - got the very back seat - it was so fun and more thrilling than a middle seat in my opinion!
- 9:53 am - on our way to meet up with my wife so despite the delayed start still not terrible. We were able to get over to Pteranodon Flyers before the line backed up there. It was 10 minutes when the girls got in line (with my mom/sister) and ballooned to 50 minutes before they got off 15 minutes later.
- If I had it to over again, I'd have tried to get to the park entrance prior to 8am both days.
