March 2021: Day 3; Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, resort hop

 We were back to Islands of Adventure, which meant another early morning.

We were actually 10 minutes later than the previous day, but again, lines had already formed on both sides of the main gate, but we were able to walk right up in the middle.  Here's a picture of the portable ticket scanners that they wheel out here.

Again, the girls just stayed in the stroller while waiting to enter and ate a granola bar for breakfast.

LittleCGC also decided to sleep some more.

Just like yesterday, we went straight to Hagrid's and rode before the sun even came up.  This time, LittleCJC wanted to try the side car.

After our ride on Hagrid's, LittleCJC really wanted LittleCGC to participate in the Olivander's show.  At this time, these shows were still private, so we decided to go ahead and get in line knowing that it was only going to get worse throughout the day.

We tried to warn LittleCJC that she would probably be the one picked since LittleCGC was so little.  LittleCJC was determined though that we needed to go through the show instead of just buying a wand.  So, we waited in line and of course, LittleCJC was picked for the show.  Thankfully, she got over it quickly and we were then able to pick out a wand for LittleCGC after the show.

We probably did more this morning in this park, but the next picture I have this day is on the Hogwart's Express heading back to London in Universal Studios.

My guess is that once we arrived, we rode Escape from Gringotts before the girls asked for ice cream.

LittleCGC was not a fan of the dragon when it roared with fire.

After leaving Diagon Alley, we headed toward Simpsons Land.

After a fun morning in the park, we left for our first hotel hop of the trip.  We traveled to Disney All-Star Movies and after checking in on line, we headed straight to our room.  LittleCGC of course fell asleep in the car and we were able to transfer to the stroller and she got in a great nap.

Once we got everything into our Mighty Ducks room, we checked out the food situation.  We placed a mobile order from our room and LittleCJC went with me to pick it up.  She had fun posing along the way.

At the food court, once your order was ready, it was placed on one of these tables and you were able to pick it up here.  They also had similar tables set up by the drink stations.  You simply told the castmember what drink you wanted and they got it for you.  On this opening day, I guess they were using the honor system, because they didn't even scan your refillable mug.

As someone who picks food up and heads back to the room anyway, it was nice that everything was packaged in to go containers already, making the transfer easier than usual.

After our lunch and LittleCGC woke up from her nap, the girls were excited to head to the pool.

Yes, we were wearing jackets on the way to the pool.  It was still chilly this day, but we were told the pool was heated.  Of course, little girls don't care about it being cold, they really just wanted to swim.

Again, we had to stop for pictures along the way.

Thankfully, it was warmer in the water than out.

Patrick and I were laughing, saying that everyone in the pool was probably visiting from somewhere north of Georgia.

Unfortunately, this was the closest we were going to get to Fantasmic this trip.

When we finally left the pool, we went back to the room for some dry (and warmer) clothes before exploring the rest of the hotel.

Even Patrick and I had to get our picture in RC, since we took this same picture about 15 years before.

LittleCJC wanted to continue around the entire hotel, but LittleCGC was over it and chose to stay in the stroller after leaving the Toy Story area.

Miss Sass had a blast.  Once we had visited every area, we went back to the main lobby and in particular, the gift shop.  Actually, I think we ordered some dinner from the food court and just waited for it in the gift shop.  LittleCJC ended up getting a new fan.  She of course had to use it all the way back to the room, even though it was 65 degrees and dizzily.

After our last two very early mornings, it was nice to relax some this evening and the girls enjoyed the downtime too.

March 2021: Day 2, Universal Studios & Islands of Adventure

The best advice I can give anyone going to a park is to go early.  We take this seriously in our family and everyone knows and understands that this is how to get on the most rides.  That being said, LittleCJC was super excited for this very early start.

During this trip, the parks opened at 8:00, but hotel guest and certain passholder levels were able to enter the parks an hour early, meaning 7:00.  Now, this does not apply to the entire park, and it changes from time to time what is included, but during this trip it applied to both Harry Potter areas.  The biggest draw of this perk is you could get in line for Hagrid's Magical Motorbike Adventure, which quickly switched to virtual line only once the park officially opened at 8:00.  We wanted to be sure to get LittleCJC on this first thing, so we were at the park an hour before opening.

 Even the hub was empty this early.  In fact, I had done my homework and learned that at this time, if you took a bus from the hotel you could get in earlier than those driving because the parking lot didn't open before 7:00.  We weren't actually the first to the gate, but we were first in line at one of the admission points.  Pro tip, everyone always lines up at the permanent gates on either side of the entry, but every time we've been here for park opening, they have always opened the center gate and wheeled out to portable entry card readers.  You can see there is even an umbrella here for the workers.

Since it was early, the girls decided to go back to sleep in the stroller while we waited for the gates to open.

It may seem crazy to get up so early only to stand in line, but I would much rather stand here for an hour while nothing else in the park is open and it's still cool (or in this case cold) instead of in the heat of the day when I could be riding something else.  On this trip, they actually opened the gates about 15 minutes early and let everyone enter.  You scanned your park admission here and then at the entrance to Seuss Landing, they checked for hotel keys or annual pass.  Of course, almost everyone headed straight to Hagrid's and we were no different.  LittleCJC loved her first ride on Hagrid's.  It's safe to say it became her new favorite ride.  Since we were so early getting to the park, we were at the beginning of the line and then we were also able to ride Forbidden Journey before the line got too long.  LittleCJC was a little afraid of this ride, but said she liked it.

We also jumped over for LittleCGC's first ride on Flight of the Hippogriff.

Now that the entire park was open, we left Hogwarts and made our way over to Kong, where we were surprised to find that LittleCGC was tall enough to join us this time.

We then continued around the park, of course skipping the water rides since it was so cold.  This meant, we basically walked around the entire park just for Spiderman.

With nothing for her to do, LittleCGC decided to go back to bed.  In the meantime, LittleCJC found a new character.  Posiedon's Fury was closed during this trip, but they had some fun interactions around the entrance.

We also found King Julien. I have to admit that I was surprised to find so many characters at Universal, especially during this time of Covid.  Yes, we were distanced from them, but it was still great seeing them all around the park.

Eventually, we made it back to Hogsmeade and we decided to take the Hogwarts Express over to the London station.  LittleCGC was just barely awake by now and LittleCJC was so sweet loving on her while we waited for the train.

Of course, as soon as we arrived at London, LittleCJC wanted to ride Escape from Gringotts.  Unfortunately, the line was already pretty long,  This was when our eyes were truly opened to how much the parks had changed since our last trip last July when the parks were still empty.  

LittleCJC enjoyed seeing the extended queue since she had never seen it before.  Honestly, I think the ride broke down for a while, because we didn't move for a long time and once we started moving again, it really wasn't that bad.  You have to remember that parties were still standing 6ft apart, so the lines all seemed longer than they actually were.

Once we got off the ride, we stopped for some Butterbeer.  Since it was so cold, Patrick and I were excited to get to try hot Butterbeer for the first time.  We've only ever been to Universal during summer, and up until now this wonderful drink was only served seasonally.

After leaving the wizarding world, we found some more Mardi Gras floats.  LittleCJC loved this lady, because she realized that she was using these same golden wings in dance this year.

If you haven't figured out yet, we take a lot more pictures at Disney than Universal.  The main reason for this, is Universal has a stricter policy about cameras on attractions.  Since I obviously don't write these as soon as I get home like I should, I don't remember all the details.  Instead I piece these days together just as best I can from one picture to another.  For example, I'm sure we rode something here at Universal Studios besides just Gringotts, but the next picture I have was taken back at Islands of Adventure.  I do remember that I was able to introduce Patrick to the walkway that sometimes opens from one park to another when it's really crowded.  At this time, it was open from Universal Studios, by Minions, and crossed backstage to Islands of Adventure, by One Fish Two Fish at Seuss Landing.  This was very convenient not needing to walk out to City Walk and around and getting our passes back out to re-enter the park.  This was also fun to see a new part of this backstage area.

When we entered Seuss Landing, we listened to the story of The Lorax.  LittleCGC loved it.

After the story, we were able to take pictures.

We then decided to ride the Carou-seuss-al, while Patrick ironically talked to a friend from work who happened to be here at the same time.

At some point this morning, we were able to get a virtual pass for Hagrid's to ride again, so we were making our way back to Hogsmeade.  On our way, LittleCGC found King Julien.  He actually moved his location from this morning.

When we reached Hogsmeade, we joined the virtual line.

LittleCJC was so excited to get back on the ride.

Now that it was daylight, she wanted pictures with everything.

Yep, still in line.

LittleCJC rode on the motorcycle, meaning I was in the sidecar.

After our ride on Hagrid's, we decided to go back to Seuss Landing to ride the High in the Sky train that we skipped earlier so that we wouldn't miss our time at Hagrid's.  This was also LittleCGC's first time on this ride, since it actually has a decent height requirement for all that it is.

Since we were back here, we also rode One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

That was the end of our day.  See, obviously, I feel like I missed a lot today.  However, I do know that we had a great day.  It's also nice to slow down a little and not rush from one attraction to another.

March 2021: travel, Day 1; Universal Studios

Spring Break 2021!  We picked LittleCJC up from school on Friday afternoon and drove to Georgia.  I honestly don't remember how far we made it, but the girls were both asleep by the time we stopped.

The next day we continued our drive to Florida.  It actually was the coldest start to spring break we've had in many years.  With every stop we expected it to be warmer than the last, but instead we kept just thinking we were cold.  The girls of course couldn't care less.

It never fails that I forget something, this time it was a belt, something I needed.  So, we stopped at Target when we first got to Orlando.  The girls loved the giant dog display.

Finally ready to check in, we made it to Universal's Endless Summer Dockside resort.

This trip was actually an interesting one in terms of hotel.  Originally, we had booked a room at Disney All-Star Movies for the week.  As we got closer to this vacation, we were looking into adding a day or two to the trip since we weren't scheduled to check-in until Monday.  It was at this point, that we discovered, All-Star Movies was actually reopening on that specific date.  Therefore, we obviously weren't going to be adding a night or two at that hotel, which led us to look at other options.  After looking at many different scenarios, we discovered we could stay at Universal all week, add 2 nights, and still end up cheaper than what was originally planned at Disney.  Unfortunately, we thankfully realized before cancelling our reservation, that if we were to cancel our hotel at Disney we would lose our park reservations.  After consulting the park availability calendar, we realized we would not be able to enter Hollywood Studios, since there was no availability for that park the entire week.  After a lot more deliberation, we ended up making the decision to resort hop, more than once.  This ended up being a little annoying and Patrick said he'd never do it again, but it fit our needs for this trip and it worked.  So we arrived on Saturday at Universal and stayed 2 nights.  On Monday, we switched to our original plan at Disney's All-Star.  However, we were able to modify this reservation to only two nights, which allowed us to keep our park reservations.  This also meant that on Wednesday, we hopped back over to Universal to finish out our vacation there.  Both reservations at Universal were here at their Endless Summer Dockside resort.

Once we were checked in here, we decided to head out to the park for the evening.  We rode the bus from our hotel to the park.

LittleCGC was super excited just for the bus.

We were all excited to be visiting Universal during their Mardi Gras celebration.  We had never experienced this event before, and although they weren't having the traditional parade, we were excited to see this modified event.

Before getting too far, we had to stop for a picture with the Taxi.

We also quickly found some Mardi Gras characters out ready to greet us.

As I stated above, they weren't having their Mardi Gras parade, but instead, they placed the parade floats sporadically around the park.  Honestly, I think this worked out better for us at least.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the parade would have been fun to experience too, but this way, we were able to get a feel of the festivities all throughout the day any time we came across one of these floats.  They usually had characters at the floats and a lot of the time they were handing out beads, too.

It took the girls a while to warm up to the idea of the beads, but they loved seeing the floats and characters.  

Our first ride this trip was E.T.

LittleCGC decided that this ride was scary.  I'm not sure what scared her, and she didn't seem scared while riding, but that was her statement when we got off the ride.

Next up was Woody Woodpecker's Nuthouse coaster.  Since we ended up coming to Universal before Disney, this then became LittleCGC's first roller coaster.

When we got off, she immediately asked to ride it again.

We rode again, and she would have continued riding if we let her, but after two rides we convinced her to move on to see what else we could find in the park.

The next thing that impressed her was this photo opt set up for the Mardi Gras celebration.  We of course then had to stop in at Gringotts.

LittleCGC told us that the goblins were busy coloring.  If you read my last trip report, you know that this was LittleCJC's favorite ride of that trip.  This time, she was tall enough for a few more thrill-seeking rides though.  First up, was the Mummy.

She was a little scared of this one, but she liked the coaster part of it.  She ended up riding with both mom and dad, meaning LittleCGC got to explore the gift shop and see some of the Mardi Gras scavenger hunt displays.

The park was about to close for the night so we were on our way out when the girls asked if we could ride Despicable Me.  They were in luck as we barely made it on before they closed the line down.

Even though LittleCGC was taller this year, she still was too short for the motion seats on this attraction.  Anyone can ride this one, if they sit in the stationary seats in front, but this meant we had to sit in front of Dad and LittleCJC.  As I said, this was the last ride we got in before the park closed.  Unless you're like LittleCJC who says the bus ride is the last one of the night.

It may have been a little chilly, but we were thrilled to finally be in Florida and the parks.