Good morning everybody! It's Tuesday morning. It's our last day at Universal. We're gonna do about a
half day here. Adam and I are currently walking on the pedestrian path from the Royal Pacific
hotel over to Studios. It did open at 7 a.m. this morning for on-site guests, but I think we
just value sleep a little bit more than Studios time especially. If it was Islands it might be
a different story. But it's about 8 o'clock now, and we'll go to Studios. Islands opens at nine. So
probably gonna get some ice cream for breakfast, and just take some pics at Studios, and then do
the Hogwarts Express or walk over to Islands. And hopefully Hagrid’s and/or Velocicoaster
open with a park. We've had pretty bad luck with that lately. Since we've been here it's
been a delayed opening. If the park opens at nine, the rides open around 10 or 10:30.
We're hoping to be done with park stuff by like 10:30 or 11, and then just grab lunch
somewhere… maybe Three Broomsticks if we can, otherwise probably in City Walk. And then head
out because we are on to the Disney portion of our trip, which I’m so excited about!
So maybe we'll check in later… Probably not because the theme parks are really loud! But
try to do some vlogging for sure more regularly… we'll see how that goes. See you later!
8 30 a.m. and we're in the Wizarding World and we got ice cream!
There was no line, and we got pistachio. It's already melting like crazy even though it's 8
30 a.m. Yeah. We got pistachio, that's why it's green swirl on the soft serve,
when it originally came out it was super light, and she let us taste it and it was
just vanilla. So she went to the back and got us like a beautiful--I’ll put some pics in--but
like super bright green. It actually tastes like pistachio now, so cheers. Breakfast of champions!
Hi! So we checked in for ice cream breakfast; it's now 10:30 and we are in line at Three
Broomsticks over at Islands to get lunch. We got to Islands via the train and we rode Velocicoaster
twice, which was awesome. We also got on Flight of the Hippogriff and we've just been sort of
walking around Hogsmeade taking pictures, doing some magic, and having a good time.
Hey friends, so it's just about 2:30 p.m. now on Tuesday, September 7th. So we still are only a few
days into our vacation, but I feel like we have accomplished so much. This morning we wrapped up
our Universal portion part of our stay, and I am sad because it's wonderful--and especially
the new additions to the parks, or at least new to us, were fantastic. But I am excited to get on to
Disney! Today was always planned on being a short, little, not even quite a half day at the Universal
parks, and we did stick to that. We were able to eat lunch at Three Broomsticks, which is awesome
because that's probably my favorite in-park dining experience. I think the food is actually
really good. The roasted potatoes that come with either the spare ribs platter or I think they also
come with the chicken platter are phenomenal. So I got the spare ribs platter; it was tasty.
The ribs were a little on the fatty side, but the potatoes were perfect. The corn was delicious. And
honestly it's like a lot of food. It was a little bit expensive; I think for both of our meals--and
we just got free waters--it was a little under 40 dollars… I think it's around $38. So it's a little
bit pricey, but it is theme park food, and it is actually good. Adam got the fish and chips
platter, which was also really tasty. The outside was crisp, but it was light and fluffy. The fish
was nice and firm; it had a little bit of a bite to it and tasted really great. And then the fries
that come with it, little potato wedges, were delightful. They were perfectly cooked, really
well salted but not overly salted. So everything was super fresh because we did basically the
very beginning of lunch service, and I think that worked out super well for us and our plans,
and also for the food quality. But yeah, we just did a couple rides this morning at Universal and ate
and spent a lot of time in the Wizarding World both over at Studios and at Islands of Adventure.
Obviously it's just such an immersive, wonderful place to be. And we do have our wand from 2015, so
doing some magic and pretending not to be muggles for a little bit. We then moseyed back over to
Loews Royal Pacific. We ended up walking. I think we actually only took the boat one time—once?
I think once, yeah. Twice max for sure--the whole time we were staying there, which of course was
only one day. But the walk is just so quick and convenient. So honestly, we beat the boat this
morning. We walked out because there wasn't a boat there, and we beat the boat. So if a boat's
not like right about to be there, it's probably faster to walk. And our feet were feeling fine so
we decided to do that. We took a quick AC break in the hotel. We checked out a really beautiful bar
over across from the lobby. It was closed for most of the time that we were there. I don't
know if this is always true, but at least while we were there it's closed on Sundays and Mondays.
Today is Tuesday but it didn't open up until later. But it's a it's a gorgeous sushi bar,
and a lot of people were posted up like working from home in the hotel. That was fun. So just
took a little break there, and then we grabbed the rental car and headed out to the Disney character
warehouse outlets--the one that's pretty close to Universal on I-Drive, not the one down on
Vineland. They did have a system set up where I think if they were at capacity you would have to
join a virtual line and they would text you to come back. Luckily, they were not at capacity
so we just went straight in and did some browsing. They had a lot of cruise stuff; like a lot--a lot
of stuff from Castaway Cay, there was some stuff from specific cruises like a northern European
cruise t-shirt, some Alaska stuff. But yeah, it felt dominated by cruise line things for sure.
There were a few spirit jerseys, those were $45 I believe instead of the usual price,
which I think is around 75 dollars. So they had the ink and paint one for Disney World,
and they had a peach colored one. They had a black one for Disneyland that had--the Disneyland in
the back was in this like foily gold. There was one tie-dye one left. And yeah, so they do have
spirit jerseys, but the selection wasn't huge. And I wasn't super interested in any of those,
so I didn't end up getting them. There were also a few pins, but really hardly any. They were mostly
the EPCOT logo pins. So I was hoping to maybe find some cute pins that were a year old or something
at a pretty discounted rate, but no luck today. There were a lot of just random t-shirts for sure;
that is what most of the inventory felt like to me. I looked at them all, and none of them
really piqued my interest. They did have the Pixar zip up like windbreaker type hoodie,
and I tried it on and it fit. And there were pockets! But it was just super not breathable,
and it also didn't feel rain proof. So I wasn't sure when I would ever wear it, and I decided
not to buy it. For the most part things are discounted, but it's not like a hugely steep
rate off. For example, most of the things I saw that were $49.99 were discounted down to like
$34.99; so you save 15 bucks, which is better than not saving anything, but it's not like
you're getting these huge deals. A lot of t-shirts also were going for $10 or $15
instead of you know $25 or so. But you're--it's not like there's five dollar deal bins with like
really good things. I did end up buying a couple of really cute pieces of merch for my niblings,
so I am excited about that. They are a little bit small, and most the sizes there were kid sizes.
They didn't have hardly anything for toddlers or babies; so selection wasn't great for smaller
kids. But, you know what, if it's too big they'll grow into it, so cool. I also don't think I saw
any mouse ears, and I went around the store a couple times and was looking pretty closely at
all of the shelves and like all the displays. So I was surprised not to see any ears.
They did have some Halloween stuff that was fairly discounted. In fact, there was a $35 t-shirt that
was being sold for $15, so that was one of the better deals that I saw. It is early September,
so I guess they are well into their Halloween season. But honestly if you bought it soon--which
this vlog won't go up in time, but in theory if you bought it soon--you could wear it for a solid,
you know, month and a half before Halloween is over. So that's not too bad. Yeah, overall
the character warehouse was fine. I had made a mental note that if this one was really good,
or if they had things I wanted but just not in the size that I wanted, that we would go to the
one on Vineland, but I just didn't feel that way. Like the selection, in terms of just what
they had--not the sizes, but because it was so dominated by the cruise stuff that I don't want,
wasn't that great. And then the discounts also weren't fantastic. So we ended up skipping the
Vineland store, and I feel fine about that. If we have free time later that we want to kill
and not eat during that time, maybe we'll stop by, but it's not a priority. I am glad I did get
a few cute little apparel items for my niblings though. After that we made a quick Publix run,
just to buy some more water. We're going through more than I had anticipated, which I think is
good. And I certainly don't want to feel limited on water. Also normally we never drink out of
single-use plastic bottles; I feel really wasteful doing this, but the Florida tap water tastes
bad. And I know people say like “just bring a Crystal Light and like put it in”; but when I
want water, I want it to taste like water. I don't want it to taste like Crystal Light.
So this is one of the few times in our lives where we do buy the plastic bottles. And I feel bad,
but we will find a way to make up for it at home. After that we just swung by Loews Royal Pacific
one last time to pick up our luggage from the bellhop, so goodbye Universal! And then we drove
down to the Disney Springs area. We're now staying for one night at the Hilton Buena Vista Palace in
the Disney Springs area. I had booked a king room with a Disney Springs view through a Mousesavers
rate, and via that corporate rate it came with free parking as well as two complimentary
water park tickets. We do still have to go to the front desk to pick up our waterpark tickets. But
to my great surprise a couple days ago Hilton let me know that they were upgrading us! So instead
of that king room with the Disney Springs view we're actually in a king suite. I think this is
the first time I’ve stayed in a proper suite; it's definitely the first time I’ve done it with Adam
since we've been adults and traveling together. So this place is huge and impressive, and it's pretty
cool to get an upgrade now and again. We're taking our midday break now; Adam has showered. I’m about
to shower when I wrap this up. We'll probably take a little bit of nap and do the Theragun--just
some self-care, before we head back out. Then we will be heading to Disney Springs. I have a Wine
Bar George reservation for dinner that I’m really excited about! And then we're going to Boo Bash!
Earlier today, I think it was when we were driving to the Disney character warehouse, Adam mentioned
like “can you believe we're going to Magic Kingdom tonight?” And I think it's just finally hitting
me that that's happening, so I am really excited about that! And we'll try to check in again later.