Florida Day 5: Universal Islands of Adventure

I'll preface my comments by saying that I'm sure Islands of Adventure would be fun for OTHER people so I'm not trying to bash the place, but we didn't have a wonderful time.

It all started at 6:30am when Nathan and I got up to head back down to Orlando. Dad and Chris were watching Chloe that day so we were off by ourselves. We made it to Universal about 8:30 so we were at the gates ready to go by 8:45 when they let people in. Mayhem. There was no crowd control at all so people were cutting in from the side. Ugh. I could go on and on about that alone but I won't.

We got through the gates and headed back to the Harry Potter section. Nathan's main reason for wanting to go to Islands of Adventure was to ride the Harry Potter ride, try butter beer, and see the shops. Well, we got back to the ride to find there was only a 10 minute wait. Yeah us! We got inside the castle when they announced the ride was delayed. They updated frequently and it sounded like the ride might get going soon. Finally at 9:55 (50 minutes after we got in line) they announced it would be several hours before they would be loading guests. ARG! (Side note: we went by the ride at 1:30 and it was still broken.) So, we got off and looked around the shops. Had butter beer (Nathan's version at home is better, and yes, it's alcohol free.) Had a snack and walked around the park. We ended up riding a kiddie ride in the Dr. Seuss section and going into the Poseidon "ride" which was LAAAAME. There was one ride in the Jurasic Park section that I wanted to go on and we got there only to find out that it was only for kids or adults accompanying kids. ARG! So we just decided to leave. $82 each plus parking and we rode 1 ride. There were some water rides which soaked you and two roller coasters that we didn't go on, but overall I was not impressed with the place. It was a lot of money for not much.

The best part of the day was going to The Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch. We had soups, sandwiches, and got a slice of cheesecake to split. Great ending to the day!

We made it back to Dad and Chris' around 4:30pm and spent the evening at the house. We really needed a relaxing night after the busy days we'd been having!

Even though I was pretty disappointed in Universal Islands of Adventure, we got a lot of photos of the day so I'll share them :-)