Monday was another early up and at em' to get to the parks for the extra early hour as resort guests. We ate breakfast in the hotel room with the things we brought from home and we were off! We did Islands of Adventure again to do Velocicoaster and Hagrid's and were so pleased to be able to get on both in the first hour before official park opening!
We park hopped over to Universal Orlando by taking the Hogwarts Express from the Hogsmeade Station. It was cute! We immediately got into Diagon Alley after visiting the Knight Bus. Diagon Alley was amazing! Seeing the dragon blow fire, looking at all the little shops and alleyways. I loved the decor and theming! We rode Escape from Gringott's, which was such a fun ride! I loved that one! The boys exchanged some muggle money for money at Gringott's, we had more Butterbeer and treats, and just enjoyed shopping and exploring.
We left Harry Potter "World" and moved over to the Fast and the Furious because the wait time was low, but the ride broke down while we we were waiting and it took longer than we anticipated. The kids were hungry for lunch so we walked over to Springfield, IL to see The Simpsons stuff, which was so cool! The lunch line took a bit, but there were stations to pick food from and it was decent.
After lunch we did E.T.'s Adventure, which is one of the only remaining OG rides at Universal and Evan loved it! He even bought a stuffed animal ET. We did a meet and greet with Spongebob and then walked over for a meet and greet with Transformers before getting on the Transformers ride. The wait was the longest we had all day, but it was a decent ride. Our last ride at that side of the park was The Revenge of the Mummy, which I loved. We shopped and decided to park hop back over to Islands of Adventure. The kids wanted to ride a few of their favorites one more time. I had originally thought we'd stay for the Hogwarts Nighttime Light Show, but no one was up for it. It was very hot and cooling off by the pool sounded way better.
The pool felt great! We swam, had a late dinner by the pool, the kids made s'mores by the bonfire, and we rested back in the room.
Tuesday morning we slept in. I got up before everyone else and went down to have an omelete made for breakfast and just sat and relaxed in the food court with my hot tea. The kids joined me eventually for some waffles and bacon and then we packed up the room to officially "check-out". We used the pool late morning and all afternoon until our room was ready over at Pop Century. Evan participated in a hula-hoop contest and took 4th place out of probably 15 (all girls). The boys both did an extreme Rock-Paper-Scissors game too. It was a fun day!
We got the text at 3pm that our room was ready so we changed out of our bathing suits and drove 15 minutes over to Pop Century, stopping to get gas and more beer for our cooler. Sean showed Evan all our favorite photo spots around Pop Century's grounds and we moved all our stuff into our room. We were in the 70's building again, like Sean and I were last time, but building 10 this time. We showered and got ready to head to dinner at the Whispering Canyon Cafe at the Wilderness Lodge. Dinner was delicious and Sean really liked the whole "ketchup ordeal" they do. If you ask for ketchup, the last table that used it has to bring all the bottles over to us. Like 15 bottles of ketchup and then we have to do it for the next table and the waiters/waitresses shout throughout the restaurant, "we need ketchup"!
After dinner we walked around the grounds and the boys were able to roast a marshmallow outside of the Wilderness Lodge at their bonfire. We decided since it was getting to be sunset time that we would take Wilderness' boat for a ride to Magic Kingdom and back since it's only a 10 minute ride. It was so pretty and I'm glad we did it. It got us all excited for Magic Kingdom the next day! We made it back to Pop in time to see the first half hour or so of Toy Story by the pool before calling it a night.
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