Florida Day 3: Universal Islands of Adventure and Getting Soaked!

It was another sunny day today so we went to Islands of Adventure!

 Our first ride was 'Incredible Hulk', which is a roller coaster. There was such a long queue for this. In fact, we ended up going over the locker time limit and had to get a staff member to open it for us; we weren't going to pay when the queue was longer than it said! It was a good ride though and there were a lot of turns.

Andrew, Christie and I then walked over to 'Doctor Doom' which is one of those long columns that shoots you up and then drops you. It was good, but not as exciting as we hoped! At least the queue was only 20 minutes.

Somebody then came up with the fun idea to go on the river rapids. You know, because the people walking around were obviously soaked because of the log flume - not the rapids. Obviously! Needless to say, we got water pouring in from the sides, buckets dumped on our heads and waterfalls cascading onto us. My leggings turned into liquid cotton, and it was a blessing that my sheer top went dark instead of transparent! I did get it all on film though and it was funny when people unexpectedly got soaked.

After spending a good half an hour wringing out our clothes in the toilets we (and our water trail) decided to plod on to Hogsmeade.

Hogsmeade is absolutely gorgeous! they made everything look SO real and even Hogwarts looked incredible.

Even though our clothes were starting to dry out, we were all still a bit chilly so a warm drink from the three broomsticks was perfect. I don't like tea or coffee so I had a hot butterbeer instead which basically tasted like steamed milk with very sweet caramel syrup in it!

Things had quietened down by now so we thought that we would give the Hogwarts ride a go. Bear in mind - we had no idea that this is basically the BEST ride in the whole theme park. It was a short queue and we were like, okay yeah another ride simulator, this might be good.

Oh my! It was an absolutely incredible ride. It mixed between the screen and real scenarios and you literally got stuck working out if it was real or not. I found myself ducking and moving my legs out the way of fake objects. The key is to not look up behind you because the edge of the screen is slightly visible and if you don't do that, it makes it more real. We all know it's fake - there's no point disturbing the magic of it to prove so!

The park was closing now, so we slowly headed towards the exit after a 10 minute chill; passing through Suessland on the way. It was so colourful and I got a gorgeous view of the park over the lake at night. Beautiful!

Thankyou so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and have any of you been on the Hogwarts ride? What's your favourite ride in Islands of Adventure?

Click here for day 2 of Florida if you missed it! Universal Studios, Flying Cows and Applebees!
I now have day 4 up aswell, if you want to click here for that!

R.C. xx

Florida Day 2: Universal Studios, Flying Cows and Applebees!

A good old dose of jet lag meant that the whole family was wide awake by 7am today. Why can’t that happen in England?! My parents headed downtown to sign into our villa, whilst Andrew, Christie and I all got ready for the day, before grabbing the pool chairs and sitting out in the sun. It was definitely one of the hottest and sunniest days today.

When my parents finally came home, it was about 10am so we decided to head off to universal studios. First stop – the café. We stopped at a little place near the minion ride and had a lovely panini and drink.

Our first ride wasn’t the most exciting – terminator. I’m all for a traditional ride from the old films, but it just wasn’t very interesting. The fact they got rid of jaws, which was my favourite ride last time, but not a rather dull 3d display upsets me greatly.

We then wandered down Springfield (is that even what it’s called?) and even though I've probably watched 'The Simpsons' about 2 times in my life, I recognised a couple of places so I'd say it was pretty well designed.

Of course, we then decided to queue up for the Simpsons thrill ride. Although it wasn’t until 20 minutes into the queue that we realised it was a ride simulator and not an indoor rollercoaster. But, we carried on queuing up anyway, and we got sent into a room with a huge 2 row machine. Then you got lifted into this area with a huge screen surrounding you and got carried through waterfalls, fire and even a baby's stomach. It was incredible how real it felt!

We then got on men in black – after ANOTHER toilet break from my brother and Christie – and had a little laugh at the child swap section. ‘If your child is too short for this ride, go to child swap’. It sounded like they meant you could trade your child in for a taller one haha. When we got on, you basically go around shooting creatures but I couldn’t tell where I was aiming and the guy next to me was somehow on 38000 and all I got from it was major finger cramp. Big fail.

There was also a parade going on as we walked through, starring Despicable Me, Hop and Spongebob and I may have secretly enjoyed seeing the minions...

Obviously we had to have a potter (see what I did there?) around 'Diagon Alley' to try some butterbeer, watch the dragon breathe fire and look around the shops. It's all so creative and accurate, I think I fell in love a little.

Next up was the mummy ride. I felt this ride could have been incredible and scary, but Christie and I had a guy in front of us who took it upon himself to turn around for the whole ride and say all the things that the voiceover was saying just before he said it so it ruined all the suspense of it! Although it was kind of funny and when we got off to look at the photo you could see him turned around and we were there like ‘see, we weren’t kidding!’ To make it funnier, we got to our lockers and were taking our stuff out when we heard a massive scream. Christie had pulled out her jumper and a cockroach fell onto the floor and she practically screamed blue murder!

It was quite late by now so we decided to go on ‘twister’ because Christie told us that she went on it when she was younger and closed her eyes the entire time so she wanted to know what she was so scared of. As it turned out, she was scared of a little gust of wind and a spray of water to the back of your legs. There was a flying cow in the middle of it though, how random?!

After battling through the thousands of people who were crowding for the parade, we finally got to the car park. Unfortunately a good half an hour was spent running around looking for the car until I decided to ask a guy who worked there were it might be at the time we came in… and discovered that there are actually 5 floors and we were one above! When we finally set off, Christie and I fell asleep whilst dad drove us all to ‘Applebees’. It was a lovely restaurant with amazing garlic sticks (yum) and it was a very nice meal, I just wish I had been more awake to enjoy it!

That’s all for day two in Florida, I hope you enjoyed it and I’d love to know if any of you have been to Applebees or on one of those rides.

In case you missed it, click here for the first day of travel and scary films!
Of course, day three is up now too, so you can click here for that!

Thanks for reading,

R.C. xx

Florida Day 1: Travel and Scary Films!

Saturday morning – way too early – it’s time to leave for america! I pop on my hoodie and ‘forever 21’ joggers which are a thin material with an elasticated waist and extremely comfy to travel in! I used a roll along bag from new look for my hand luggage that is just the limit for travelling. So much kinder on your back than a heavy backpack! Although, I did take a little backpack of my essentials – like camera, ipod, headphones and ipad.

The taxi dropped us off at the terminal and we were stood looking at the board for about 10 minutes before realising its not this terminal. Weirdly, I knew the route better than my family because I once spent the whole day there with my friends running around from terminal to terminal looking for 5 seconds of summer!

Anyway, we eventually managed to get to the correct terminal and through security, and had a little chill in neros before boarding the plane. Me, my brother (Andrew) and his girlfriend (Christie) were sat on a row and my parents were further forward. I started off the flight watching ‘Into the storm’, but it was a little bit too scary watching tornadoes in America… when I was going to America! so I didn’t finish that, and watched ‘If stay’ instead.  We then had a few games of cards and I planned some blogposts.

After a nine hour long flight, we arrived in Orlando and headed to passport control.

We then had to get a train to the other part of the airport for our bags, and at the station they had light bulbs around the entrance (like celebrities have on their dressing table) and it looked so gorgeous. 

The villa was really nice and there were plenty of rooms. I even had a walk in wardrobe and en suite which was quite cool. It was a bit late so after unpacking, we nipped to the shop for essentials and got a take away for tea before heading off to our rather squeaky but comfy beds (no innuendo intended).

Thankyou for reading and I hope you enjoyed hearing about my first day of Florida. I apologise if it was a little boring as it was only our travelling day!

Day 2 is also up now so if you want to read that, click here!

R.C. xx