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