4/18/19 - Universal Day 1

#so_much_fun #universalstudios #eventful

What an EVENTFUL day!!! We woke up right at the crack of dawn(actually before dawn) to catch our 4am flight. We barely rolled out bed in time to hop in our preheated car(Thx mom). Our original plan was to sleep in the car and on the flight, but we were far too excited for Universal to do that. We ended up flying out of a smaller airport in our area because it was a direct flight and free parking(like Monopoly). Overall, the flight was extremely smooth for a plane, but we got our pre-thrill ride in the car that was drove by my brother who currently has his permit.

When we landed, still extremely tired, we took about an hour to get our bags and find the right bus because Orlando is a huge international airport(or because we are clueless). Anyways...we made it to the bus eventually, but had to wait for him to load others on which took a good chunk of time, especially with the anticipation of going to Hogwarts. The drive only took 30 minutes, although it felt MUCH longer due to our bus driver who talked the whole entire time(we didn’t ask for a tour).

We proceeded to the hotel where we jumped out of the bus, grabbed our bags and headed to the check in. It was so much warmer here than in Pittsburgh! We are staying at the Hard Rock for four days, my mom describes it as the teen hangout hotel(lol). Also, they have fancy restroom here that Elaina and I discovered, and there is a lounge within it. After signing in, we then checked our bags and headed to grab a bite to eat before hitting the parks. By this time it was about noon. With a full stomach, we were both more than ready to enter the park, Universal Studios, but the boys(My brother and foreign exchange student) decided to stay and chill at the pool, so us girl’s headed out.

Our hotel is the closest Universal resort to the two amusement parks and in total, is only a five minute walk to the entrances and the Citywalk(food). The trail was a really pretty little path with lakes, flowers, and cute geckos we tried to catch. We started at the front and headed towards the back of the park to Diagon Alley. We hit Almost every ride. The one roller coaster went straight up which scared the living daylights out of us. This ride even gave you the option to choice a song specifically to your seat. That was a cool feature…to bad we could barely hear it over the screaming of our voices. All the rides are extremely awesome, well planned out, and detailed. Must of took a lot of time and money.

When going to ride the Simpsons ride, we accidentally went to the line for food instead of the actual ride, and didn’t figure it out until 20 minutes of being in this line. What an adventure. All the rides we went on, the lines were really short because the hotel we are staying at include express passes which take us past the general admission line, and are well worth it. After some more rides we made it to Diagon Alley. Once we were there, we made sure to go inside every single shop, but tried to control spending our money. All of the detail were so impressive and it looked just like in the movies.

Of course we had to get interactive wands to cast spells, so we went to the Ollivander's show, and we're hoping to get chosen with our Hogwarts shirts on. Unfortunately, he choose the cute little girl in the front with the full robe and costume. The show was still cool, but as we were exiting he called the two of us over, and told us he saw something special in us. We had our own individual ceremony. We did not see this in any of the Universal tips and tricks articles we read prior to going here(trust us we read up). We had been given sister wands both made out of unicorn hair, how cool! The wands even choose us and it lit up the area standing around us. We will definitely never forget this.

We made the decision to do the Harry Potter rides another day because wait lines were really long, and we had three more days. My mom then departed from us to go back to hotel and rest. After she left, we went to some more rides and then went back to the hotel room, to rest before dinner. Our favorite ride of that day had to be The Mummy, with all the special effects such as fire.

My mom ordered some groceries to be delivered to our hotel, so we had snacks to eat during our trip(we probably ordered wayyyy too much), but our delivery guy, Raul took forever to buy the right stuff. We were waiting at the lobby forever. It took an extra 30 minutes when he updated us that he had three items left 0n our list. We were just really impatient, and hungry. My mom thought he had said he would be there at nine, but thank goodness it was actually nine minutes because we were starving and ready to find somewhere to eat for our late dinner.

There were tons of options in the Citywalk, but we choose, Vivo, which was a delicious restaurant where we both ordered fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken, can never go wrong with that. By the time we got back to the hotel, we literally passed out on the beds after writing this blog. We are totally ready for Universal Day 2. Don't mind the typos, we did write this half asleep after a long, thrilling first day.