Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Orlando 2019 - Moving offsite

Two resorts, three parks, and more rain

We have arrived! 


Breakfast today: Disney's Hollywood Studios Early Morning Magic event.
We heard about this several months ago and decided to get tickets - it's a sperate ticketed event that lets you have access to Toy Story land before that park opens, plus you get breakfast.

We arrived before our 7:50 am ticket time, and were let right in. We followed the crowd but realized people were going to breakfast first. We ended up going in and getting some small items to eat on the way to Toy Story Land.

First time in Toy Story Land



We got in line for Slinky Dog Dash and had less than a 15 min wait - not typical for this ride. After, we did the Alien Saucers and Midway Mania. Then we couldn't help ourselves and hit Slinky Dog twice more before committing to breakfast.

Slinky Dog Dash... a new favorite! 


Plus, the park was about to open to the general public so our short lines were almost gone.
A comment about the breakfast options for this event.... the menu seemed to be catered to Millennials or hipster foodies. We like a variety of food, but when it comes to breakfast we tend to be more traditional. Chicken and Mickey waffles with Sweet potato tater tots, or Avocado toast with oven-baked egg- were not really what we had been expecting. We don't eat pork so the other options were not going to work for us. However, they had a nice assortment of bread and fruit.
And overall we are very glad we got tickets for the event.

At this point, we left Hollywood Studios to get back to our hotel at Universal. Today we check out and we have about 90 mins before check out time.
When we got back to the car our young man asked where his bag was... uh oh.  With the crowds of people trying to get into the park and the timeline we were on, the decision was made that hubby would go back by himself to try and find the missing bag. It was left at breakfast and turned in. Lucky for us Hubby talked to the cast member who had handled the bag and she was able to get it for him.  Despite the missing bag, we got back to the hotel with plenty of time to get packed up and check out.
And the rest of the day we planned to spend at Universal parks.  Last chance to ride things at Universal so go now!

Great view of Portofino Bay plaza

Hubby finally got to go on Hulk and we all got a little snack. The kids and I hit the Seuss Island rides again and we met hubby after.
We grabbed a second ride on the Hippogriff and then the adventurous half of us went for the last ride on Jurassic Park while the young man and I found some food. Lunch today is snack as you go... and he found something that looked good, so it worked well.





Again we popped on the train to the Studios park and re-road the Men In Black ride and ET.  Hubby and I shared a Beyond Burger at Mel's before we rode Minions on last time.
On the way out of the park, we hit the Today Cafe and shared a few goodies.



This wraps up our time at Universal. We headed off to check into the Orange Lake Resort an IHG property.

Bye Universal, It's been fun! 


This is a timeshare, but we paid cash for our stay. The unit is great - two bedrooms with a king and two queen beds. A full kitchen, full washer and dryer, two baths, and a living room. The price was good. We booked a unit at the building by the pool/lazy river.
Upon check-in, hubby got mild pressure to schedule a 90-minute timeshare presentation to join. He politely declined and we got settled into our unit.

The living room at Orange Lake 
dining area
bedroom
second bedroom 


We had our Owner's Locker delivered here, which Owner's Locker handled great. The resort was not nearly as sure about it. But despite that, Hubby found the locker and we were able to get into that too.

After a rest in the new room, we decided to try Disney Springs again and specifically try to get to Earl of Sandwich. Wanna guess how it went?  Not bad through dinner, but about halfway back to the car park area it started to pour again. Now we are used to the whole afternoon rain thing at this point, but this was another downpour. And despite carrying raincoats around with us all day in the parks, we didn't bring any to the Disney Springs.  We once again found ourselves sprinting from cover to cover and getting a wee bit wet along the way.

This was the sky, just before the rain......

this was my weather app when I took the picture of the sky (posted above) 

this is the young man and me after we found shelter from the downpour. 

Once back in the car we decided to head to Publix for some grocery items since we now have a kitchen... this is where things went bad.
Our brave young lady got her fingers caught in the car door. It wasn't good.
We freed her ring and middle finger and found our way to an urgent care clinic. (a few years back she broke her pinky finger and the state of her fingers looked a lot like that. Plus she was reacting very similarly, although that happened in a very different way).
The boys dropped us off at CentraCare and we got x-rays ... nothing broken!! Yay!!!
The boys spent the time doing that grocery shopping that we had to abandon earlier, and came back to pick us up.

Didn't think a pic of the fingers would be helpful to anyone.. but Thanks to CentraCare for taking good care of us. 


We got back to the room around 11 pm. We decided not to do rope drop the next day and pushed back all our FastPasses.

Our sweet young lady is ok, but a good night's sleep is needed by all.




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