We drove to my parents house on Friday June 12 and had dinner with them, and put Jace to bed there. After he was asleep we drove to Paul's parents house to park our car and get a ride to the airport (Paul's parents lived closer to the airport). We then had Peter drive us to the airport to catch our flight. I forgot how much I dislike taking red eye flights. They usually aren't bad, but I had the hardest time falling asleep. We left Utah at about midnight and arrived in florida around 6 their time, which is 4 our time. So we only got about 3 hours of sleep. After landing we got all situated with the time share people. Unfortunately we couldn't check into our hotel for another 4-6 hours. Our hope was to take a nap, then go to the beach, but we had to do it in reverse.The beach that we hoped to go to was about 2 hours away. Running on 3 hours of sleep it probably seemed like it was forever away. My amazing hubby let me sleep the whole drive, (he knows I don't handle lack of sleep very well), while he kept himself awake for the drive to the beach.
We were told that there would be snorkeling, so we brought our gear. We were so excited to snorkel, until we got to the said snorkeling location and found nothing of the snorkeling type. We ended up mostly playing in the ocean, which, might I add is incredibly warm and amazing. The only down side was that I forgot my water shoes. I just hate touching the seaweed with my feet and feeling things with my toes that I can't see. Needless to say I was freaking out a little bit. But no worries. Paul thought it was hilarious and carried me around most of the time so I didn't have to touch the bottom.
Some locals said that they saw a few manatee swimming and we looked and looked but couldn't find it. After spending a few hours at the beach, we were exhausted and figured that we should get to our hotel before we were even more exhausted. I can proudly say that I stayed awake the whole drive back to our hotel. Paul and I had to play 20 questions to keep me awake, but I did it! And I even beat Paul once!! We had an early night and got to bed so that we could be wide awake and refreshed for church on Sunday.
Playing on the beach after our red eye flight, three hours of sleep, and a 2 hour long drive to get here. It was overcast outside, but the water felt fabulous. Almost too warm!
Even though we are married and have a kid, we still kind of love each other ;)
Paul was being camera shy. So I took a picture of him anyway
When Jace falls he makes this face, and does that pose with his hands. I had just tripped in the sand and decided to pose like Baby Jace just to be silly.
We only ended up going to sacrament meeting. Then we stopped and visited the temple because it was right across the street from the church building. In order to get our hotel for free we had to consent to going to a sales pitch for the Blue Green time share company. Our presentation time was at noon so after church and our temple visit we went to that. The sales presenter did a great job. Paul and I seriously considered purchasing a time share. It was seriously a difficult decision. But we know that we want to build a house and don't want to have lots of extra debt when we do. So we walked away without buying anything. We spent the rest of the evening on the Disneyworld board walk, eating dinner, and hanging out at the hotel. We tried to take it easy so that we would have lots of energy for the parks.
In front of the Orlando Florida Temple. It was so sunny!
Sitting in the shade at the temple
The front view of the temple
The Disneyworld Boardwalk
We walked all the way around the boardwalk and then found a fun little beach with a porch swing on it. Of course we had to go sit in the swing and take a picture of ourselves.
....and on of our feet
And on of Paul
We thought this was pretty sweet. Its Lady and the Tramp but the whole sculpture is made out of different kinds of greenery. Quite incredible.
This is what Mimi and Papa let Jace do while Mom and Dad are away.
Our plan Monday was to get to the park a good 30 min before all the rides opened. We wanted to get a good parking spot and get a jump on the lines. We got to the parking lot around 8:30 and got going on our day. We went to Island of adventures first and rode the Hulk roller coaster. The wait was only 5 or so minutes so we breezed through it so quickly. It was great! Then we hit up the spiderman ride and a few others along the way to Hogsmeade. Somehow the lines weren't very long today. We rode almost all of the rides at Island of Adventure and barely had to wait. I think the longest wait was maybe 30 min tops. By around 6 we were hot, sunburned, out of cold water and exhausted. So we left the park early to have dinner and relax. The weather was so hot. 96* with humidity! Your clothes were seriously damp all day long. You couldn't do anything about it. Even if you weren't super hot the humidity made it seem like you were sweating like crazy anyway. We found this hole in the wall pizza buffet place for dinner. Eating dinner there for the both of us pretty much cost less than feeding one of us inside the park. Again we had an early night and pretty much crashed.
Tuesday we changed up our game plan a little bit. We planned to get to the park early again, and instead of staying all day, we figured we would leave at lunch time, eat and rest, then come back and enjoy the rest of the park in the evening out of the hottest part of the day. We definitely enjoyed Tuesday a little bit more because of that. We started the day off in universal studios and hit up all of the rides and visited Diagon Alley. The park was definitely busier than it was yesterday. Despite getting into the park as soon as we did, there was still a crazy long wait for a lot of the rides. I think we actually did spend 1 hour waiting for the Harry Potter, Gringotts ride. We got as much fun in as we could until we got tired, then we left, got some lunch, and went back to the hotel to nap. We took a pretty decent nap, and then headed back to the park for the evening shows and the rest of the rides we missed. We got in a pretty good amount of rides in before they all closed. Then we just had to wait for it to get dark so we could watch the cool fireworks show-thingy universal does. We ate dinner at an old 50s diner and had delicious burgers and fries! The show was pretty cool. But nothing amazing. Mostly just little clips of some of the movies that Universal Studios has produced.
Wednesday was our last day in Florida. We woke up early and tried to get everything all packed and ready to go. We got to the park around the same time we normally did with a plan to get on the Despicable Me ride very first. Both days we were there the wait was pretty much always over 65 minutes. So we stood in line and waited and did that one first. We still had lots of people in front of us, but the wait was only 30 minutes as compared to the 80 minute wait it became a few minutes after we got inside. We knew we would only have so much time at the park because we had to be at the airport around 6 so we tried to get in everything we could. We doubled up on some of the rides, and went to see as many fun shows as we could. We went to see a Fear Factor live show, and I am TOTALLY wishing that Paul and I would have auditioned. We could have done some pretty cool things like rappelling type stuff. But by the time we saw the show, we didn't have enough time participate in the next show.
We made sure that during our stay we ate at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade and at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley. Both atmospheres were so fun. Of course we tried the butter beer. Multiple times actually. Paul loved the stuff. I thought it was good, but it just tasted a whole lot like butterscotch and cream soda mixed together so I wasn't quite as oooh-ed and ahhh-ed as Paul was.
Our trip home was uneventful. We dropped our rental car off, caught our flight, and got picked up from the airport. We had a late flight, and we knew Jace would be asleep already, so we just spent the night at Paul's parents' house and went to get Jace in the morning. We thought it was going to be this big fun event to see how Jace reacted to us coming to get him, but he didn't react a whole lot. He did just wake up from a nap and wasn't quite all all there, but he acted for a minute like he didn't even recognize us, or he was just being really shy with us. Eventually he warmed up to Paul and myself and didn't want to leave our sides for quite awhile after that.
Florida was great, but man is it nice to be back in Utah weather. Its hot, but its dry hot.
Its Hogwarts!!!
And Hogsmeade!
We were so excited that we decided we should capture the moment on film!
Another view of the castle. It was so crazy how cool they made everything look!
They had lots of wand shops. There was always a line a mile long at Ollivander's Wand Shop to pick out your wand, so we snagged a shot of Gregorovitch's Shop instead.
The inside of Diagon Alley. There were tons of little shops and things to look at. They did such a fantastic job recreating it!
Paul hanging out in front of the Weasly's Wizarding Shop
Paul thought this was kind of silly so we snapped a picture. The owl post. They totally made it look like real bird poo!
Waiting for the Hogwarts express at platform 9 3/4
So they had this really cool set up that made it seem like you could totally run through the barrier of 9 and 10 to get to platform 9 3/4. We tried to get a picture of it, but because they use mirrors for the effect you can't really see how well it works from a pictures. But the experience is priceless!
The lighting is bad, but this is Paul at the entrance to Dumbledore's Office
Hanging out by a cool looking door. On the Hogwarts ride at Island of Adventure, they made the wait for the ride really neat. It wound through the castle, kind of giving you a tour of Howgarts while you stand in line. It was pretty fun.
Looking into the Pensive in Dumbledore's office
The sorting hat!
Our first time having butterbeer. You could choose three different kinds, frozen, regular, or hot. With the temperature, we both got the frozen kind. So so good, and so so refreshing!
We got some random strangers to snap a photo of us in front of the universal studios entrance. Gotta love strangers!
Looks like you had fun! We recently went to Disney World but we had the kids so we decided not to go to Harry Potter World. Maybe next time.
ReplyDeleteI too don't do well without a lot of sleep. Maybe it runs in the family.