Universal Take Two – Orlando

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that as we got closer and closer to Orlando, my RV started shaking a lot, and I think it was crying, too. Maybe that was me, but I really felt like Irv said “I just don’t think I can go on” and I realized something was really wrong….

So let me reiterate the need to write more often. I don’t, but to be honest I’ve been going non-stop since we arrived in Orlando. I haven’t had the time to write.

For the three people who religiously read my blog, you may recall the very beginning of the trip when I wrote about leaving Disneyland early? (If not, check it out here). We were busy that week and it was earlier in my grief journey so I figured I could conquer Orlando (minus Disney, which we didn’t do). But I’m meeting up with people next week so I’m on a time crunch, so breaks aren’t happening now.

So here are the pros and I’ll get to the delicious cons in a minute.

Universal Studios and Islands Of Adventure- fun times and Harmony was very brave. Scared, but brave.

Holy Land Experience – we all loved this (shockingly). I thought maybe the moody teen might not be so sure but he enjoyed it, too.

Discovery Cove – Dolphin encounter was a highlight of the trip for the girls. It was an almost perfect day (it was the only “cold day” in Orlando at 65 degrees that day)

Medieval Times – It was so good to get a partial day off, go to Church and then Medieval Times (we watched “The Cable Guy” the night before. Adam would have loved it.)

Coca-Cola Orlando Eye – 2nd biggest Ferris wheel in the US- who wouldn’t love that?

Wycliffe Discovery Center – the one time we packed a lunch and they had good, cheap burgers. Glad we went, though.

With the ups come the downs….

SeaWorld and Aquatica- we got free tickets to SeaWorld with our Discovery Cove tickets – it didn’t disappoint – however by then I was moving a lot slower and we didn’t hit as many attractions as we did at the other parks. Unfortunately Harmony lost a little of her bravery and she was heavily criticized for it by family members. There was a lot of fighting that day which we hadn’t had in awhile because no one wanted to go separate ways but Harmony didn’t want to ride all the coasters – and side note: they really were scary. Not sure how we made it through the day so angry and also enjoy the sea life. It was probably just a long week.

Universal’s Volcano Bay – we got along better on this day, but it wasn’t super fun. Giant lines on top of exhaustion. The biggest problem this day was that it took a lot of coordinating to get the RV in the shop. I knew we’d have the dog with us so I specifically chose this day to get the RV fixed because Universal has a kennel (which caused us to be even later so we arrived like 2 hours after they opened) We got up super early to drop off the RV, but Caleb wouldn’t wake up to help (did I mention his sleep issues?). When I was finally ready, my stabilizing jack wouldn’t retract. At all. This has happened before but not to this degree. I spent at least 30 minutes working on it until Caleb woke up and spent another 30 minutes on it – literally digging it out of a hole until we could put a car jack under it! By now, we were late to drop off the RV. They were super nice and sometime during our day they called and said they couldn’t help us! They said that they didn’t have the diagnostic software to figure out what was wrong with such an old vehicle (and implied that it might be too hard to save). This was the second place I’d called – the first not being able to help since they were booked out through April. All I could think about was that if they couldn’t help me, no one could and I’d have to leave my RV in Florida as a vacation home. I actually had a panic attack at a water park. Yep, good times. Probably part of why it was the worst day for me.

Kennedy Space Center – so we’d been to the Houston Space Center two weeks before, so I was excited about this one. I was able to find another place to work on our RV so again, we had to drive at the crack of dawn to drop it off and then drive an hour to Cape Canaveral. This mechanic assured me that they work with older vehicles. The kids liked this one a lot more than the Houston one – not sure why, since they learned a ton at Johnson and Kennedy was much more FUN! So that was fun, but frustrating (plus at both centers they have 2 IMAX movies and we accidentally watched the same one)

Because of the car issue (even though we dropped off the car at 7:30), we still arrived late to NASA, plus with dropping off the dog at their kennel, we were even later. To pick up the car, we had to leave early. So with 6 1/2 hours we only got done about half of what there is to do there! Anyway, the guy was awesome and fixed about 100 different things that were wrong with the RV! So I think we are good to go to take our next trip. (Update, please pray for my stupid RV right now)

This week had some big highs and big lows. I’m lucky. But you know what the best part was…and it didn’t cost very much? It was that pair of yoga pants I got at Walmart for ten bucks…

So don’t ever feel envious of me, because this has been a good, but demanding and difficult trip during a hard season for us and there are Walmart’s everywhere where you can get some yoga pants, too.

Harmony’s Corner

So we parked at our campground and we were planning to go to Discovery Cove later in the week. So we had to wake up at Six O’ Clock and when we got there since my mom had already payed everything was free. In fact for drinks I had a Pina Colada Icee all day. I was gonna do this thing called Seaventure where they put a bucket on my head and I couldn’t do it.

I was scared to go to Universal when we went on the Mummy ride my shoe came off in that ride I was afraid it was gonna fall off. (And that’s a big deal because it’s my favorite pair of shoes.) But other than that it was so okay.

When we went to SeaWorld there was like eight rollercoasters in the park the first one was called the Manta I was too scared to go on this ride. On our drive to SeaWorld we saw this stuff sign that said Virtual Reality Ride it was called Kraken but when we got to that ride they didn’t give VR (Virtual Reality) So we went on and it was AMAZINGLY AWESOME!

There are three parks in Universal. Universal, Islands Of Adventure and Volcano Bay.

After SeaWorld We went to Islands Of Adventure Best Park out of all three of them. When we went to Doctor Dooms Fear Fall (which is it zooms up and then bounces down) when we got to the top I felt like I was gonna flip over.

When we went Aquatica I got lost. When my mom found me (after a year in Harmony world and a half an hour in real world) tears were bursting out of my eyes. Although it was better then Volcano Bay which I’ll tell you about next.

There were these watch things called TapuTapu’s and for rides you scan it on its logo for a ride and it will tell you the wait and you play in the lazy river or the wave pool or eat. Once it buzzes you go on the ride.