Today was the first day since the start of our vacation that I was able to sleep past 5 am. I didn’t end up waking up till around 6. It felt nice to sleep that extra hour. Anyone that always wakes up early should understand how that feels.
Today I felt it was going to be a good day. We were going to be doing some water rides and we would be wearing our matching shirts that I made. To my surprise I didn’t have to fight with my daughter to wear her shirt. She actually liked them.
Before you knew it we were heading off to the park. We’ve been wanting to ride the Minions ride but the wait has been incredibly long all week. So we made sure we got to Universal Studios early to be on it before the park opened. Good thing we did it too. Not even an hour after the park opened and the wait time was already 45 minutes. Only for a brief period of time today did the wait time drop below that.
We waited in line to be turned into minions for the day. Good thing we had our minion shirts on. This way Gru knew we were serious about being minions. Now I’ve been on this ride a bunch of different times. It was much rougher than I remember. It was still a lot of fun. Just a lot more bouncing around.
We rode a couple more rides at Universal Studios than headed over to Islands of Adventure on the Hogwarts Express. Not sure how she missed this but she never saw anyone go through the “wall” to get to Platform 9 ¾. So before we got on the train I had to show her. She was in love with it and made me take a couple videos of it.
Once we were done and made it to the platform we were off to Hogsmeade. From there we found our way to Toon Lagoon so we could ride Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges. The ride was a walk on and we did it a couple of times.
The first time I somehow barely got wet. Don’t get me wrong I did get hit with some water (more than you would at Animal Kingdom’s Kali River Rapids). I just wasn’t soaked. That changed very quickly.
On the second ride through I got soaked from head to toe. She did two. We both looked like drowned rats. Same thing happened on our third ride. It didn’t matter though. That was the purpose of us riding that ride.
After our rides we headed back over to Universal Studios. It didn’t take us long to dry off in the hot Florida sun. She helped move it along a little faster by riding the Woody Woodpecker Coaster over in KidZone.
From there it was time to eat. We were going to eat at Moe’s in Springfield but we decided to get a burger from Richter’s Burger Company. We were not very impressed by the burger. It was very bland. By far that was the worst meal we ended up eating on the whole trip. Now the milkshake was good and that was the best part about our meal.
After lunch we headed back around the parks. We stopped back into Diagon Alley for some butterbeer ice cream and one more look around since today was our last day at Universal for at least the next couple of days. My mother and brother will be coming to Orlando in two days and we are planning on doing at least one day at Universal and two days at Disney, so we should be back again soon.
We took the Garden Walk back for the last time. I really liked this little walk. Sure it took about 20 minutes to get back but it had nice scenery and it was an easy walk.
I also have to say that I love the fact that you can walk to the theme parks from the resort. Every Universal Resort you can do this. Even at Endless Summer Resorts you could walk from. It would just take a decent amount of time. It is a little over a mile walk to CityWalk. Then again, walking from Cabana Bay is close to a mile too.
Once we got back to the resort we jumped in the car and headed over to the Orlando International Premium Outlets on International Drive. Now this place was massive. Might be the biggest outlet mall I’ve been to. There are so many stores. Everything from Nike and Old Navy, to Crocs and of course, the Disney Character Warehouse.
Now that is why we were going here. I wanted to see what kind of stuff they had at the Disney Character Warehouse. Here you can usually find older t-shirts, pins, sweatshirts, and other random Disney parks merch.
We checked out the store for a good 20 minutes or so. It might have been even longer to tell you the truth. We did pick up a few things including a new Disney sweatshirt for my daughter. It was really nice too. It cost around $30 for it. That was about half off the original price.
We could have easily spent the rest of the day there. However, we did spend a little more time checking out the different stores. Our next stop was going to be Disney Springs but I decided to just head back to Cabana Bay and relax for the rest of the day.
We also had to pack the car back up tonight. We are waking up early tomorrow morning so we can be at Discovery Cove by 07:30am when they open. So that’s what we did.
We packed up the room and packed up the car. We also hit up the pool for an hour. That turned out to be not such a great idea. Our swim suits didn’t get enough time to dry and had to sit in the car for the entire next day. Same thing with my soaking wet shoes and boy were they soaked. Plus they were stinking up the whole place.
Before the night ended we got some food at the food court. It was pretty good. Everything we ended up getting at the food court the past couple of days was good. Overall, we had a great time at Cabana Bay and would do it again. The room was nice. The pools were amazing and the rest of the the resort was great.
Tomorrow is going to be an amazing day. We get to swim with dolphins and fish at Discovery Cove. So be sure to check back tomorrow.
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