I said to Keith this morning that I hated using the I4 to get to Universal and that I remembered another road we used to use which was much easier. We had a good look at the map that Alamo gave us but Keith couldn't remember the exact way. I even looked back at my blog to see if I'd mentioned the road and although I stated it was the West Osceola Parkway, we couldn't see how we had used it as it was nowhere near the parks.
We had decided to go to the park earlier today so we set off at about 9am and came off the I4 onto the 417 which is a toll road. However, we became lost after a while and ended up on the Florida Turnpike! Luckily we saw signs for the I4 and drove back onto it, but the good thing was that we had missed out a good chunk of the evil road! Getting into the car parks was a slow process as there were loads of cars heading towards them and we were directed up onto the roof of the multi-storey again, in the "Jurassic Park" section.
Universal was busy and there were loads of people flowing through the turnstiles, but it wasn't overly crowded. It was hot, though, and the sun shone out of a gorgeous blue sky.
Our first ride was Spiderman with a 50 minute wait, which passed quite quickly. The ride seemed much more intense than last time and was really fun! We walked through the cartoon section - always my favourite because of the bright colours and palm trees - and into Jurassic Park where the children went on the water-ride which had a 25 minute wait. I was going to give it a go until Sophie remembered that the drop was quite steep...I decided to sit it out! Instead, Keith and I enjoyed a beer and waited for them in the shade, watching the huge amount of people walk by.
The children emerged from the ride quite wet and Sophie bought a tee-shirt in the shop. It's really great that you can break up the hot walks with a trip into one of the shops which are all fully air-conditioned. Sometimes you get a blast of cool air as you walk past!
Our next ride was the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey and there was a 45 minute wait, which again passed very quickly as there is so much to see within Hogwarts. The ride itself was great and we were really thrown about. There was a lot of screaming on our car!
Before leaving we decided to take the new Hogwarts Express into Islands of Adventure. As it goes from one park to another we had to show our tickets again. There was a ten minute wait which was good because I'm not sure I would wait any longer to go on it! You get on a lovely old steam train (the carriage seats eight) and on either side of the carriage are screens. One side shows the train rolling through countryside like in the films, while the other side has the characters walk past in shadow. The last bit was interesting as it shows scenes from modern day London, so it was a bit like being at home!
By now we were all very hot and tired and the walk back to the car seemed to take ages. We stopped on the way for some bottled water ($3 each) as Sophie felt really warm. Our car was literally baking in the heat up on the roof of the multi-storey...the temperature was 102f again and all the metal parts inside were burning hot to the touch!
We were going to have lunch at Shake Shack on International Drive and then return to the villa for the rest of the day to relax. After one wrong turning we found the restaurant and parked in a badly lit car park next to the Orlando Eye. Sophie loves this fast food restaurant and had been to the New York one several times but I don't think that Keith was prepared for it to be counter service! However, the food was delicious and three of us had the double burgers with crinkle cut fries, while Keith had a chicken version. I had a strawberry milkshake which was thick and delicious! As we'd only had a tiny bowl of cereal for breakfast I felt I deserved it!
The really nice touch about the restaurant was the free chilled water and we all made use of this with our meals. I think we were a bit dehydrated from our visit to Universal so we all topped up our fluid levels and felt much better.
We took quite a long detour back to the villa and ended up on the I4 again but the traffic was very slow. We weren't sure what the hold-up was but we did see an ambulance fly past. Getting back to the villa was bliss and we all jumped into the pool to get cool! All of our clothes went straight into the washing machine!
The rest of the day was very relaxing. We either sat around the pool or relaxed in the cosy living room where I watched a couple of episodes of Modern Family with a glass of wine. Perfect!
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