Universal Studios, Part 3

We repeated our morning routine on Tuesday morning and left our room to head to the buses around 6:45. The sidewalks at our resorts had these blue circles, and our kids played the floor is lava on them every.single.time. I mean, what do they expect when they design sidewalks like this. It was funny to watch other kids at the resort doing the same thing. It's just a funny memory I want to remember. 

We were back in line by about 7:20 on Tuesday morning and ready for some fun. They opened the gates and let people in at 7:45 on the dot every morning. Their system and timing is flawless, and the organization and efficiency is something that I enjoy probably more than I should about the Universal and Disney parks. 

This time Hagrid's was open, yay! We pretty much walked right on the ride- through a long queue though which took awhile to talk through.

I hung with this girl in the child swap area while the other kids rode with Matt. I prefer  the child swap procedures at Universal over Disney. They seem much more efficient and fast. I waited with Katherine and then as soon as the other kids got off the ride, we pretty much walked right back on the ride again with no wait at all.

After Hagrid's we walked over and rode Forbidden Journey and Flight of the Hippogriff again like the day before. 

Riding with Katherine never got old. I know she rode that roller coaster at least a dozen times (probably closer to fifteen or sixteen times) during our trip and her joy and excitement never waned. 

After we finished at Hogsmeade, we walked over to the super hero area of Islands of Adventure. Nathan was ecstatic to ride Hulk. It took cowboy boots and shoe extenders, but we made that boy tall enough! He and Matt rode while I waited with the other kiddos. The wait was longer than we expected, and since Matt couldn't have his phone in line because of the ride rules, the other kids and I just hung out and ate snacks while they waited. 

We did rider swap, so I could ride, and I guess Elisabeth did cartwheels while we were on the ride, ha!

Hulk was fun, but both Matt and I remembered liking it a lot more 2.5 years ago. We rode it so many times back then, and it just felt jerkier and more rickety. Maybe it's older and more worn out, or we're older, I don't know. But we were fine just riding it once. Nathan loved it though. The first launch is really fun. 

After Hulk, we went back to Dr. Seuss land to reward Katherine for all her patient waiting during the big kid rides.  

She's always liked carousels, and we get the cutest pictures of her on them. Her smile just melts me. 

We also rode the Cat in the Hat ride again and then spent some time casting spells in Hogsmeade. 

The reaction every time they successfully cast their spells- it never got old. 

We had a frozen butterbeer for a treat and it was delicious!! I remembered how much more I liked the frozen butterbeer to the regular kind. Yum, yum!! It was my favorite treat of the trip. 

Brothers and butterbeer. I love this picture!!

Hagrid's actually went to a virtual queue on Tuesday, and we snagged another time that afternoon, so we got to ride it twice that day (and the kids rode it four times).

We walked back over to Super Hero Island for lunch, and then decided to brave the water rides. We remembered how soaked we got on the water rides, but we had to do them, right?!

Just a little wet after the rapids ride, ha! I made the boys ride again with Matt. Elisabeth refused. She said she was wet enough. 

We also rode Dudley Do Right's Ripsaw Falls. It ended up having a really long line. Thankfully for child swap, Katherine didn't have to wait with us on that ride, so she got to ride a dinosaur flying ride with Daddy while we waited. It was a fun ride, but I think we were all done with being wet by the time we rode it. No one needed to ride it again another time. 

We rode One Fish, Two Fish with Katherine to end the day and decided that since we had done almost all our must do's for the trip and still had three more park days that we should call it an early day and we went back to the hotel to swim for a couple of hours. 

I liked our resort a lot! We ended up staying there just because they had a great promotion for a vacation package at that resort, and I'm just really glad it worked out, because it was so much fun! The resort had two pools and a water slide and lazy river. On this day we just played at the pool with the waterslide. Everyone went down the slide multiple times and spent time swimming in the water. 

After we finished swimming we drove to Checker's for dinner. We decided it was much cheaper and didn't take much more time to drive off property for dinner. We all had burgers and chicken bites and ice cream treats for dessert.

When we got back to the hotel, Matt realized he forgot a room key, so we had to go to the front desk. This girl was conked out from the drive home and stayed asleep the whole time we got our new key. I threw her in her jammies and put her to bed and she slept all night long. Our style of vacations wear her out!