Theme Park Ride Summary

Me on the grid 😉

To summarise, here’s a list of all the rides we went on together:-

• Hollywood Studios – Rise of the Resistance
• Hollywood Studios – Smugglers Run
• Hollywood Studios – Tower of Terror x 2
• Animal Kingdom – Avatar Flight of Passage x 2
• Animal Kingdom – Expedition Everest Legend of the Forbidden Mountain
• Magic Kingdom – Tron Lightcycle Run x 2
• Magic Kingdom – Space Mountain
• Epcot – Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
• Epcot – Mission Space
• Epcot – Test Track x 2
• Epcot – Soarin’
• Universal Studios – Men In Black Alien Attack
• Universal Studios – Revenge Of The Mummy
• Universal Studios – Transformers The Ride 3D
• Universal Studios – Despicable Me Minion Mayhem
• Universal Studios – Fast & Furious Supercharged
• Universal Studios – Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts x 2
• Universal Studios – E.T. Adventure

Not a bad list of rides ticked off there.

Room Swaps

Room Number 3

I know people say you live out of a suitcase when you travel, but this is silly.

We stayed at one hotel twice on this trip, once when we arrived in Florida for 4 nights, then again, after coming back from New Orleans for 5 nights.

The first time we arrived and checked in, we went to our room and unpacked everything as you would normally do, but not long after though, we found the toilet didn’t flush properly, ie you could put a single piece of toilet paper down and it would take 2-3 flushes for it to actually go down and disappear (we didn’t want to find out how many it would take for something ‘heavier’)… plus, we realised after taking our shoes off, that the carpet near the bathroom area was soaking wet.

So, after changing my socks, we went back to reception and asked for a different room, which was fine.

After coming back from New Orleans, we checked in again and obviously got a different room.

On the morning of the third night, I woke up to find a wet patch on the right hand side of my bed… and no, it’s nothing like that before you start!, it was actually the roof leaking, perhaps a drip every minute… dripping right onto my bed!

It was pretty obvious from the ceiling ‘patch up’, that there had been a pretty bad leak here before.

…So we swapped rooms… again.

On the 4th day in this room, I was taking a shower when Jánine noticed (quite loudly), that there was a cockroach running across the worktop behind the bathroom / kitchen sink.

Not wanting to spend the night with this little critter, Jánine tried to catch it so it couldn’t have free run of the place throughout the night, but with all the taps, lotions and potions in the way at the time and only an empty coffee cup as a weapon / protection, it eluded capture and escaped behind the fridge / microwave.

Trying not to think about it and just get on with our holiday, which we only had one more night left, we settled in to watch some TV.

Unfortunately our ‘liddle friend’ must have told his pals about the game of chicken it just played with a ‘ooman’, so another one wanted to try its luck!

This one was a little smaller, but also a little faster… however, Jánine was ready for this little sucker!, she managed to scoop it into the sink with the upturned coffee cup, then place said cup over it as a form of cardboard coffin… boom! 👍

At this point, it’s getting late in the evening and our minds were whirling, if there’s two of them, could there be many more? And do they come out at night?… Google says yes to both statements.

…So at 11:10pm, we went to reception again asking for another room swap.

I’m guessing by this point the hotel were glad to see us leave and watch the door hit us in the posterior on the way out.

Oh well, it made it a little easier to leave our holiday behind and come back down to earth before heading home.

Transportation Methods

We kind of went to some extremes today, to try and maximise the number of rides we could fit in on our second to last day, while still adhering to all the rules we had to follow.

Rules such as:-

– You can only join a virtual queue for a ride if you already have a park reservation for that day.

– To actually get a reservation for a ride, you have to be up at 7am refreshing the app like crazy, until the virtual queue ‘opens’, then click the join queue button to get your booking group number confirmed.

– You can attend any other Disney park after 2pm without needing a booking.

– You only need to pay for parking once per day for all the Disney parks.

– You can join a virtual queue at a park if you are already scanned in as being physically present at that park and the second batch of virtual bookings have been released at 1pm.

So with all of the above in mind, we booked to attend Magic Kingdom… so we could join the virtual queue for the Tron Lightcycle / Run at 7am.

Unfortunately, after waking up at 7am and refreshing the screen numerous times, it seems it was already booked up and no longer available. 😢

So, to try and get the second release of bookings, we needed to be scanned into the Magic Kingdom park before 1pm, then keep refreshing the app until it comes up.

…Right, so that’s plan B! 👍

Us being us, we didn’t quite manage to get ourselves up, showered, out the door, onto the Highway and scanned into the park in time, so thinking we’d missed it, we decided to change direction at the last minute and go to the Epcot park instead… to book for the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride.

Arriving at the Epcot park entrance at about 12:30, we asked the parking attendant if we could park here, then go to Magic Kingdom instead?… I’m not saying she didn’t understand our accent or anything, but something was definitely lost in translation… oh well, we’ll figure it out on our own thanks.

We were directed to our parking space at Epcot and parked up… then we started to try and get clever… I know!… what were we thinking?

Trying to think it through, we thought if we went to Magic Kingdom right now!… we could get scanned in and hopefully get on the second release of bookings at 1pm for Tron Lightcycle / Run… ok… go, go, go!

Arriving at Magic Kingdom (parking already paid 👍), we jumped on the tram from the car park to the entrance, scanned into the park and quickly refreshed the virtual queue for Tron… thinking we’d already missed that one too (but ever hopefull) as it’s already 1:05pm… it’s available! 😃 …so I quickly stabbed the join virtual queue button with my hot dog fingers before they changed their mind.

Phew, now we’ve got Tron booked, we could relax a little, as it’s going to be hours before we’re called… could we perhaps?…

We now thought, if we got the monorail back to Epcot, we might get booked on the virtual queue for Guardians?… hmmm?… let’s do it!

Getting to Epcot, scanning in and refreshing the list again, Guardians was still showing spaces!… boom, we’ll have some of that!

So now we’re on the virtual queues for Tron and Guardians of the Galaxy. 👍

Totally going for broke now, we decided to get a complimentary bus from Epcot to Animal Kingdom, to see if we could get another go on the Avatar Flight of Passage ride too, which doesn’t have a virtual queue system and cannot be booked ahead of time.

Heading straight for the Avatar ride at Animal Kingdom, we found there was an 80 minute wait, so we went to the restaurant for lunch, hoping the queue would die down a bit by the time we’d finished.

… it didn’t, so we had a pretty long wait for the Avatar ride, but totally worth it!, it really is such an amazing ride and the visuals are spectacular!

Once we were done at Animal Kingdom, we caught the bus to Magic Kingdom for the Tron ride… typically, the guardians virtual queue was now saying we should head there to board… noooooo! 😢

At this point, we had to make a decision… Tron… or Guardians (which we might not even make time wise), we decided to hold fast for Tron and wave farewell to Guardians. ☹️

We finally got called for Tron and completed our second ride at around 9:30pm.

Strangely enough, our first Tron ride was at the very front and our second ride, at the very back, so we had the benefit of having both perspectives.

Starting to feel tired now, we headed for the ferry dock for a short boat ride across the lake to the trams, while watching the remainder of the fireworks display over the Cinderella castle.

In the car and heading back to the hotel, we stopped at Pizza Hut for a takeaway to finish off our amazing day.

Summarising the transportation methods we took today, as per the title of the post… goes a little something like this:-

1. Car to Epcot, then to Magic Kingdom
2. Tram from car park to entrance
3. Monorail x 2 to Epcot
4. Bus from Epcot to Animal Kingdom
5. Ride a Banshee / Ikran at Animal Kingdom
6. Bus from Animal Kingdom to Magic Kingdom
7. Steam Train around the park to Tron
8. Bike (Tron)
9. Ferry to Tram
10. Tram to car park
11. Car to Pizza Hut then to hotel

Quite a day, but an amazing one!

Avatar Mech

Avatar Mech

Oooo, I nearly forgot, I grabbed a photo of this mech from outside the Avatar ride at Animal Kingdom.

It looks a little like the mech loaders in the Alien films… all of which are a great watch by the way.

Local Gift Shop With Its Own Shuttle

Shuttle Gift Shop

While heading down the street to grab a subway (the sandwich), I saw this shuttle bolted to a gift shop. I guess everyone’s got a shuttle in Florida.

Despicable Me Ride at Universal Studios

Minions

Another of the slower, more family friendly rides at Universal Studios… minions everywhere!

Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts at Universal Studios

Escape From Gringotts

After almost accidentally finding the Harry Potter themed area at Universal Studios, we thought we’d have a go on the Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts ride… and we’re so glad we did.

Basically, it’s based inside a bank called Gringotts and you sit inside a kind of steam train carriage without a roof, while wearing 3d glasses.

You’re taken around large caverns under the bank where there are some big horrible looking bad guys that come after you, while your friends try to save you.

It was one of those rides that you thought was going to be oookay, but it turned out to be great!… some kids came off shouting that it was ‘the best ride ever’, so it seemed to go down well with them too.

We loved it that much, (helped by the short single rider queue), that we joined the end of the line again and did it all again.

For anyone loving Harry Potter, I think this would be one of those places you need to go, adults & kids were dressing up in robes and pulling out their magic wands here and there to perform incantations that started water fountains and all sorts.

Definitely a place to grab all your souvenirs from too, the whole area is themed around Harry Potter.

Hagrid’s Ride… Ours Now!

There Be Dragons Here

Shark Attack at Universal Studios

Shark Attack

There was a shark attack at universal studios today, I tried to sacrifice my thick head so Jánine could get away… I think it worked, it probably realised there was nothing inside my head to eat, so I managed to get away too… phew!

Child Swap Anyone?

Child Swap Sign

Another one of those signs I just giggled at and thought to share, if you don’t like the child you’ve got… swap em for someone else’s and see how that one goes.

Fast and Furious Supercharged Ride

Fast and Furious Supercharged

It’s got to be said, this was one of the rides I was totally looking forward to at Universal Studios, I love all the fast and furious movies and I thought this would be something that would fit right into that whole look and feeling I get, when I watch any of the films (excluding Tokyo Drift).

I started to reduce my expectations a little when a guy on the gate asked me to fill in a questionnaire about our visit to the park and he asked why we were there, or what were we looking forward to,… or something along those lines, I said the Fast and Furious ride… he then said that the ride was a little controversial over here.

Dodge Challenger

We have no idea what he meant by that statement, but figured we needed to make our own judgement anyway, so we headed off to the ride.

Dodge Charger

Reaching the ride, we were told it’s currently closed due to technical difficulties and to check back later.

Checking on the app every half an hour to see if it had opened, allowed us to stay in the loop, so when it did open, we could head that way and get in line.

The set / setup looked pretty good, a looked like a kind of warehouse district and when you board ‘the party bus’, there were virtual scenes shown as you go through.

Subaru BRZ

However, with 6 people to a row and perhaps 9 rows, your view was pretty limited, I actually sat on the very left hand side, so I had a great view of the left side of the bus, but couldn’t really see too much on the right and from what I could tell, nothing else happened anywhere apart from a few lights blinking in the bus to show the ride was over.

Overall, this ride was a massive let down for me, where I only really saw half the action and was played on screens to your left, or right and I don’t really know what the story was, as I only saw half of it.