It was obvious to us late last night that being “early birds” just really isn’t the best approach for our family. It was even more obvious when I woke up at 8 AM this morning to find the rest of the family still fast asleep. I decided to give them a little more time, managed to doze back off, and woke up at 10AM… to find the rest of the family still fast asleep. We slowly woke up and started to go through our morning routine. We took our time and enjoyed looking at the park map, discussing rides, and just chatting about our first two days. Abby spent a good amount of time this morning categorizing the map, identifying attractions that we had already visited with a “star” and used a “heart” to identify those attractions that we loved. It was totally precious. She enjoys managing our map and helping us navigate the parks. It helps a little that the parks aren’t that big.
We finally made our way over to Islands of Adventure a little before noon. We headed straight for The Hulk, used our Express Pass, and were stunned to find quite a little line waiting for us. We were a little nervous at the sight of the line, but it ended up not being that bad… no more than a 12-15 minute wait. We seriously couldn’t complain. And we are continually impressed with the speed in which Universal can turn around a ride. They are F.A.S.T. – no doubt!
After The Hulk, we hit “Spidey,” then made our way over to the Jurassic Park River Adventure. As you can probably tell from the name of the attraction, water was involved. For the record – I do not like water rides. I hate having wet socks and I hate having wet underwear. SERIOUSLY. I do not ride water rides. But today I conceded to my family and rode this dang ride… but not without some good negotiations on my part. I got the middle seat in the row of 5. And they all promised that we could go back to the hotel so I could change if I got too wet. Fortunately we were seated in the middle of the boat, so I thought that had to be good. The ride was cute – complete with plastic dinosaurs that made cute little dinosaur noises. Of course, you had to expect the appearance of the raptors and the T-Rex, which showed up at the end of the ride. And when we hit the final drop, down my head went. Didn’t matter. I was still wet. Thankfully my legs were protected, which kept my socks dry. And the lap bar was very big, so that protected the underwear from any drenching. But my hair and t-shirt were soaked. UGH. The important thing was that the rest of the family enjoyed it and I endured. That’s all that matters. However, I think Abby put a “heart” beside this ride, so I may be subjected to further water torture. Here are a couple of pics of the girls post-ride…


From the Jurassic Park area, we made our way over to the Harry Potter area. We rode both of the coasters at The Dragon’s Challenge – first the Chinese Fireball and then the Hungarian Horntail. We did confirm that Marcus and I were correct the other day, much to the frustration of the girls. Hehe. Don’t you remember just hating it when your parents were right? The wait time for these coasters was non-existent, even for non-Express users, so we managed to ride both in under 10 minutes. When we came off of the Horntail, Abby asked which one we liked best and we all agreed that we enjoyed the Chinese Fireball the most. Odd that we all four agreed on the same thing!
It was definitely more crowded in the parks today. This picture of the Hogsmeade area shows what kind of crowds we dealt with in the Harry Potter section...

We stopped for a butterbeer on our way out of Hogsmeade, then went to find some lunch. Kacy had expressed interest in eating at the Hard Rock Café, so we headed there. It was outside of their restroom that I spotted the gold “undies” worn by Rocky in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” This warranted a text to my sister. After all, she flew down to San Antonio back in October just to attend this movie with me! Alas, I didn’t take a photo, as I had left the camera on the table. Why I didn’t think to take it with me to the toilet, I’ll never know.
After lunch we headed into Universal Studios where we hit Terminator 2 in 3D. Marcus and I hit this attraction on our previous visit, but we didn’t recall much about it until we were actually in the queuing area. The girls have never seen the Terminator movies (obviously!), so we had to do a lot of explaining to keep them caught up. Kacy isn’t really a fan of 3D and kept her eyes closed quite a bit, but still managed to squeal here and there.
We next headed over to the coaster that was added since our last visit and has quite an intimidating appearance… the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit. The coaster’s ascent to the top of the first drop is seriously straight up. This has had our eyes bugging out for over 48 hours! We had not yet hit this ride because it is not one that currently takes the Express Pass, and the wait has been a little long for us. We decided last night that we would ride it today. We would just keep an eye on Marcus’s Universal app that tracks wait time and head over there when we were comfortable with the time. We finally found it at 50 minutes and decided that we should go. Here's Marcus and the girls waiting in line...

The unique thing about this coaster is that you get to pick the music that you listen to while riding. They provide video instruction on how to select it on your own touch screen once you are strapped in. Marcus, Abby, and I all selected the Dwight Yoakam selection on the Country music genre. Kacy, however, didn’t manage to make a selection, so she really isn’t sure what she listened to on the ride. The coaster itself is pretty good – no complaints. The first descent isn’t nearly as bad as it looks, and the ride has some neat features, like a roll at the top of a full loop and a quick jaunt through a building. It was fun and I am pretty sure that we will find ourselves in that line again soon.
Here’s a pic of the ascent – going straight up!

And coming down the first hill…

And coming out of a building…

Before we left Universal Studios, we hit The Mummy, which the girls have grown to enjoy quite a bit. Then we decided to take a break from the parks for a bit and head back to the hotel. Marcus and Abby went to the swimming pool while Kacy and I headed to the laundry room. And for the record, Kacy went to the laundry room of her own free will. We managed to get two loads of laundry done pretty quickly and Marcus and Abby had a great time in the large, heated pool. Abby really seemed to enjoy the sandy beach area, where she made a sand castle.
We headed back over to Islands of Adventure around 7:30PM and were in line for The Forbidden Journey by 7:45PM. The stated wait was 45 minutes, but we managed to get on the ride in 35. Again – no complaints. This is yet another reason that we don’t feel compelled to be out for early entry again, especially given that the one morning we tried it, the ride broke down and we waited way longer than 45 minutes! We have found that the ride’s wait time drops drastically late in the evening, so I think we will keep the “sleep late, stay late” approach.
At this point it was truly supper time, so we decided to grant one of Abby’s meal selections and headed to Moe’s Southwest Grill at City Walk. *sigh* I mean – who doesn't want to eat at Moe’s on vacation!?! Good heavens. Here’s the thing… until about 6 months ago, we had a Moe’s near our house. Abby loved this place and would ask to eat there at least once a week. It got to the point where Marcus or I would say, “Girls, we are going to eat out tonight. Do y’all have any preferences?” and would have to immediately follow it with, “AND DON’T SAY MOE’S!” Well, obviously we should have backed off of that statement, because the darn thing closed down and reopened as a barbeque restaurant. And ya’ know, if we have a shortage of any kind of restaurants in San Antonio, it is Mexican and barbeque. The funny thing is that Abby couldn’t have cared less about the plain cheese quesadilla that she ordered every time she went to Moe’s. Nope. She loved Moe’s because they gave out great chocolate chip cookies with their kids meals. Seriously. And she totally fesses up to that to this very day. So when we saw the Moe’s location at CityWalk on Wednesday, she almost flipped. Tonight we made her one happy little girl.
I know that it seems like we are doing the same things day after day, but there is so much more to it. There are so many things happening that I can’t really capture here at the end of the day. But there are moments that I just want to freeze in my mind. Like watching Abby talk to her daddy today while playing with his hair. Or listening to the silly conversations that take place between Marcus and the girls. Or watching Kacy teach Marcus how to play “Double-Double-This-This Double-Double-That-That” while standing in the Green House at the Forbidden Journey. These moments are just so incredibly sweet and these are the reasons that Marcus and I wanted to take this trip. It wasn’t an easy decision to come to – being away from our extended families this Christmas season. But we just knew that there were so many memories to be made with a trip like this, and we just wanted to make those with our girls. Let’s be honest – Kacy starts high school next year. She’s going to be in 9th grade and that really means that we don’t have many years left to do these kinds of things. So while it was a hard decision, it was also an easy decision. Our girls are growing up too fast. We have to stop and spend this time with them – no doubt!
It’s now after 11 and we are all clean and curled up in bed. We will be taking a similar schedule tomorrow and enjoying a nice, leisurely morning before heading over to the parks. I’m wondering if I can talk the family into stopping at Cinnabon on the way… hmmm….