2022 December – Days 6-7 Universal Orlando

We are finishing up at Disney World and moving to Universal Orlando for a special event in these next two days.

I’ll also post more pics on my Instagram (adventures_by_anne), so follow along there too.

Day 6

We still had til mid afternoon before we can go check into our Universal resort, so let’s spend some more time at the Magic Kingdom.

After doing a few rides, we stop for lunch at Columbia Harbour House. This is one of our favorite quick service places at the Magic Kingdom. They have more than the usual theme park food and lots of air conditioned seating inside. Don’t forget to look upstairs for more tables too. Good people watching from those upstairs windows too.

Of course, we had to take a few more pics around the park before we left.

All of the buddies came along today, so we had to take the iconic castle picture! They’ve had a blast these last few days at Disney!

One last thing to do here is to hop over to the Polynesian Resort to check out those decorations since we skipped it the other day.

We even managed to snag a walk-up spot to the newly refurbished Kona Cafe for a little snack – crispy dumplings. Yum!

Before we left, we had to go out back to grab a Dole whip too. We haven’t had one yet this trip! Gasp! This is a lime and pineapple swirl. So refreshing! Yum!!

Ok, now we can go. We take the monorail back to Magic Kingdom to catch the bus back to Pop to get our car.

Bye, Pop! Bye, Disney!

Hello, Universal!

We moved over to Universal Studios! We stayed at the Cabana Bay Resort, which is so cute. Everything is themed to the style of the 50s and 60s.

CityWalk is beautiful all lit up at night. There are so many delicious restaurants there. We had dinner at BigFire for the first time.

Of course, we also checked out the many stores there. Just ended up window shopping this time. I’m on a quest for a mini pygmy puff this time as another roadtrip buddy. They were sold out here, so we’ll look again inside the parks tomorrow.

Off to bed for now. Goodnight!

Day 7

In the morning, we explored the resort a little. Very cute! Beds we’re comfy, everything looked new, and every place had a retro 70s type vibe. The showers even had little bottles of V05 shampoo. Anyone remember those??

This is definitely a good resort for the value, being still fairly walkable to the two theme parks and right next door to the Volcano Bay water park. It just doesn’t include Express Passes like the premier resorts do.

We also walked over to the Sapphire Falls Resort across and down the street to check that out. This is the scenic Garden Walk path to get there. If we kept going for another 15-20 minutes, we would also walk past the Royal Pacific Resort and end up in CityWalk by the Jimmy Buffett restaurant.

Sapphire Falls is a beautiful resort near the parks as well. It’s just slightly closer to the parks than Cabana Bay and themed to be a more modern upscale Polynesian-esque cozy cabin, I’d say. I could be wrong, be either way, it is beautiful! Check out the pics of the lobby area.

Finally, it is time to check in for the main event, the whole reason we even came to Orlando, the Orlando Informer Meetup! This is an after hours event where we can enjoy both Universal parks after normal park closing with much shorter ride lines and unlimited food and drinks! It is our first time attending one of these. So excited!

With the Orlando Informer Meetup tickets, we were able to enter the parks at 5pm EST, so we had about 3 hours to see the shows and do anything else that wasn’t going to be occurring during the event.

One of the major things we did was see the Macy’s Christmas parade! Very cool! Those balloons were huge!

We also caught some of the Mannheim Steamroller concert that was happening right in the park! Their songs always ring in the Christmas season. We saw them here during our very first trip to Universal in 2010 also, so this brings back fond memories.

The next thing we had to do was go to London and Diagonal Alley to get our school supplies, of course!
Alas, no mini pygmy puffs here either. The hunt continues…

After all that shopping, we had to get some snacks at The Leaky Cauldron and Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlour in Diagon Alley. Unlimited butterbeer and ice cream! That alone might make the OI tix worthwhile! LoL

With wands ready and bellies full, it was time to find our way to Platform 9 3/4s for our train to Hogwarts!
Still goosebumps every time!

That first view of Hogwarts as you round the corner at the end of Hogsmeade still gets me everytime. So gorgeous! Can I move in yet?

Be sure to catch the nighttime projection show on the castle too. It’s a quick 10 minute show that runs several times a night after sunset during the holiday season, and maybe other times of the year. Check the app to see if it’s running during your trip. It’s so beautiful!

Of course, we had to go inside Hogwarts and ride Forbidden Journey. It was a walk-on! I couldn’t even get my phone and such in my bag fast enough before we got to the ride cars. There was so much to see along the queue though. They did such an amazing job recreating every little detail as described in the books. You have to check it out!

Once the OI event got underway, even the wait for Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure fell down to 45 minutes, which is pretty good for this ride, so we hopped in line. This was our first time riding it! Can’t wait!

Update: It was super fun but soooo fast! Be warned! Hold on tight!

Time for another snack break, this time in The Three Broomsticks! Remember, unlimited butterbeer and food!

I could stay in Hogsmeade forever, but time was running out fast and we had to take the Hogwarts Express back to London to experience some other parts of the Muggle world before the event ended. The scenery in the train is different on the way back, so be sure to take it both ways. So cool!

Back in the Muggle world, we visited our Simpsons friends in Springfield and had a Flaming Moe drink.

We also got some final snacks as we strolled around the park before it closed.

We didn’t have time to ride every ride and eat all the foods, but we had a great time doing all the key priorities for us and even lasted til almost the end, leaving just before 1am. We had fun at our first Orlando Informer event and look forward to future ones!

Alas, our adventure down in Florida has come to an end but it’s time to start on the next leg of our epic roadtrip tomorrow! Heading west!
Get a good night’s sleep! The Journey Continues!