Good morning! Ready for something totally new on this third day of our trip?

Let’s finish packing and go leave our bags at luggage hold. Don’t pack your park tickets away, though. We got the 3-park tickets, so that lets us go to both Universal theme parks and the new water park – Volcano Bay.

Before we head over to Volcano Bay, let’s take a look at the map above of the overall Universal properties, so that we can get an idea of where it is in relation to the other parks. Royal Pacific is at the bottom, just left of center. The past two days, we walked over to City Walk, at the bottom center on the map, and from there, went to Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios parks above it. Today, we will be going all the way to the left to Volcano Bay.

Since it is a bit farther, we will take the park shuttle bus over instead. There is a walking path too, but I believe it’s almost a half-hour walk.

Ready? Let’s go!

We’re here!

When we scan in at the gate, we will also get a Tapu Tapu wristband. This acts like our virtual line pass at most of the rides. You basically scan it at the Tapu scanner by each ride, and it tells you what time to go back to ride it instead of having to stand there in line. You can go do rides with shorter wait times or something else in the meantime.

We can also use it to charge purchases for food, souvenirs, lockers, etc, once we hook it up in the Universal app. This way, we can leave our wallets in the lockers and just use this all day for everything. Pretty handy!

Since this is all new to us, let’s walk around the park and do a quick overview first.

OK, so it looks like the huge volcano in the middle is the off-shoot for several water slides and the two lazy rivers. Then, there are lands all around it that have other water rides, beach areas for water play and lounging, and dining and shopping options.

Since we haven’t done any of these before, let’s just go around do all of the water slides first!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUbEF-_STFs

Whoa! Is that all of them? I’ve lost track. They were fun! Some were a little crazy. Which ones were your favorites?

I think we need a lunch break after doing all these. Let’s scope out the food options.

There were many good choices. I hope you liked your lunch.

Since we just ate, I think it’s time to chill a while in the lazy river. We love lazy rivers.

Now that we’ve digested a bit, let’s check out the fast lazy river. Isn’t that an oxymoron? I guess the water goes faster, and there are spots with rapids and high waves.

Well, that was fun! Let’s walk around and see what else there is. We can play by the beach and wave pool or just lay on a lounge chair for a while.

Are there any slides that you want to do again too?

This park is pretty fun. There are things to do for kids of all ages. What are your favorites?

Well, it’s about the early evening now. Did we do everything that we wanted to in here? Are we ready to get going?

Let’s get our stuff from the lockers, change into dry clothes, and head back to the resort to get our bags.

Bye, Volcano Bay!

We’re back at Royal Pacific, awaiting our Lyft ride to come to take us over to Disney World now. It should just be about a half-hour ride. Here are more some tips as we drive over.

TIP 1: As we’ve mentioned before, staying at one of the deluxe Universal resorts will include unlimited Express Pass access. That means you can go on each Express Pass ride as many times as you want. The ones you can buy separately may have limits on how many times you can ride. The deluxe resorts are pricier than the hotels that we usually stay at, but once you factor in the price of Express Passes, if you were to buy them separately for four people, it’s generally more cost-effective to just stay at this resort. Royal Pacific is the cheapest of the three Universal deluxe resorts that offer Express Passes. The other two deluxe resorts are Hard Rock and Portofino Bay. Since it is the Spring Break time frame now, there will be large crowds, so having Express Passes will be vital if you don’t want to wait in crazy lines all day. If you come during non-peak times, it may not be as necessary.

Universal has several other resorts of varying price points, and those are good options also, even if they don’t offer Express Passes. If you have more patience to wait in lines, the more inexpensive ones are fun resorts to try out. Staying at any of the Universal resorts has several other benefits, such as being able to enter the parks one hour earlier than non-resort guests. This also helps to beat the crowds if you can do some of the big rides first in that hour.

TIP 2: Did you know that the Express Passes start at park opening on the day of your check-in until park closing on the day of your check-out? So, you can get away with staying here for just one night, but get two Express Pass days out of it. Just check-in very early, way before park opening, of your first day. Your room won’t be ready, but you can check-in and get your room key/Express Pass cards, leave your luggage at luggage hold, and still make it to the parks for park opening. Then, the next day, check-out of your room early, leave your luggage at luggage hold again, and go spend that whole day at the parks still. You still need to have 2-day park tickets, but just stay one night at a Express Pass resort to get 2-day Express Passes. It could be huge cost savings. We’ve done this several times when we’re only doing short, 2-day trips to Universal.

TIP 3: If it turns out that the lines are really bad and you decide that you want to get Express Passes after all, you can still do that at the parks. So, this could be one strategy if you end up staying at one of the inexpensive resorts that doesn’t include passes. Just wait to see how bad it is first and buy passes the day-of at the park. Just be prepared that they could be sold out at any point, they are a little more limiting on how many rides you can ride with them, and they will be a little pricier during peak times.

Well, we’ve had a great time at Universal and will always love these parks too, but now we’re looking forward to Disney World!

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Welcome to Disney World!

This sign never gets old! I still take a picture every time we cross into Disney World.

Ahhh, we’re home! We’ll be staying at Pop Century for the next few nights. This is our favorite Disney resort. Our tradition is usually to check-in and grab a quick snack or dinner at the food court here whenever we arrive. Usually, we’re getting in from our flight down instead of coming from Universal, so this is when we feel like we’re finally on vacation.

Let’s get settled in and plan to get up early for park opening tomorrow morning! Which park should we go to first?

NOTE: As with any Disney trip, there’s a lot of pre-planning involved. It’s probably one of the more complex to plan for of the trip destinations out there. So, for this trip, we had all of our reservations made months ago for dining, ride FastPasses, and several other things. I’ll assume you did too, and are now familiar with a lot of the Disney processes and terminology. If not, let me know. I can give you some bedtime reading. Make sure your My Disney Experience (MDE) app is downloaded and ready to go for the rest of this trip. You’ll need it in the parks.

You really have to plan everything to maximize your experience here. However, it actually makes your days more fun and productive, it won’t make them as stringent as it sounds. Trust me. If you need help planning your future trips, feel free to contact me.