The Bunch Girls Head To Orlando And Ride Out Helene

 This past week was what A and I had been looking forward to for what seems like forever, but was really only about a couple of months. We embarked on our Orlando trip to celebrate A being finished with her degree! I found an unbelievable deal that included 5 days at the Universal parks, round trip air fare, transportation to and from the parks/airport, and hotel accommodations. We originally planned to spend a week relaxing at the beach in Pensacola, however, that would have been disastrous thanks to Helene so I am happy we found such a good deal and decided to head to Orlando instead. The vacation package we purchased went flawlessly. Everything was on time and set up correctly. We had no issues, except for said hurricane but we can't really hold that against them. The parks weren't very busy. They said the weather was less humid than in the summer, but I don't believe it. The air was so thick that you could almost swim through it! Just walking the half mile to the water taxi at 8 in the morning would have you completely drenched in sweat.  The longest line we waited in the entire time we were there was about 45 minutes and since it was for a newer ride that usually had a 2 hour wait, we were excited about that! In fact, we ended up riding that ride 3 times and never waited longer than 45 minutes. The good thing about having so many days at the parks was that we weren't in a rush to do anything. We ended up riding our favorites about 3-4 times and seeing most of the shows. We usually don't get to see too many of the shows because we want to make sure we are able to ride all the rides we wanted to. It was really nice to sort of meander around and take everything in. We averaged walking about 7.5 miles everyday we were there! Our shoes held up well and we didn't have any problems with our feet except for the last day when we each got a blister, but I think it was because it started raining because of the hurricane and our socks became wet. That was a small price to pay though because the parks were basically empty on hurricane day. We literally walked right on to the rides! The outdoor rides were closed because of wind and rain, but all the indoor stuff was open. In fact, the parks all had regular hours and just cancelled the evening Halloween stuff. 

We're super happy to be home though. We missed the boys a lot. We were always saying "oh, they would love this" or "they would enjoy that". We also missed the animals. A had T send her a daily pic of MiMi so she could see how she changed each day. T was very excited to let us know that they only "had" to do dishes twice....the entire week we were gone. However, while the house wasn't up to my normal standards and the sickbed I got out for T before I left was still in the middle the living room a week later, all the animals were alive and the boys had a great time pretty much just watching movies the entire time so I call that a win.

We woke up at 2:30am to get to the airport and catch a 6 am flight. 

We flew way above the clouds.

The world below

Our view from the hotel. We never actually went to Volcano Bay. It's a water park and we weren't that interested in going.

The volcano lit up at night.

We met Beetlejuice.

We checked out the new DreamWorks section. 

They must have changed the butterbeer recipe because it was NOT good. It tasted like soda water and we tried it from 2 different places to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

Walking through Hogwarts is awesome! However, the actual ride was our least favorite Harry Potter ride. It is mostly 3D and was nauseating.

You could feel the heat from the fire!

There was only one day the transformer's could come out. They can't have any wind.

We went to a Hollywood make up show and this was Jim Carey's mask for The Grinch. It took 6 hours to put it on and 3 hours to take it off.

I love the Minions! I was excited to try the cupcake place.

Catching the evening water taxi. It was great after a long day!

My cupcake from the Minion shop. The icing was yummy, but the cupcake was the most dry thing I have ever tried to eat. It was horrible! Definitely not worth $8!!!

In order to get to the water taxi, we had to literally walk through the NurseCon conference. I was surprised they never asked to see our badges that everyone else was wearing.

Dr Seuss Land sold nachos made with tater tots. They were super yummy!

Last time we took this picture was 10 years ago!

The Jurassic water ride was one of our favorites.

I was the only one who got soaked. Unfortunately, the water smelled like hot trash and made me stink horribly All day. We rode it at 9:30 am. The good news was everyone gave me a wide berth in the queues because I smelled so bad.

My big kid🥰

What is really fun is that you can go into the booth and call the Ministry of Magic and hear their message.

When you knock on the door, Creature will pull back the drapes....that was in a different pic.

We saw all the Harry Potter shows. The tales of Beetle the Bard was our favorite, but this was pretty good too.

Gringotts looked EXACTLY like the movie. Complete with moving pictures in the newspaper.

We rode the Hogwarts Express three times.

The knight bus...he was actually super funny.

We wanted to go see this on Thursday, but decided to hunker down at the hotel just in case it got bad out with Helene.

Last time I got all the kids in front of the van with Shaggy and Scooby, but we never saw them this time.

Hurricane day had almost no one in the park.

Simpsons land leaves next year since Disney bought the rights so we took our last pictures of it.

Hurricane day at the park. We left around 12:30 pm before things started getting bad.

Everyone gets VooDoo doughnuts.

We ate the other ones before I remembered to get a picture. They were not only less expensive than my horrible $8 cupcake,but tasted way better!

The picture doesn't really capture the wind. At this point it was sustained at about 40 mph, but shortly afterwards was sustained at 50 mph with 70 mph gusts for about TEN HOURS !!! It was crazy.