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This is the third of a three-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to Florida here.

Day 7:
This day was Universal Studios Epic Universe (USEU) day. We had been seeing ads for it, and it looked fun. And we had some friends who went, and they liked it. And we don’t take our kids to theme parks (unless you count one trip to Cedar Point), so at least they can have had the experience.

We took the shuttle from the hotel to the park, and had no problems with that. The park was crowded, but the line to get in moved along well enough.

Thanks to the Universal Studios app, we could see the wait times for all the rides on our phone, so we headed first to the one that looked decent enough to ride and had a short-ish wait time. It was in the Isle of Berk.

Most of my experience with amusement parks has been Cedar Point. I like Cedar Point, but one thing that USEU did better than Cedar Point is that they have a lot of shade for people waiting in line and they also have drinking fountains along the way. Maybe in the Florida heat that’s more of a necessity than Ohio.

The different worlds were well done, with the right props and settings, people who stayed in character as they were walking off their post back to the break room, and different music in each area that set the mood. The music really was a nice touch, it was always there, not blaring, and even if you weren’t paying attention to it, it sub-consciously had an effect.

And there were plenty of props – some animate, some inanimate – to keep your attention, like this sheep in the Isle of Berk.

We stayed in Berk for the show. We had heard, through the internet, that the shows are well-done and worth it at USEU, so we got in line for The Untrainable Dragon. We ended up being near the front of the line, which was several people wide and ended in a chain across the entrance, as is common for amusement parks. While we stood outside the venue and waited for it to open, all the Fast Pass holders got to go past the entrance and wait inside. It did a good job of making all us peasants feel the class distinctions, being penned outside like cattle.

I was more worried seeing how many of the Express Line ticket holders there were, and that the venue would fill up with them. But once we got inside there was plenty of room – the theater is rather large. And we could sit next to the privileged people if we wanted; we were all in one area once we’re in.

Anyway, it is a short musical production, but with a lot of effects. Here is Hiccup riding on Toothless, who is flying over the audience.

After Berk we went to Mario World. Mario World was fun to look at. Also now we know what the inside of the green pipes looks like, because you take one to get into the world. There was also the Kong World as part of Mario World. I didn’t get good pictures of it, but it had one of the better soundtracks of any of the worlds.

After Mario we went to what I kept calling Harry Potter World but it was specifically the Ministry of Magic World. We had no experience with the details of this one, as we had not seen the movies nor read the books, but it was fun, set in olde timey Paris.

We also saw the Cirque de Arcanus show, which was fun. At least, we enjoyed it more than waiting in line for a ride and going on a ride. A major part of the Harry Potter World was the magic wands. If you buy a wand at the shop there, you can interact with many of the storefront displays and some other things.

We stopped by the shop to look at the wands. I was contemplating getting one for all of us to share, but the starting price for a wand was $90, so that was not an option after that.

As we were wandering the streets of Paris, seeing what else we could do, we ran across some street performers. They were fun to listen to for a bit.

So the first part of our day was that we rode one ride, walked to various worlds to see the sights (skipping the Dark World section because there’s enough evil in the world already so no need to support that) and once we saw everything (and had lunch at the burger place) we took the shuttle back to the hotel.

Since we weren’t big on the idea of waiting in line for all the rides, we didn’t need to spend a lot of time at the park. A better plan for us that day was to rest, relax, and enjoy the hotel pool during the afternoon, which is what we did.

Here’s the hotel; we appreciated the retro decor and vibe.

I don’t have a picture of the pool, but it is a big pool, surrounded by a lazy river. The hotel had options, as the other side of the hotel had another pool with a water slide and stuff.

Then we napped/read/relaxed. As it was approaching dinner time, we headed back out, because there are a lot of restaurant options around Universal. But for the ride back, I also wanted to take advantage of the water taxi. We walked across the street to the Sapphire Falls resort, which looked way fancier than Cabana Bay, ducked through the lobby and out the back, and hopped on a water taxi.

The water taxi (which had an engine that was way louder than necessary) took us to Universal City Walk, which has a bunch of stores and restaurants. It was even more crowded than USEU, and it was overwhelming, so we opted to skip City Walk and head back to USEU.

People were starting to get hungry, as the expected dinner time was at hand. We waited for the bus, and finally got to USEU where we had a couple of restaurants we had picked out as possibilities.

One of the reasons we took a break in the middle of the day then went back later is because we realized we did not want to stay the whole day (not waiting for the rides leaves too much time for what’s left) and we had heard the park is great to see at night when it is lit up.

We checked the app and saw the ride for the interactive Mario Kart ride was only 15 minutes, and the boys opted to do that first and eat later. Note that you had to walk through Boswer’s Castle to get to the ride.

The ride was fun because of the interaction with your teammates, you get to steer (I think it didn’t do anything) and press your button to shoot at targets that you see in your VR goggles (that did do something). It kept score and showed you how you did compared to everyone else in your kart.

Then once we were off the ride, people started remembering how hungry they were, so we headed over to the place we had picked out. It was a few minutes after 8:00, but the park didn’t close until 9:00 so we didn’t think much about it. Until we got to the place and it looked dark, and the people leaving said they close an hour before the park does.

So now we had hungry kids and we had to make a decision for where to eat. That is not a good combination. But we picked Pizza Moon and they were open so that worked. I was going to get a picture of the food but everyone (myself included) was so eager to actually get food that I didn’t remember I wanted a picture until it was too late.

My favorite part of the day was the closing ceremonies. Apparently that is a requirement of all Orlando attractions – they must have some show just before they close for the night, whether fireworks or fountains or whatnot. USEU chose fountains. Note: it is not a legal requirement, it is just a de facto requirement to keep up with the other venues.

And they used searchlights to direct your attention to certain parts of the park.

We took the shuttle back to the hotel, and it wasn’t quite time to go to bed yet, but we didn’t feel like swimming, so we decided to take advantage of one of the hotel amenities – the ice cream parlor.

Being in Orlando, I expected prices to be higher than normal. And being in an official resort, I expected prices to be higher than normal. And the prices at the ice cream parlor were higher than at home, but not outrageously so. But I was pleasantly surprised at how good the chocolate shake was. Sometimes you pay resort prices and you think “that was not worth it at all”, but in this case it was not a letdown. So I can recommend the shake place at Cabana Bay.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 8:
This was a full travel day. We drove from Orlando to Knoxville.

We didn’t do much, just got to the hotel, had some snacks for dinner (as we were still full from our lunch at Buc-ee’s) and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 9:
This was another full travel day. We drove from Knoxville to home. We had to cross through mid-Ohio to get back into Michigan, and it just so happened that we would be in the area of Yellow Springs around lunch time. If you are in the area of Yellow Springs near a meal time, it is required to go to Young’s Jersey Dairy for the meal. And if you are in the area of Yellow Springs not near a meal time, it is required to go to Young’s Jersey Dairy for ice cream.

Needless to say, we stopped for a meal and ice cream. And we bought some of their cheese curds to take home.

Then we made it home in time for dinner, but no one was hungry so it was just snack-on-your-own for the evening.

The End

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