Post-Trip Report: Heather & Mike’s Universally Magical Vacation (April 2026)

[00:00:12] Welcome to Where I Long To Be, a Magical Trip Report Podcast. My name is Virginia and I am your host. Thank you for being here today. I must confess I am a little tired at the tail end of this weekend because I was in Disney World last week and I got back late on Friday night and had a lot of stuff to do all day Saturday. So I'm running a little bit on empty. The thing that keeps me going as always is planning for the next adventure and that's exactly what I'm doing since I reached the 60 day mark for our July trip.

[00:00:42] This week I was able to book just about everything I wanted and now I can start counting down the days. But time's a-wasting so let's get into today's show. In case you didn't listen to the pre-trip episode, Heather and Mike were planning a trip to Disney and decided to add on some time at Universal for the first time ever. They were driving down from the mountains of North Carolina where I am from and where I have known Heather for practically her whole life since she's one of my sister's very best friends.

[00:01:12] They planned to stop in Pooler, Georgia to break up their drive on the way down and on the way back at a new Drury property right off the highway. The link to that hotel is in the show notes in case you are looking for a mid-drive stop yourself. Once they were in Orlando, they had several days planned at Universal, staying at Endless Summer Resort, and then they were heading over to the Yacht Club at Disney. That should have you all caught up and ready to enjoy this universally magical trip. Please welcome back Heather and Mike.

[00:01:43] Welcome back Heather and Mike. Oh, thank you. Hello. How are you doing besides not being in Orlando? Yeah. Still tired, I think. It has taken two weeks to recover. Yeah, it's been a full two weeks since you got back. How was it overall? So much fun. Yeah. So much fun. We definitely packed it up, but it was really fun. We had a blast trying to do everything we could, I think.

[00:02:10] Mm-hmm. Well, you do the best you can, and then what you don't get to, you save for the next time, and I know there will be a next time with you two. There always will be. This is true. This is true. All right. I'm so excited to talk to you all because, A, I love you guys, and B, you did Universal on this trip. Right.

[00:02:29] And I'm going back to Universal for the first time in, like, five years this summer, so I can't wait to hear about that portion. And then you stayed at the Yacht Club for your Disney portion, and I've never stayed at the Yacht Club. So, so many new things. So many, so many things to start. Let's get right in there. How was the drive? Because you drove from Asheville, North Carolina, and you were stopping in Georgia at a midway point. How was the drive? How was the hotel, which was a drewery hotel, which is always hard to say because of the R's?

[00:03:00] Yep. Drewery. Drewery. We made that joke a lot. Really good, actually. We were, we were really pleasantly surprised. I mean, the reviews on it were really good. But when we got there, it's super clean, super nice, big, big breakfast. Like, it has a huge breakfast, like a whole, you know, like, yeah. Okay.

[00:03:22] There's actually somebody cooking on what looks like a, I mean, it's, it's one of those black stone looking things, just, I guess, a regular grill, but it's like in the middle. It's in the dining room. So somebody's cooking like pancakes or eggs or something on that. And it was just one of those. I'm super surprised at this breakfast. I will note with it, though, we were, if we didn't have our reservation, we would not have had a room there. They were booked solid.

[00:03:48] Apparently, we were informed that they were booked. You know, just, it didn't really say, they just said there was people in town. There was a lot of stuff. There was, we noticed there was a lot of baseball, little league, stuff like that. Interesting. I can't, the first, I'll say this, the way down was really a great stay. We're going to dress the way up, which has nothing to do with the room, but we can dress that later. Yeah, I was going to say Pooler, Georgia. What's going on in Pooler, Georgia?

[00:04:15] It's wild. At least, it's funny, it was the same exit we've taken before for another room, for one of the other ones we stayed at that was horrible. I don't remember which one it was now. I've tried to block it out, but it was funny. We were like, oh, this is the same place. But because that jewelry, it was brand new. Like, I'd asked, I was like, this wasn't here before, right? This wasn't another hotel, and they confirmed that it was recently built. Okay. All right. Well, good to know.

[00:04:45] We're a midway point for those of you who might be traveling from North Carolina, Virginia, wherever. If you're looking for a place to stop, which on that length of a drive, I would recommend stopping personally. But all right. So you arrived at Universal on Friday, April 3rd, and checked in to Endless Summer. Tell me about this resort.

[00:05:06] So, okay. Yeah. It's one of those things. This is kind of like a, it's more about the, probably the people than it is the hotel. Like, the hotel itself was fine. It was, it's exactly what you would expect from a, I assume, a budget. Budget level. Budget level. Or entry level Universal Hotel. But our room, our room was, our room was very clean, very nice. We had no issues with the room. We actually got a slight upgrade when we got there.

[00:05:35] Oh, what, how so? It turns out they gave us a pool view when we were supposed to get our guests to whatever the resort view is for that. And we ended up with a pool view on the first floor. So it was, again, the room itself was nice. Everything, the, the employees there were pretty nice. Check-in was a bit of a line. Mm-hmm. And this, and what I was saying earlier about people, it's packed. It's just packed with everyone. Like, it, the hallways are packed. The lobby is packed.

[00:06:05] So, that said, it was really cool when we got in because they actually have a character meet and greet when you go in. Puss in Boots was there. Puss in Boots was there. Interesting. Was, was a character of meet and greet. Does, does Puss in Boots speak? No. Okay. Okay. So, he was, he was, he was just doing the usual waving and hey and how are you, sort of gestures and very, doing sword. He had a sword, if I remember correctly. Maybe, maybe he didn't pull that off.

[00:06:33] I can't, I feel like he was doing some swashbuckling moves. Now, it's kind of out of memory. But, there is also a Starbucks, right when you go in. That was pretty easy to get to at first, but then in the mornings, yeah, that's when it, that's when it got crowded. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a Starbucks in every Universal hotel lobby from what I've heard interviewing people.

[00:06:55] So, like I said, it's been about five years probably since I've been to Universal because I think it was 2021 and I went down last. And my recollection is that they do not have a good system within their app to do things at the hotel, like check in, know when the bus is coming, any of that kind of stuff. So, you, you had to check in in person? Mm-hmm. I, I will say this.

[00:07:23] Nothing really works for us app-wise for Universal through the whole trip. Hmm. I tried to put our tickets into it. It doesn't work. Because you can't, because you have to wait until you get your tickets to put them into the app and it just was not a successful venture. So, we just ended up just keeping our tickets. We had to have the pieces of paper with us the whole time. The paper tickets, yeah. And I was terrified that they were going to like fly away. Like I'm used to a magic band. You get a room key. You still get your room key. Does the room key act as your ticket to tap in? No. No.

[00:07:52] That is actually separate. That is weird to me because I thought that the last time I went that my room key, maybe it wasn't, maybe I had something separate. But I remember having like my room key in like a lanyard. And I think I did that because I was staying at the Hard Rock. And so, it was like to prove that I was at the deluxe hotel for whatever. But maybe I had a paper ticket tucked in there. I can't remember. The lanyard would have been a good idea to have.

[00:08:21] It's very possible that we missed some sort of, I mean, there's probably somebody listening. It's like, oh, you fools. That also leads into one of the things we noticed about the staff at Universal. It's very much like you're expected to already know how to do everything. And so, when you don't, the responses you get are helpful, but almost with a twinge of comma stupid. Yeah. Like, why didn't you research? Why didn't you already know how to do this? Yeah. That's that.

[00:08:50] It was very, it was very interesting how that. There's an expectation that you're supposed to already know how to do everything. Okay. Which, you know, we definitely learned as we went. But it was definitely a learning experience, at least from that, from the start point. But you were, you're right. I don't think you're far off as the experience hasn't changed. Yeah. At least from what you're saying to us, you know, it hasn't changed all that much. But again, there's probably the whole thing that we missed. Yeah.

[00:09:18] I would definitely recommend a lanyard for people visiting Universal. Yeah. I agree. Without the magic band, I, especially, sorry, no offense to Charles and Alex. But I cannot trust them to keep up with their stuff like that. So yeah. Yeah. Highly recommend. It doesn't have to, like, you can buy lanyards for super cheap on Amazon. You don't have to get something fancy. Just something that works. And there's actually a whole bunch there. Oh, yeah.

[00:09:45] Like, they have the most lanyards I've ever seen. They're happy to sell them to you. Yes. If you don't like that. So I 100% agree and endorse that. Yeah. All right. So was your room nice, though? Comfortable? Yeah, it was. It was spacious enough. I was, I think the room was definitely the highlight of that hotel. I mean, I guess maybe the pool, but the room definitely being, when we got in there, I didn't really know what to expect. And yeah, it's comfortable.

[00:10:14] We, you know, again, the biggest problem was people. So it was noisy. It was noisy. It was noisy. A lot. Well, and especially on the first floor by the pool, I'm imagining. Yeah. You know, during the day, noisy too. And the elevators weren't far off either. But it definitely, it definitely ranged into the night. That said, it wasn't something that kept us from sleeping. It wasn't. Right. You know, 3 a.m. People weren't doing anything. It was just, you would just get that amount of noise. But that's, you're spot on.

[00:10:40] That being by the pool probably had a big part to play in that. Did you go into the park the first day like you were planning to? Yeah. Because I think you were going to go into Universal Studios' original park. Yeah. We did. Okay. What'd you do? Well, the interesting thing is you got to go through City Walk for most of this. So the security check, they're very thorough. But we got in there and we went to Universal Studios the first day.

[00:11:09] So that was kind of, it was not super busy if I remember correctly. Like as far as when we first got in there, it was just kind of laid back and we just kind of wandered around. Like we didn't know anything about this park. So we just wandered around for a long time. Still having Mardi Gras. So they had special festival booths out for the Mardi Gras stuff. So we had some of their Mardi Gras food. Yeah. The first thing we did, you know, we got, we got some. Staking cheese. Yeah. Yeah. And then it was, it was really fun.

[00:11:39] Like as far as like getting to see some of the food they had, we started taking pictures that they had stuff like the Back to the Future DeLorean and stuff there. So started taking pictures and kind of just taking it all in. And then of course we got a refillable cup. We had to get the refillable cup. Like just, it's not like the Disney Resort cup because this one works in the parks at Universal. So got that. And then again, just kind of wandered around for a bit and kind of started getting the

[00:12:05] understanding of rides and not having lightning lanes or something, you know, or an express pass to get us on those rides. So it was kind of taking a lot of that in too. But the first place we really hit was Harry Potter. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, no, no, no. That was, uh, that was Dagon Alley. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. That was Dagon Alley. Yeah. They all started to mix together. Yeah. But yeah, we were able to, uh, we rode, we, we got, no, we didn't get a line first for.

[00:12:33] No, we actually got in the wand line first. That's right. The wand line. We got a butterbeer. Uh-huh. Wait, wait, what format? That's just the regular, normal, cold butterbeer. Okay. Was it cold? So I'm trying to remember. Uh, we, I thought it was okay. She didn't like it as much. It was too sweet for my taste. It's very sweet. Yeah. Autumn loved it. I like the, um, the ice cream. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I think we only experienced one other form of it over the whole trip, which was the crepes.

[00:13:02] So, uh, which were freaking delicious. Um, so yeah, we did, you're right. We got in the one, a line for the wand, the whole experience where you, if the wand chooses you, et cetera. And that was, that was the kind of our first taste of, of universal versus Disney in the way that we had the butterbeer in line. And I thought by the time I got to the end of the line, they would probably say, you can't take that in. I'd be like, okay, cool. Well, I'll just throw it in the trash can. That's at the end of the line. But there was no trash can at the end of the line.

[00:13:32] Oh, or anywhere near us. Yeah. Not even near where we were. So I had to, they said, well, you have to get out and go throw it away. So I went to throw it away. But when I came back, they said, oh, well, you can't come back to this part of the line. You have to go back to the end of the line. Wait, even though you just went by yourself to throw it away? Yep. You couldn't rejoin Heather and Autumn in line. No, we all had to get to the back of the line. And, and, and they were, and they were pretty cranky about it. Wow. And I was like, okay, well, we'll get back in line.

[00:14:00] So we got back in line and. Wait, how long was the wait in the line? Like. It's about 10 minutes each. So it's because the way the experience is you go in, they let a group in and then it's like a 10 minute experience and then they let another group in. Okay. So it wasn't, it wasn't like super, it's not like a ruin the day or anything, but it was just, it was just weird. I'm just not used to not having a trash can. Right. Throw something away. So either way, went in, did the one. Autumn wasn't chosen, but it was still a fun experience.

[00:14:28] I mean, you probably could do it over and over, but once you get past that experience and then to Ollivander's one shop, oh my God, it's, it's wall to wall people. So she had to step out. I ended up yelling at somebody and decided that it was time to leave the store. Oh my gosh. Because these, well, he like got right in between me and Autumn and Autumn's like wandering up to the other side of the store and I'm trying to catch up with her and he wouldn't let me around him. So I was finally like, would you please just let me catch up to my kid?

[00:14:56] And he glared at me and walked on. And I was like, okay, that's the moment where I need to step away. And I'm yelling at other people. I think that's your version of yelling, Heather. Oh yeah, definitely. Like, excuse me. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Excuse me, sir. I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. I told them, I was like, get what you need to get. I will be outside. Oh my goodness. So outside of that, yeah. Once she, once she departed after that horrible interaction, just blowing up.

[00:15:25] So yeah, we were able to kind of navigate and get the wands and depart the store. How many wands did you get? Two. Two. Okay. We had, we have borrowed some wands from a friend. So I was using a borrowed wand and they bought their wands. Yeah. We, we always just bring Alex's and if I want to do it, I'm like, let me hold it for a second. Yeah. I don't want to be carrying around a bunch of wands. Yeah. Lots of people do it. Lots of people do.

[00:15:54] Oh, there's a lot of wands. A lot of wands. And, and, and I see why. You look at the, the expensive, like the saber when you make lightsabers. But once you've done that, you really can't do that much with them. Right. But with these wands, I mean, throughout all three parks, there's usage of these wands that make it more worth the money, I think. Yeah. And that's a fair point.

[00:16:21] But yeah, once we, once we did that, we got through and kind of wandered around. I think then we went and got some lunch. We went to. The mummy ride. The mummy ride totally messed up my stomach. No. You get ahead there. So yeah, we did, we did lunch in Harry Potter. Uh huh. In Diagon Alley. And then, what's the name of that place? I can't remember now. From the movie. The Three Broomsticks. Is it The Three Broomsticks? I thought that was the other one. Either way. We had.

[00:16:50] It's very similar to the other one. Yeah, it's very similar. So we had, we had lunch and then we ended up riding. Yes, then we, I think, left and went. The Winky Cauldron. That's it. Yeah, that's it. There we go. Thank you. We ended up leaving. Yeah, I remember this now. We ate lunch and then it just became very overwhelming. And we were looking at the times for Gringotts. And we were just like, this is a lot. We did catch a few minutes of some of the live shows they do, which were super fun. They were actually doing the Tale of the Three Brothers when we went over there.

[00:17:18] That whole area after it just kind of became a little overwhelming and went to, that's when we went to ride Curse of the Mummy. And that's when we experienced the locker system fully. And that was another one of those kind of uphill battles that made you feel, it makes you feel kind of dumb. Like everybody else is over there just zooming into these lockers and we look like, like deers in headlights just looking at this locker going, what is poking it? Like just hitting it? Like I don't understand how this works. And then we finally got everything in there. Then you realize your stuffing's been there.

[00:17:48] And it was just interesting. Well, the other thing is they've got the free lockers, but it's only free for 30 minutes. So when the wait to the ride is 35 minutes and then time to ride the ride, by the time you get back to your locker, you've had to pay for it. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like you can't get your stuff until you put a credit card on it. Oh, wow. I don't think I ever had that experience. So hot tip, just pay for the locker. Oh, you know why I haven't had that experience is because whenever I've gone to Universal,

[00:18:15] like, because we usually only hit in the past, I think the most I've been is like three days with two nights. And we have done the room where you get the express pass included. So that's why I was like, why have I've never paid for a locker? Yeah, this is this is those budget hotel problems. Yeah. Yeah. But learning experience no matter what. I mean, we still walked out and said, OK, well, now we know. Now we know how this works. Well, and the lockers are fairly, fairly small.

[00:18:44] They are. There's not a whole lot of room. Like if everybody in your family has a backpack, you're going to struggle to fit everything in there. And they have bigger ones that you can pay for. But it's just something something to think about when you're planning your trip. Like what kind of bag will I bring? You don't want to bring a giant backpack. You want to bring a more modestly sized backpack. Right. To make sure it will fit in the lockers. Otherwise, you're just going to pay every time. Yeah. But how did you like the mummy? That was so much fun.

[00:19:11] It was our introduction to how much more intense Universal rides versus Disney rides. Like when at one point it teeters you over the edge and you're like, they're not going to do this. But they do. And then they do it. You're like, oh, my God. That wasn't expected. Autumn's like not expected it. She and I are sitting next to each other. And we're just like, oh, no, this is just like, hey, we're looking over this weird edge. And I'm like, no, I think I see track. This is this is going to be a thing. And there we go. We dropped.

[00:19:42] But other than that, it was it was nostalgic fun because, I mean, we love the mummy movie. So I don't know what this is. How did Autumn like it? Because you said that she doesn't like loops or free falls. Was it too intense for her or was she into it? I think she enjoyed the mummy. She enjoyed it. If I remember correctly, she said, as I said, she just wasn't expecting.

[00:20:05] She wasn't expecting it to be that because we actually just thought it was kind of like a dark ride with a couple of quick turns. Boy, that's what I thought the first time, too. I was not paying attention to any of the signage in the line. And so when it took off and it was like, oh, this is a real coaster. Like I was like, what? And I was riding with Alex. And I think he was he was probably like seven or something. And so we both were a little shocked. Now we both love it. Yeah, it's one of those things.

[00:20:35] But I did say I was like, OK, we can't ride that one again right now. That was a lot. We just thought it was going to be an easy lean in ride. And we were super because, you know, nobody can really. I mean, I guess people have recorded them. But for the most part, Universal doesn't let really people record it. So we haven't really watched a lot of the videos or at least seen accurate, you know, portrayals of how it was. So that's how it got us. It was still fun. It was the surprise that we did actually like and enjoy.

[00:21:06] Where did you head from there? I think we wandered around a little bit more. Found, you know. Because you got you got those express passes. Oh, that's right. So there is a little story in there. As we were walking. No, that was the second day. No, that was the first day because we went to Spider-Man. Spider-Man stuff is the House of Adventure. Oh, OK. So no, that was the day we ended up just continuing. We finally went back over to we did some more Mardi Gras stuff.

[00:21:29] Got some more Mardi Gras snacks and then ended up going over to ended up going over to back to Gringotts to stand in line. And we stood in line for Gringotts, which was not that long at that point because it was getting later in the afternoon at this point. Um, because remember, I was getting dark on the side of the guy. So we ended up going through Gringotts and that's when it was like it didn't take 20 minutes. I think we were in in 20 minutes. And that was that was just one of those really well themed rides.

[00:21:59] Like you go through the queue. The queue was just so cool to see. It took a thousand pictures in the queue of like all the animatronics and the bank itself. And then the ride was fun. And it was Autumn really enjoyed that ride because she got to see the characters. You know, that's because you go in. What is it? Bill. You've got Bill is leading you through the through the mines with the with the goblins. And so that has like Voldemort. Right.

[00:22:28] All the Harry Potter rides are now mixing together. But I know Bellatrix is in there. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's her. It's her. Yes. So this is the first experience we had with the kind of the motion and how things are going. And it was fine like that. I was actually really nervous about how that was. And that will I will add some reason I'm saying that is because when we get to Isles later and we ride Forbidden Journey, which I'll explain that when we get there. But it was a different story. Hmm. Okay. So, yeah.

[00:22:57] But other than that, we finished that one up. And then that was we said, okay, let's go to the Mardi Gras parade. And so we left Harry Potter again and went to the Mardi Gras parade. Which Autumn loved the Mardi Gras parade. Yeah. They they have like all beads and everything. Yes. There's there's people on all of these floats and they're like chucking beads at people. Like Mike took one to the back. It. Yeah.

[00:23:21] It's so what happened was you the people that are on the float or guests that paid for a package. I think it's like a dinner package. Yeah. Or a riding float package. And so it's full of just, you know, guests and stuff. And they are given, I guess, the most infinite amount of beads one could be given. And at first it was all it was all fun and games. We're catching beads and Autumn's having a great time. It's really fun.

[00:23:47] And then one of the beads that then people started getting really grabby about these beads. And then I bit over to get one of those ones that fell on the ground. And I'm pretty sure people on the float were targeting me because I just got pelted. It hurt. I was like, oh my God, what is wrong with you people? Other than that, that was that was fun to get to experience that. Honestly, the Mardi Gras food is fine.

[00:24:16] The theming is fine. But that parade was just to see like the amount of lights and the way the floats are designed. If you ever get a chance to experience that, that was the coolest. That was the coolest thing. And I had seen streamers do videos of it and I thought, eh. But seeing it in person was definitely worth the time. Yeah. Okay. That kind of ended, that was kind of the start at the end of the night. We decided we wanted to go back to Harry Potter one more time and wandered over.

[00:24:44] I think somewhere in there we ended up getting a Duff beer, which was fine. And just again, just kind of wandered around and looked at stuff. But we ended up going back to Harry Potter one more time to do one stuff. Like to then see everything at night. All the windows and everything. Tried to at least. This, was this the night of the bathroom incident? This is the night of the bathroom incident. Okay. So it's closing, like they close at nine. Uh huh. It's nine. Uh huh. Autumn has gone to the bathroom and we're waiting outside the bathroom for her. Uh huh.

[00:25:14] And it was taking a little longer than I expected. So I went to go in to check on her just to make sure everything was okay. They, they were stopping me from going into the bathroom because they're closed. So they're not going to let anybody go in and use the bathroom. And I was like, I'm not trying to use the bathroom. I just want to check on my kid. And she's like, well, I can't let you in. I'm going, I just want to make sure my kid's okay. Cause she's still in there. Uh huh. She's finally let me pass to go check on her and get her out of the bathroom.

[00:25:40] But man, once they close, this is not a wander around the park kind of place like Disney is. Right. They want you out of there. Wow. Yeah. They put, they put like, I think it was four security sweepers out that are standing there. They won't let you go past and they're going to, they start doing the usual start from the outside and push inward. And they were ready at nine o'clock. Like you didn't, there was no, I was watching the whole interaction. I was like, oh boy.

[00:26:07] I was like, now again, like you said, Heather blowing up is one thing, but I, now if you will keep her there and get her kid, she may have fought the security guard. But luckily it didn't come to that. But it was, it was wild. Yeah. Do you think, I mean, you were still in Harry Potter. Yeah. Correct. So I wonder if it's a little bit more loose in like the main drag there because people have to go to the bathroom before they leave.

[00:26:32] Like that's, that's almost like a standard for me, unless I'm like staying someplace that's right outside. Like I got the impression they were trying to push everyone into city walk. And so if you needed to use the bathroom before you left, you would find a place to do it at city walk. Okay. Yeah. But again, as you, as, as you're saying, it's not like we, when we were leaving, we were like checking every spot. It could just be because that's one of the most popular parts of the park. And people probably try to stay hanged back a little bit. I get pictures. Yeah.

[00:27:02] So I get it. It was just strange. It was just, again, it was, it was like, it's just the bathroom. But yeah. We, we, so we did escape from Harry Potter world. And we escaped Gringotts. We escaped Gringotts and the park. And so we did the long walk out of the park. That it being the more Harry Potter kind of central day and wander around the mummy. And we actually had dinner reservations in city walk. Oh, okay. So that was the night we ate at Vivo.

[00:27:31] Oh, I've eaten there. It was. Yeah. It was quite delicious. It's like, there's always just one weird story about everything. The service was great. The food was great. We had this one guy that kept taking pictures of his wife and like doing the posing thing at the bar. It was very strange. And he kept like putting his rear on our table as he was backing up. And I finally had to say, sir, can you not do that? I was like, why is everybody so crazy here? But city walk is a very interesting place when the, when, when it gets dark. Like it is.

[00:28:01] It is. And this was a Friday night. Correct. Yeah. So we had a lot of locals out too. And that was the thing that we had to kind of come to terms with. A lot of folks like locals and whatnot have to be coming over here. They're not going to the parks, but there's a lot to do over here. And we had been to city walk before, but we just, we had went at that, but it was probably like a weekday. I think it was like a Monday or something. And so it wasn't that bad. This was like, oh my God, there are so many people here drinking and partying and doing these things.

[00:28:29] But I, I could totally see why the locals would go there and hang out. It's a cool spot. How was the bus ride back to your resort? Were the lines okay? How did, how does that all work? It's right back. Wasn't bad. Yeah. It's, they are definitely, they, sardines in a can scenario for Universal. They will stuff as many people. Like, I feel like the difference between that and Disney in a sense is that Disney doesn't

[00:28:59] want to have as many people standing up, but I mean, I've seen them pack out buses too. So it's not like they're much different, but Universal will pack it out every time. That will be, to address that, that is the thing about city or about Endless Summer was there is, there's technically two bus bays. They only used one for multiple buses going to, so you would have like one bus to show up to go to city walk and then behind that might be an epic bus.

[00:29:26] Well, weirdly, because they wouldn't use both bays, they had a, like say a bus would come for, or for city walk and then two epic buses would be there. So one epic bus would come up and then the other one would come up while the line continued to grow for the city walk. And then maybe a city walk one would show up. Finally, at one point during the, if I remember, I don't remember which day this was, they actually started trying to funnel people. They pull the other bus up and funnel people into it.

[00:29:53] It was just a very strange situation and yeah, inefficient. But, but again, I just, I didn't know why they didn't have both the bus terminal stops open. But another thing about Endless Summer is that because it's two hotels, it does when, so to address what you're saying, coming back, it goes to both places and we could never figure out a real rhyme or reason to which place it stopped at first. Sometimes it will stop at the other hotel first and sometimes it will stop at our, the one

[00:30:22] we were staying at first. Oh, okay. So it was, it was definitely, it wasn't a, you know, like a closed loop because it was across the street, but, and you didn't want to cross that street. You didn't want to get off and want to try to cross the street. It was dangerous. It looked like, but other than that, it was fine. I mean, it was a bus ride. I would say it was about 10 minutes. Yeah. Maybe about 10 minutes. And I mean, you know, it was not too bad. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a bus ride.

[00:30:50] So Saturday, April the 4th was your Islands of Adventure day. How did you like it? Good. We, we got over to Harry Potter early so that we could hit that ride. And, um, Hogwarts was covered, so we didn't get to see the castle and that was kind of disappointing. Mm-hmm. But by the time we got all the way over there, the wait time for Hagrid's motor, motorbike was already, motorbike was already at like 140 minutes. Mm-hmm.

[00:31:20] So we went over to, um, the castle ride. We went over to Hippogriff. Hippogriff was first. And then we rode Forbidden Journey. And we were able to hit those with like almost no wait. But then I will say Hagrid's motor cart was a 200 minute wait the rest of the day. So we never got to hit that one. Yeah. We just didn't want to stand in that line. I mean, it was, it was, I mean, we could have done single rider. But, uh, yeah, the castle being covered for refurbishment was tough. That was a bummer.

[00:31:50] Hogsmeade was, Hogsmeade was cool. We had breakfast at the Three Broomsticks. At Three, that's where we ate. We did eat breakfast at the Three Broomsticks that day. To just circle back around to this, Forbidden Journey almost killed me. Oh, yeah, it did. That was the most gut-wrenching ride I think I've been on since Mission Space, in my opinion. Really? Because it grabs you and just shakes you like a, like a, like a mixer. And it flipped me on my, when it pushed me on my back, that's when I knew. I mean, my motion sickness just kicked in.

[00:32:20] And I was like, oh, nope, this is not, I mean, luckily I didn't get sick. It just, it just broke my brain for, for, for another couple hours. So, so warning to anyone that gets motion sick, that one, that one is the one that might shake you just enough. Okay. I loved it. But, yeah. Did all the, as much as we could over there, Harry Potter-wise, to start the day. And that's when we started kind of roaming around that park and seeing everything to be seen.

[00:32:49] Like, you know, going to, you know, all the aisles. I think next up we ended up going to Jurassic Park. So, or to the Jurassic Park side of things. Where I thought she was going to ride Velocicoaster. The wait, again, the wait was always too long. But, you know, what it was. But that was when we first had our very, very awesome cast member experience talking to one of the, one of the cast members that was running the shop because we had a question.

[00:33:16] And, man, did she not just, like, she nailed the question. And then she was just, like, telling us all these things, like, some kind of inside baseball about things we should do. And that's when we were like, well, how do we, how do we compliment a cast member here? How do we compliment an employee here? And that is not easy either. So, apparently that was one of the, one of two cast members that we wanted to compliment. And they were like, we love it when you do that. But you have to do this, this, this, ABC.

[00:33:45] Here's, you know. And we were just like, oh, my God. You still can't go into the app and say anything? They're like, no, it doesn't work that way. And we're like, oh, my God. Wow. It's different. Yeah, it's definitely different. But we did at least say, thank you so much. You've been awesome. We're going to do our best to get, to get you compliment or something. So then we wandered around, ended up going over to the kind of Marvel side of things. Checking that out.

[00:34:13] I had a kid in a candy store there, seeing comic books and meeting Captain America and all that. So that was a cool experience. And then wandered around Transformers. Saw the Transformers stuff. Saw that the Blues Brothers drove through at one point. So that was a fun thing. We got to see the, I think that was the, that was not that day. But I do remember us getting to see one of the other, the construction band at one point. I think that was, that was Universal.

[00:34:42] But that was still, just bringing that up, how fun that was. And then, yeah, that was kind of the day we, we, we decided to go back to Universal just to kind of see if there was anything we missed. We wanted to ride the Hogwarts Express. Right. Yeah. Because we rode the Hogwarts Express. That's right. Which was super fun. That was super cute. Yeah. Getting to ride that. That is the day that we decided to take a break and go back to the, go back to the room. Mm-hmm. And go to the pool.

[00:35:10] So, I mean, yeah, it's about, what, 30 minutes total of traveling to do that. Mm-hmm. But it was actually great because this kind of goes back to Endless Summer's pool, which is a really big pool. It's right in the sun, though. There ain't no shade over there except for the, like, covered area where you can get drinks, which were really good. Really expensive, but really good. But Autumn had a great time at the pool.

[00:35:33] I actually took a nap because I think Forbidden Journey had just wrecked me just enough I needed a nap. And once I had the nap, I felt loads better. Mm-hmm. And then, yeah, we suited back up and went back to the parks. And that's when we just kind of went, oh, so this was the story behind this. We had found an express pass on the ground. And I was like, oh, I don't know how this works because one person is like, you have to have three express.

[00:36:02] And I was like, well, I don't want this sort of karma. So I picked it up and we had just got a snack. And I took it over to one of the employee cast members and said, hey, somebody dropped this. And they were like, thanks. I guess. I don't know if really they knew what to do with it. But I don't even know what to do with it. But I was like, okay, well, let's continue on. And then on our way through the parks, one of the casts, another cast member had stopped us and said, hey, how are you guys doing? Great. Or I had stopped to ask a question.

[00:36:30] But then she was like, well, hey, before you go, how would you like three express pass, single ride express passes? I have three in my pocket. And I feel like you guys could use it. I was like, we can. And that's when we got to, that was the second great experience we had there. And we got to compliment her to her boss. Her boss was actually right there. So we said, she's awesome. You know? And so that was, that was, that's a way to circumvent the system is just talk to the boss directly.

[00:36:57] And so we used that single ride to go ride the Spider-Man. And that was super fun. That was super fun. I love Spider-Man. So it was, it was like one single ride, not like you can ride whatever you want. And not Hagrid's, except for Hagrid's. It specifically says, you cannot ride Hagrid's. And so we're like, okay. That was kind of the end of that. I mean, we didn't really do anything. We walked around, looked at, you know, more of the rides and like the water rides. It's that one that's the Dudley Do-Right water ride.

[00:37:26] It was watching people get soaked. It was hilarious. I used to love water rides like that, but I get blisters so easily these days on my feet that as soon as my shoes get wet, it's immediate. So I just don't do them anymore, but they look like so much fun. Yeah. That's what I generally, when it's, you know, the high heat of summer, or I guess if it's, if it's going to be in like the upper eighties or whatever, I usually will wear like completely waterproof sandals so that like I can go on rides like that. Cause I'm the same.

[00:37:57] I like blisters are just something I deal with on a regular basis. So, all right. So then the next day was Sunday, April the 5th. And this was of course your Epic Universe Day. Yes. And I'm just going to say this, like, I don't think there's any arguments. There's no disagreements with this. Epic lives up to every bit of that word. That was, we were, I can say that the first two days of Universal, because we were new to that, it was confusing.

[00:38:27] It caused, you know, maybe that's one thing that made it feel like it was a little less fun to us or maybe just trying to get used to it. But that got erased immediately with an Epic. That was from start to finish, like the most fun, like day at Universal. It was going into the park was fun. Just, you know, seeing all the stuff. It's so well, like put together. And I mean, maybe because it's so shiny and new, I don't know.

[00:38:55] But they even did a better job at park entry at Epic. Like Universal and at Owls of Adventure for, for Rope Drop, it was like everyone at the very beginning of the park before you get in, waiting until the time you can cross that border. And Epic does it more like Disney, where you can get in and you can get near where you're headed. Yeah. Before that, that park entry time. Yeah. And because you had to have your room key and all that ready.

[00:39:24] So that was maybe because we were so used to that experience, but it seems like they copied that a little bit from the Disney side. But that said, I don't want to make everything, hey, Universal versus Disney. It's just one of those things that that felt more familiar. So maybe it was easier for us. Well, I think also just the setup, the layout of Epic makes that easier to do. Like at both Islands of Adventure and Universal, there's not like a big area like right when

[00:39:53] you come through the ticket spot. Yeah. It's real small. So it kind of comes, like it doesn't open up until you get farther into the park. Right. And I think, you know, Epic was their way of saying we were looking at how this works and they addressed it. And yeah. As soon as we stepped in, we went straight to, once again, Harry Potter and Rope Drops Ministry of Magic. Uh-huh. Which was awesome. Which theming, 10 out of 10. Mm-hmm.

[00:40:22] We had heard that, you know, the cast members are a little rough around the edges going in. We understand why now. It's because everyone's trying to stop to take pictures. And they're like, look, even one guy, even one cast said, there is no stopping in my line. Something to that effect. Wow. Because he's like, he said, do it later. He was just trying to address it. But, but for rightfully so. Because immediately as, as soon as they're trying to say that, people were stopping to take pictures.

[00:40:50] And it's like, everyone's like, no, we got to keep moving. Because the line was growing quickly. Once you get in, it, like I said, that's super fun ride. Not the motion sickness. It's more, it's more along the lines of the Green Dots one. Definitely not all that extreme. Felt pretty comfortable. It was cool to see all the updated stuff, the queue, like I said, 10 out of 10 for the queue and everything you see in there. And that was it. Like, you know, just as soon as we were in, then we walked out, we took a big old breath and said, okay, let's continue the day.

[00:41:19] And that, cause that was what we, that was what we went to do. We went to make sure that that ride was done and it was. And so that was when we kind of wandered around Paris as it were for a bit. Super cool. Lots of, lots of just a good theming there too. But quickly we left there and that's when we decided we wanted some breakfast and we went over to the Oaken Ale, or is I think that's what it's called. But whenever there and got some breakfast, it was a little bit more of an unorthodox sort

[00:41:47] of breakfast for autumn. I mean, that was kind of like, it kind of had like different types of like, had like a chorizo sauce and stuff like that. So not the standard, like pancakes and stuff she's used to for breakfast. And then we ended up going over to Burke to the How to Train Your Dragon. And that was just so fun. Nothing but good things about that area. Oh, Burke was amazing. So fun. The interactions there are cool.

[00:42:11] We rode Hiccup's Wing Gliders, which was a fun, very Slinky Dog-like coaster, but actually a little bit. I'd actually dare say it's probably more fun than Slinky Dogs because of going over the water. Yeah, that was cool. That was super fun. So rode that one. Free locker system there. Yeah. And I like how that is. You actually go through the queue and then you put stuff in the locker and then you can retrieve it from the locker on your way out. So kind of like Tron where it's like mid-view. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. A lot like Tron's system.

[00:42:41] And then we left there and went and met Toothless, which was a super fun interaction. Actually, they said it was like 45 minutes, but we only waited probably like 20 minutes. And then we went and saw the Dragon Show. This is another thing where Epic just blows it out of the water is their shows that they have are just out of this world awesome.

[00:43:09] I can't name one bad thing about any of the shows we saw. So we saw that and then it was time to continue moving. I think that was around the time we decided to go to Nintendo World. Nintendo. Yeah. Super Nintendo World. And this was after the movie had just released, the new Mario movie. And it was wall to wall in there. And there is no shade in there. So it was just like a giant oven. Like you just walk in there. She left immediately.

[00:43:39] I think I was maybe in that realm for like five minutes. And I said, you know what? The line for Stardust Racers is only 25 minutes. And I'm the only one that wants to do that anyway. I'm going to go do Stardust Racers. You guys have fun. How was Stardust Racers? Awesome. Really? I loved it. It was fantastic. Was it your favorite ride in Universal overall? Well, okay. As a roller coaster? Yes.

[00:44:04] Theming wise, like the Harry Potter stuff was like more impressive to see. But as a ride? Yeah, that was my favorite. Yeah, if anyone ever is interested in the story behind Stardust Racers, it's super cool. So I would say look it up. It has Back to the Future theming. Secret Back to the Future theming. And a story behind it. Autumn and I decided to see a Super Nintendo World. It was fine. It was hot. We didn't do anything there really. We actually... Get snacks.

[00:44:31] Yeah, well, we ended up going into Toad's Cafe to eat a cupcake and a tiramisu, which was fun. It was packed in there. So we didn't stay there much longer. We actually ended up meeting her out somewhere. There was a band that was playing out in the middle at one point. So we met somewhere near where the band was playing and hooked back up. And that's when we decided to go visit the Helios Hotel. And I'll just say this real quick. We went in.

[00:44:59] We just wanted to see their souvenirs and stuff like that and just check out the hotel. And they were like, hey, super nice. They were like, if you guys are just hanging out here, go check out the rooftop. We're like, oh, can we? They were like, yeah, there's a bar and everything up there. And so we went up to the bar. And holy crap, that was super cool. We were the only people there because they had just opened. Oh, wow. And so got some great pictures and got a couple of, you know, we got a couple of drinks. I got some sort of form of lemonade or something.

[00:45:29] And we went and sat out on the deck or the kind of overlook and was able to see the whole park. And it was super cool, except for the fountain was drained because apparently they're having some pump issues. So they drained the whole fountain. So it's just a big, big empty circle. But other than that, we enjoyed the drinks and the view and went back downstairs.

[00:45:51] And that's when we encountered that if you're staying at the Helios, there is a little tiny security thing, much like City Walk, that just lets people from the hotel get into the park. And everybody there was super nice. And just, you know, we talked to them for a minute. And then we left Helios and we were like, okay, well, next time we come, we're probably going to stay at Helios because that's super cool to just walk out of your hotel into the park. Mm-hmm. So we did that. And that's when we started checking. That's when we went to check out.

[00:46:21] I think that's when we went to check out Monster, the kind of dark universe. Mm-hmm. And kind of walked around that for a little bit just to kind of get our get a feel of what we wanted to do over there. And I think that on the first one, I think we ended up doing Monsters Unchained, which is very much, it's very similar to kind of how Forbidden Journey is, but not in the shake you around as bad. So it was kind of familiar, but it did not set off my motion sickness.

[00:46:52] It's the same, like, I want to call it like a claw system. That's a good way to say it. Yeah. If that makes sense to anybody who's hearing me say that. But I did a hand gesture, so they knew what I meant. It was very much the T-Rex hand gesture. But it was fun, and I think it's because of the more practical, like, animatronics and less screens. I think that really is what makes sense that kind of apart from that motion sickness. So I rode that, and I walked out.

[00:47:22] I had a great time. That was a great ride. Mm-hmm. And then we ended up, I'm trying to remember, I know we did some other stuff around the park. I'm trying to remember we hit up all the portals, right? Yeah, we hit up all the portals. So, yeah, then we ended up, I think, doing the Burning Blade Tavern, seeing the windmill catch on fire. Yeah. Then it started to rain. Generally, and again, generally, oh, we saw, we did, we ended up going back over to Harry Potter to watch the show. To watch the circus show. Yeah.

[00:47:49] Yeah, I don't want to spoil what it is, but there's a show, there's a live show there, too. So we saw that one. And so, yeah, that was kind of really everything we did. Again, that was just such a killer part. Oh, the interactions in For Harry Potter. We saw some of the same, like, students were coming around telling jokes. When we stopped to get our, I remember now we stopped to eat lunch at one of the places in Paris. We sat outside.

[00:48:16] They sat us outside, right kind of on the corner, and we could just people watch. Mm-hmm. See everything. And they, the students came over and started talking to us and brought the monster book, and the monster book was alive. Mm-hmm. And one of the other ones was telling jokes. It was just the fun, it was the most fun interactions. Autumn had a great time interacting with them and the auras that were going around teaching people how to use spells. Because that was the other thing.

[00:48:40] There were people teaching people how to use the wand stuff in the park versus the other parks where, you know, kind of were on your own. So, again, that was, that was pretty much it for that, though. And that was just, to wrap it all up, just, oh, my God. I, Epic was definitely 10 out of 10. Must do it again. Yeah, it's interesting to me because, like, it's all, it's all the same park system. So, you would think, like, the training would be the same.

[00:49:05] But it sounds to me like at Universal and Islands of Adventure, there's a very much a, why don't you know this? Yeah. And at Epic, it's like, let me share this with you so that you have a better experience. Yes. Yep. Yes. Percent. Yeah, that's well said. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect way to say. All right. So, you stayed at Endless Summer for this last night as well? Yeah. Okay. So, the next morning was when you got up and made the journey over to Disney to check into the Yacht Club.

[00:49:34] Help me remember, had you stayed at the Yacht Club before? No. We've never stayed at a Deluxe before. Oh, this was your first Deluxe. Oh, okay. All right. Well, what did you think? It was so nice. It's so nice to the point that she has already bought, like, Yacht Club candles and scents that are now infiltrated the house. Of course you have. That was going to be my question. I was like, did you like how it smelled? Oh, my gosh. I mean, I think Disney resorts in general smell very good.

[00:50:02] But the Deluxe, it's like another level of scent. So, the cool thing about it, so we get there. We already enjoyed, like, driving in. Mm-hmm. And so, get there. They're doing work on the Yacht Club right now to the exterior because they did redo the rooms, what, about a year or two ago, which the theme in the rooms was great. But we get there and you go in. You're like, we have at least been to the Yacht Club before doing a resort. When we were doing a resort crawl, we had been through. So, we knew at least what the lobby was.

[00:50:31] But luckily, it was Easter Monday, I guess you would say. And so, the eggs were still out in the lobby. So, we got a chance to see the eggs. And we got a very, very nice cast member. So, Jordan was there. And she was amazing. And this was our first pixie dusting at a resort because we had, when we booked, we had booked a water view back at the beginning. But then the deals came out as they always do.

[00:50:57] And so, I had called and it was like a $3,000 reduction of price to take the deal that they had, which went back to a resort view. But they said sometimes there's like some views that can be like partial water views. So, we'll put you in the system for that. So, Jordan had brought up that that was the case. She said, but let me see what I can do. And we weren't ready to check in. And so, she said, I got your room. She said, I hope you like it. It's the one I like when I'm, you know, get a chance to stay here.

[00:51:25] And she was super nice and sent us on our way. But the room wasn't ready. So, we ended up going into Epcot to start the day. And we just, all we really did was walk around Epcot. We didn't really do anything other than the usual kind of walking around. And then got a dole whip immediately. And that's, I would say, probably about an hour of walking around. We got our message. And so, we walked back, which is the cool thing. It takes five minutes, really. Five to seven minutes to walk from the hotel to International Gateway. So, we get back.

[00:51:55] And they give us, we have our room number. And we go up to the room. And boy, it's order. And it was like, holy crap. Jordan, you're awesome. And we ended up finding her later. And, I mean, I immediately put in, this is where I was like, I know the app does this. I immediately put in the cast compliment. And then we ended up talking, seeing her again later and thanking her. And she was like, oh, she was just, she was like, oh, I wasn't sure if you guys were going to like it. I was like, are you kidding me? Come on. And that's the room.

[00:52:24] Yeah, the updates to the room. It's very, I know some people, I've seen different opinions on it. I thought it was really nice. The theming was subtle, but it still felt very nautical. Very, very just, I don't know. It was just such a clean and nice room. I don't know what else to really say about it. It was just, having stayed at Coronado and Caribbean Beach a lot, this was just such a crazy upgrade. Like, just such a nice upgrade, like, room-wise to have the balcony and all that.

[00:52:52] Did you end up eating breakfast at the Ale and Compass like you'd originally planned? We did, thank you. I totally forgot about that. Yes, that was the thing we did before we went over to Ale and Compass. We went and had Ale and Compass breakfast, which was super delightful. It was really delicious. Super delightful. That was, it was a really good hearty breakfast. I think I had steak or something. You know, why not have steak for breakfast? So, very good service. Fast. It was super fast. And, yeah. Mimosas.

[00:53:21] Plenty of mimosas. Oh, a lot of the mimosas. Because Disney just loves giving you mimosas. You had a lot planned this day, even though you weren't going to be going into the parks, like, first thing in the morning because of breakfast and getting over to the area and everything. But I had written down that you were doing multi-pass, that you were going to try to take advantage of the extended hours. Yep. Flower and Garden was going on, of course. You were trying to hit up the Garden Rocks concert.

[00:53:50] And I think you had a G082 reservation. As I'm saying all this, it's like you had a lot planned. And, honestly, we hit a lot of them. Because I remember, so we did, as soon as we got in, we rode Soarin'. No, you and Autumn went to Living with the Land. And I was supposed to go on that one, but we were running later than we meant to. So I already had my G082 reservation. Because we couldn't take Autumn with us, we were having to go separately. Oh, yes.

[00:54:19] It's adults, because it's adults only. Right. So I went straight to G082 while you guys did Living with the Land. And so we did Living with the Land, which broke down Midway. So it was interesting. But at least you're in a cool place. So you're just hanging out, looking at some of the cast members in there. I mean, trimming the plants and stuff like that. Yeah, that got back up and running. And we met back out. That's when I think we rode Soarin'. Yeah, then we did Soarin'. Then we rode Soarin' after that. And then you went to G082. And then I went to G082.

[00:54:47] But also in the middle of all that, we had our Disney, because we're Disney Visa card members, we went to... To the meet and greet? Yep. And we went in, and they wouldn't tell you who it is. No. It's a surprise. You'd get around the corner and get surprised. And we got Mickey and Goofy. Oh, cool. So a good experience there. But yeah, we both did G082. Beautiful. If you get a chance to do G082. Yes, I am doing it next week, in fact. Perfect. It's... I bought the glass and everything. I did...

[00:55:17] She did the flatbread, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I did the flatbread. And I think... So I had my birthday button on. And I think that another party may have... I want to say took pity on me, because here I am with my birthday pin, and I'm all by myself in this bar. And I'm just kind of like staring off into space. That might have been... Yeah, exactly. So I get done with my meal, and the waiter comes over, and he says, somebody else took care of your bill for you. And I'm pretty...

[00:55:45] They were like, this poor woman is not running a birthday alone. There had been a couple who had said happy birthday to me as they were leaving. And I was like, I bet it was them. You know, because here's this person sitting all by themselves, having their little birthday drink. I told her it was the karma. I told her it was the karma again, because during our breakfast at Ailing Compass, waitress forgot to add our drinks to our bill. And I reminded her, I said, you forgot our drinks. And she was like, oh my God. She said... Like, in a funny way, she's like, who does that? Who would actually...

[00:56:15] She said, you could have slipped. I said, we could have. I said, but I don't want you to get in trouble. So I told her that was her karma for that. She was paid back. So she, after her sad G082, I had went, no such luck with free meals for me. But I did get the charcuterie board, which was awesome. I didn't think I was going to do all that. And I did the bourbon flight. So, and the bourbon flight is all Disney exclusive, like handpicked bottles or whatever.

[00:56:45] The usual sorts of... But super cool. I definitely say go to G082. Whoever you are. You're going next week. Anybody listening, go to G082. Mm-hmm. And then we rode Spaceship Earth. I remember that. So, because it cut off my head in the pictures and Autumn got such a kick out of that. The little video at the end, it didn't put my face on that. So it's just this headless body doing stuff. And Autumn is just cackling through this whole ride at the end. I think people were like, oh my God, tell that kid to shut up.

[00:57:15] And then, yes, we ended up going to the Garden Rocks series and seeing Sugar Ray. Mm-hmm. Which was... How was that? It was fun. It's fun. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. She didn't enjoy it as much. And Autumn's like, I don't care about this old people band. Oh, yeah. No, she's on her phone the whole time. She's listening to it. But, yeah, we got seated underneath the thing and watched the show. It was super fun. And then it started...

[00:57:44] That's when it all started raining a lot. It had been... It started raining while you were at G082. That's true. It started raining then, and then it just kept... It kept, you know... You know, coming at us. And even... Even so... Throughout the whole night, even into the fireworks. We got a great... I think because of the rain, we got a great view of the fireworks. Oh, good. It was gorgeous. So then we just... And then we just went around and looked at some of the topiaries for the rest of the night. Yeah. Went back to... Went back to the room.

[00:58:12] Well, that was our extended hours. Oh, that's right. You're right. Sorry. We rode... Sorry. You're right. We did ride more rides. I forgot about that. We rode what we could. But we did have a test track scheduled. We did already have a test track ready, but it got canceled because of the rain, because that ride goes outside. So that we were able to secure... The next day, we were able to talk to a cast member and secure a test track. Oh, good. Later in the trip. Okay. Cool.

[00:58:40] The second day, though, for your Disney time was an Animal Kingdom day. And I noted that you wanted to rope drop Everest. So at this point, though, with your Universal days and your day at Epcot and the extended evening hours, you've been going pretty hard at this point. Did you make it for rope drop at Animal Kingdom, which is the earliest rope drop to do? We did. Yes. Pretty sure it took a year off my life, but we did. We did. Yeah.

[00:59:10] We were nervous because of the rain and not being able to make it, but luckily, it was only kind of misting that morning. So we got in there and... We got right on Everest. As we've traditionally done. Just walked right onto it and rode. Had a great time. But that's how you start off your Animal Kingdom day. I agree. We always do that, too. I told Autumn the story about you and Alex getting on it over and over, and she was like, oh, I couldn't do that a second time. She's like, I'm not doing that again. The backwards can't get you.

[00:59:40] Yeah. I feel like every time we try that, it gets less and less. Like, I mean, Alex could keep going, but not me. It's catching up with me and my age and everything. So yeah, that was it. And then we kind of wandered around. Then we actually were going to try, and we thought we were going to kill some time in between either the Safari or for Zootopia.

[01:00:05] But as we were walking by Zootopia, the new Zootopia ride had like, there was no way. So we just walked on. We pretty much just walked into the theater almost for that. Honestly, just the quick opinion on that. I know a lot of people will miss It's a Bug's Life. I think this is a great upgrade. It was also nice to see everything working. So, because that was the other problem with It's a Bug's Life. It was really beat up.

[01:00:31] I mean, I kind of enjoyed It's a Bug's Life, but I haven't heard one single person complain about it being gone. I loved Bug's Life, but Zootopia was a perfect replacement. But I don't know. Anyway, so it was that sort of, so we walked into that and walked out. And apparently, Tuesday apparently is pen trading day at the park. Or a new pen day. So apparently there was some bloodthirsty people out there trying to get pens.

[01:01:00] It was wild. I actually said, well, I'm here. I'm going to try and get some pens. And then I got in the line and listened to people, how mean they were to each other in the line. I was like, okay, I'm going to leave. I just got out of the line. I was like, you guys are kind of me. But apparently people were getting the pens and getting back in line and getting more pens. The people that are selling them. Yeah. So I went in later, actually, and got two of the pens that were left. So that was fun to experience. But I would not recommend ever doing it again. Unless you're selling them.

[01:01:29] So we ended up, that was after that we hit up. Did we hit up Nomad right after that one? I think it was close to it. I think it was close. So we hit it up. Hit it up. Hit up. We went, walked around the... Where the tigers are. Where the tigers are. The Asia part. And just looked at the tigers, chilled out. And then we went back and had Nomad lounge. And I think the best part about this was we got to sit out on there, the deck space. But that was when it really started raining. Mm-hmm.

[01:01:58] And so the biggest part of the rain the whole day was while we were at Nomad lounge having snacks and drinks. And then by the time we were done with it, it was starting to taper off a little bit. Mm-hmm. So that was really cool. I like sitting outside there. It's really nice. Then the day progressed to Kilimajari. Was able to hit that up. Saw some really cool animals. We got to see all the cool animals. There was... We thought the rain would send a lot out. That wasn't the case. They were actually out enjoying that. Did the usual kind of walk around the park. Saw the Festival of the Lion King, of course.

[01:02:29] Mm-hmm. And then all of our lightning lanes popped for Pandora. So we went over to Pandora. Did the usual green beer. Hulk's Grog. And Satuli Canteen. So we did that. Then we went to... We got the... Rode the Rides there. And that was getting pretty close to the end of the day. Yeah. At least for the half day. Because we ended up going to...

[01:02:56] We left there probably around 3, 4 o'clock. Yeah. And went to Disney Springs. Well, we went back to the hotel. That's right. And we had some pool time. But it was kind of hard because it had been raining. So it had cooled off. And it was windy. So it was kind of chilly and windy. But, you know, when you're staying at the Yacht Club, you have to have some pool time. So we definitely did that. Yeah, that was our first attempt at Stormalong Bay. Yeah. It was not our most successful one. So we did try again later on. Okay. As long as you try it again later. Well, one of the sunnier days, we did make it back out.

[01:03:26] But it was super cold that day. So we ended up kind of making that super quick. And then we had reservations at the Boathouse at 8 o'clock in Disney Springs. And how did you like the Boathouse? This... I would say this is our third, fourth time at the Boathouse. And I think we're going to give it a rest after this one. Okay. It's good. It's good. It's good.

[01:03:52] Some things that are usually more a little bit more Calabash style seafood that I enjoy. But that's not what I always get there. But this time, I don't know. It just felt a little different. Well, that... What we run into, especially at Disney, is the things that you really enjoyed, you want to enjoy again. But at the same time, you also want to try all these new things because there's so much to try. And so there's the balance of finding the new things versus the stuff that you enjoyed before is difficult.

[01:04:19] So I think what we learned about Boathouse is we've been to Boathouse enough now. We need to try something new next time. Yeah. So... But other than that, walked around Disney Springs, did the usual pop our heads in certain shops in the world of Disney and Quartzicle booth. And once again, ignored Gideon's Bakery because I'm not saying... Because the line was around the building. I mean, nothing against them. I'm just not going to stand for a cookie. No. If you want a cookie, you got to go to Summer House. That's the best. And see, and that was the other thing.

[01:04:49] We're always saying, oh, we need more time at Disney Springs and we never take it. And there's missing all the things that we really want to try out there. And we'll learn a lesson one of these days. It's hard because you get stuck doing things that you've done before, even if you're like, yeah, I would love to try something new or I've done that enough times. And I think you just, you have to have a balance of let me do these things that I know I love

[01:05:14] that I'm looking forward to doing again because it feels like tradition for us versus trying new things. So like for us as a family, what I like to do before we go on a bigger or more trip is each of us pick a restaurant that we want to go to because we've been there before and we love it. And so that means as a family of three, we have three reservations that are repeats for us that each person has picked.

[01:05:41] And then I usually use my executive decision making to pick one restaurant that none of us have been to before. And so we go into like a bigger week like that, knowing that we have four table service reservations, three that are old favorites and one that's new for everyone. And then, you know, of course, we'll make reservations and drop them here and there, you know, as as we see fit. But then we go in saying, OK, we've we've at least got these four that we're excited about.

[01:06:11] That was the end of that night. Wednesday, April the 8th, you're doing a Magic Kingdom Day. But first you were doing breakfast at the Garden Grill. Yes. OK, I love breakfast at Garden Grill. I think the food is great and you get to see the characters multiple times. How was this for you? Exactly that. Yeah, exactly that. We had had lunch there before and lunch was delicious there. So we knew we we kind of knew the food was going to be good. But breakfast was delicious.

[01:06:40] I don't usually like scrambled eggs that are mass produced. Those scrambled eggs were delicious. Yeah, it was a solid breakfast. We felt a little weird when they said, oh, would you like another bowl of meat? I was like, yes, yeah, I do. But it was super weird. They just brought me a bowl of meat. And I was like, I don't hate this. This is amazing. But it's so weird. I feel so I don't know. I feel wrong. I shouldn't eat this much meat. But yeah. But yeah, I got the meat. And I appreciated the kind of quickness of the interactions.

[01:07:09] But each time it was just super quick. Got our pictures, got our signatures and got to continue watching Living with the Land until the till it rotated right towards X. I was like, it's time to go. So we left and they gave us a birthday cake or birthday moose with a little white chocolate candle. I thought it was adorable. Cute. And from here, I think you were doing a monorail crawl over to Magic Kingdom.

[01:07:33] And I can't tell whether you literally meant we're going to crawl and try drinks or whether you were using the word crawl in that, like, that was your mode of transportation. Because I did not write down enough details here. We had big ideas. Big, big. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. The drinks thing was more limited in the sense we just kind of, we have never actually taken the monorail from to do the loop like that. We've taken the monorail from Epcot to Magic Kingdom before. Okay.

[01:08:03] And, you know, and at the transportation center, et cetera. But this time was the, hey, let's take the big loop. And we did. And we ended up only stopping at Contemporary because you actually have to go to the, what? The Polynesian, the Grand Floridian, and then you go past the part and go to the Contemporary. So we ended up going to the Contemporary and just got off there because then we were like, we can just walk to Magic Kingdom from the Contemporary.

[01:08:30] So all we really did was the Contemporary, which we didn't get any drinks there because I couldn't really. Yeah. The bar wasn't open from the upstairs one. We weren't really sure where we were going. It was a, it's a really cool inside of that hotel, but we were very confused about what we were, where we were. I thought I'd be more prepared and we were not. But other than that, we got to see the shops and watch the monorail go through it. And they were like, okay, let's head over to Magic Kingdom. That's what we did.

[01:08:59] Now in Magic Kingdom, this was an extended hours day. Correct. So you were definitely going to be taking advantage of that. And you had some lightning lanes, multi-pass, and then also Seven Dwarfs and Tron for individual lightning lanes. Right. Plus a Beacon Barrel reservation. So a lot jam-packed into this day. What were some of the highlights? Yeah, we did the normal stuff. We were able to hit up the different things like the normal Pirates of the Caribbean. What was the other route we hit?

[01:09:29] Haunted Mansion. We hit all the staples pretty quick. Got our spring rolls. The parade. We watched the parade from the firehouse window. Mm-hmm. That was so much fun. That was a tip we learned from Janelle from Disney Parks with Love streamer. And she was actually there that day. And we talked to her about that. And she was really happy that people were using the firehouse window. But it's really cool because you get individual kind of interactions with the characters because they're all looking into the window and waving at you.

[01:09:59] So it's actually kind of a fun little interaction piece. Oh, that's cool. We got to meet, I don't know how many people know Grayson, the piano player. Mm-hmm. We got to hear him. That was our first time actually seeing Grayson. And I got a picture with him, talked to him for a minute. He's like the super nicest guy in the world. And then, like I said, we just kind of did all those things and we made it over to the Beacon Barrel for that, which was an interesting experience. You know, I don't know if you've been.

[01:10:29] I have. Okay. Did you get just drinks? Did you get drinks and some snacks? We just got drinks. We were a little. No, we did get the chips or kind of the. Didn't we get like some chips or something? Yeah, we got some chips the multiple days. Yeah. So we got that. That was okay. I did like our placement. I wish it's kind of. I think it's a strange layout, like in the sense that you're kind of behind this wall. So you can't really see what's going on at the bar because there's like a wall with a window there and the window is close.

[01:10:55] So you can't really see the parrot and see what's happening over there. But I understand. Hopefully next time some get a little bit of a different placement. But that said, the experience was still cool. A storm. The battle or storm happened while we were in there. So that was fun. And the cast members were all great. They were super interactive and having a bunch of fun. So hopefully a better place by next time. But good drinks. Fun bar. Okay. Solid review. Yeah.

[01:11:23] So I'm trying to remember and I'm like, I don't want to make it sound like it's a horrible thing. I feel like all I ever do is like negative on things. I'm like, no, it's just when you're paying them. You go in. You're like, oh. It takes a lot to impress. Yeah. Those prices, I think. Yeah. And then, yeah, we stuff everything else in that day. As you said, we did the people mover. We did the, you guys, we wrote Tron. We did the nighttime Tron.

[01:11:52] And we were hoping to see the starlight parade, but thanks to the rain, we weren't able to see that. That kind of was disappointing. But, you know, you only do what you can do. And something about Tron, like, I don't know, I've never really had my, I don't know, motion sickness in Tron. I've rode it, you know, so many times that something about it clicked wrong with me this time. And it kind of took me out of the game for a short period there. Like, they rode Space Mountain. I actually didn't ride Space Mountain with them. But I think that's also, maybe I just didn't want to break my spine.

[01:12:21] So that was, I was like, I don't know. After you got hit with those beads, I mean, you were playing with a handicap. I was not ready for Space Mountain, I think. We rode Tiana's. We did get our Tiana's in. Yeah, then we just kind of took advantage of some of the other extended hours things. Actually, more so just getting to walk around and experience Jungle Cruise. Yeah, Jungle Cruise at night was cool. If you ever rode Jungle Cruise at night, it's super fun. It's different. It's not like a different ride.

[01:12:50] So our plan was, like, because extended hours go until 1am at Magicina. And so the plan was to stay there until 1am. But as you've said, we've been going and going and going. By midnight, we were all just done. It's like, you know what? We're going back. We're going to go sleep. They even convinced me, you know what? We're not even rope dropping Hollywood Studios tomorrow. We are sleeping until we wake up. And then we will go over to the park. Yeah, good plan. I mean, I think, you know, you want to get as much done as you can.

[01:13:20] And you're so excited because you're there and you love it. And you want to make the most of every moment. But it will catch up with you, particularly if it's a time of year when it's on the warmer side. So... And rainy. It was raining again that day, too. And you get the summer slash late spring rains. So, you know, it's good, I think, to build in some downtime to kind of counteract all of the go, go, go. And so we did.

[01:13:48] So, Thursday, April the 9th, you said it's a Hollywood Studios day and you decided not to rope drop. But you did have your multi-pass lightning lanes this day. And so you were kind of set for that. Arise the Resistance individual lightning lane. An Ogas reservation. So another lounge reservation in the middle of the day. And a dinner reservation. Oh my gosh, I'm looking here. And you were building a lightsaber? Well, that one I feel like it's just a... They lead me to my own devices.

[01:14:17] Yeah, that was just him on his own. Autumn and I went and did snacks and shopping while he did that. Okay. And, Mike, you had a friend meeting up with you in the park. Yeah, we did. This day as well. And we did meet up. That was super fun to, you know, stop and have a blue and green milk and watch the little kind of show that they do out there in Batuu at the First Order ship and all that. So that was fun. We watched that. He's a big Star Wars fan, too.

[01:14:45] So we got to talk about fun Star Wars trivia and things like that where they are. Or even just sometimes make funny jokes. So, but yeah, that was nice to meet them for just a little bit and have a quick drink and went on our way and did the rest of the day kind of... I can't remember if we did. Oh, so we did do our Ronto wraps. We had to go get our breakfast Ronto wraps. We got there just in time. Got there just in time. We got our Ronto wraps.

[01:15:12] I like the breakfast Ronto wrap, but I also like the lunch slash dinner Ronto wrap. I don't think you can go wrong. It's more of the slawy stuff that she doesn't like about that one because it has that slaw in it. I don't like slaw. North Carolina native not liking slaw. I do not like slaw. I feel like I don't even know you anymore. Who are you? But yeah, and then the whatever that... I can't remember the name of the coffee. It was like the Black Spire coffee or whatever it is. Oh, yes. With the Cocoa Puffs in it. So we did that, of course. With like the cream cheese or whatever.

[01:15:41] Yeah, it's so weird. And the Cocoa Puffs. But it works and it's delicious. I don't like it. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I don't. And maybe it was just because it needed to be stirred or something. You do have to stir it a lot. So Alex and I, when Galaxy's Edge first opened, Alex and I both got one. And we both tasted it. And I remember turning to him and being like, it's okay if you throw it away. I don't like cold coffee. You don't like it. I don't like cold coffee. I'm aware of a hot coffee. She gave me a hard time the whole trip about drinking hot coffee.

[01:16:11] It was like 80 degrees and he's ordering a hot coffee. Supposedly that cools you down. See, I'm ahead of my time. That's what I've heard is when it's super hot, if you drink a hot drink, it cools your body temperature down. Well, well, maybe. Maybe. I mean, I'm not trying it. I want to cold coffee. Yeah. So then we did, we did our usual Brown Derby lunch. Because we just love going over. We go outside. We do the outside. Yeah. Part. And did our margarita flight.

[01:16:41] And that's when we separated after that. She went to ride Tower of Terror. And Autumn and I went to, and we just kind of walked around a little bit and ended up going over to the Starbucks and got a coffee and they gave us a free cookie. So that was nice. That's nice. And then that's when I went back to, then we met back up and then we separated again because that's when I went to do the lightsaber building. And I met the Mandalorian. So that was cool. And then built a lightsaber.

[01:17:09] And we took a break, I think, after that. If I remember correctly. Because I took the lightsaber back to the room. And we had dinner reservations. Yeah. Because we had the dinner. Yeah. That's right. Because we had the dinner reservations. So we went back. I mean, we rode stuff in between. I cannot remember all the stuff we were able to accomplish. Right. I know Mickey and Minnie's. I'm pretty sure. We saw the Little Mermaid show. Oh, yes. That's right. We saw the new Little Mermaid show. Super, super cute. How was that? Had you seen it previously? Not the old one. No. We had. Okay.

[01:17:37] Every time we went, it was close. It's been the last how many ever years. Yeah. We did get a chance. It was super cute. All the technology was super fun. Mm-hmm. It was, again, like, after the epic shows, we were like, well, I wonder what Disney's new shows were like. That one was kind of like one of those ones. It was just, like, right on target with that. I was like, these are great. So all these new shows are great. We did miss the villain show. We totally forgot. I did not go to the. Oh, okay. Yep. So we've got to catch that one next time.

[01:18:06] Like, we had thought about it at the very end. We're like, well, we're not going to. It's tucked away over in that corner of the park. Right. So. Where they're doing all the work. I have to have it in mind of I'm going to do this. And especially with Rock and Roller Coaster being on a renovation. Yeah. You don't really have a reason to be over there unless you're specifically aiming for the villain show. Saw the redesign on the car that they're doing, the repaint. So that was kind of cool to see. But we didn't. Yeah. Like I said, we didn't. I forgot to even.

[01:18:35] It's like, there's no reason to go back there. Right. Totally forgot. I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. But yeah. So we had dinner. That's when we. Yeah. Then we went back to dinner at the Yachtsman. How was dinner at the Yachtsman? This is another restaurant that I've never eaten at. It was so good. You've got to get the sauce flight. The sauce flight. Wait. Sauce for what? What is it? What is it accompanying? Steak sauce. Okay. Okay. There is. What is it? I think there's four or five different sauces that you get with it. Not all of them are amazing.

[01:19:05] The blue cheese one is amazing. There is a blue cheese one that was out of this world. Charles loves the blue cheese. I will say I forgot to mention. We did do Ogas before we went to dinner. I remember that because we did that around three o'clock. So we did do Ogas. I apologize that I skipped over that one. But it's standard Ogas. I mean, we always enjoy Ogas. So nothing. Nothing new there other than some new drinks to try. And he got our traditional to-go drinks. We weren't going to. He's like, would you guys like some to-go beverages? We're like, fine. Twist my heart. Fine.

[01:19:32] But yes, then back to the yachtsman and the sauce flight. And one of the funny, cool things about this is I'm looking at some pictures too. For the kids portion, there is a thing called Mickey Puzzle. It's just on the menu. It's a side. It's listed as a side. As a side. And we're like, is it, did they just give you a puzzle? We don't understand what you're saying. So we asked.

[01:19:55] And it turns out it is a white chocolate puzzle pieces that comes on a little tiny plate tray. And you have to put the white chocolate pieces together to form the Mickey picture. It comes with two cookies, a paintbrush, and three different colors of simple syrup that you use to paint the puzzle. Did you get it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And she loved it.

[01:20:22] And now, because we had to get back to the part, she was like, well, if we weren't in such a rush, I was going to really make this really cool and paint it really good. And she said, all I really did was just throw different paints on it. And we're like, yeah, you're going to make a masterpiece of your white chocolate puzzle that the simple syrup was hardly stiff. But she still to this day says she had a grand plan for this masterpiece. But then she ate it. So, you know, whatever.

[01:20:52] Was that the end of your night? We actually, we ended up going back to Hollywood Studios because that was our phantasmic. No, that was not our phantasmic. We just decided to go back because we had one ride and we just wanted to do that. It was Mickey's, wasn't it? That was our Mickey and Minnie's Runaway. No, Slinky Dog. We had a Slinky Dog because it was the nighttime riding of Slinky Dog, which we had never done. And I didn't want to lose that, which is why this one got more complicated because I did not want to lose a nighttime Slinky Dog.

[01:21:22] And we got to ride it. It was super fun. And we actually ended up being able to go back through Galaxy's Edge and find the line for Smuggler's Run was non-existent. So we rode Smuggler's Run and they actually just let the three of us ride it instead of stuffing us in with a bunch of people. That was super fun. And this is where it gets to that point. Like, okay, it's time to go and we're heading out. But the difference we were saying earlier is where security's like trying to get you in the Harry Potter world. Nobody's rushing us out of.

[01:21:50] They're actually, the cast members are standing there. They're like, you know, take your pictures. Do what you want to do. You just can't go this way. It's like, okay, cool. We were not going to go that. So we stood around, took a few pictures, not trying to be super, you know, we tried to be understanding of their time too. So we took our pictures and got it. And that was super cool. I love taking pictures in Galaxy's Edge at night. Oh, me too. Especially at night. It's really nice. And that was it. Okay. All right. So Friday, April 10th. I know that you had a breakfast reservation at Ohana.

[01:22:20] Planned to do some Disney Springs time. And then you were going to do Epcot or Hollywood Studios or both. So walk me through this final full day in the Disney parks. We actually, after the whole monorail situation and kind of figuring out how long that was and we wanted to sleep a little bit more. We actually said, no, we're just going to take a minivan. So we slept.

[01:22:45] We slept about 30, 30 more minutes and then called and got a minivan and took the minivan to the Polynesian for our Ohana breakfast. And that was perfect. It worked out perfect. Ohana's cute, fun. Another big, super, you know, all you care to enjoy breakfast. Autumn is a huge fan of Stitch. So it was the guaranteed meet and greet for Stitch. And she loved it.

[01:23:09] And we met, we were, we actually didn't know all the characters that were going to be there, but of course Lilo and Stitch, but also Pluto and Mickey. We were, we did not know about Mickey. So that was cool to see Hawaiian shirt. Like collecting certain Pokemon. Vacation Mickey. Yeah. Vacation Mickey. But yeah, it was a fun experience. I think Gordon, I like Gordon Grills breakfast better, but you know, it's hard to argue with. The eggs there were also exceptionally delicious.

[01:23:39] And of course I love pog juice. Yeah. Gotta get your pog juice and that, but it was cool to see the Polynesian. We got, we actually built in some time to walk around the Polynesian and see that. There's also construction going on there. Also the situation where we saw the new buildings that are building a new DVC stuff versus the Polynesian, which we found it interesting. The two kind of contrasting differences. Right. The tower versus the old school. Yeah. It's like, it seemed different, but. Those bungalows are super cool.

[01:24:09] The bungalows were cool to see though. Just like walk out. Too bad we couldn't just go knock on somebody's door and be like, hey, can we just take a look around? But other than that, that was, we finished up there and actually took a minivan back. Did skip the Disney Springs part. Just not something we wanted to crush in there. It was one of those. Yeah. At the moment you're like, that's just going to take too much time. Right. And you had already been over there to the boathouse anyway. So it's like you'd seen it for this trip. So which parks did you end up going into? We ended up going into Epcot.

[01:24:41] We did Epcot for most of that day. That was our test track makeup day. So we got to ride test track. How did you like the new test track? Loved it. It was so much better than the previous. I never liked having to build a car in the queue. So I'm glad that they took that out. Yeah. It was just nicer just to kind of hang out and see some stuff. I mean, just, I don't know. Building the car was always just felt like, I don't know, just felt like an unnecessary step. But we remember old test track.

[01:25:09] We, I remember we would just before it even where it kind of lost its popularity for a bit. And we were just going running around, riding it like three, four times because you could just run right back in and ride it again. And that's how quick it was. And then they built the other one and that's where it redid it. Where I guess test track two, 2.0. And now this is what test track 3.0, right? Yeah. Three and a half. But either way, loved it. I love the new theming.

[01:25:35] It gives a lot of the old, the old original test track and just some of the newer stuff and kind of left out the middle stuff. I'm sorry. 10 out of 10. Would ride again. Autumn got to meet Asha. It was one of her favorite movies. Where did she meet Asha? Asha was, she's got like a gazebo. Yeah. It's like, it's right over there from when you came in. Is it like the entrance to World Showcase sort of? Yeah.

[01:26:01] For like, you go in front and take a left and you go past, I tried to, the shimmering, whichever one is shimmering. Shimmering sips. Shimmering sips during the food and wine. So that's whatever it is now. Flower and Garden. But we also stopped and got a Dole Whip there. Which was funny because we were standing there. We walked over to pick up our Dole Whip and they had one of the swirled Dole Whips sitting there. I was like, oh.

[01:26:30] I said, I didn't know you could get a swirled Dole Whip. And she goes, oh, this is the one you get for the, doing the prize or doing the scavenger hunt. And then she said, but we made this accidentally. And she looked at Heather's badge. She said, so happy birthday. And she pushed it over. So we had three Dole Whips. And we're like, oh my God, how are you going to eat all these Dole Whips? Which we managed. But this was also the day we, so she met Asha, but this was also the day we decided where we were going to do festival booze. So we started wandering around doing festival booze.

[01:26:58] Got like the macaroon, macaroon, whichever. Well, this is a running theme on my show because I'm very passionate. About the difference between a macaroon and a macaroon. Macaroon is made with coconut. And macaroon is the, like, a little sandwich type looking cookie. See? And I've been saying, I think I've been saying it right. You say it either way. Wow. A lot of people interchange it. And like, I don't know. You know, we all have like things. And that's one of my things.

[01:27:28] Where I'm, when people say macaroon, I'm like, no. Macaroon is like a little, you know, dollop of coconut, you know. Yeah. Smished into a cookie. Yeah. Fair enough. Look, I'll defer to your knowledge on this one. They both taste good. I don't care. This is where we had some pool. Then we had some more pool time. Yeah. This is where we ended. Then we ended our day at Hollywood Studios to see Fantasmic. Okay.

[01:27:55] Heather, did you do the Lazy River portion of Stormwater Bay? I did. Yeah. I was surprised at how slow it goes. Well, it's slow, but it's also very deep. Yeah, that was not problematic for me. I gotta kick out of that. What was problematic for me is the inner tubes. I could not get a comfortable position in the inner tube. And so as slow as it was going, like, I couldn't just be. I was always having to, like, adjust myself. This is the most first world problem. So I finally just got rid of the inner tube and just started floating.

[01:28:26] Yeah. I swear it's the most first world problem. Oh, I couldn't get comfortable on the Lazy River. The lifeguard was looking at me going, what are we doing here? The parts. Yeah. So we, yeah, we ended up going back, but we had done, like I said, we did some world showcase boost. We also ended up coming back and do it, going over to Boardwalk to look at the Cape Bake Shop. Not go in it because I felt like I had to pay just to go in the Cape Bake Shop. I know you don't have to, huh? That was Saturday morning. Was it?

[01:28:55] Oh, okay. I thought that, no, because, oh, you're right, because we were just looking at the boats. You're right. Sorry. Sorry. All right. So Friday night you did Fantasmic. Yeah. You said. Okay. Well, that brings us to Saturday morning anyway, which is your checkout day. So you went and put your nose against the glass at Cake Bake Shop. Yep. Because I did not, yeah, I just, even looking at the prices intimidated me. I was like, oh my God, they have them posted outside. I was like, I just don't want to walk in there. I feel like maybe they're going to tell me to leave.

[01:29:25] It just feels so, so fancy and expensive. I'm going next week for the first time. So let us know how it is. We'll see. But we decided that we wanted to walk over to Boardwalk and go in and we went in there and it was surprisingly busier than I anticipated. Like, cause we had experienced Yacht Club being very easy to get in and out of. Nope. We barely saw anybody in the hallway when we were going in and Boardwalk was just, the lobby was slammed.

[01:29:53] I was like super surprised how busy Boardwalk was. And cause we went there, as long as we visit the resort, we pick up a pin. We feel like if you visit a resort, you get to get the pin for it. And Boardwalk was out of pins. I was like, what is happening right now? So. I wonder. So like, first of all, it was the morning. So maybe there were a lot of people arriving. So that could have been it. But also, like you mentioned, they're redoing the outside of beach and yacht.

[01:30:19] And so I'm wondering if, if Boardwalk's getting a little bit more traffic of people staying there just because people are like, oh, well, I'd rather stay somewhere where there's not construction going on. Yeah. I didn't see the beach lobby. I'm not sure if a lot of people, but now we did walk the way you can kind of walk along, kind of walk along outside of Stormalong and then kind of cut through beach. We usually cut through where the restaurant is, where the character dining is over there. So there's a lot of people over on that side, but that makes sense. I mean, it's a big popular character dining experience.

[01:30:49] So I don't know. It's just more just something I noted. I was just like, there's just more people here than I anticipated, but you're right. People checking in, et cetera. Yeah. So that was, that was our experience. We just kind of checking out Boardwalk. We got on our way back to Epcot for the last day. And we didn't really do much. We just kind of- We did some booths. Autumn met Mulan. Yep. Met Mulan. Did a couple of drinks. It's a Saturday. It was very party centric.

[01:31:18] There were a lot of 21 birthdays. There was a lot of- Groups. Groups trying to drink around the world, which was interesting. Like, I've seen people drink around the world, but this was a lot of groups of people drinking around the world. Yeah. Like bachelorette parties. Yeah. It's like, we saw a lot of like the ribbons and the hats and stuff like that. So, and there was a, there was maybe bachelor parties too, because we saw a bunch of groups of guys. Yeah. Too.

[01:31:45] I mean, it's hard to say, but it was just, that has, was not something we had seen throughout the whole trip for the most part. It was just like that last day. It was a mass gathering, which, you know. Yeah. Saturdays are always busy. I mean, Saturdays and Sundays, I would say, are busier at Epcot. Yeah. So, if you are doing your, your own trip planning and you're trying to figure out what park to go to on what, what day, I would recommend saving Epcot for a weekday. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

[01:32:12] And so, we only went to it for this day as a matter of convenience visits. Right. You have a ticket. You're there. You're there. So, we were trying to hit the road anyway. So, we hit, I don't remember what we wrote. I mean, I know Remy's. I think Remy's was one of them. We wrote something. We wrote a couple of things. We wrote Frozen. So, the one thing I forgot to mention, we did do Indiana Jones on, at Hollywood Studios. I totally forgot to mention that, to see the show. I love to show you. So, we were with other people.

[01:32:41] Other than that, yeah. Because we had considered trying to go back over to Hollywood Studios that day, but we just, by the time it was done, we were just like, nah, let's just continue snacking, like having some of the snacks we haven't had. The line for the maple popcorn was out of this world. Like, I've never seen the line that long. Almost all the way into England. Yeah. Yeah. It was the first time I did. I've never seen that. People were even walking by going, I don't understand. It's never like this. And I was like, I don't. I think the groups were fueling that because it was a quick place to get a drink.

[01:33:09] That was not like the Rose and Crown and stuff like that. Because the Rose and Crown line was long. Everything for drinks was super long. But, because I didn't, I actually didn't know the maple popcorn stand did drinks. I thought it was just the popcorn, but I've never really noticed before. So, I still got my popcorn because I took it and had it on the road on the way home. Yeah, you need popcorn to go. Yeah. And that was it. You were planning to hit the road by three.

[01:33:37] Was that about the time that you ended up heading out? It was closer to four. It was closer to four after we got everything done. We did pretty good. Yeah. But, yeah. We still were pretty spot on and stopped and got gas at the, at that gas station that's right there. Right inside of Disney World. The speedway. The drurururur. But it was. Drurururur. But, but on our, but the, the, it was, I was tired. I was pretty beat. Yeah.

[01:34:05] So, it was definitely one of those ones I had to kind of stop. Yeah. Quite a bit and slap myself in the face and get it. But, when we got back and we made it in a, in a decent time this time instead of the last time where we were getting in and dragging it at like midnight. We made it at a decent time and this is when the hotel, while the hotel was still great and the people that weren't there are still great and the breakfast was great the next morning. This is when everybody was there. Definitely for the baseball teams. Like people were just yelling in the lobby.

[01:34:32] There was kids everywhere for these teams. The elevator. Even Autumn was getting irritated with the kids running in and out of the elevator. And the restaurant only had two employees at the time because apparently some people had called in sick. So they were way behind and all we were getting was a pizza. But, I mean, just to say that it has a restaurant in there that is open till like midnight that you can order food from. So that was super cool to be able to do that and get food and the necessary.

[01:35:00] Not having to like try and find food that late at night. So it took a little bit. But none of that was the hotel's fault. So the hotel was still, still has a plus a mark from us. It was just unfortunately a bunch of people there. Like there was kids all in the pool and it was a rough one. But as far as people wise. Yeah. Yeah. But it sounds like a solid place to stop. It definitely is. I still would recommend it. No, no, no problem. I would say that's, that's the place now since it's newer.

[01:35:29] So if anybody's listening and planning that drive, that's a perfect spot. It's right off the highway too. Like it's like literally, like literally both nights, the two nights we stayed there, our room overlooked the highway for the most part. But it wasn't noisy or anything. Which is not something you usually desire. But when you're in the middle of a road trip like that, it's nice to not have to go too far from the exit to get where you're going to stop. And again, it wasn't loud. It's not like the noise. They've done a pretty good job of insulating it enough to where it wasn't bugging us. Yeah.

[01:35:59] And then the next day got up and drove home. All right. Well, this was truly an epic trip. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. It's taking so long. I'm looking at the time. I'm like, oh my, we've been talking about this trip for a while. This is pretty standard for a trip, a post-trip. Of this magnitude. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, you like to visit Disney every few years at least. Do you have any kind of plans?

[01:36:29] You said that I think before the show, we were talking about perhaps doing a school trip. Yeah. So, Autumn's Middle School is hoping to go to Disney. And so, we are hoping to volunteer to be chaperones, even though I've never chaperoned a big group of kids before. But it is a good excuse to go. No idea. We have no clue. It was funny because we took her to see the new school and meet the new teachers or kind of get introduced. It's not the official meet the teacher.

[01:36:59] It was just kind of an open house. So, we got to go. But we went to the band room and she had noticed that inside of the band director's office, he had a bunch of Mickey statues with awards or presentations. You know, I don't know. So, she asked him about it. He said, oh, he said, yeah, you get one of those every time you go to Disney and play music at Disney. He said, this year we're doing university. He said, so next year when you come, we'll be doing Disney. And Autumn's like, wow.

[01:37:26] And that's what even us, we were like, what do you need from us? Actually, I told Heather, I said, you go be a chaperone. I'm just going to attack. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just going to be a plus one. Yeah. We had all these intentions of our next, now that we've done this big trip, our next big trip, we're going to do something different. Let's go to Japan. And, you know, we might even be able to hit up the Disneyland that's in Japan. Tokyo Disney. Tokyo Disney. What is it? Sea.

[01:37:56] Tokyo Disney. Yeah, Mike's looking it up and he's like, oh, that's a 15 hour flight. Maybe we should just do Europe and we can hit up Disneyland Paris. Yeah. And the more we talk about that plan and how much time we need to really enjoy Europe, then it's like, or we could just go on a Disney cruise, which is kind of where we're winning. So, that's what we're thinking about doing. The European thing, we have a friend who lives in Europe and he was telling us a bunch about visiting Europe.

[01:38:24] And we were just like, we're going to want like two weeks to do that. And she really did. She can't do two weeks right now. Mm-hmm. Or in the next probably year. So, there's some work stuff transitioning, things like that. Mm-hmm. So, that's what we were just saying. I was talking to some friends. I was like, yeah, cruise, cruise. And so, I brought it up to her and she was like, wait, cruise? And it was like this weird back and forth. And then we just kind of... And even Autumn's like, yeah, I want to go on a cruise. So, yeah.

[01:38:51] So, it sounds like right now we're possibly entertaining the idea of getting possibly a travel agent for this one. Mm-hmm. Because we don't know a lot about cruises. But we are eyeballing the destiny out of Fort Lauderdale. Okay. Because it turns out the wish is going to be in Europe next summer. So, we will not be able to take the wish. But the destiny is a wish class ship. So, we're thinking about that. Okay. Well, I know plenty of travel agents.

[01:39:19] I'm happy to recommend one to you. Cool. Thank you. We will take all the help we can get probably on this one. This is not... This is... We don't want another Universal. We're like walking around blindly scenario. Yeah. Which is... This will be nice to be different. Yeah. That's why I do the Deluxe Hotel at Universal. Because it's just so much easier because of the lines. Which we're doing next time. Yeah. Yeah. And we learned our lessons. Yeah. And because you can get so much done, it's not like you have to stay as many nights as you did. You could even...

[01:39:47] If you do one night, you get the express pass for both your check-in day and your check-out. So, if you stay on your arrival day, stay at a random hotel that's a good price. And then the next day, hit up the parks and head to your hotel right before that just to grab your passes. Yeah. And you can do two park days with the one cost of the Deluxe Hotel and really take advantage. What I was also going to say, though, about the Disneyland Paris thing is I love your cruise plan.

[01:40:17] I think you should definitely move forward with that. But if and when you are ready to go to Disneyland Paris, you know, I'm going there in the fall. So, I've already got my stuff arranged for that. It is very affordable. Like, extremely affordable. Oh, yeah. I don't think we were... Affordability out of all these was not really the biggest concern of ours. It was just, like I said, it was just the timing. The timing. Because we want to do more. We want to do more of Europe than just one thing.

[01:40:44] But if you do decide, like, you want to go... Like, we're doing a week and we're doing three park days and then the rest of the days we're, you know, just exploring Paris. Now we're just doing Paris. So, we're not going to be, like, wandering around to other places in Europe. But it's actually, like, affordable and it's doable within a week. Yeah. You know, to get some Paris time and the park time. So, definitely something to think about for the future. Yeah.

[01:41:11] I think because also, because of Amsterdam being so close, our friend lives in Amsterdam. So, he would be super upset if we didn't go visit him while we were going to Europe. So, that's why we're trying to factor in a lot. But apparently, that's just what we like to do is just stuff as much as we can. Everything. Yeah. We're apparently psychopaths or something. But I always have to remember we're, you know, we're doing this podcast with you. And I have to remember there's no Disney judgment here. We're so used to Disney judgment from everyone else.

[01:41:40] Oh, now we're going to possibly take a Disney cruise. And they're like, I'm like, you know what? I'm not telling you anything anymore, jerks. No. This is a safe space. I know. Everybody who is listening is either a Disney diehard or they're planning a Disney trip and trying to get more information. And people get it here. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Well, it has been so much fun catching up with both of you. I love that you were willing to come on the show because, you know, Heather and I have

[01:42:09] been friends and kind of like family all of these years with our connection with, you know, my sister. And we grew up going to church together. Mm-hmm. All of that sort of stuff. So it's just been so much fun having you on the show and getting to talk to you about this thing that who knew all these years later we would have in common. Yeah. It just took a wedding to figure it out. I know. I know. I know.

[01:42:36] Which is funny because I think that wedding was the second wedding I had seen you at because the first one was ours. I think that's where you and I met was the wedding. Yeah, probably. They met each other. Yeah. So that's just 20 billion years later. Here we all are. Yep. Life goes by so quickly. I don't feel old. What are you talking about? No, I feel old when I'm riding Space Mountain. That's about it. I feel old when I'm talking about the trip. Talking about the trip has already made me tired. I'm like, oh my God. Oh my goodness. Yeah. You got to build in some rest time.

[01:43:06] Yeah. We are not good at that. Even if it's half a day. Like, even if it's half a day, you say, okay, on this day, we're going to truly sleep in and, you know, when we get up, we get up. We're just going to have quick service. So there's no rush to get anywhere, you know, for a reservation. Yes. We'll go to the park later in the day. But just give yourself that respite. The cruise is kind of our hope to try and do something Disney related and not try and do everything. Kind of relax. We're going to try. We're going to see how this works.

[01:43:36] Yeah. It's us though. We'll probably factor in something else crazy. You might, but I have a feeling you'll really enjoy it. All right. Well, have a great rest of your day. Okay. Please tell your parents, Heather, that I said hello. I will. And give them a hug for me. I will. Thanks so much. Thank you. This was awesome. Thank you again to Heather and Mike for being on the show. It was a lot of fun catching up and hearing all about your trip.

[01:44:02] Of course, if you are listening and you haven't had a chance to rate or review the show, please consider doing that. And if you do a review, you might even hear me read it on the show. And of course, make sure you're subscribed on the podcast app you are listening on now. That will ensure that all the latest episodes will be ready in your queue. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and that you keep daydreaming about where you long to be.