Trip Report Our first WDW trip, not so scary in Disney but so scary in Universal

Hi all,

a day later than promised, but here is our TR from out October 2014 trip to WDW and Universal. It will be a long TR I guess, we have tons of pictures! So please be patient, it probably will take quit some time to finish this TR! This week we still have holidays so not that many time to work on this TR, but from next week I will post as many posts as possible during work time

If you are interested in the PTR: here it is

The overall thought of this trip is marvelous, wonderfull, magical, scary, beautifull! I guess a lot of you want to know the comparison with DLP. My first opinion is that although the parks in USA are older than DLP I am sure that the parks in USA are better!! The cast members are more gentle, easier to talk to! The look of the park is cleaner than in DLP, all the buildings are in a much better shape than in DLP. Off course we are in DLP 4/5 times a ytear, so everything feels 'normal' and WDW was a first timer (yeah I was there 25 years ago, but the only thing I remember from that trip are the pictures (sorry not digital). So when you visit WDW for the first time everything looks better than DLP.

The best thing about WDW in comparison to DLP is the magic band system in WDW. It really worked out very good! We also had the Memory Maker, so beside our tons of pictures we also have 100+ memory pics taken by cast members.

So in short words the days:
Friday October 17th: flight, was ok, not that much turbulence
Saturday October 18th: Magic Kingdom, was great, special, magical
Sunday October 19th (daytime): Universal, Island of Adventure, was also great, Harry Potter was marvelous
Sunday October 19th (nighttime): Universal, Universal Studios, Halloween Horror Night, absolute a thrill!
Monday October 20th: Epcot, not really our thing, Test Track was great, The Wine and Food thing was not our thing
Monday October 20th: Downtown Disney, hard to find a parking lot, and a lot of structure going on, some great shops, but overall not really our thing
Tuesday October 21th: Universal Studios, great day!
Wednesday October 22nd: Hollywood Studios, a more that great day, Fantasmic was a more that special end of the day
Wednesday October 22nd: Premium Outlets, not that great, much shops that were not our thing
Thursday October 23rd (daytime): Animal Kingdom, good, not great! Some great rides, for the rest nothing more than a zoo
Thursday October 23rd (nighttime): Magic Kingdom, Not So Scary Halloween, a more than great night!!
Friday October 24th: flight home, was ok, a lot of turbulence

So this was the trip in a nutshell!

Much, much, much more to come!!

p.s. It was the first time, but absolutely not the last!!!!

 

[FlaggNL]

enjoying your tr so far. Was hoping to see ya at Mk the first day, but didn't happen. Perhaps, if I get some time I might post my Disneymoon tr.

Thanks! Yeah we missed each other at MK, off course we both were there... should have been fun.. so you should be there October '15 again

Hope you had a great Disneymoon! And off course would love to read your TR, but hej didn't you post earlier this week and deleted the msg? It sounded a bit sad if I remember right!

 

[FlaggNL]

Now thats enjoying life in Disney!

Ohw yeah this is how it should be Although this was Guiness, but Heineken or Budweiser was also a good one

 

[FlaggNL]

Here we go again with day 4 of our trip. I know this site and all ther TR's and PTR's mostly are about Disney. As you know we visited also Universal for 2 days including HHN. The next couple of post are again from Universal. Our full day 4 was at Universal Studios. Again a great day and we finished in the Hard Rock Cafe before leaving for the villa. No pictures from HC, but we just visited the shop and bought us some shirts. One shirt was for me very special. I looked for it a couple of years. When we were in HC Amsterdam it as sold out, and same happened in HC Paris. And guess what, I found it in HC Orlando, and even in sale So befofe please you with a lot of Universal pictures and some thoughts here is the shirt A perfect combination. HC and U2! You have to know that I am a huge huge U2 fan, so that explains a lot I guess I visited more U2 concerts over the years than Disney parks

 

[FlaggNL]

So forget about U2 and go on with the TR! Day 4 of our Florida trip and a wholeday in Universal

As you read before Sacha is crazy about the Minions, so the first ride of the was off course the Despicable Me ride!

 

[FlaggNL]

Some more pictures of Despicable Me:

After the ride there are some Minions dancing and off course Sacha wanted a picture with them

Then it was time for Transformers! A great ride! On the outside you find 2 transformers for a picture. First there was Optimus Prime and after a while it was Bumblebee, so we returned for some more pictures.

One more post for today, then some work to do! Off course will be back for more soon!

 

[FlaggNL]

Continuation of Day 4:

After Transformers we went for the Harry Potter part in Universal Studios. To be honest the ride in Island of Adventures is better but the theming in Studios is greater! I guess we were for almost 3 hours in that area! So a lot of pictures of Harry Potter!

When we were walking to Harry Potter of course we saw tha landmark of Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket. A hell of an attraction..... but will come back on that later in the posts! So first some pictures of our walk to Harry Potter.

Then we arrived at Harry Potter. The great thing is that on the outside you cannot see how big it is! You just a book and a record shop.

That's it for today folks! Much more to come since we are just in day 4 of our trip!

Feel free to comment!!

To be continued.........

 

[Obi]

Thanks! Yeah we missed each other at MK, off course we both were there... should have been fun.. so you should be there October '15 again

Hope you had a great Disneymoon! And off course would love to read your TR, but hej didn't you post earlier this week and deleted the msg? It sounded a bit sad if I remember right!

yes, I did post earlier, but after reading it later I decided to delete it. Yes, there was some sad things I wrote. I realized that this is your tr and I didn't want to derail it as it is a fantastic tr.

hopefully, the wife and I may make another trip that way and time again. If so I would definitely like to meet.

 

[mrdrift]

Thanks for sharing the Universal pictures of your trip. I just love the Harry Potter attraction, to me its the tops from any park. Can't wait for Avatar land to come and maybe give Universal a run for there money. All of the pictures are really great. Following along.

 

[prfctlyximprct]

Finally all caught up with your trip report.. I am really loving it.. you seem to be having a wonderful time and I must get myself to go to Universal one day! I love your comparisons between Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World and one day I will get to that side of the world and visit for myself! thank you so much for sharing your memories. you look like you're having a great time in all your photos and I love how many photos you took! The weather looks beautiful, gotta love those blue skies in disney! And I am soooo jealous you already have anther trip booked.. Can I come!

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Love the Minions!!! Sooooo cute! Jealous that you got to meet the Transformers. My brother is a huge fan, so I grew up with so much Transformers stuff in my life. I also HIGHLY approve of your shirt. Donald rules!

 

[FlaggNL]

yes, I did post earlier, but after reading it later I decided to delete it. Yes, there was some sad things I wrote. I realized that this is your tr and I didn't want to derail it as it is a fantastic tr. hopefully, the wife and I may make another trip that way and time again. If so I would definitely like to meet.

Hej there, thanks! Don't matter if you wanna share any thought and happenings. Of course it is sad when sad things happen, hope for you and your wife that it isn't that bad!! And no matter what, hope it goes better now! And if you are there in Oct'15 we will meet

Thanks for sharing the Universal pictures of your trip. I just love the Harry Potter attraction, to me its the tops from any park. Can't wait for Avatar land to come and maybe give Universal a run for there money. All of the pictures are really great. Following along.

Thanks, I think a lot of people agree with us that the Harry Potter part is on of the greatest things in whatever park in the planet! Let's hope that the Disney Engineers build something great in AK with Avatar land! I guess nowadays Disney has to feel something about the fact that Universal have HP. Thanks for the compliment en much more to come

Finally all caught up with your trip report.. I am really loving it.. you seem to be having a wonderful time and I must get myself to go to Universal one day! I love your comparisons between Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World and one day I will get to that side of the world and visit for myself! thank you so much for sharing your memories. you look like you're having a great time in all your photos and I love how many photos you took! The weather looks beautiful, gotta love those blue skies in disney! And I am soooo jealous you already have anther trip booked.. Can I come!

Thanks for the great compliment! We absolutely had a more than wonderful time in all the parks! And yeah you should do it for sure. When visiting WDW again try to get to Universal. Even if it's only for the HP part! I try to make the copmparisons between DLP and WDW as objective as possible, but are we as Disney lovers objective And when you finda possibility to come to this side of the ocean you absolutely have to go to DLP. Sharing the memories is great! off coruse because you all also share your memories and thoughts in all these TR's, but is also brings back our own memories and it's great to relive the trip over and over again! We took more than 1,000 pictures and it is great to share them with you all! And off course it is nice to get compliments about the quality. We have to give Ria all the credits since she took almost 95% of the pictures! The weather was marvelous this trip! No rain at all and that in October in Florida And we decided to go back to WDW in October '15. We are not finished at all in the parks! There is still so much more to see and experience! And hey, you are welcome

Love the Minions!!! Sooooo cute! Jealous that you got to meet the Transformers. My brother is a huge fan, so I grew up with so much Transformers stuff in my life. I also HIGHLY approve of your shirt. Donald rules!

Sacha is also in love woth the Minions, so she get herself one The Transformers were great and they even talked a bit (although it was prerecorded ) And thanks for the shirt compliment! Hope yo will enjoy the rest of the TR

 

[FlaggNL]

Here we go further with Day 4 of our Florida 2014 trip. Still more Universal Studios pictures and thoughts to come

We are on our way to Harry Potter and are almost there. Universal did a great thing. The build a tiny part of London with Kings Cross Station for the Hogwarth's Express. As said before you can only board when you have a hopper ticket for both parks. We didn't have that option. We could upgrade for $40 per person, and we thought that was too much this time. So maybe when we come back in 2015 we'll do the ride. Outside the Harry Potter part you find some shops like a bookshop and a recordshop. A telephone cell as you can see on below pictures

The entrance of Harry Potter is strange and tiny, but when you pass the entrance you find a complete village It took us alsmost 2,5 hours to see all and ride the big attraction.

The look from the entrance to the village of Harry Potter

The dragon fires during a couple of times a day, we didn't get it on picture!

A shop full of wants

As you can see the village has a roof. During this trip it was not necessary because of the good weather, but I guess it's great and even more crowded when it rains.

 

[FlaggNL]

Still much more pictrures of the Harry Potter park. When we were in line for the great attraction it broke down. They announced that they did not know how long it would take to repair the thing. But we are free to stay in line. And that's a big difference with DLP. There you always have to leave the line! We waited for about 45 minutes before the attraction was back on it's tracks! By the way, it is a great ride, but the one in Island of Adventures is even better!

The next couple of pics are inside the ride, during the waiting line.

Off course you can't see it on the pics, but the pictures in the newspaper are videos, just like in the HP movies

 

[FlaggNL]

And here we are with the final post of today. As you can see I mostly post 3 posts a day. There is so much more to come and don't have time to finish the TR in one day!

So here are more pictures of Universal Studios.

That's it for today! During the weekend no posts from us. On monday I will be back with more from Universal Studios. And off course 3 more days on HS, AK and NSSHP in MK during our final night!

Have a great, fantastic and magical weekend!!

 

[abzoo]

The Gringotts ride was also down a lot the day I went to Universal. When we finally got close to boarding the ride, it broke down again and we had to wait about 30 more minutes.

 

[Disneydreamer23]

Glad you had a great time can't wait to read more!!

 

[coachwnh]

My favorite movie as a teen! Loved it and still do. We actually got my son (well, Santa did ) the three movie DVD set for Christmas last year. Now he's a fan! So this is my favorite picture today!

 

[mrdrift]

All of the Universal pictures are beautiful, it really shows the details that was put in this section of Harry Potter. Since my family hasn't been yet I would like to say thanks for sharing. Now my family really can't wait to go next summer and see Diagon Alley. Following along.

 

[LauraRose]

Love how thorough your report is! You remind me of my dad in disney hahaha

 

[epcotisbest]

Still following along and enjoying the trip report. We have not been to Universal in a couple of years. Last time there was a couple of weeks before Christmas and we loved the Grinch and the parade too. Having grown up with Seuss books we both enjoy Seuss Land.
I am a fan of older U2 stuff, especially Rattle and Hum.