Trip Report Will it ever stop raining? Our June 2017 trip

Hi, all!! I've finally had a chance to start going through my photos and thought I would get started on my trip report! For those of you not familiar, here is my pre-trip report:
Adventure is out there...June 2017
If you don't want to read the PTR, here is a brief synopsis before I get started:
Who: Me (Amy), DH (Brian), DS Logan (14), DD Lily (12), and DS Owen (9)
When: June 2-17, 2017
Where: Universal Studios (Hard Rock Hotel), Disney (Art of Animation), and SeaWorld

For those of you who followed along with the live portion of my PTR, I apologize that some of the photos will be the same. I'm too lazy to go back and remember which ones I used!

I experienced one of the longest days of my life on Friday, June 2!! We left Dayton, Ohio before 5am.

Neither one of us drinks coffee, but we definitely needed some caffeine to start our morning! We stopped for the best Coke in the world!!

McDonald's!!
We had a little delay in Cincinnati because I-75 was closed both directions and we had to take a little detour.
We waved @LisaBelle and @21stamps and any other Cinci friends as we finally drove over the bridge and entered Kentucky!

We made sure to get past Lexington before morning rush hour, and stopped in Richmond for breakfast.

The kids had never had Chick fil A for breakfast, so we had to correct that!

 

[TheMouseFan]

I can't say anything about someone not liking Harry Potter (the books I love, the movies are just okay) when I feel the way I do about Star Wars. I've never understood why people love Star Wars so much. My husband loves all of them and I just know he's going to drag me all through the Star Wars land at HS when it's complete

But at least you'll be at Disney! Maybe you can just ditch him and check something else out!

 

[gdisneyfans]

Love that you all wore Minion t-shirts If I asked my husband and daughter to wear anything matching, I would get the -

 

[TheMouseFan]

Love that you all wore Minion t-shirts If I asked my husband and daughter to wear anything matching, I would get the -

I'm lucky, they are all pretty good sports about that kind of thing!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Brian had knee surgery this morning and my mom has the kids, so I figure I'll use this time while he's sleeping off the anesthesia to work on my report more!

We had just left IOA and were heading to Royal Pacific for brunch. We walked because we were short on time and didn't want to wait on any other form of transportation.




They had a standard breakfast buffet. It was tasty! They also had POG juice!!

We had an issue with Owen stuffing as much food as he could into his mouth right as the characters were approaching! Not sure what his deal was that morning!!

A farting noise was made, and Owen was blamed!!

Then, as Bart was approaching our table, the attendant yelled across the room to "watch the one in green, he has a gas issue!" It was really funny!



As you can see in the previous pics, there were not many people in the restaurant! We had fantastic interactions with the characters because of that!
Homer was next, and he just stood there for awhile before the kids noticed him!

I'm sure the finger pointing in these next pictures had something to do with farting!


Then I was having trouble getting my camera to focus, so this is what I got:

Gru grabbed Lily's braid as soon as he approached us.




They insisted that we get a family pic since we all had Minion shirts on!

Overall, we had a fantastic experience at this meal and would definitely recommend it to others!!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We then took a water taxi back to the parks.






Once back at Universal Studios, I took Logan and Lily to ride Rip Ride Rockit, and Brian took Owen to meet Megatron. Somehow, I failed to get any pics of Rip Ride Rockit before we rode it.

Then Optimus Prime came out, but he didn't want to wait in line again.

We decided to ride Transformers since it was right there!


We all enjoyed it! Then we made our way over to Revenge of the Mummy.





We enjoyed that one too!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then we stopped to do a little shopping on the way out of the park. We saw Bumblebee on the way out.

The reason we left, was to go back to Hard Rock to change into faster drying clothes so that we could ride the three water based rides at IOA. Once back, we hopped on Jurassic Park River Journey first.
















We enjoyed ourselves, and didn't get too wet, but no one was asking to ride again!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Notice the sky!!
Next up was Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls.









No on ride pics, as I was specifically told no pics, even with no flash!
This one is like Splash, I enjoyed seeing the sets, but I still don't like getting wet on rides!!

 

[TheMouseFan]

A few pics on the way to Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges:











We definitely got wet on that one!!
We then returned to Hard Rock to dry off and change clothes again.

 

[amjt660]

So Brian had a knee surgery requiring anesthesia eh?
Just curious what he had done
I have had 3 ACL reconstructions (2 RH and 1 LH) so I feel his pain
Obviously he was able to walk around WDW and USF with a wonky knee (?)
Hope he feels better soon.

Max

 

[TheMouseFan]

We decided to take a water taxi back to the parks after we had changed and rested awhile. This was part of the landscaping at Hard Rock:

We headed to ET Adventure first.








It was corny, but we couldn't not ride it!!
Guess what was happening when we emerged, yep, it was pouring!
We were getting hungry, so we ran to the first available place. Mel's Drive In. I wish we could go back and make another choice!! It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good either!
The kids enjoyed their "shakes". They were really just soft serve ice cream in a cup with a straw thrown in!

Looks like the boys all shared chicken fingers and fries, Lily had mac and cheese, I had a chicken sandwich, and we got some onion rings to split.

Really pathetic chicken sandwich:

I had already removed the lettuce and tomato because they didn't look good, and I added some ranch dressing which made it edible!

 

[TheMouseFan]

So Brian had a knee surgery requiring anesthesia eh?
Just curious what he had done
I have had 3 ACL reconstructions (2 RH and 1 LH) so I feel his pain
Obviously he was able to walk around WDW and USF with a wonky knee (?)
Hope he feels better soon.

Max

He has severe osteoarthritis in both knees. He had meniscus surgery in December on his left knee, which helped for a few months. Then he tore that same meniscus again. So they went in and repaired that again today and performed micro fracture surgery to try to help get some cartilage regrowth. We are just trying to put off knee replacement as long as we can! In December, the surgeon told me that the inside of Brian's knee looked like it belonged to a 60+ year old instead of his true 43 years! He was in a lot of pain from all the walking, but he refused to let me get a wheelchair or anything. He just loaded up on the naproxen!

 

[Tuvalu]

Seeing the city street pics at Uni made me miss New York Street at DHS. . I may have to visit Uni just to see the facades.

Mel's Drive In wasn't so good 15 years ago either....although I am all in favor of soft serve "shakes" with a straw!

 

[TheMouseFan]

This time, we were able to mostly wait out the rain while we were eating dinner. It was just a slight drizzle when we left, but it did pick up a little again before tapering off. The kids decided they wanted to do Men In Black, so that is where we headed.
Brian was intrigued by Springfield.













We, as a family, decided not to ride the Simpsons ride because of its reputation for making people feel ill, but we did enjoy walking through!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Seeing the city street pics at Uni made me miss New York Street at DHS. . I may have to visit Uni just to see the facades.

Mel's Drive In wasn't so good 15 years ago either....although I am all in favor of soft serve "shakes" with a straw!

I also miss the Streets of America in DHS!
The kids certainly didn't mind, just not what I call a shake!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Logan was the one who suggested this next pic:

Owen didn't realize until afterward that Logan was suggesting that the two of them were "stupid"! He eventually thought it was funny!



I really stink at any and all shooting games, and this one was no different! Needless to say, this was not one of my favorites!!
The good thing about the rain was that it cleared the park out pretty quickly. This was right after exiting MIB:

The last thing we wanted to accomplish before leaving for the night was the Jimmy Fallon ride. We had plenty of time, so Lily requested another run through of Diagon Alley.



The kids thoroughly enjoyed this interaction:

 

[TheMouseFan]

Lily wanted to check out the Money Exchange:



She wasn't really happy to learn that you could only get $10 and $20 exchanges. She definitely wasn't willing to spend her own money for it, and I would have done $1 or maybe even $5 for all the kids if it had been offered, but I wasn't going to do $10. She didn't seem too upset!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We then headed to Jimmy Fallon.









The virtual queue thing was kind of a mess! Lots of people were really confused and made it difficult for everyone else! It was an okay ride.
Then we headed over to CityWalk to look around.


Not a flattering pic, but I will include it anyway @amjt660 ! Brian asked to get a pic of me, so I stood there and smiled, and stood there, and stood there, so as I start to ask him when he is going to take the picture, he takes the picture! He claims he was waiting for the lettering to be where he wanted it!!





Brian and I had another stupid argument, so we decided it was time to head back and go to sleep!!

Recap: Day 3 of rain on this trip!

 

[TheMouseFan]

So not really trip related, but I was getting something out of the bag I took to the hospital with me today and a Magicband went flying! Apparently, I didn't totally unpack after our trip. I said, "Oh, I want to go back so bad!" Brian said,"I do too!" I think I have him hooked!!

 

[amjt660]

Thanks for the tag
it is a good picture of the universal globe

I hope the surgery was a success and that Brian recovers well

I have been told that I am a candidate for a replacement sometime in the future but right now I just really limit high impact and I am okay

Max

 

[Matt and Kelly]

Who knew you you could do character meals at universal too!
Wishing Brian a speedy recovery. And maybe we will be seeing another pre trip report soon!