The Traveling Pine

 Friday, 25 Feb was our last full day in Florida. Hotel checkout was at 11am and we used every last minute of our time. We of course all slept in, probably a little too long, but made it work. Housekeeping checked on us at least twice to see if we had left yet. At precisely 11am we rolled out of our hotel room. I wanted to pop into the hotel gift shop one last time which also allowed me to give away the three one-ride express passes we didn't use from the day before. Colleen had also made these cute Platform 9 3/4 tickets to give out, but we never brought them into the park so Charlotte placed them all over the Harry Potter items in the gift shop. I didn't find any last minute items I couldn't live without, so we hopped in the car and headed towards home. We decided to stop for lunch on the way and I remembered Florida has the Mellow Mushroom. Lucky for us it was less than 10 minutes from where we were! I had a tasty mushroom pizza, Charlotte a cheese and pineapple pizza, C...

After yesterday's long, exhausting day in the parks, there was no way I was going to set an alarm. Sleeping in was a great idea and we took even longer to get going this morning than the day before. Our plan was to head right for Islands of Adventure as we were happy with everything we covered at Universal Studios the day before. The number one goal was to get on Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure since that always had the longest wait out of any ride in either park. We saw the wait go up to 180 minutes! Yikes! We got to Hagrid's and the wait was about 75 minutes. That's as good as we were going to get, so we hopped in line. The line started before even reaching Hogsmead. We were still in the Ancient Greece part of the park. We did have some entertainment with a talking fountain. There was a guy hiding somewhere with a camera and a microphone because he was having conversations with anyone willing to talk to the fountain. It was amusing, especially when he would spray water a...

 One of the perks of our hotel is getting early entry into the Universal Parks. That means we could be in the park as early as 8am! Beat the crowds! Hahahahaha....yeah right. I set an alarm just in case we wanted to get up, hit Starbucks and hop on one of the first buses. As soon as that alarm went off, it was immediately silenced and I slept for another hour. I think I eventually crawled out of bed at 7:30 or 8am, took a shower and everyone was still asleep. We all got started to get moving at 8:30 or so. Colleen wasn't feeling well, so the three of us ventured on towards Universal Studios. Our strategy for the day was to find the rides and experiences with relatively short wait times. The Universal App was great at keeping us updated. Our first stop was the Transformers 3D ride. The wait was 35 minutes when we entered the park and 45 by the time we got in line. There is a neat feature that many of the rides had called Single Rider. Your group would be broken up, but the line usua...

Our days at Universal were so full and exhausting, there was no way I could have attempted to blog while we were there!  Tuesday, the 22nd we packed up the car and made our way to Universal. We booked a room at the Dockside Inn which is an official Universal hotel, but not on the Universal grounds. Check in wasn't until 4pm, but we were able to get into our room around 2. We had a nice 2 room suite with a picnic table and enough space to keep all our snacks. Just enough space for the 4 of us. After we unloaded all our things, we hopped in the bus to head into the park. We kind of planned that Tuesday would just be a day to check out the layout of the two parks and get a bearing on what we wanted to do for the next two days. I think we came to Universal at somewhat of a less busy time of year, but you could have fooled us! Before actually entering the park, you get dropped off at City Walk which has a bunch of restaurants and gift shops. It was so incredibly crowded! We thought we...

 Today (21 Feb) was a fairly easy-going day, but still exhausting! We slept in again, because it's vacation, and finally got out of bed around 9:30. Charlotte was already up and Colleen wanted to go down to the dock to see a rocket launch, so the two of them went to check it out. Meanwhile, Ross and I cooked up some breakfast.  Once our bellies were all full and Charlotte knocked out a little more homework, we got dressed and packed up for the beach! Ross really enjoys relaxing on a beach, so we had to make sure at least one of our days included some much needed and well-deserved beach time. We got down to the beach entrance about 12:30, but they weren't allowing vehicles onto the beach for some reason. We thought it was because the beach was at capacity, but it sure didn't seem like it once we rolled onto the beach about 20 minutes later. One positive note about having to wait, is that Charlotte got more homework done. (I'm really trying to get her to finish it before ...

 Our first full day (20 Feb) in Florida was a mixed bag of activities. After sleeping in a bit Ross started making breakfast, Charlotte was doing homework, and I worked on the first blog post. We eventually got showered up and headed out to the Iron Horse Saloon where Colleen likes to listen to open mic music and hang out with some of her Florida friends.  The Iron Horse Saloon is a biker bar through and through. We definitely looked a little out of place from the regular clientele, but there was some good music to be heard. We met a few of Colleen's friends and wandered through the gift shop. Ross had a pretty tasty bloody mary too. After hanging out for maybe an hour, we decided it was time to move on to the next adventure of the day.  We made a stop at a consistent favorite, the Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens. It is a very pretty location with a lot of neat foliage to see. But the star of the show at this location has to be the dinosaur sculptures! In the 1950's some fol...

It's been quite a while since we blogged about anything! So sit back and prepare yourselves for all the details you can (or don't want to) handle! Yesterday (19 Feb) we arrived in Florida! We decided to call this trip Operation: Golden Snitch. Here's the background. When Charlotte was 11, she got her Hogwarts letter, as the kids in Harry Potter do, telling you that you have been accepted into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. COVID had been raging, so we couldn't go to Florida to see Hogwarts at Universal. So for this past Christmas, when Charlotte was 12, she received a second letter from Hogwarts letting her know that now that COVID has slowed down, Hogwarts is re-opening and she has dates for her initial orientation. She was over the moon excited and so were we! We were lucky to find military discounts for the hotel at Universal and the Universal tickets themselves. The annual military passes are cheaper than a 4-day, 2 park pass. With the flights book ...