Up enthusiastically early for a Friday as there was a welcome meeting with the Virgin Reps, which we usually don’t bother with. Meeting was at the Enclave Suites a short walk from our hotel. This was a complete waste of time as the Rep was just there to answer questions etc. Not even the hard sell!
Not all was lost as our morning turned into a bizarre adventure to the so called worlds biggest McDonald’s on International Drive. We ordered what we thought was a Sausage McMuffin, which turned out to be a weird sickly sausage and pancake sandwich? It might be the biggest McDonalds, but not the best. The only decent thing was the the exit sign!
Making our way back to the hotel playing the 80’s classic arcade game frogger with the traffic – We’re both very good at looking the wrong direction and walking out in front of cars! Visited some of the gift shops, popped into Walgreens for some essential supplies.
Along we went to wet and wild with our Flexticket vouchers from Virgin, which have scant information about what to do other than going to guest services with photo ID and voucher. Guest services were closed, so we get in a line – get shouted at for being in the wrong line and shouted at again for attempting to take a bag in without a security check! Dear Virgin, we’re on holiday – we don’t want to be messed around by your voucher system!
Hotdog has never done a water park, first up, Brain Wash – we came off this laughing like little kids. Hotdog wanted to do the Bomb Bay – but was a little nervous about the height. We made our way over to The Storm – Hotdog rode it and I watched – after getting off The Storm Hotdog clucked like a chicken at me for not wanting to do it.
Next up – Bubba Tubs! For some reason we both got vertigo about half way up and had to embarrassingly make our way back down, so we went on the lazy river instead and embarrassed ourselves, even more, when trying to get into the tubes!
Headed over to the Black Hole – Hotdog was up the stairs with his double tube like a rocket, poor me was suffering from vertigo again, but managed to get to the top. A word of advice, avoid looking through the gaps!
We walked back to the Brain Wash ride and watched people doing the Der Stuka and the infamous Bomb Bay! Hotdog decided it was time to climb those stairs, fight his vertigo like a true soldier and do the drop. He got to the top almost shaking with adrenaline – there were five people in front of him – so plenty of time to chicken out, but before he knew it he was in the bomb and the door was closing – no going back now! The only way he could describe the slide was like being dropped out of an elevator and having your bottom spanked all the way down. We did a few more rides, then made our way back to the hotel.
Around 4pm we walked to universal studios – our intention was to get there for lockdown in the Halloween Horror Nights holding area inside the park. No such luck – we found a very long line for tickets and dreaded voucher exchanges. We so wished we had proper tickets and not vouchers. Next time We’ll buy all our tickets direct and not bother with reps as vouchers are just a pain in the you know what!
Finally, we got in and there were zombies everywhere – I was an easy target for them much to the amusement of other people! Feeling a little confused we headed for the Transformer Ride, which we walked on. It was out of this world! There were quite big lines for the horror houses so we did rides instead – it was better than having an express pass!
The wait for the Evil Dead house was 15 minutes so we decided to give it a go. The horror houses are based on the films and are walk through sets in the studios – The Evil Dead house was very scary and in true Scooby Doo style we were leaping in the air. We decided it was time for a beer and then spotted no wait for the despicable me – so went for it!
After a beer and a glass of wine we visited a few shops in City Walk, then headed back to the hotel in a taxi as we had done so much walking!
We decided to eat at Red Lobster – the food and service was great. I had seafood linguine and Hotdog ordered Mahi Mahi, a fish he first tried on our honeymoon in St Lucia.
Got into our room, poured a Bacardi and collapsed, day one done!