One Day Girls Trip to Universal Studios, Orlando.

Universal Studios was quite far from our hotel in Disney’s Lake Buena Vista, so we went to Denny’s near our hotel for an epic stereotypical American breakfast, and then got a taxi up there which cost us around $50 one way ($25 each, so not actually too bad). We had an awesome taxi driver who was really chatty and lots of fun, so the journey flashed by and before we knew it we had arrived!

Straight away you can feel the difference between Universal and Walt Disney World.

While Disney is all about the magic and imagination and dreaming, Universal feels much more grown up and fun, there’s a huge strip of bars and restaurants on the way to the park entrances called ‘Citywalk’, and plenty of people mill about drinking in the bars and grabbing a bite to eat before they even enter the actual parks.

There are two parks at Universal; Universal’s Islands of Adventure® & Universal Studios Florida®.

We had a Park-to-Park ticket which allowed us to go between the two, and honestly I’d recommend this because we loved both parks so much!

We started off in the Universal Studios park, and were completely astounded and walking around wide-eyed as soon as we entered!

Also obvs all photos of me in this post are by Jasiminne…

I hadn’t been to Universal Studios since I was eleven years old, but parts of it I recognized, while others were new. I absolutely adored the Beverly Hills mock-up, and the Walk of Fame stars will make everyone on Instagram think you actually went to Hollywood 😉

Then we headed straight for the ET ride. It was just as good as I remembered…except once again, just like Disney, I forgot about the wax models.

You each sit on a bike in rows of 4, and I was on the end of our bike row, cue me leaping onto Jasiminne’s bike to try and get away from the wax models that kept appearing out of the darkness and almost touching me! Damn my weird phobias.

Next up was The Simpsons area. Although I used to enjoy watching it, I’ve never been a huge fan, and although it was all really well done, I wasn’t really fussed by it.

Jasiminne however is a HUGE fan, so we spent quite a long time in this part while she fawned over every little minute detail.

It felt a bit weird being in Hogsmeade with fake snow everywhere, bright blue sunshine, and 35 degrees celcius heat…but the small-version of Hogwarts was ah-mazing, as was the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride inside it! In fact it was so good we went on it twice.

 

I’ll try and explain it as best I can, but basically you sit sideways in a rollercoaster seat that’s inside a Cathedral style bench, and it’s a rollercoaster/simulator which takes you on a broomstick ride around Hogwarts and the main parts of the castle (including the Forbidden Forest).

Now, before you go on it there are heaps of signs everywhere warning you that you shouldn’t go on it if you’re anything but in perfect health.

I was panicking so much, because it said ‘don’t ride if you get motion sick’ ‘don’t ride if you get claustrophobic’ and a load of other things that technically apply to me.

Me over-reacting as I do totally thought I was gonna vom everywhere or die.

But it was all OK and actually it was so good that I couldn’t stop laughing and squealing with delight from the pure joy and excitement of the ride! I didn’t feel motion sick at all (I don’t usually in cars etc just on simulator style rides), and we went on again because we loved it so much.

After having a butterbeer (so delish FYI) and exploring Hogsmeade we then went on the Jurassic Park River Adventure.

This was one of my favourite rides from the day, and again we loved it so much we went on twice. It was a river raft ride and perfect for such a hot day, as you get a nice refreshing splash at the end!

Then it was the big one…the Skull Island: Reign of Kong™ ride. This was another simulator ride, but you were in a large moving jeep type of thing rather than a rollercoaster.

This was also a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed it!

The queue was pretty epic, even with our queue jump ticket we still had to wait around an hour, but it was better than the 2.5 hours that some people had to wait. Also there are a few surprises in the queue….but I won’t spoil those for you 😉

By this time it was late afternoon and we were both starving as we hadn’t eaten since our epic Denny’s breaky, so we made our way to Hard Rock Cafe for a lunch/dinner extravaganza.

It was amaze.

We both had fajitas which were just what we needed, and a really delish mac & cheese. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food at Hard Rock Cafe, and I mean, when at Universal Studios you kinda gotta go there.

We were getting really weary by this point, and after our second ride on the Jurassic Park ride we went back to Universal Studios on the Hogwarts Express, explored the San Francisco and New York areas of the park, and went on the Mummy ride just as it was getting dark.

Another long queue later and oh man was it worth it. We LOVED this ride, but it was so short 🙁 it needed to be twice as long it was so much fun!

We got off The Mummy ride just as the park was starting to close, so we raced to the shop, grabbed some tourist tat, and then made our way out to find a taxi back to our hotel.

Another day, another conquered theme park.

We did all the rides we wanted to do aside from the Fast & Furious one, and we had the best time ever! We both loved Disney, but Universal was something else. They’re so different and you can’t really compare them – you really need to do both!

Read all about spending a day solo at Walt Disney World!!