Rather than spend the entire week at Disney World, we decided to take a day to spend at Universal Orlando and the Loews Royal Pacific Resort, so we left Epcot and the Boardwalk Inn after dinner at Monsieur Paul and Ubered our way to the Loews resort.
After the upgraded room at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn, the comparatively tiny room at Loews Royal Pacific was a let-down. I suppose it would have been nicer had we gone in the opposite order, and it was quite nice compared to my usual hotels for work. W refused to sleep in one of the two queen beds with anyone, and without a pull-out sofabed, he arranged a chair and ottoman into a makeshift bed to his liking.
Our primary goal was to visit the Diagon Alley addition to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, which was not available at our last visit in 2013. With the Hogmeade and Hogwarts (Forbidden Journey) attractions available now at Universal Hollywood, we have half of the equivalent Wizarding World of Harry Potter available to us locally, so really Diagon Alley was it.
In my opinion, Universal did an even better job with Diagon Alley than they did with Hogsmeade, whch was already excellent. With the buildings built pretty high, Diagon Alley is an even more immersive environment than Hogsmeade, comparable to Cars Land in Disney’s California Adventure. Once inside Diagon Alley, views of anything outside of it are entirely blocked.
Stores and other sites from the book are present in Diagon Alley — including Gringotts Bank, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, Ollivanders (which isn’t supposed to be in Hogsmeade), the Leaky Cauldron, and other stores. There’s even a Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn Alley, a side-alley.
The Escape from Gringotts ride is the main attraction, and we got to Diagon Alley early enough (with our early entrance pass from the resort) on Saturday to ride it twice. It’s another 3D projection ride similar to Forbidden Journey (at Universal Hollywood, not in Orlando, surprisingly), themed on scenes from the 7th book of the series. The dragon features in the ride, and it’s surprisingly shorter than Forbidden Journey. I don’t know if it was a design choice or if it was a design constraint due to limited space. However, the bank was entirely immersive, and the ride was enjoyable.
A few times a hour, this dragon spouts flames.
The rest of Diagon Alley was basically a large number of shops for buying Harry Potter merchandise. J bought another wand, this time an interactive Dumbledore wand, so he could wander about the Wizarding World and wave the wand in front of various displays, activating some interactive part of the display. He covered the entire Diagon Alley, while W and Hsuan went off to the Mummy ride outside of Diagon Alley. After having some ice cream, J and I rejoined them for another ride of the Mummy.
By early afternoon, I was feeling wiped out. The week of Boy Scout camping followed by most of the week of Disney World had left my legs, hips, and knees in some pain. I think the main problem was the hike down Goat Whiskers and all the pounding my joints took, and with the rest of the campout and Disney World, I hadn’t yet had tiime to recover.
So, we spent most of the afternoon walking around Universal Orlando, seeing the Terminator show (which I slept partly through), skipping Transformers and Minion Mayhem (both of which we have at Universal Hollywood), walking through Simpsons land, riding Men in Black, and stopping by Lombard’s for some seafood for lunch. I really needed this restaurant, for the sit-down service and air conditioning.
Finally done with Universal, we rode the Hogwarts Express from Universal to Islands of Adventure. The Kings Cross station was very impressive and realistic (if unrealistically clean — unless they keep it spotless in London), and the ride from Universal to Islands of Adventure was probably pretty impressive and seemingly realistic — at least that’s the impression I got from W and J; I slept for the entire ride.
At Islands of Adventure, we hung about Hogsmeade quite a bit, getting in line for Forbidden Journey right before a big rainfall hit the area. I stayed awake for the ride, and it was done by the time we got out.
W and I rode the Dragon Challenge roller coasters, while Hsuan and J went around Hogsmeade a bit with his new wand. For security or safety, the ride staff made me take off everything (fanny pack) and empty my pockets. I was supposed to store them in the free lockers, but I gave them to Hsuan instead. Universal and Islands use free electronic lockers that lock and unlock with fingerprint identification, but Hsuan and those machines simply don’t get along. They like my fingerprints far better, and sometime during the stay at Universal, we switched from her fingerprint to mine, but I still didn’t like storing stuff in the lockers.
W and I had a good time on the roller coasters, but after the second ride, we had both had enough. All four of us rode the Flight of the Hippogriff, and by then, W and I decided that we’d not ride any more fast rides.
J wanted to hang out in the play area of Jurassic Park, so we had dinner there, and then the boys ran off to play. After I used the restroom, Hsuan went after them, and I dozed off at the entrance while waiting. When I woke up when the boys returned, J was drenched, apparently from some water battle they had had.
We tried riding the new Skull Island King Kong ride before the park closed by using the single-rider line, but after a short while, the line stopped, and announcements were broadcast about technical difficulties. After a few minutes more, another announcement was made about a possible 40 minute delay, so we left the park and returned to the hotel.
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Rather than pay a full day (or the second half of a two day admission) at the parks, while spending only part of Sunday there before going to the airport for our return, I decided in conjunction with the boys and Hsuan that we’d instead spend all of our remaining hours on Sunday at the pool. The boys wanted to swim, and Hsuan and I didn’t mind not spending the money to go back to the park for only half a day.
We had check-out at noon, but the hotel allowed us to use the gym locker room and showers to wash up before leaving. So, we spent a relaxing day at the pool, with breaks for rain and lunch at Emeril Lagasse’s Tchoup Chop. The pool itself was nice, and local ducks and ducklings sometimes went for a swim, too. We got to watch some lifeguards in training, or in job evaluation, which was a little unusual (plus, the pool was nowhere deeper than about 4’ 8”).
Around 4 PM, we left to go to the locker rooms, where we enjoyed the whirlpool room and the steam room before taking our showers, getting our luggage, and Ubering back to the airport.