Sarahbelle341
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2014
With several Disney vacation under our belt and feeling a tad frustrated with the rising prices and construction delays we opted to explore Universal Studios and SeaWorld this trip. We stayed at a lovely offsite hotel suit for a steal that had a free breakfast buffet every morning. We bought 4 day one park tickets for Universal and one day tickets for Sea World.
Our travelling party is consists of a super excited 6 year old boy, a thrill seeking teen boy with Down Syndrome and Celiac, my wonderful but hard of hearing hubby, and me a chubby chick prone to motion sickness.
We opted to explore SeaWorld our first day. We enjoyed the One Ocean show, the Pets Ahoy show, seeing the manatees, and seeing the penguins a lot. We ate lunch at Voyagers Smokehouse and they did a great job with preparing a safe gluten free meal. We enjoyed the refillable mugs especially the ICEES. Overall we thought SeaWorld was a great park and very underrated.
Islands of Adventure. The big boys rode Dragon Challenge and loved it. The Jurassic Park section was incredibly well done and such a big hit with both of the boys. Blutos Bilge Rat barges were fun for both of the boys and they got soaked! We aren't big Harry Potter fans but the section seem very well themed and very similar to the movies we have seen. Spiderman was a big hit as was the entire Seuss Landing section with our 6 year old. Mythos is incredibly well themed and reasonably priced. There are a lot of gluten free options at Mythos even dessert!
Universal Studios- We ate lunch at Finnegans and were really impressed with the food for the price. The big hits were the Mummy, Minion Mayhem, Simpson's ride, and the Woody Woodpecker kids coaster. Hubby said Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket was a tight fit and not that enjoyable. The big pink donut was my six year old's dream come true and he and his dad ate the whole thing!
Citywalk-we loved the moving walkways to the parking garages and found the Universal's security process was a lot more streamlined than Disney. Margaritaville was yummy and loads of fun. The volcano nachos were huge and yummy! Bubba Gump Shrimp was good as well and had a decent amount of gluten free options.
Overall we really enjoyed our trip to Universal and plan to visit again soon. Univeral has much better affordable table service options and I really like the refillable mugs. Their app is more user friendly too. Disney's parades are still a cut above Universal in my opinion and the night time shows at Disney seemed much better than Universal's Cinematic spectacular to me. However the walkways at Universal weren't nearly as crowded, many of the rides were way better, the lines were shorter, the refillable mugs and food a much better value, and the characters were far more accessible. I did miss having more family rides especially slower moving boat rides for the whole family but found the street shows to be a fairly good tradeoff.
Our travelling party is consists of a super excited 6 year old boy, a thrill seeking teen boy with Down Syndrome and Celiac, my wonderful but hard of hearing hubby, and me a chubby chick prone to motion sickness.
We opted to explore SeaWorld our first day. We enjoyed the One Ocean show, the Pets Ahoy show, seeing the manatees, and seeing the penguins a lot. We ate lunch at Voyagers Smokehouse and they did a great job with preparing a safe gluten free meal. We enjoyed the refillable mugs especially the ICEES. Overall we thought SeaWorld was a great park and very underrated.
Islands of Adventure. The big boys rode Dragon Challenge and loved it. The Jurassic Park section was incredibly well done and such a big hit with both of the boys. Blutos Bilge Rat barges were fun for both of the boys and they got soaked! We aren't big Harry Potter fans but the section seem very well themed and very similar to the movies we have seen. Spiderman was a big hit as was the entire Seuss Landing section with our 6 year old. Mythos is incredibly well themed and reasonably priced. There are a lot of gluten free options at Mythos even dessert!
Universal Studios- We ate lunch at Finnegans and were really impressed with the food for the price. The big hits were the Mummy, Minion Mayhem, Simpson's ride, and the Woody Woodpecker kids coaster. Hubby said Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket was a tight fit and not that enjoyable. The big pink donut was my six year old's dream come true and he and his dad ate the whole thing!
Citywalk-we loved the moving walkways to the parking garages and found the Universal's security process was a lot more streamlined than Disney. Margaritaville was yummy and loads of fun. The volcano nachos were huge and yummy! Bubba Gump Shrimp was good as well and had a decent amount of gluten free options.
Overall we really enjoyed our trip to Universal and plan to visit again soon. Univeral has much better affordable table service options and I really like the refillable mugs. Their app is more user friendly too. Disney's parades are still a cut above Universal in my opinion and the night time shows at Disney seemed much better than Universal's Cinematic spectacular to me. However the walkways at Universal weren't nearly as crowded, many of the rides were way better, the lines were shorter, the refillable mugs and food a much better value, and the characters were far more accessible. I did miss having more family rides especially slower moving boat rides for the whole family but found the street shows to be a fairly good tradeoff.
