USA Part Ten - Moving to International Drive - visits to Universal Studios, Wet 'N' Wild and Discovery Cove

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As we were not able to check into our hotel on International Drive until after 3pm, we decided to stick around at Disney World a little longer before going to the hotel later on in the afternoon. We checked out of our room at around 10am and left our bags at the luggage storage area before jumping onto a bus to Downtown Disney. We enjoyed a few hours playing on the games at DisneyQuest and each had another delicious hot sandwich from Earl of Sandwich before catching the bus back to the resort.

Knowing that it would be a massive hassle trying to catch buses to International Drive whilst hauling our luggage around with us, we had decided to just get a taxi, even if it would cost quite a bit more than the bus – sometimes the convenience is worth it anyway. We got our bags back and one of the staff members hailed over one of the taxis that wait around in the car park. We put our stuff in the boot and then sadly said our final goodbyes to Disney World as we drove out of the resort.

The trip to Travelodge on International Drive took about 20 minutes, and we thanked and paid the driver once we arrived before checking in at reception. We needed to wash some clothes so we spent the next couple of hours doing our laundry whilst watching TV and playing on our phones. We also took a trip down to the nearest Walgreens to pick up some cereal, milk and pop for the next few days, and also grabbed a Lynx bus pass to use to get to the theme parks over the next week. Although our hotel does offer a shuttle to Universal Studios, it sets out from the hotel at 10:35am – over an hour and a half after opening! We like to get to parks early to enjoy the shorter queues for the first hour or so, so we doubted that we would be catching this very often! The only other shuttle goes to Disney, so we would need the buses anyway to get to the Seaworld parks too.

We were up bright and early the next morning ready for a full day at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We caught the number 8 bus further up International Drive and then a 37 bus to the park, arriving just after 9am. We headed to Islands of Adventure first, getting a picture taken by one of the photographers on our way in. We had pre-purchased a photopass a few months ago after finding a really good offer online, so we took our voucher to the ‘Photoconnect’ centre just inside the entrance, where they gave us a card to wear around our necks. This would enable us to get all of our ride photos (though they don’t have that many rides that take your photos), character photos and any other random photos when walking around the park over the next 5 consecutive days, which we could then download online. We certainly made use of it over the next few days and got loads of great photos! Good job we had it really as we managed to forget our camera on this first day, hence why there are only photopass pictures – but more about our camera later…

Knowing that the crowds would all flock to ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, we instead went straight to Marvel Island, where we got a ride on the ‘Hulk’ roller coaster (cue cheesy grins on the ride picture that we got), the ‘Doctor Doom’s Fear Fall’ drop tower and the Spiderman ride with no waiting at all! Spiderman was hanging out near the ride so we also grabbed a picture with him to put on our photopass. We then had a walk through ‘Toon Lagoon’ but decided to skip the water rides as we knew how wet you get on them and didn’t fancy it this early on. Next up was the ‘Jurassic Park’ area. Now, we have been on the version of this ride at Universal Studios in Hollywood but didn’t go on it when we were in Orlando in 2011. We got DRENCHED on the one in Hollywood, but only because they shot up some jets of water on the drop, so we thought that we would watch a boat come down to see how wet the people got before going on, as we didn’t want to get soaked. A boat came down and the people on it just seemed to get sprayed a little from the aftermath of the water that was displaced when the boat hit the bottom. Sweet – we thought – let’s go on!

We reached the front of the line and were pleased to find that we would be getting a boat to ourselves, so both sat in the front row, knowing that the people that we had watched in the front row didn’t get too wet. We then went on a little journey around the world of Jurassic Park, passing various dinosaurs before going ‘the wrong way’ into a restricted area that seemed to have been savaged by much meaner dinosaurs than the peaceful ones that we had floated past. We then ascended up into the building, coming face to face with raptors and finally the big T-Rex that tries to eat you just before the big drop. Down the drop we went, ready for the bit of mist to hit us. Instead, a torrent of water hit us in the face, DRENCHING us from head to foot. WWHHHYYY?!!! We’re not too sure what happened with our boat – we think the boat may have been more front heavy with just the two of us sitting in it – but all we could do was laugh it off and not let it ruin our day! We had the picture scanned onto our cards and then continued our way around the park with our clothes clinging to us, though we dried off soon enough!

We reached the Harry Potter area, and saw that the queue for Forbidden Journey was 30 minutes – although this is normally our queue time limit, we knew that this would fly by as there is just so much to look at and you are constantly moving forward. Before we knew it we were taking our seats on our ‘enchanted bench’ before being whizzed around the ride, which was every bit as amazing as we remembered! Again we had the picture scanned onto our pass before walking over to the Hogsmeade area and having a wander around some of the shops. The ‘Dragon Challenge’ roller coaster only had a 5 minute wait showing (for some reason, this ride is ALWAYS a walk-on), so we made our way around the RIDICULOUSLY long queue line – actually being congratulated on completing the “hiking part of the challenge” by a staff member as we reached the station, which made us laugh! We had a ride on the red ‘Chinese Fireball’ dragon before running back round again for a ride on the slightly more intense blue ‘Hungarian Horntail’ version.

We had done everything that we wanted to do at Islands of Adventure for the day, so made our way through ‘Seuss Landing’ and going for one more ride on the Hulk before reaching the exit. We grabbed a bite to eat from the CityWalk area before heading to the gate for Universal Studios. Once in, we had a few more photos taken with some photographers before noticing that the queues here were a little bigger than what we were expecting - the new ‘Despicable Me’ and ‘Transformers’ rides were over 50 minutes each! Thankfully, ‘The Mummy’ ride was only showing a 10 minute wait (another one that just eats the queues up), so we went on this, which is one of our favourite rides here.

We then walked over to ‘The Simpsons’ area, where we joined the queue for the ride which was showing as 25 minutes. Unfortunately, this was more like 40 minutes by the time we got on the ride, but we both enjoyed it nonetheless. Once off the ride, we had a wander around the new expansion area, where they have built Moe’s Tavern (which looks JUST like the one from the show), a few new food places such as ‘Krusty’s Burger’, ‘Duff Gardens’ and ‘Lard Lad Donuts’, and a few statues and characters from the show dotted around. There is also a ‘Kang & Kodos’ Twirl ‘n’ Hurl’ ride, though we haven’t rode this as it just goes round in a circle whilst the cars move up and down (kind of like the Dumbo ride at Magic Kingdom.

On our travels, we got a few pictures with ‘Bumblebee’ from ‘Transformers’ and also Shrek and Donkey. Donkey was particularly chatty, calling Craig ‘Lurch’ at one point which cracked us up! We saw that an ‘Animal Actors on Location’ show was starting at 4:20pm, which was around 15 minutes away, so we got a seat to watch the show, which was adorable as usual! We didn’t really fancy queuing for anything else, and we were returning the next day anyway for ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ so we left the park (getting some photopass pictures posing with Daryl’s crossbow that was mounted on a car) and caught the buses back to the hotel.

We had a bit of a lie-in the next morning, in order to conserve our energy for the evening. We eventually made our way back to Universal Studios at around 3pm, and after seeing that the Despicable Me queue time was only 20 minutes today, we joined the line for this first. This was quite similar to the Simpsons ride, being a large simulator taking you on a journey through Gru’s laboratory and being made into one of his minions. We did find that it was a little jolty though – every time you seemed to ‘move forward’ with some speed you would ‘hit’ something and come to an abrupt stop, and the whole ride was like this. It was still pretty fun, but we both agreed that we were glad that we didn’t have to queue for long.

We had brought the camera with us today and so had every intention to actually get some pictures, but after getting a couple of pictures of the car from ‘The Walking Dead’ (one of the main themes for tonight’s Halloween event), the camera started to play up. The zoom on the camera has been playing up for a while – sometimes when we zoomed in to something, it would start recording a video instead, little things like that – but now it was just going to full zoom as soon as we turned the camera on and we couldn’t zoom back out. We suspect that a bit of sand might have gotten into the camera way back in Rarotonga which has now made its way deeper into the lens barrel and has now messed up the mechanism. We couldn’t seem to fix it, and knowing that the price of camera repairs would probably be more than the camera was worth, we decided that we may have to purchase a new camera the next day.

Thankfully, we still had the photopass to use, so we could at least try to get as many pictures on this during the day and hopefully later in the evening too. We noticed that the ‘Transformers’ ride was also only a 20 minute wait today, so we got in the line but soon heard the dreaded voiceover telling us that the ride was experiencing some technical difficulties which they were working on fixing. We waited for another fifteen minutes or so before giving up – it’s usually the case that they will close the ride if you carry on waiting for it to be fixed, so we wanted to avoid this disappointment, and instead aimed to return later in the evening.

It was now approaching 4:30pm and we knew that they would be closing the park at 5pm, but as we had tickets for the event, we could go into the holding area to wait for the park to reopen. We found the holding area by the Finnegan’s bar and sat on the kerb along with everyone else. At 5pm, we could see security start to guide everyone outside of the holding area towards the exit, until eventually the streets around us were empty apart from staff members setting up various props such as bloodied bodies strewn around. We spent the time using the free wi-fi to browse Facebook and Reddit and also checking out the map for the event. At 5:45pm – a full 45 minutes before the people outside the gates would be let in – we were able to leave the holding area and head towards the scare mazes.

Some of them were not open yet, so we followed the crowd over to the first maze – American Werewolf in London. As we were near the front of the crowd, we didn’t have to wait long before entering the large sound stage, where we passed through various scenes from the movie, such as ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’ pub, the moors and the London Tube station – all the while being attacked by werewolves that would jump out on us and coming across the bodies of victims of the werewolf. We thought it was very well done and gave us quite a few scares, leaving us ready for more!

Knowing that the ‘Cabin in the Woods’ house would be a popular one this year, we went here next. As expected, the queue was already 45 minutes and growing, so we quickly joined the queue. It was quite a long and uneventful wait, but we eventually reached the dark entrance. We passed through a wooded area and entered the cabin, which we walked through before going down into the basement and through the facility, ending of course with the chaotic elevator scene. I have to say, they really did do the movie justice with this maze – we spotted several creepy characters from the film as they jumped out at us or stared creepily out of their glass containers, such as the one-eyed ballerina and the Hell Lord with the saw blades poking out of his head.

Once out of the maze we had a walk around for a while, coming across plenty of walkers (zombies for those of you that don’t watch ‘The Walking Dead’) that were chasing people, snarling in faces and just generally being very creepy! There were also various scenes and replica props from the show dotted around, such as a campsite with the RV, the barn from season 2 and a school bus – all of which were surrounded by plenty of walkers ready to scare any passers-by!

Our next stop was the ‘Havoc: Derailed’ house, which is one of this year’s original houses (i.e. Not based on a film or show). They have used this theme in previous years and was this time based on a derailed train, from which crazy, gun-yielding ‘super-solders’ are escaping and coming after you. It was very chaotic and though not scary in the conventional sense, still made us jump quite a lot as these soldiers came out of nowhere. Surprisingly, there was only a ten minute wait for this one – we suspect that most people were getting the more popular, film-based houses done first.

The next house that we came across was the ‘Afterlife: Death’s Vengeance’ maze – another original one which was also this year’s 3D maze. We had a wait of around 30 minutes for this one, but were soon being handed our 3D glasses. This was supposed to be based on a serial killer who has been sentenced to death in the electric chair, and his victims are waiting to take their revenge in the afterlife. However, we didn’t really see much of this ‘storyline’ and as we experienced in 2011’s 3D house, it was all just really disorienting and the 3D glasses aided the actors in their scares as it was really difficult to see them coming, which I guess is a good thing for a scare maze!

We had done 4 of 8 of the mazes by this point, which we thought was pretty good going for one night. We actually have frequent fear passes, which are valid on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday event nights, so we were planning on returning several times anyway over the next couple of weeks. We decided to call it a night on the mazes as the lines were now getting quite long – we had a look at the ‘The Walking Dead’ house and the line was 50 minutes, so we figured that we would instead just head over here first next time.

As we had missed the Transformers ride earlier due to the breakdown, we returned to this ride and had to wait around 15 minutes before riding. We were both very impressed (Craig in particular as he loves the films) – the 3D effects in this are the best that we have ever experienced. The ride itself is very similar to the Spiderman ride, with moving vehicles that switch between live-action and simulator screens to give an amazing experience. It was also longer than we were expecting, which was a nice surprise, but does explain the need for such a huge building to contain the ride!

It was approaching 9:30pm and we were starting to feel a little tired, so we started to make our way back to the bus stop, passing more walkers as we went and getting a few scares from them – it’s difficult to tell between them and normal people as you walk around in the dark (especially in the more crowded areas) until they get right up in your face! Our hotel actually does a shuttle back from the park at 10pm but we stupidly hadn’t checked where the pick-up point was (we know now!) so we just got the bus back, thankfully not having to wait very long for one to turn up!

We had planned to go to ‘Wet ‘N’ Wild’ the next day, as we figured a water park would give our feet a bit more of a rest than spending a day walking around another theme park. Unfortunately as the camera was still broken and we still hadn’t bought a new one, we don’t actually have any pictures of this park, but I guess it’s just your usual generic waterpark – though not particularly as aesthetically-pleasing as some of the others that we have visited. We spent a few hours at the park, sliding down various water slides – our favourite was probably one in which you went down in a tube and down into a funnel filled with disco lights, where you then slid back and forth along the funnel until you popped out of the end. There were various other tube slides and also a body slide that ended in a large bowl, which you then slid around until you fell through the hole in the centre into a pool below. There was also a lazy river which we floated around for a few laps and a small wave pool, though nothing like the monster at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon!

All in all we had a pretty fun morning, and it was nice and quiet so we were able to ride our favourite slides multiple times before deciding to call it a day at around 1pm. We came back to the hotel (which is only a fifteen minute walk away from ‘Wet ‘N’ Wild) and got showered and changed before having a look online at our options for a new camera. Eventually, we found an amazing deal on ‘Best Buy’ for a Nikon Coolpix L820 (actually the #1 rated camera on Amazon for Point-and-shoot digital cameras) that was on sale. We were thinking that we might have to pay $250+ for a decent camera, however this one was better than most of the cameras in this price range and was on sale for $170 – bargain! Even better, it also came with a free case, which in itself would have cost another $20.

We reserved one in our nearest store then caught the bus to the Florida Mall to go and pick it up. As this just takes AA batteries we decided to also invest in a charger and some spare batteries, though they only had an expensive Energizer charger in Best Buy, so we popped over to the nearby Toys R Us (of course they would have batteries and chargers in here!) where we picked up a Duracell charger and some batteries that were on offer. Pleased with our purchases, we returned to the hotel and spent a while playing with the camera and testing the amazing zoom (30x optical zoom, which is pretty incredible). The camera is a little bigger than our last one – it’s actually more like a mini DSLR with a much bigger lens, but this just means that we’ll get even better photos!

Our day at Discovery Cove was booked for the next day. Now, when we booked this online through Attraction Tickets Direct (whom we always use for tickets now), we booked the package without the dolphin swim, as we figured that we had done it once, it costs more money and you can enjoy a day there without doing the dolphin swim anyway. However, when we received our tickets back in February, the receipt showed a non-swim package, whilst the tickets clearly stated a dolphin-swim package. We were really not sure what this meant, but decided to just see on the day if we would be getting a free dolphin swim – we weren’t going to argue if we didn’t have it but it would be a nice bonus if we did!

We caught the number 8 bus down to Seaworld, where we then got the free shuttle over to Discovery Cove. We went over to the check-in desk, handed over our tickets which were then processed and then were told that our dolphin swim time would be at 2:15pm – score! We had our pictures taken for our passes (which would also serve as our tickets for Seaworld, Aquatica and Busch Gardens over the next couple of weeks) then we were in!

Discovery Cove is an all-inclusive day, with all food, drinks and snacks included in the price, so we had held off for breakfast knowing that they had a full buffet on offer here. However, knowing that the birds in the aviary are usually more hungry right at the beginning of the day, we decided to go here first to feed them, getting some shots with our new camera as they flew down onto our hands to eat. Once we were done, we walked back over to the restaurant and enjoyed a huge breakfast of sausage, eggs, breakfast potatoes, French toast and fruit parfait, along with some orange juice to drink.

We then each grabbed a wetsuit (knowing how cold the salt water pools are that contain the dolphins and the rays/fish), locked our stuff away in a locker and went to explore the new freshwater oasis area. This consisted of a pool around an island on which several little marmoset monkeys were scurrying around. They were being fed so were particularly excited and following the keeper around, who stopped to talk to us about the monkeys and answer any questions that we had. We then swam around to a cave, where a pile of otters were sleeping behind some glass - we did later come back to find them running around but didn’t actually get any pictures of either these or the marmosets as we didn’t want to risk getting our new camera wet!

We then went to our favourite part of the park – the lovely, warm, lazy river! We had picked up a snorkel and mask so spent a while snorkelling along, looking at the various ‘artefacts’ that they have dotted along the pool floor. Once we had got bored of snorkelling, we grabbed a couple of noodles and just floated around for a while, trying various ways to balance on our noodles as we went. We then decided to brave the ray pool, so walked back over to the other side of the park and tentatively made our way into the water. It was certainly a lot cooler than the lazy river, but our wetsuits took the edge off (people that had chosen the vests instead were pretty much dithering in the shallow end) and we soon got used to the temperature once we were in. The rays were as huge as we remembered and we tried our best to not step on any as we made our way into the deeper water, where we then snorkelled around, looking at both the rays and also the hundreds of tropical fish that live in the coral reef at the bottom of the pool.

We had somehow missed the shark area last time, so we made sure to swim right to the back to the glass wall, behind which a number of large sharks were swimming around. As you are snorkelling up to this area, it’s quite hard to tell that there is actually a glass screen in between you and these giants, so I imagine it has given some people a bit of a shock to come face-to-face with them! We watched them through the glass for a while before making our way back to the shallow end. We were keen to get back into the warm water of the lazy river, so headed back there for a while, all the while keeping an eye on the time so that we didn’t miss our dolphin swim. As we passed under the aviary area, a little grey bird landed on some rocks and was chirping at us, so we stopped for a little while and got out, thinking that maybe he wanted some food. We’re pretty sure that he was a baby version of some of the other more colourful birds, but he just hadn’t got his coloured feathers yet, but he was very friendly and would affectionately peck softly at our fingers when we put our hand by him – he was very sweet! We went to get some food (consisting mainly of fruit) but when we returned, the lifeguard nearby said that he wouldn’t eat it as he only ate fish – these birds actually just liked to play and would often fetch sticks that they threw in the water for them – aww! We played with him for a little while then continued around the river, as it was coming up to our swim time.

As we were still full from breakfast, we decided to have lunch after our swim – the restaurant closes at around 3:30pm, so we thought that we would have plenty of time to get lunch after, as you are only in the water with the dolphins for around half an hour. At 2pm, we made our way over to the Starfish Cabana, where we would be given our brief and would have to sign waiver forms before our swim. We signed our forms and were shown a short video, before one of the trainers gave us a bit of a talk and offered to answer any questions that anyone had. Now this seemed to go on for a lot longer than we remembered, and it was soon approaching 2:45pm and we still hadn’t left the cabana! It turned out that the dolphins were being a bit naughty and they had to get a new group of dolphins for our session – if the dolphins aren’t willing to take part then they never force them to, they will just find a different one that does want to play!

Finally, the other trainers appeared and we were split into our groups – we had a group of eight, consisting of four couples, two of which were on their honeymoon! We made our way out to the dolphin pools and were soon introduced to our dolphin, Yoko! The next half an hour once again passed in a happy blur, but we got to stroke Yoko on her back and on her belly, give her a kiss, pose for a photo, feed her a fish and hold on for a ride from the deep end of the pool to the shallow end, all the while being given lots of information about her and the other dolphins. She also demonstrated a few tricks such as waving with her tail and making a screaming noise through her blow hole, which sounded really funny! Yoko is also one of the only dolphins that is able to stick her tongue out to the side, which she did by kind of flinging her head to the side and just letting her tongue hang out – again, this was pretty hilarious to watch!

Near the end of our session, it appears that one of the dolphins from another group was playing up and decided that she wanted to come over to our group instead! Yoko was sent off to that group instead and we were introduced to Marea. She showed us a few of her tricks (her ‘scream’ was even more funny, it sounded like a person) and we got to stroke her too as she swam past us. Finally, we watched as all of the dolphins in the groups around us jumped around the pool together in unison before Marea said goodbye in the best way that dolphins know – by splashing us with her tail!

Sadly, our dolphin interaction was over and we made our way back out of the pool. We had agreed that we wouldn’t buy any photos if we did have the dolphin swim, as we had bought these last time and they are quite expensive – we would just have the memories! By the time we were out of the pool, it had just gone 3:35pm and we had little hope of getting any lunch due to the delay at the start of the session, however we found that the restaurant was still open and had plenty of food left. We had a bit of a mix of chicken tenders, spaghetti and meatballs and seafood jambalaya, along with a chocolate cake for dessert. We ate as much as we could but had to admit defeat half way through the chocolate cake – it was incredibly rich and we were very full!

We decided not to go back into the water and instead get showered and dressed and have a walk around the park with the camera to get some more photos. We spent the next hour or so walking around, taking pictures of the dolphins, the ray pool and the lazy river before returning to the aviary to feed the birds one last time. They actually seemed more hungry and keen than this morning – we actually walked into one part and this little red parrot flew straight onto Emma’s shoulder and was just tweeting into her ear and staring at her face! He eventually ate some food but it was very funny – it was as though he had recognised her and had come to say hello! He hopped over onto Craig after and was trying to bite his ears – hence the terrified look on his face on one of the pictures, ha ha!

By the time we were done taking pictures of the birds, it was approaching 5:30pm and it was time for us to leave the park. We made our way back to the entrance and picked up the free photo that we got taken at the beginning of the day as we arrived, before catching the shuttle back to Seaworld and then the number 8 bus back to the hotel. Another perfect day at Discovery Cove, and tomorrow we had planned a long day back at Universal Studios, where we would be doing the parks all day followed by more Horror Nights in the evening – there will be pictures of the event in the next blog, I promise!

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