Trip Report From the Glory Oct 10th-17th Lots of Pictures to Come

[dallas52]

enjoying your review so far, have been on glory a couple of times. cant wait to hear more.

[Quampapetet]

[quote name='Megnolia']Thanks for the clarification! I thought I was probably making a faux-pas as I wrote that.... to us Northerners, all those parks get lumped into one vacation, so I've always thought of them together ;) I can't wait to visit Universal as well as the Disney Parks :)[/quote]

A lot of ppl make the mistake - unfortunately, some of them only find out when they're at one of the parks trying to use a ticket for the other park!

Another poster's reply also reminded me to mention that Disney also has Downtown Disney, a large eating/shopping area (including a Ghiradelli's ice cream shop!) that doesn't require a ticket to go to. One of the buildings there is DisneyQuest, which does require a ticket, and it is a mini-theme park full of virtual reality games, old video game consoles, bumper cars, etc.

Also, I forgot to mention Disney's two water parks (since I don't go to them), Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. Disney also has two mini-golf courses, regular golf, and many different hotels in three price ranges (value, moderate, and deluxe).

IMO, the best Disney park ticket to get is the Park Hopper, which allows you to switch between the four main Disney parks on the same day (otherwise with a regular ticket you can only visit one park - you can leave and go back to that park later in the day, but you can't visit both Magic Kingdom and Epcot, for example, in one day if you don't have the Park Hopper).

Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled thread.... ;)

[babies12]

Ok, I'm here at work and bored and needing more of your great review!!!!! Where are you??????

[TeknikDC2]

Ok i'm here. Sorry for the delay. The bandwith in my other photobucket account got exceded so i'm reloading the day 3 pictures to my other account until the bandwith clears up in my main one. With that said onto the recap.

[B]Day 3: Islands of Adventure[/B]

Day 3 was another early morning as we had our day at IOA to look forward to. However all of us were still way tired from the night before so we were a little slower at getting ready this morning. Becasue we didn't want to spend any extra money on food for breakfast at the parks we went to a local Walmart the night before and got some milk and some cereal as well as granola bars and some fruit so we could just eat at the hotel before we left.

Around 10am everyone was finally ready so we left the hotel and started making our trek back to the universal orlando resort. Once again the day was very hot and humid. Before long we were back in Citywalk and making our way towards the enterance of Islands of adventure where we would be spending the day.

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We quickly got into the park and i was amazed just at the entry. The port of entry is so well detailed and themed. You really feel like you just stepped into another world. There arn't any attractions in this area of the park but there are many shops.

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Our first stop for the day would be at the Marvel Superhero Island. This island is very well detailed to many of the supeheros based off of Marvel Comics such as *********, the Hulk, the X-men, Fantastic 4, ect... With Disney recently buying Marvel it will be interesting to see what Universal ends up doing with this island in the years to come.

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[TeknikDC2]

Our first ride of the day would be the Incredable Hulk rollar coaster. And man was this thing awesome. What made it even better was the 5 minute wait it was posting. If you are a coaster fanatic and love Inversions or going upside down then this ride is for you. From the launch tell the end the ride is just pure awesomeness.

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We decided not to ride the Storm Force Accelerator ride since it was basically the same as the Tea Cups at Disney. We also didn't ride Dr. Dooms fearfall since it was also pretty much the same ride as one we have back home. So we made our way thru the Island to *********.

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What can I say about *********? It was absolulty Stunning and Amazing. I don't even know how to explain the ride. From the moment you step into the cue where you walk thru the office's of the Daily Bugle tell your done with the ride its just such and awesome experiance. The ride did momentarly break down while we were in line for about 20 minutes though. But it was soon back up and going. Basically the ride is similar to Indiana Jones or Dinosaur at the Disney parks but the vehicle has more movement and you wear 3d glasses to give the effect that the characters are there in front of you. The only thing that could have made this ride better would have been if the characters were filmed in live action instead of cartoons.

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[TeknikDC2]

After ********* we were done in the Marvel Island so we started making our way to the next Island.

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That next Island would be Toon Lagoon. This island is designed to make you feel like you are in the world of the Sunday Comics from the newspaper. The lagoon name gives away to what kind of rides are here as well. Wet ones. They have a Poppie rapids ride and a Duddley Do Right Log Flume ride. Because of how early it was still we didn't feel like getting wet yet. So we pretty much passed on by since we would be coming back to do the wet rides at the end of the day. Its a nice well done area though.

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[TeknikDC2]

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The next island we came to was my favorite island. Jurassic Park. I am a big fan of the movies and the ride at Universal Studios Hollywood is in my mind the best water flume type ride out there. So I was excited to be immersed in the Jurassic Park atmosphere. Theres so many details here that you can't miss. Like the animal tracks and leif prints in the cement and all thru the island you can see the electric fences beyond the trees. Because the Jurassic Park River Adventure is a wet ride (basically the same as in Hollywood) we would also save the for the end of the day. There is also a small kid coaster there as well as a kid play area called Camp Jurassic that we never got around to checking out.

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[TeknikDC2]

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By this point we were starting go get hungry some so we grabbed some food at the Jurassic Park Discovery Center. While there we also looked around for a bit. Its designed to resemble the Visitor center from the movies and has the dinosaur skeletons in it as well. There is also a few models of Dinosaurs and they have a hatchery where you can watch a baby dinosaur break out of its shell. Kind of a cute experiance for kids. There are many other activitys in there as well.

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[TeknikDC2]

Just outside the discovery center theres a great view of the other islands of the park so I snapped a few quick photos.

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Between Jurassic Park and the Lost Contenant a new Island is currently under construction. Its going to be the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My wife and I are huge Harry Potter fans so needless to say we are very excited for this Island. Hogwarts Castle is going to house a new ride based on Robocoaster technology while the Dueling Dragons and Flying Unicorn Coasters are being rethemed to fit the area. The village of hogsmead will also be built where you can buy items mentioned in the books and movies. Hogwarts is massive standing around 200ft tall. We look forward to returning to see this when its all finished. Its said to open late spring of 2010.

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[TeknikDC2]

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Because of the Harry Potter construction the interance to the Dueling Dragons coasters is in Jurassic Park. These coaster are awesome. The que is also amazing and it will be interesting to see how that changes with it being rethemed to Harry Potter. We first rode the Fire dragon which was awesome. However they didn't have a sinced quit right with the other coaster so we were slightly ahead of the other train. We then got back in line and rode the Ice Dragon which was my favorite of the two and my new favorite inverted coaster anywhere. They also synced us perfectly on this ride so the near misses with the other train were so awesome and scary. Both trains we rode in the front seat as thats the only way to do it on an inverted coaster.

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[TeknikDC2]

After Dueling Dragons we headed into the Lost Contenant Island. With Harry Potter taking over Dueling Dragons and the Unicorn coasters the only the Lost Contenant has left is 2 shows. We aren't really show people so we decided to skip them. However we did look at some of the area and the lost contenant is very well themed. Too bad it doesn't have much else going for it.

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We finally came to the last Island of the park. Suess Landing. This island is themed to the world of the Dr. Suess books. And they did an amazing job with it. There isn't a strait line anywhere and you actually feel like your in the books. its very very well done. The area is mostly for kids so all the attractions are built with them in mind.

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[TeknikDC2]

Our first ride here was the High in the Sky Suess Trolly ride. This isn't really anything special. It takes you on an overhead view ride of Suess landing. However its themed to the Star Bellied Snitchs which was my favorite Dr. Suess book so I had to ride it. The views were great but I would avoid it unless you have small kids.
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[TeknikDC2]

We then made our way to the Cat in the Hat Dark ride. Wow this ride was great. It was my guilty pleasure of the trip. I don't know why I liked it so much but it was so much better then most of the Dark rides that Disney offers. If you have kids or not this is a must ride if you go to Islands of Adventure.

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Suess Landing also has a marry-go-round and a dumbo style spinner but we have those back home so we passed on them. We were now done with Suess Landing so we decided to start heading back to Jurassic Park and start hitting out the wet rides before we went home. However before we left Suess Landing we ran into the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat.

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Once back in Jurassic Park we made our way to the River adventure. Like I said earlier the hollywood version is my favorite wet flume ride ever. The Orlando one is just as good however they are slightly different. I still think the Hollywood one is better because its got more dinos, is slightly longer, and has better scenes. However the drop seals the deal on both rides and this one is great as well. We were really suprised that we didn't even get wet on this ride though. One thing we found kind of cheap that Universal did though is all the major rides have free lockers you can use. However all the wet rides you had to pay for the lockers. Kind of a cheap money maker if you ask me.

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[TeknikDC2]

After the River Adventure we went back to Toon Lagoon and to our next wet ride Dudley Do Right's Ripsaw Falls. A thing you need to know about the Toon Lagoon wet rides is if you don't want to get wet then DO NOT ride them. Cause you don't only get wet on these things. You get completly soaked. Dudley do right is a good Flume ride. Its not the best by any means though. The show scenes in it really seem to be lacking. However the drops on this ride are the best i've ever experianced on a log flume. Yest even better then Splash Mountain. The main drop is taller, steaper, and faster which means you get completly drenched when your done. The drops on this ride are what makes it great.

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Now that we were soaked we made it to our final ride of the day. Popeye and Blutos Barge Ridge Rapids. This is the best Rapid ride I have ever been on. The point of Rapid rides is to get you wet. I don't know why people can go on these and think they will stay dry. Dudley got us soaked. But popeye go us drenched. If there were any dry parts left on us from dudley there weren't anymore. I don't even think ponchos would have kept you dry on this thing. This is a very good ride and easily the best rapid ride out there.

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By this time now we were completly soaking wet. With how high the humidity was we wouldn't be drying very quickly ether so we decided to call it a day and start the long, wet, miserable walk back to the hotel.

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[TeknikDC2]

It was around 4pm when we left IOA. The park was open that day tell 7 and i really wish we would have had a chance to reride many of the rides there. However we should have thought of that before we were soaking wet. Cause once we were wet we were done. It was a crappy feeling to be in wet clothes lol. Overall IOA is alot of fun and the themeing there rivals Disney and in some areas was better. You can't do the Universal Resort without going to both parks. Dont even try it. Make the time to visit both Parks on seperate days if you plan on going to Universal Orlando. I look forward to going back sometime soon after Harry Potter Opens to experiance it all again.

Once we were back to the hotel we figured we were already wet so we might as well go swim. So we changed into our swimsuits and went down to the pool for a little while. I was suprised that for how ghetto our hotel was the pool was actually pretty decent.

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[TeknikDC2]

After swimming and getting ready for the night we were straving. We didn't know what we wanted though so we headed out to International Drive to see what we could find. While driving around we found this upsidedown building which is some sort of museum or something. It was really cool to see and the pictures don't do it justice.

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For dinner we ended up choosing a Chicago food resaurant called U.N.O.'s. The food was really good but the service wasn't great. We were there for like 2 hours. Our food took forever to come and we didn't even get all the food that was supose to come with our orders. Yeah they were busy but they couldn't be so busy to mess up everything so bad. Oh well.

Rachael had 4 free movie passes to an AMC theater that were going to expire while we were on the cruise. So we decided to go to a movie that night to use them before they did. We could have gone to the AMC at Citywalk but we didn't want to make that walk back to Citywalk from our Hotel and because HHN was going on parking would be $12. So we drove back up to Downtown Disney and saw the movie Couples Retreat at there AMC theater. The movie was pretty good and funny.

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It was past midnight when the movie was over so we headed back to the hotel to get a good nights sleep and get our things packed as we would be heading out in the morning to head to Port Canaveral and board the Carnival Glory for our 7 day Cruise.

[AndrewD65]

Awesome review so far.. The parks can be tiring.. My girl friend and I did both parks in one day for my birthday and what a rush.. But we live 45 minutes away so we can go back anytime.. I am looking forward to the new opening at ioa, should be very interesting..


Looking forward to more of your review, can't wait to see the picture from the cruise..

[TeknikDC2]

Wow i'm suprised with how many people were waiting for the last update and there is only one comment. Oh well. Keep them coming everyone as today I finally start the actual Cruise portion of this Trip Report. Enjoy.

[B]Day 4: Embarkation Day[/B]

The Day had finally arrived for our cruise to begin. We woke around 10am and got ready for the day. Kiera and I walked down to the Hotel lobby to checkout while Tyler and Rachael finished getting there things packed and ready to go. One thing I need to complain about with this Days Inn. I booked the hotel back in June on Days Inn's website. They had the option where if you "Buy Now" you will save 15%. So thats what I did. Well apperantly Buy Now doesn't mean Pay Now. I don't know where I could get the two confused. So that was a blow of an expense that I had thought got paid 4 months earlier. Oh well we were happy to leave that hotel. As I said in the first post I don't recommend it to anyone. Unless your brave and just looking for a cheap place to crash while your at Universal. Then it will work out just fine for you.

We soon had the car loaded up and were soon on our way to Port Canaveral to board the Carnival Glory for our 7 day Eastern Caribbean Cruise. Don't forget you quarters cause there were a few Toll Roads on the way out to Port Canaveral. The drive was nice and somewhat scenic. It took about an hour to get from our Hotel to there. We soon saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time ever and off in the Distance we saw our ship. The excitment was really building now as we passed it to go drop our car off at Budget.

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After dropping the car off Budget has a shuttle that took as strait to our Terminal. We got there right around 1ish. I was very suprised at how quickly the line moved. Even more suprised how short it took once we were inside the building tell we were getting our Sail and Sign cards and were heading to board the ship. On our last cruise out of Long Beach on the Pride this process seemed like it would never end. Props to Port Canaveral for being on top of things and getting us thru quickly.

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[TeknikDC2]

Finally the time had arrived. We were stepping foot onto another Carnival ship and more importantly another long awaited cruise would soon be starting. By the time we were on the ship we were already starving. However since we were told our rooms were already ready for us we decided to go drop off our carry on bags first. Our room was on the Empress deck in room #7345. Rachael and Tylers room was two down from us in #7353. On our cruise on the Pride Kiera and I had a balcony room. For this cruise we wanted to do it as cheap as possible so we just got an interior cabin. We thought it was going to be way way small. However we were very suprised to find how big the room actually was. Not bad at all. I just wish I would have remembered a power inverter since the rooms only have one outlet.

After getting settled in a little we meet back up with Tyler and Rachael and headed up to the Lido deck for lunch. I forgot how much I missed Carnivals food. There grill items still taisted amazing. Yum. After lunch we walked around for a little bit before we heard the announcement for the Muster drill coming up soon. So we went back to our rooms to relax a little until the call would come. Once it did we grabbed the life vest and went down to our Muster station for the briefing. It was soon over and we would be leaving for the start of our cruise in a matter of minutes.

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One thing I had to do before we headed back to our room was make a phone call to Hotwire before we lost Cell service. When I booked the cruise I booked it with hotwire because they were giving $200 of onboard credit with "all" cruises booked within a certain time. When we were in the room before the muster drill I pulled up my account on the tv and saw the credit wasn't there. So I called hotwire and asked what was going on. Well apparently that deal didn't apply with the Early Savers rate. Even though I read all the fine print everywhere for it and the email I printed off said we were elegible for it. Anyways the guy who I talked to refused to give it to me since I was booked the Early Saver rate. So congrates Hotwire. You just lost yourself a Customer who has booked a few hotels and 2 past cruises thru you.

As we were pulling out of the port we meet up again with Tyler and Rachael and the back of the ship to watch the sail away. It was fun watching the land move past us as we left the US for our wonderful cruise. Off in the distance we could see the Nasa buildings. We also saw a sea turtle floating in the water and the beautiful Florida beaches.

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[TeknikDC2]

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We chose to do the Early dinning on this cruise because on the Pride we found with late dinner that would get on the ship after the port days and we would have to still wait forever for dinner to come. So this time we tried the early dinner. This was what I had been looking forward to the most. I love food and Carnival has excellent food. Each night I would typically order 2 starters, 2 main dishes, and desert. Tonight I took it easy though with just having some fish and a ceaser saled as my starters and the flat iron steak for dinner with the cream brule for dessert. Sorry but i'm not one to take food pictures lol.

After dinner we went back to the top deck to stroll for a little while. at the back of the ship there was a strom behind us a distance away. Lightning was happening every few seconds so that was really cool and interesting to watch. So I set my camera and timer and tried to get some shots of what we were watching. I also got a decent one of the sunset.

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[TeknikDC2]

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Since we had time to kill before the welcome aboard show we wondered up to the front of the ship to try to find the mini golf. We had some fun just messing around killing some time instead and just trying to get a feel for the ships layout.

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[TeknikDC2]

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I can't remember why but next we went back to the rooms. Maybe it was because we wanted to see what towel animal we got this evening. Or cause rachael wanted her camera. I can't remember.

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Before we headed down to the show we had to make a stop at the place we stopped at probably 5 times a day. The ice cream machine. We love soft serve ice cream so that is one of the huge highlights for us. We even bring our own candy and stuff from home to put toppings on it.

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After getting the ice cream we made our way down to the Amber Palace to stake out our seats for the show that evening. We watched Game Show be played as well as a round of bingo before the Welcome aboard show began.

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[TeknikDC2]

The show began and we watched as the almost naked (ok not really) dancers did there thing on the stage. They then did a part where they pick people out of the audiance to come up and participate. The cruise director specifically warned to not try to get the people to pick your friend because they will pick you instead. Well my wife Kiera obviously didn't liston to that part cause when they were picking people she tried getting them to pick Rachael. And so subsequently she got picked instead to go up. So there she was. Up on stage not knowing what it is she would have to do.

I do have to comment though that it was always funny to see people reactions when we would say we were from Utah. And the reactions were no different here lol. Its like people think we are in a bubble our couldn't belive we would be around so much alcohol or where our other wives were lol. Sorry to break it to most people but we are somewhat normal too lol.

For the routein Kiera had to do a dance thing with 3 other people. It was pretty funny and i'm glad that she actually got into it and had fun. The guy next to her was hilarous with his dancing lol. I don't know if I could take pictures or not. But my wife was on stage so I didn't care.

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Kiera did a great job and I was very proud of her cause I could never do something like that lol. For her participation she won a bottle of Champeign. Yep thats just the perfect gift to give to one of those Crazy Mormons from Utah who doesn't drink Alcohol lol. So needless to say the bottle sat in our room the whole week. I will tell what we did with it at a later time. But that didn't stop us from at least having some fun with it for pictures.

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One thing about the early dinner was it doesn't replace the starving point of the day lol. It just delays it. By the time the show was out and midnight was rolling around I was already hungry again. So we went and got some Pizza (and more Ice Cream) wich would become a tradition each night of the cruise for us.

By now we were tired and ready to go to bed. So we said goodnight and headed back to our room for the night. Unfortunatly we would have another early morning the next day because we would be getting into our first Port of Call in Nassau, Bahamas. We will be there for only around 6 hours and arrive around 8:30 in the morning. When well we ever get our chance to sleep in?

[AndrewD65]

So far so awesome, love the pics and the story line.. can't wait for more.

[jeniferlyn]

Awesome review!!!!! Keep it coming...and thanks for taking the time to write such a wonderful, detailed review.