We got four day park hopper tickets. So On our third day we broke things up by going to the water park Volcano Bay. I did not take ONE picture. But we had a great time. It was a nice relaxing break from the crazy of the other parks. It's a very nice water park. The wave pool is huge and has a sandy beach. There are a zillion chairs everywhere. We worried about not getting chairs but that was crazy because there a ton and we never actually sat. The men and the girls did a lot of the slides. I hung with Will Holden a lot in the kid splash park area. I love that because he played forever and I sat in a chair. They have two lazy rivers that are fun - one is normal and one has waves.
Every night we ate on the City Walk. This is an area of restaurants and stores right outside the parks. Honestly this part was easier than Disney because it's all together.
I called and made reservations for each night. They have a number you can call (or you can do it online) and a lady helped me get all our reservations. Since we had 9 - I couldn't do it online. We ended up making reservations for tables of 4 and 5 at the same time for each place. But every single night they gave us a table for 9 so it worked great! But I HIGHLY recommend making reservations. It was almost impossible just to walk up and get in.
We just ate lunch in the park each day - nothing to write home about. I wanted to eat in one of the Harry Potter restaurants but we have picky eaters who weren't excited about them. The taco truck in Simpsons was good. We ate there twice. And the water park actually had decent food - I got a veggie wrap and it was super fresh and good.
I got this fanny pack before we went and it was perfect. I never had to take it off (I might have had to if I rode Hulk or velocicoaster) and it fit great on the rides with me. They have lockers that you have to put bags in for most rides and it seemed like a huge hassle to me. We got away with not carrying much.
Our tees came from Target and Jane.com.
The last day we were there was a Saturday and it was SOOOOO hot and extremely crowded. We did not get express passes that day and we really regretted it. We went to Universal early that morning and did as many rides as we could before people got there.
Once we started having to wait in lines - and it was SO hot - we were over it.
We rode what we could and we left in the early afternoon and went back and let the kids swim. It was a nice break. Then we showered and got ready to go eat.
Love this group of kids. Poor Will Holden and all the girls. They are so sweet to him.
Mom and Dad going to dinner!
It was Laurie and Steve's anniversary that night. Their anniversary always falls on Fall break and so they almost always spend it with us on vacation somewhere. ha!
The last night we ate at Big Fire. We would all say that was our best meal. The food was really good!
The kids got table side S'mores and they loved it.
We adults got other desserts. And they were all good.
We ate at Mythos the first night. It is in Universal. It's Mediterrenean food. I really liked it. I'm not sure anyone else liked it as much as me. Emily and I shared some hummus that was REALLY good.
The second night we ate at Toothsome - this big chocolate factory. I would say it's like a cheesecake factory as far as menu goes. We didn't have reservations until 8:30 that night. We were EXHAUSTED by the time we ate and it was super slow. So we were eating dinner at like 10 and nearly falling asleep in our plates. But I will say that Laurie and I both got flourless chocolate cake that I'm still dreaming about. They are famous for milkshakes and the rest of our families got that.
The third night we ate at Cow fish which has burgers and sushi. It was really good and we had the best service. We all either like burgers or sushi so we liked it a lot.
Sunday morning we were up early and headed back to the airport. We had no trouble getting an uber - it came right away. We got home by noon which I loved because I had the rest of the day to unpack, do laundry and grocery shop before a busy work week.
We really liked Universal - hopefully we can go again sometime!
