We decided that we want to take all of our kids on a Senior Trip the year they graduate from high school, and this is the year for Christian! Senior trips provide such precious and fun memories. Way back in 2001 when I graduated, my mom took me (and my brother Daniel whom I invited) to Seattle to attend a Mariner's baseball game. We were obsessed with baseball at the time, and it was a dream come true to watch ARod, Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro Suzuki, and the Mariners play. We went during their record-breaking winning season, and it was so much fun. We also got to tour all around Seattle. Money was tight for our family back then, and there were a lot of kids still at home, so it was extra special to do something like that.
Fast forward... I talked to Christian about where he would want to go. I told him we would take him anywhere in the world. Literally the only thing he wanted to do was go back to Florida to Universal Studios, and he insisted that he wanted to do it with the whole family. I kept asking things like... how about Europe? Or Africa? He doesn't really get excited about too many things, and Universal Studios was the only thing he really cared about. I am guessing that it is because we have made so many amazing memories there. It kind of feels like our happy place, our tradition. I understand because I am a lot like that too. When I was young, I always wanted to go back to the same places that we loved rather than try a new place that might not be so great. I have changed a lot as I have grown up, and now I crave new adventures, but this wasn't about me, it was about Christian.
Since we have already done Universal several times, we tried really hard to come up with something new. We settled on the after-hours party known as the Orlando Informer Meet-up, and we gave the trip as a present to all of the kids for Christmas. The Meet-up features all you can eat food and extremely short lines because tickets are limited, so we knew it would be a cool new experience.
As expected, the kids were thrilled! Even Christian, who shows very little emotion, seemed genuinely excited.
On February 23rd, our trip finally arrived! We took the kids out of school early and headed to the airport. Our flight was uneventful, and we landed in Orlando around 11:00 pm. When we got to the rental car place, they had upgraded us to an electric vehicle and let us choose one. Jonathon was so excited to get a red Tesla for the week. He felt really cool driving it, but it did pose some minor problems when we couldn't figure out how to put the vehicle in park or turn the car off. Ha! We finally googled it and found the solution.
That night, we stayed in a hotel close to the airport since it was so late. The next morning, we hadn't really made a plan yet, so we went and found a bunch of brochures at the hotel and let Christian decide what our day would look like. We ended up buying a 3-for-1 ticket that gave us entry to the aquarium, Madame Tussaud's wax museum, and the Wheel at ICON park. The aquarium was fairly small, so it only took about 45 minutes. The wax museum was fun to take pictures in. Most of the figures were very lifelike, so the boys took lots of selfies. Lastly, we took a ride on the huge ferris wheel. It took us up high enough to see the whole city including Disney World, Universal, the new amusement parks they are building, and even the Orlando temple off in the distance. We then went and ate lunch at the nearby McDonalds. It was the biggest McDonalds I have ever seen. It was two stories tall with a huge playplace, and hundreds of seats. It was a fun, casual morning.
By that time, we were able to go check in to our next hotel, Cabana Bay. We love their family rooms that hold all of us and have a refrigerator and small kitchenette. Cabana Bay also has 3 awesome pools and a lazy river. We have stayed there a couple of times and always enjoy it. The kids immediately wanted to hop in the lazy river, so we spent about an hour floating around. The water was heated, but I was still pretty chilly, especially after I got out, but everyone else seemed fine with the temperature.
The next day we decided to go miniature golfing. We saw the course from The Wheel and tracked it down on Google. It was a fun pirate themed course with an awesome design. As we were going in, I tripped on the curb and skinned up my knee pretty badly. It had some major road rash, and I worried that I had broken the hand that I caught myself with. My knee definitely stung, but my hand was so swollen that I couldn't close it very far to grip things. I don't know how I managed to hold the golf club, but I sucked it up and went and played. Despite the rough start, we had a great time golfing, and I actually won with the lowest overall score. That was pretty funny since I was basically playing one-handed!
When we got home, I took some ibuprofen and stayed in the hotel room to elevate my leg while Jonathon took the boys to go swimming again. I took a nice long nap and felt much better when I woke up. My leg was still a bit sore, but I knew that I could tough it out for the rest of the trip.
At 4:00, we headed over to Universal to get our tickets for the meet-up. The wristbands allowed us to enter the park at 5:00, so while we waited we ate some of their free pre-event snacks. When it was finally time to enter the park, we headed to Jimmy Fallon's Race through New York. The line was short and would still give us time to catch the Mardi Gras parade that started at 5:30. The parade had 7-8 huge floats, and on each float people threw bead necklaces to all of the watchers. Hyrum was collecting beads and ended up with 15. We kept a few as souvenirs and then got rid of the rest.
After the parade, we went to Hyrum's favorite ride, The Mummy. He has been talking about it ever since he finally got up the courage to ride it on our last trip, so he convinced me to ride it with him. It was fun seeing him so excited. From there, we stopped by some of the free food offerings and got some dinner. We tried so much food on our trip. Some was just ok and not worth the calories, but there were some really delicious things that we tried including: beignets, jambalaya, mango cheesecake bites, gourmet mac and cheese, and my favorite, the bread pudding from Finnegans. Most times, we would just get a few things to share so that we could all try each item but not get too full too fast.
As soon as the parks closed at 7:00 pm the wait times for the rides dropped significantly. Most of the rides were walk-on. Hagrids and Velocicoaster were delayed because it was raining slightly, so we chose other rides to focus on during that first night and planned to ride them the next night. We did Men in Black about 5 times back to back to back. That is one of our family's favorite rides, and our scores gradually got better with each try. The last few times we got our combined scores high enough to get "Galaxy Defenders."
One of the coolest things we got to do was go to Florean Fortescue's ice cream shop and try whatever flavor of ice cream we wanted for free. It was so nice to not have to worry about the sticker shock of buying food at the amusement park. There were so many fun flavors that we have never tried before. Huckleberry and Apple Crumble were my favorites that night.
We rode Escape from Gringotts, got our wands replaced at Ollivander's (two broke our previous trip), and then rode the Hogwart's Express to the Islands of Adventure side. By that time, the rain and wind had stopped, so we got to do Hagrids, Forbidden Journey, Kong, and many more. We rode at least 15 rides the first night, walked 20,000 steps, and sampled so much yummy food. By 12:30 when the meet-up was over, we were exhausted. We headed back to the hotel and went straight to bed. The saving grace was that it was really only 10:30 MST, so we were tired, but it wasn't crazy that we were up that late.
The next day we got up late and ate breakfast in our room. We spent some time that morning doing homework, answering emails from work, etc. By about lunch time, the kids went to the pool again.
Finally, it was time for our night 2 check-in. Jonathon and Hyrum headed over early to pick up the rest of the tickets, and the rest of us joined them right at 5:00 pm when the park opened to us. Our first stop on Saturday was to watch the Bourne Stuntacular. It is such a cool show, and I am glad we made time to see it again! When we finished that, I really wanted to see the Horror Make-up Show. We weren't really sure what to expect, and the boys were nervous that it might be gruesome, so they all went to ride Jimmy Fallon again while Jonathon and I went to the show. Little did we know that it was a comedy show. We thought it was hilarious and laughed all through it. The main hosts were great, and I wish the boys would have stayed. Now that we know what it is all about, we will go again the next time we are there.
By that time, we had about 2 hours left before the park closed to the day guests, so we decided to bite the bullet and ride Gringotts, even thought the line was really long. We figured that we would have to kill time some way, so this was as good as any other. After waiting for 40ish minutes, we finally got on the ride. We started to move forward, but about 20 seconds in, the audio started to be out of sync with the cart. Suddenly, the cart stopped moving altogether. Soon a voice came on the intercom telling us that they were experiencing a delay. I could tell Christian and Hyrum were getting nervous. They are already a little cautious about rides, and now Christian was worried that there was something wrong that would make the ride dangerous. We reassured him, and after about 5 minutes the cart started moving again.
Unfortunately, we only moved for about 10 seconds. It was just long enough to move us to the part of the ride that tips forward right before the big drop. Within about 2 minutes, they said we were ready to start again. The track tipped us forward so that we were hanging at a 45 degree angle in the dark and then stopped again. We all knew that the big drop was coming, but we didn't know when! This time the anxiety really set in and Christian had a minor panic attack and Hyrum was near tears. Andrew, on the other hand, was super amused and was filming the whole thing. We hung in that position for quite a long time. The poor lady next to us was rather large, and I could tell she was very uncomfortable being squished in the seat and hanging forward.
Finally after a long time, there was an announcement that we were going to drop. The cart moved quickly and dropped forward down the track. It was nice to finally sit flat again, but as might be expected after all that, the cart stopped. This time, they announcer told us that they were sending someone to get us out, but that it would take about 10 minutes. Now that we were safely off the drop and knew our rescuer was coming, everyone was much less stressed. Andrew and I took pictures, and everyone talked about what a crazy experience this was. Jonathon was actually pretty thrilled. He has always wanted to see the inner-workings of an amusement park ride, so he was getting to check something off his bucket list.
After about 10 minutes two workers came to get us out of the carts. When he arrived he said, "I'm here to save you!" He then showed us the long pole with a hook that he would use to open the safety lock on the lap bar. He said that he referred to it as his "shepherd's hook." Even though we were stuck on an amusement park ride in Orlando, Florida, I immediately saw the connection between someone coming to save us with a shepherd hook and Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, who has already come to save all of us. It was a little tender mercy to be able to feel the love of the Savior in such an interesting situation.
He reached the hook across the whole row and was able to use the end to unlock the lap bar. When it clicked open, we could push it up and exit the cart onto the catwalk next to the track. Andrew was filming the whole thing, and the worker got a bit mad with him and told him he had to delete the video footage. When I asked why, he got feisty and told us it was against their agreement with JK Rowling and some other reasons. The excuses didn't seem to hold much water, and we figured that the real reason was to avoid bad press and possibly to prevent security issues with showing the workings of the ride. I'm not sure what was really going on, but Andrew did as he was told and deleted the videos.
I was amused by the whole thing and talked to the worker a little bit afterward. He apologized for being mean and said that usually people are really mad, and he has to react like that to keep them in line. When he realized I was just curious and wasn't trying to be antagonistic, he settled down a lot and we actually had a really good conversation. He said that the ride doesn't break down very often, only about 3 times in the previous 6 months have they had to rescue riders from the middle of the ride. Considering how many times they run it every day, I was pretty impressed. When I asked about what problems typically cause it, he said it is usually audio/visual things that don't sync up right, which made sense with what we had experienced. For our troubles, they gave us 10 fast passes to use on rides. I knew we wouldn't be able to use them because we were leaving the next day, but Joe and Kym were going to be there the next week, so I texted them a picture and told them to get excited for their free passes. It was actually a very memorable experience, and we talked about it a lot afterward. I even used the story during testimony meeting the following Sunday.
The rest of the night was problem-free. The parks didn't close until 9:00 pm that night, so we ended up waiting in a few more lines. We had never ridden E.T. before, so I really wanted to do that one. It took a while, but I really enjoyed it. It definitely wasn't a thrill ride, but it was cute and fun. We had watched the movie as a family before our trip, so we pointed out some of the fun easter eggs throughout the ride.
When the park finally did close, we had a blast! We rode all of the rides we wanted to... several times! We got to ride Hagrid's (our very favorite ride) 2 more times. It is a different experience at night in the dark and was so awesome. The second time, I rode with a 12 year old girl that was ahead of us in line. Her mom couldn't ride, so she was very nervous. I coached her through exactly what would happen and then she rode in the sidecar with me while I was on the motorbike. It kind of felt like I was helping one of my young women, and I was happy to do it. She had a great time.
After we had gotten our fill of the usual rides, Andrew finally convinced me to go on Hulk. I had never done it before because I was too scared. He had been working on me all week, and I finally caved and wanted to show him that I was a cool mom! I was nervous, but I figured it would all be over soon, so why not give it a try. The ride itself was actually pretty fun. It wasn't nearly as scary as I imagined, and I even kept my eyes open nearly the whole time. The upside down loops didn't really bother me because I felt very secure in the seat. When I got off though, I was quite dizzy. I had to lean up against the wall for a few seconds to get my bearings. Andrew and Jonathon were proud of me, and it did feel really good to conquer a fear.
They may have gotten me on Hulk, but there was no chance they were going to succeed with Velocicoaster. Jonathon didn't even really want to ride it, but he was willing because Andrew was so excited. While they rode Velocicoaster, the rest of us went and got pizza at Pizza Predatoria followed by lime cheesecake. All of us agreed that the pizza was the best meal we ate at the park. It was perfectly crispy on the outside, chewy in the center, and greasy enough for optimal flavor. We washed it down with a butterbeer and later in the night some more ice cream (clotted cream was delicious!). When Andrew got back, he said it was his favorite ride he has ever done. High praise from Andrew!
We partied all night and didn't leave until 1:30 am when the parks closed. I was so impressed with how well all the boys did, including Hyrum. He kept up with us the whole time, didn't complain, and had the time of his life! I am pretty sure we will never want to do an amusement park again without the after-hours special access, unlimited food, and almost no people. It was a complete game-changer! The Orlando Informer Meet-up was everything we hoped for and more!
On Sunday, we slept in late again and then packed up so we could check out of our hotel room. We had a lot of time before our flight, so we drove over to the Orlando Temple. The gates were locked, so we only got to see it from the road, which was a bummer. Then we tried to drive to a state park to see manatees, but it was completely full, and they were not allowing any more guests in. On the drive back, we were able to listen to my parent's mission farewell over Zoom, so that kept everyone interested. They both did an amazing job speaking. I am so proud of their dedication to serve the Lord. We will miss them a lot, but what a great example they are!
We needed to charge the Tesla before we returned it, so we found a charging station. It was next to a Chili's so we stopped and got some lunch before heading to the airport. We got to the airport quite early, so we had to wait for a long time, but the boys did great. They have traveled enough that they know what to do and didn't complain. Our flight was delayed an hour, so we didn't get into SLC until after midnight. We were all wiped out from two busy, late nights, so Jonathon drove and the rest of us slept all the way home. We got home at about 1:30 am that night and had to be ready for school the next day. That was a little hard, but so worth it for the amazing trip we had.
I'm sad that our time with our family living under one roof is coming to an end. I know this is just the beginning with Christian leaving on a mission and then college. I love that our kids are growing up, accomplishing goals, and doing great things, but I can't help feel sad for what we are losing. This trip made me love and appreciate the time we get to spend together so much more. What a fantastic senior trip for a really great young man!
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