Our Family Vacation at Universal Studios

When you are a blended family, it’s very important to make fun family memories that will help bond the family together for the years to come. Mike and I have been married since for a year and a half and have taken a honeymoon and trips alone due to how expensive it is to fly five people! But our high-schoolers are not going to be with us for long, so we made the decision to do something epic with them and give them this memory. The kids had the week of Thanksgiving off so we left bright and early at 2:30am on Saturday morning for the airport, boarded our flight at 6:30am and arrived in Orlando around 10:30am. We dropped our bags off at the Endless Summer Resort that had direct transportation to Universal Studios and we got to Universal right before lunch and enjoyed half a day there before we all conked out with sore feet in our hotel room.

The second day we woke up for the early park check-in because JJ and Ethan wanted to get a head start on the already 2 hour wait at the VelociCoaster. The boys ended up riding on that ride 4 times! It’s safe to say that JJ has completely gotten over his fear of roller coasters. However my boy Braidy has not. He did ride one scary ride with me and that was the Incredible Hulk ride. When it comes to epic rollercoasters, this one makes the top 10 list of scariest roller coasters I’ve every ridden. Instead of a dramatic incline where your adrenaline is pumping before you even start the crazy stuff, this ride started immediately with blasting you out of a tunnel before corkscrewing you down into a spiral twist and then several loops. There was no buildup of anticipation. Braidy braved it with me but decided he was not going to go again on that ride. He did find other rides he liked better like Flight of the Hippogriff and Harry’s Forbidden Journey, which he also rode on 4 times!

I loved the Spiderman ride which was very cool with spraying water and real flames making you feel like you were really apart of that world. We also spent time on day 3 in the other park that is apart of Universal Studios where Harry Potter’s Diagon ally is. For Harry Potter fans, this place seemed to be depicted from the books and movies perfectly!