Another chilled villa morning, our entertainment today is evening based at Universal, so we had a lovely relaxed morning at the villa.
We headed out around 2, and stopped at Sickies Garage, a car themed restaurant where were shared some appetisers. We had a burger loaded tater tots, chopped up burgers, pickles, onions and cheese on a large pile of crispy tater tots, with a pile of onion rings and some boneless chicken wings. Probably too much food bearing in mind there would be plenty of free food around Universal.
We arrived at the Universal parking garages about 4 and walked the citywalk where we found staff directing people into a separate entrance for the Orlando informer event. This is an after hours event, you can access the park from 5pm, but can stay after the park closes, which is 7pm this evening. From then all the rides, (and from 8pm) restaurants and snack carts are open and more importantly the food and soft drinks are free u til event close, which is 12.30am!!
They were using a couple of the stage buildings behind the scenes for registration and food offerings until 8pm, this included hot dogs, nachos, cookies, chicken skewers, cans of coke and sprite and bottles of water.
We grabbed cookies and water and hovered around here til we were able to enter the parks. We briefly chatted with a couple from Idaho.
We decided to start in the Studios, the couple we'd spoken to had recommended the Bourne show that usually only had one show at 5.30, unfortunately when we got there it was cancelled. Nevermind, we headed off round the park, some rides were still showing longish queues as it was still open to the general public but between then and about 9.30pm we managed to do Men in Black, the Simpsons, E.T., the Mummy a couple of times, Transformers, Minions, the Harry Potter Gringotts ride and Fast and Furious.
We picked up some skewer snacks and a duck dumpling from a cart along the way and also stopped for some drinks in Harry Potter world - Peachtree fizzing tea, Tongue tying lemon squash, Fishy green ale (mint and cinnamon with blueberry boba) and a Butterbeer.
We then took the Hogwarts Express to Islands of Adventure where we rode Velocicoaster, Spiderman, Hagrids Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, and Sarah rode The Hulk.
Food wise we picked up some of our favourite brookie cakes in Jurassic Park, we had fish and chips in Hogsmeade, Sarah had a hot butter beer, which was really delicious, a milky mild chocolate flavoured drink with cinnamon and spice. We also tried some flavoured coke from one of the machines and we finished off with a couple of hot teas and some cinnamon buns and cinnamon sweet bites which we ended up bringing home for breakfast tomorrow.
All in all a very good night, the only slight down side was the 45 min wait for Hagrids ride, but otherwise everything was walk on, and we could have made better use of the free food if we hadn't eaten earlier! There was plenty of chicken and burger meals, even shepherd's pie in one of the Harry Potter areas as well as popcorn, churros, doughnuts and crisps, plus all the restaurants we didn't actually explore!
The food offerings was extremely well organised, with sample trays laid out for you to help yourself from most of the carts, or plenty of staff to serve other options.
We were pretty exhausted, and left just before event closing, and took a slow walk back through citywalk to the carparks. We had walked approx 21,000 steps this evening and got back home just after 1am.
Stephen and Sarah are back for a repeat evening tomorrow. Keith and I will stay home in the villa and leave the youngsters to it!
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