PTR....Universal Adventures of Dreams and an Expanding world. About This Page:

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by rhinohunter

You are right, it would not be a Jen trip without changes and challenges. Sounds great. The outfits for Claire are really neat.

I know...why can't we just stick to original plans??

[jenseib]

So much to do in so little time...


I now need to lose 20 lbs in less than 2 weeks. Yeah, I know it won't happen, but I am trying to get some walking in everyday and taking Claire out too. I have decided we will not bring the stroller. I know she is 7, but we use it still here and there when we have long days. It lets us adults do more if she is comfy. I told her the other day that we would go without it this time...and she her jaw dropped. I told her it was only 3 days of walking and she could handle it.

I will miss it though. Unlike many others, I love having a stroller along. I like to have a spot to keep some extra things. I know need to figure out what kind of bag/s to take to the park and where to store stuff, if I go that route. My camera back is bulky and won't fit much in it, so I'm still figuring out what to do.

Besides losing 20 lbs, I need to really get in shape myself. I have become a computer chair junky and I need t oget these legs moving and ready for the long days as well. I am hoping to keep this up after the trip and lose the wait I need to lose...plus I need to be in shape for Novembers trip as well.

Skip is very proud of himself still about adding MK to the trip. I really don't care either way. I almost feel like I'll have less down time and more rushed with this addition, but we'll survive...and have a fabulous time.

I also need to start studying Universal maps now and get my bearings with the parks. Does anyone have a good detailed map of the Harry Potter section? I need to figure where everything is so I don't ge in blindly.

[MayraLR]

Great start! I love the outfits! Good luck on the weight loss!

[mushu22]

Great start. At least Skip is going with you this time. My cousin also married a dairy farmer and getting time off is hard for him. Have a great time at US/IOA. Can't wait to and see all your wonderful .

[mickeyforlife]

love reading your reports. I like that you take so many pictures while there. takes me to disney for a little while

[Shell_of_the_South]

Jennifer - I wrote an article a couple of years back comparing the costs of staying onsite vs. purchasing the Express Pass - this might be helpful:

Article: Universal Express Pass

One of the biggest differences is that the purchased Express pass is good once per attraction. Staying onsite gives you unlimited entries in the Express pass lines with your room key. Also, you can stay one night and get 2 days worth - its good the day you check in and the day you check out.

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by MayraLR

Great start! I love the outfits! Good luck on the weight loss!

Thanks. I'll be happy to lose even 1 lb...but 5 would be nice.

Originally Posted by mushu22

Great start. At least Skip is going with you this time. My cousin also married a dairy farmer and getting time off is hard for him. Have a great time at US/IOA. Can't wait to and see all your wonderful .

It is hard...and he makes it even harder than it actually is too. I do like him coming with us, but as time goes on and he keeps resisting...well Claire and I will just go without him.

Originally Posted by mickeyforlife

love reading your reports. I like that you take so many pictures while there. takes me to disney for a little while

Thanks. I do plan to take a lot of pictures again as well. Only 10 days left before we go!

Originally Posted by Shell_of_the_South

Jennifer - I wrote an article a couple of years back comparing the costs of staying onsite vs. purchasing the Express Pass - this might be helpful:

Article: Universal Express Pass

One of the biggest differences is that the purchased Express pass is good once per attraction. Staying onsite gives you unlimited entries in the Express pass lines with your room key. Also, you can stay one night and get 2 days worth - its good the day you check in and the day you check out.

Thanks. I'll take a look at that. I did explain all that to Skip too. He said, if we need it, we'll just check in the hotel onsite when it's busy and use it. I told him goodluck with that too.

[jenseib]

What a night!!!!

We had storms to the North of us, even tornados. Luckily, no one was hurt. About 10:30, we watched the weather channel as they report the damage of the neighboring towns just over the line in Michigan.

They showed radar and it showed that Toledo was getting a good storm as well...we live West of Toledo and I made a comment that I was happy we were getting hammered on...I even said knock on wood and tapped the bed frame...so much for that.....

About 11 the lightening that we had watched from the North was getting brighter and closer. It started hailing and Skip got up to go out to pump a pit out and it started downpouring too. Claire came in to say her ceiling and walls were leaking. The rain that was in Toledo had doubled back and was hitting us from the northwest. When we get rain from the direction we get leaks trhough the dormers of our house and Claire's room is directly under one of the dormers.

This was supposed to have been fixed after we moved in, but the company closed and we never heard from them again. They have another branch, and I have mentioned to Skip about calling them and seeing if they will take care of it, but he says don't bother.

Skip told me to check upstairs to be sure windows weren't open, which I knew they weren't but did it anyways and he went out. I got Claires room cleaned up and put the some towels down and got her settled back to bed.

I was going to go and check the basement. If you have followed me over the years, you know that our basement likes to flood. As I walked towards the door, the phone rang. It was BIL wondering if Skip was coming out. I let him know he had indeed went out about 10 minutes ago.

I proceeded to the basement and as I went down...it didn't "sound" good at all. I looked at the sump pumo and water was blowing out and it sounded like a waterfall. I ran back upstairs, grabbedthe phone and called BIL and told him to find Skip as the storage side of the basement was flooded and I think the pump was just pumping the water back into the basement.

I started panicking as the water was flowing closer to the good side of the basement and ran around and picked up stuff off the floor to be it didn't get ruined.

Skip came in and sure enough, the pipe from the pump had broken off. He unplugged it and he and his brother had the task of reattaching it. The floor was wet...and had a bit of glass floating around because I habroken a vase the other day and yet to pick up the pieced (I had good intentions, I got a bucket to put the glass in, but I just hadn't actually picked it up). So now I was barefooted and stepped on glass and then somehow I got a small piece on my had and cut my hand with it too.
Nothing major...but it just added to the chaos.

Around midnight or so, everything was fixed, Skip went back outside to check on things and then we went back to bed for a 2nd time. The had slowed down and we were able to sleep for a few hours.

Claire was exhausted this morning, but I got her off to school. Skip got a hold of a guy to come and fix the dormer leak first, then to replace (and demold I'm sure) Claires ceiling.

Mil has water seaped under her house, so Skip is working on pumping that out right now (and he's such a joy to be around at this moment too). Mil had a window in her attic broken out a few days ago from a wind storm. She is going crazy about it, swearing her ceiling will cave in at any moment now since it has now rained. Skip told her he would have it taken care of, but this morning she called some place to come fix it and told them it was an emergency....not even close. LOL!

I just was outside helping Skip and MIL came out and Skip kept telling her to call and cancel. She said she would...but who knows. Then she was worried about the family down the road who lives in one of our houses and the guy works for us. I guess the wife spilled grease on her yesterday and went to the ER. She is worried they won't be able to eat now, so she wants me to make them food and she is going to go buy KFC. I saw the aldy walking around outside last night, so I know she's not hurting too badly...and I am not making food. I'm not being mean, I'm just not making food for people who don't need it...I hate cooking for my OWN family! LOL Skip yelled at MIL and told her not to buy any food for them and MIL was mad as heck and slammed the door and went back in the house.

What a fun day this is going to be.

I decided to edit some pictures of Claire's musicale from last weekend to keep my mind off of all the fun here.

Her school has one each year. It has a theme and each class sings a song that is suppose to follow that theme. This year was Disney. YAY!...or so you would think....lets just say that they did a really good job of butchering some great songs. Claire's class was wonderful, of course. They sang Chim Chim Cheree and were dressed as Chimney Sweeps.

[pamcarey]

Sorry about the rough night! Sounds like a great trip you have planned! I can't wait to hear all about it! We are doing one day at IOA on April 13th, before we cruise on the Fantasy on the 14th. I'm SO excited to see WWoHP, and especially to ride Forbidden Journey!

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by pamcarey

Sorry about the rough night! Sounds like a great trip you have planned! I can't wait to hear all about it! We are doing one day at IOA on April 13th, before we cruise on the Fantasy on the 14th. I'm SO excited to see WWoHP, and especially to ride Forbidden Journey!

The day hasn't been all too much better. I swear if I touched it, it broke.
I'm ready for bed and to start a whole new day.

[Shell_of_the_South]

Those chimney sweeps are so cute!

[jenseib]

Originally Posted by Shell_of_the_South

Those chimney sweeps are so cute!

Thanks

[jenseib]

Time to get planning. I swear the days have been put on fast forward mode and I have had very little time to think over how I want my days to go, or much research at all for that matter.

March 26th plans.

This day really doesn't involve much planning. We don't fly down till 6:50 PM.

It will be a normal day at home. I'll let Claire sleep in, but probably not too late and just finish any last minute cleaning and packing. And going out of my skin that we have to wait all day to leave.

I really hate the times that Allegiant has right now. Why in the world would anyone want to arrive in Orlando at 9:10 at night. I want to hit the ground running, but that is not to be this time around.

My Dad is taking us to the airport. Since our flight doesn't leave almost 7, I'll have him come over around 4:30. We only live about 12 minutes from the airport....all country driving....so it won't take long to get there. It's a small airport too and usually it's fairly easy to get trhough security and to check in as well.

We'll probably get a bite to eat since it will be prime supper time. And we will pray that we don't have a delay like last year.

Once we arrive, we will get our car from Hertz and of course get our luggage., and head off to the Quality Inn and Suites....note to self, print off directions.





I have already called them and let them know that we will be arriving late that night. We'll just get settled in and go to bed. It will be late and I do hope for an early morning the next day.

It's kind of sad that our first day is so boring, but nothing you can do about it when the plane arrives so late.

I just hope Claire gets right to sleep. She is NOT an early riser at all, and I want to try to do early days this trip. It may turn out that we have a crabby girl with us after a day or so, so we'll play it by ear, I guess.

[jenseib]

I thought I would tell you about my movie likes before I go on to day 2 planning.
As we all know both Disney and Universal are parks that base a lot of rides off movies or TV shows.

I have a few movie series that I just LOVE...I watch them quite a bit...and if they come on TV, I am stuck watching them all day....even though I own the DVD's.
Pirates of the Caribbean is one of those series...and that ride happens to be one of my favortie Disney rides. And if we make it over to the Magic Kingdom, it will be a ride we will go on.

My ALL time favorite movies are the Back to the Future movies. I have a thing about time travel. I was going into my Jr year of highschool when the first movie came out. I saw it 5 times at the movie theatre that summer. I just loved it.

On my 1st (1995) and 3rd (1999) visit to Universal Studios I rode the Back to the Future ride. The first trip we waited 3 HOURS in line in the hot July sun. We deemed it the best ride EVER!!! (I didn't ride it my 2nd trip in 97 because I got very sick after a few hours in the park, so I went back to the hotel to "dye" while my Mom took my kids {Michael and Paige} back and spent a fun day without me.)

This ride is no longer there,(replaced by the Simpsons), but they still have the Delorean and train somewhere on the grounds near that ride from what I have read. So we might have to go and get a picture of that.

I do actually have a picture of myself sitting in one of the Deloreans used for the movies, but it's a polaroid and I doubt I ever scanned it to photobucket.....and I am too lazy to go look for it.

Another movie series I love is Jurassic Park. That movie came out in 1993 and I took Michael to see it (I think he was 4 at the time), he was kind of into Dinosaurs then. I remember seeing the big "veggiesaurs" on the big movie screen and just being amazed at the beauty. Michael said "aren't they beautiful Mom?" And they were. We really enjoyed the movie...even the intense parts. I had put my hand on Michael's leg when the T-Rex was attacking, and he pushed my hand off telling me it wasn't scary....BUT when that Dilophosaurus...the spit dinosaur as we call him now, attacked, Michael was screaming and crying...go figure.

It instantly became a favorite, and though we did see the other 2 movies (and own them) they are not nearly as good as the first. The 2nd one was nothing like the 2nd book and pretty much a disappointment. BUT I still love the movies.

While touring US in 1999 I did see the advertisement in the park for the new Jurassic Park area at IoA and was excited to go back eventually to see it. Well 13 years later I am getting that chance finally. And I can't wait to photograph the area.

I swear every time I hear thunder off in the distance it reminds me of the sound that the T-rex's foot stomps made. In fact last night at about 4 AM I heard thunder off in the distance...and isntantly thought...theres a dinosaur out there.

And I don't think you all will be surprised with my next Movie series favorite....Harry Potter. I own all those movies as well and have listend to each book and tape/CD several times each. The books are much better than the movies, but they did a decent job with the movies too.

This is the main reason I want to go to Universal...along with most eveyone else these days. I can't wait to take pictures of Hogwarts~!

[carters_mom]

Following along, great report! We are heading to Universal right after you. I am so worried about the crowds, but there is no way we will pay extra for the Express Pass so I'm sure we will be spending a lot of time in lines . I'm really excited anyway and reading your report is a great way to pass the time until my trip comes!