TBE won the Branch Championship for BOTB! They have worked so hard. It's fun to watch them- we can all tell when they don't know an answer. They work incredibly well together- they are a great group of kids. And now they are off to the District Final!
Camille has decided to switch from saxophone to clarinet, mostly because the clarinet weighs less. I was able to find an almost new clarinet on Craigslist for $75- nice! And now she is a clarinetest!
By Day 4 everyone was exhausted! All of our days were LONG. Wonderful, but long.
Nevertheless, at 8 AM we headed to Universal! Audra and I had never been, and we were excited to give it a try.
Unfortunately, it was a little bit of a bust. It was SOOOOOO crowded! Audra went off with some girlfriends and I was mostly by myself. I started out by walking through The Forbidden Journey, or Hogwart's Castle. It really was incredible. The ride itself is known to cause motion sickness, so I decided not to go on the ride. I was glad I made that choice- another woman got off as I was walking out and she was not doing well. I gave her a ginger sucker to help.
I walked through the Harry Potter world and was simply amazed!
I tried to ride the Hogwart's Express but after 30 minutes of waiting it broke down. So I started wandering around and ended up at Poseidon's Fury. I had no idea what this was. It turned out to be a show, and it was a really good one! It was very, very cool.
Then I tried to do some single rider lines, but they were either too long and so were not operating or they didn't have enough staff to run it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to ride Hagrid's Motorcade because the line was 3 hours long the entire day and I wasn't willing to wait that long. Audra did and she said she loved it, but she did wait about 3 hours.
Pretty much EVERYTHING was hours long of a wait. The Express Pass was $300/person so that wasn't an option.
I went to ride the single rider line at Spider Man and they were closing it because it was too long. I sighed and said to the team member, "This is a rough day to be at Universal." He was super kind and he gave me an Express Pass for that ride! It was so nice of him! And made the line only about 10 minutes.
I was able to get on King Kong with the single rider line.
And I had a lovely sit down lunch at Mythos. Then I saw the Bourne Stuntacular and the Rocky Horror Make-Up Show, which was really funny. The Bourne Show was incredible- I wish Ben was there to watch it with me- he would LOVE it!
I'm trying to focus on the positives, but really it was a rough day. The lines were just so incredibly insane that it ruined the day. In fact, at the very end of the night I decided I would buy myself a caramel apple since it was such a bad day. But the line for caramel apples was ridiculously long, so I just left.
Lesson learned: If we ever go back, we will only go if we get the Express Pass. Without the pass, it isn't worth it. But also, it left a bad taste in us, so I don't know if I want to go back to Universal anytime soon. Which is too bad. Of the things I saw, they were awesome and top notch. The problem is we just couldn't do very much. And that was incredibly disappointing.
Day 3 was way chillier than expected- a high of 71. Both Audra and I were shivering by the time we got to the fireworks. We had never seen the fireworks before! Ben doesn't care for them and the kids were so little so we didn't stay for them. But, they were wonderful! It was a true joy to see the Enchantment show.
The day started with the band meeting with a Disney composer at 7 AM. Yikes! I was not sad that chaperones weren't allowed, only the band director, as it meant we got to sleep in a bit longer. They did sight reading of Disney classics and then recorded a song from Tangled. Supposedly we will eventually get a copy of the recording. Time will tell. The kids said it was a really good experience.
We did tons of rides, ate Dole Whip (or Whole Whip as my podcast friends like to say), devoured a Nutella waffle, saw a couple of shows, and had an overall great time. It was a magical day in every way! It was really just so great to be there!
