The boys, especially J, were super crabby after being out so late at the Magic Kingdom. So we gave the boys a day off from parks. They stayed at the hotel and the pool for almost the entire day. They slept in late (J almost 'til 11am) and just relaxed. Even swimming all day was less tiring than if they had gone to the parks.
We left the boys at the hotel in the afternoon/evening with my niece so that Stormy and I could go to Epcot and have some adult time. We ate at a Mexican restaurant, rode some rides, and then headed back to Hollywood Studios once again for our fourth round of Star Tours and second of Tower of Terror. We love our kids, but it was nice to be able to escape for the evening. Even at home, we don't get to out on many date nights, so this was so nice for us. We ended the night eating ice cream (Stormtrooper is obsessed with ice cream) and fell into bed and slept.
Monday we all woke up and went to breakfast and then headed to Universal Studios. My husband got to geek out at Star Tours and Star Wars weekends, but Universal has the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and that is my thing. I was so excited. I loved it. It was fantastic. We rode the rides and got some treats from Honeyduke's. The boys have both read the Harry Potter books and seen the movies, so they were excited about going, too.
J had one meltdown while there, but it was definitely nothing we were upset about. My niece, husband, and I wanted to ride on the dragon ride, but J doesn't like roller coasters that do the "corkscrew" kind of turns. And our other boy is just terrified of any rides (which we didn't even know until we went to Disney and he was scared to ride on everything that was on a track). We weren't going to force either of them to ride something they were scared of, but we still told them they had to wait in line with us. When we got to the front, I asked one of the employees if there was a place they could stand and wait because they didn't want to ride. Jokingly, the guy said, "Oh, no, everyone in this line must ride the ride."
J burst into immediate tears and just buried his face right into the middle of my chest. It took a few moments to get him to calm down, but he did, and he wiped the tears away and waited while we rode on the ride.
We rode water rides and got completely soaked. The boys seemed to enjoy that. I was skeptical about J enjoying it because if he gets uncomfortable he will complain for ages, but he seemed to like being wet! My husband took the boys on some sort of spinning ride that was similar to the tea cups. Since my husband nearly killed me on Saturday on the tea cups, I sat the ride out and let him torture the boys to sickness on it!
Universal was nice. We also spent the day with one of my old friends from Starbucks who moved down to Orlando a few years back. It was great to reconnect with him and his wife - and also get some inside scoop on working for Disney! We hopped over to the other Universal park so that we could go on the Transformers ride.
I think the boys enjoyed Universal more than Disney because they were much more familiar with the movies and rides. Some of the rides from Disney were still old-school characters, like Dumbo or Peter Pan, and that is not as relevant to them as Harry Potter, Spiderman, Jurassic Park, or Transformers. Over all Universal was really amazing and I am so glad I got to see Hogwarts, and I am glad the boys were able to share in that experience. They got to watch Stormy geek out over Star Wars, and me over Harry Potter.
We drove home on Tuesday, and we got to see Tiny after five nights away from him! And now on to the rest of our summer! Which looks like it is going to include a new swimming pool, clay camp for Iron Man, and autism sleep away camp for J. So much of the summer has already passed and yet we have so much more left to experience!
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