Tuesday, 1/6Only after booking the hotel, did I realize it was just a 10 minute walk to Chabad and Kosher Gourmet (formerly Kosher Culinary), the better of the 2 Orlando restaurants according to most people I asked. Shacharis was at 8:00AM, and at 7:30, I turned off my alarm and fell back asleep. Whoops… We had decided the night before that we would pass on the 8:50 shuttle to Universal (the parks open at 9) and opt for a more relaxed morning and catch the 9:45. When I finally did wake up (thank G-d because I did not have an alarm set), I Davened and went down to pick up some free breakfast (something I also found out just a few days prior and also feels great when it’s a BRG). They had kosher Nestle hot chocolate packets (like SW), fruit, and yogurts. Man, the waffles and eggs looked good, though! We packed some sandwiches (from the bread and spreads that we brought with us) for lunch for the day and ran down to catch the shuttle. You have to pick up a free shuttle “boarding pass” from the Universal service desk that’s in the hotel lobby. The signs make it seem like you need to pick these up well in advance, but we got them 5 minutes before departure. The shuttle picks up from a few hotels, and the ride that I thought would take 5 minutes, ended up taking a ½ hour.

We got to Universal around 10:15, went through security and entered CityWalk, which is the strip that leads to both parks and is full of stores, shops, a movie theater and a bunch of other things that make it an exciting nightlife scene. At the end of CityWalk, the road splits to each park, and we headed to
Universal's Islands of Adventure. Why we picked that one first? No good reason. I bought the tickets to Universal a little while back when Yehoshua found that Musement was having a black Friday sale – buy a 50€ Musement gift card for just 25€ – and they had Universal Orlando tickets! Only one gift card could be used per transaction, so I bought one under my account and one under my wife’s. I waited until they released tickets for the dates we needed and got ready to book. I found a discount code online to take 10% off a booking, but their site was only accepting one “code” – be it a gift card code or discount code. I chatted with them complaining that I couldn’t use both codes even though the terms of the gift card didn’t say anything about combining it with a discount code. It took some time, but I was able to get them to give me 2 new codes for 65€ each. After applying them (and considering the 25€ I paid to buy the gift card originally), the Universal passes came out to ~$140 per person for 2 day park tickets. About $10-15 cheaper pp than Chabad’s prices (who are normally considered the cheapest for Orlando park tickets). Now, all I received from Musement was an email confirmation listing the tour travel agent who the tickets were officially coming from, but no official Universal ticket. I called the tour agency a while ago, and they told me just print out the email and bring it to the ticket window at Universal. At the park, we decided to go to the guest services window and after waiting online for about 10 minutes, we got to an agent. She looked at my email printouts and tried punching in every “code” that was in the email, but nothing showed up in her system under our name. The codes must all have been Musement and the tour agency’s internal codes, and she explained that she needed some sort of code to put into her system to turn these emails into actual tickets. We called up the tour agency and found out that, for some reason, I never got a second email from them with vouchers that could be turned into actual tickets. The rep made it seem like she could easily forward that information to the Universal agent, so I said great and passed my phone over to the agent. It took 30-45 minutes from the time we got on line until the agent was finally able to get our tickets printed, and it was now after 11. What a way to start the day.

Although it was not Universal’s fault at all, the agent felt really bad and gave us 4 express passes to skip the line on rides!! That absolutely saved a LOT more time than the 45 minutes we spent getting the tickets. G-d always has a plan, eh?

We finally entered the park and immediately fell in love. I just love how well Universal (and Disney as well) makes you feel like you’re in a totally different world – and that world changes completely every time you step into a new “section”. The park starts off with a long strip of restaurants and shops that all give off an Island vibe (hence the park name). I’d like to point out that thank G-d, the weather today was just BEAUTIFUL. Not cold at all and yet not too hot where you’re sweating as you walk around all day. My wife got attracted to the first Minion thing she saw, but we made sure not to waste too much time in the shops so early in the day.

At the end of the strip, you have a choice to go left or right. I have OCD with these kind of things and always want to make sure I don’t miss any corner of a park (and somehow I didn’t take a map at the ticket counter!) but I quickly realized the park is nicely laid out for the OCD folk as it’s a big circle, so pick left or right and you’ll eventually make it all the way around. We chose left, “Marvel Super Hero Island”.
Let’s start with this: I’m a chicken when it comes to rides. I definitely don’t do roller coasters (I have tried a few, yes). I’m scared of the speed (while not being in an enclosed car on the ground), the idea of falling, the heights, and I really don’t like the feeling of the wind blowing through my cheeks or the drop in my stomach. My wife, however, is into rides except super spinny rides that make you nauseous. Because most you can’t see most Universal rides since they’re indoors, I was led to sheepishly asking the employee standing at the entrance to every ride what kind of ride it was. Every ride has warning signs that scare you to death, so those don’t really help you judge what to expect. Asking an employee is great if you have the courage because they often can describe it in simple words and also compare it to other rides in the park that you may have gone on. It was also great that every ride had employees standing at the entrance to the line (something that LegoLand, for example, didn’t have).
Marvel Super Hero Island: The Incredible Hulk Coaster is the first ride you see, and it’s clearly a roller coaster. My wife was willing to go on real rides herself, but was not in the mood for a coaster first thing in the morning, so we walked on. The rest of the rides in the area were too scary or nauseating until we found The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, which was the first ride we considered as the entrance agent said it was a 4-D ride/experience with no real drop. However, the line was long, and we weren’t sure it was worth using 1 of our express passes on the ride (since we didn’t know what else was coming up), and so we continued walking. Dr. Doom was proudly standing around for pictures and the Green Goblin was sneakily running through the crowds and scaring people.
Toon Lagoon: This next area was really, really cute. I didn’t even know Universal had rights to this kinda stuff, but all the buildings were splashed with your favorite characters from the Sunday Funnies – Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, etc.
2 of the 3 rides here were closed and the 3rd, Dudley Do-Right’s Ripshaw Falls, was an indoor/outdoor water ride that had a very large drop at the end into a pool of water. I never saw this before, but there were several walk-in drying machines at the exit of the ride for you to dry yourself off – pretty cool! The drop looked too steep for me, and my wife considered it, but decided to keep walking instead. I can’t blame her, I understand that it’s not fun to go on a ride alone. I’m glad in the end we hit up enough rides to overshadow the ones I chickened out on.
Jurassic Park: Another incredibly well-done section of the park. The extensive greenery and the sounds of animals and dinosaurs you hear really make you feel like you’re in a jungle.

Pteranodon Flyers was another ride that looked like I could handle (it was on a track in the air, but it moved slowly), but when we got to the entrance, they told us only kids can ride. #awkward Next up was
Jurassic Park River Adventure. My wife had heard about this ride and knew she was going to go on it - first ride of the day! The entrance agents told us there was a drop into water at the end (you could see it from the outside), so I was out, although the wait was really short, so that was good. The ride was probably very similar to Ripshaw Falls, based on what they both looked like from the outside. Thank G-d all Universal rides have a quick exit lane at the last second, so we were able to wait on line together and then I could take the walk of shame when it was her turn to get on. She said the ride was amazing. You’re on a boat with about 10 people, and it slowly makes its way around a Jurassic Park scene, showing you realistic-looking dinosaurs, etc. Eventually the ride goes indoors and also gets a bit faster and finally ends with the big drop from indoors to outdoors and into a big pool of water. Yeah, not for me… but really too bad because it sounded great. We then left this section because I still didn’t have a map to realize we missed 1 attraction. Eventually we came back here, so I’ll just put it in here instead of coming back here when we chronologically actually came back.
Jurassic Park Discovery Center is an interactive activity room that’s set up to mimic the visitor center from the movie. You can have your picture taken and morphed with a dinosaur to see what you would look like as a dinosaur, you can go through the steps of incubating a dinosaur egg and play a dinosaur trivia game show. Cute, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way to stop off here.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade: Ah, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It was everything we dreamed of. You step into Hogsmeade and are just overtaken by magical the world that J.K. Rowling created.
The whole village is covered in fake snow, the shops are all the cute HP shops from the books and movies and - Ah! It’s just awesome!
Let me first state that we have been to the official HP Studio Tour in London, so we were ready to compare everything we saw there with what Universal created. Universal did a fantastic job. First, we headed towards
Flight of the Hippogriff. Built around and through Hagrid’s hut, this mini-roller coaster had me thinking twice before getting on. However, after talking to the entrance guy and watching it go around once, I decided I would brave it. Here we used our first express pass and only waited about 3-5 minutes. As expected, most people would laugh at this “coaster”, but for me, it was enough to know I didn’t want to ride it again. I didn’t hate it, but it was definitely at the edge of rides I can handle. The drops and speed were just shy of what would make my stomach churn and so I handled it, but didn’t love it.
Next up, we saw The Castle. Ah, it was so cool!
It houses the main attraction,
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and I was fully expecting it to be a roller coaster. I was quite downtrodden because I really thought it would be cool to go and wished I liked coasters better, but then was shocked when the entrance agent told us it wasn’t one but rather an intense flight simulator and that it capped out at 5mph! An old Irish lady (
love that accent) was right behind us and told us she just went on it, and it’s a bit more intense than the way the agent described, but that it’s definitely not a coaster – and she was scared of coasters herself! That really calmed me down. We had to put our bags in the lockers (free for the first hour), which were impressively modern – fingerprinting to unlock your locker. We used our second express pass, but still had to wait about 10 minutes to get into the castle. Once in the castle – they just did
such a good job! – you walk through the hallways while waiting online and you see people moving in pictures having discussions, you get greeted by Dumbledore in his office, you see Harry, Ron and Hermione in a classroom telling you about the ride which is going to be an experience of you flying on a broomstick. Finally you get to the ride, and it’s a few people per “glider” hanging from above tracks with huge screens that really make you feel like you’re flying. The ride does move and occasionally spins a bit much as you “dive” for the snitch and around castle grounds. Really, a very enjoyable ride! I’m sure it’s worth the wait, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out!
After the HP ride, we began our research into the Kashrus of
ButterBeer. They sell it everywhere, and it looked so good, that we just had to find out. I asked a few people and eventually they brought me to one of the chefs in the back kitchen. He told me the mix is Kosher, but that I couldn’t go into the kitchen itself to see the Kosher logo – so I convinced him to take a picture of it on my phone.

I had never seen the Florida K before, but before I was able to make any calls, he told me, “Oh by the way, we don’t have certification for the topping that we put on top of the ButterBeer, and we aren’t allowed to sell it without the topping since it’s a trademarked drink.” I started making my calls and finally found out that Florida K is approved by the CRC, but after speaking to a Rabbi who works with the Rabbi that gave the Hechsher, he said they’re familiar with ButterBeer and know there’s an issue with the topping and that’s it. They couldn’t give me a good reason it has a Hashgacha on half the drink – the mix and not the topping – but that’s what it was. I tried getting a few vendors to sell it to me without adding on the topping (by saying I was allergic, etc.), but they all knew the rule and were steadfast in not allowing me to get half the drink – alas ButterBeer and my wife and me were not meant to be.

After the ButterBeer tragedy, I Davened Mincha, we ate sandwiches that we brought with us, and we went through the cute shops such as Honeydukes (where they sold actual Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans – not the Jelly Belly version – and many other candies from the books all made by Universal… without a Hechsher

), The Hog’s Head and The Three Broomsticks (and actual restaurant and bar!) and Ollivanders – where you can watch a demonstration of someone getting picked to have Ollivander try to find the right wand for them (and they get to keep it)! They sell replica wands from all the famous characters and kids were waving their wands all over the park. How much? FORTY dollars. Sheesh. The fancier wands actually interacted with parts of the park to make certain things happen, like water shoot out of places, etc. We also got to take a picture with the Hogwarts Express conductor infront of a replica train. We passed over the Dragon Challenge roller coaster – my wife wasn’t in the mood either – and then headed out of Hogsmeade. We came here later for something very exciting, but we’ll get to that soon. Based on how long this section was, you can tell HP World was our favorite part of the park.
The Lost Continent: This next section was built to look like an olden day, Middle-Eastern, Alladin-esque world. Of course it looked really cool, but there are only 2 attractions and we decided to pass on them and only come back if we wanted to later. One is a Sindbad stunt show, and the timing was off from when we got there. The other is a walking guided tour of Poseidon’s “ancient temple”. That one sounded interesting but, again, we decided to just keep walking and make sure to see the whole park.
Seuss Landing: Dr. Seuss world put up a good fight with Toon Lagoon for the cutest section of the park. The whole place was bright, colorful, and felt like you were walking in a Dr. Seuss book.
We picked up some candy (finally had some Kosher stuff in here) and Dippin’ Dots (yeah, we’re really healthy

) and then waited on a 15 minute line to ride
The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride! (Exclamation mark is part of the official ride title – it wasn’t
that exciting

). The ride was a slow moving trolley in the air that went around Seuss Landing including riding through some of the shops and restaurants. Cute, relaxing ride. The rest of the rides here were too kiddy (yeah, the trolley wasn’t, right!?) except for
The Cat In The Hat ride.

You sit on a slow moving car that goes through the story of The Cat In The Hat – it does spin a bit at times in case you’re the nauseous type, but not too bad. A great, fun ride. To me, that kinda ride (similar to It’s a Small World in Disney) is the ideal kinda ride. #chicken
Now it was time to backtrack (at this point I had gotten hold of a map and marked off which rides we wanted to get back to). Since the park is a big circle, we just walked past the entrance and walked right into Marvel Super Hero Island again. Here, we decided it was time to use express pass #3 to ride
The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man.
The line was really long, so it felt great to skip it and our wait was less than 5 minutes. The ride also fits into my category of ideal rides, although it’s definitely faster and more intense than Dr. Seuss. You put on your 3D glasses and get into a car that goes through a storyline of all of Spider-Man’s villains trying to get you while Spidey tries to save you. The rides spins a lot IIRC and the 3D was pretty intense (in a good way!) but what I like about the twists and drops is that it’s all the screen + the car tilting and not actual drops, so it’s just in your mind, which I can handle much better. The ride was so good that we were ready to get right back in line and use up our last express pass. We got back on the ride and were enjoying it until… it stopped! The car stopped, the audio shut off, the video screens went blank, the moving things stopped moving, and the lights went out (besides for emergency lights). I kindly informed everyone in my car (who apparently didn’t speak much English) that I rode the ride before, and it’s not supposed to stop like this.

Got some laughs. 5 minutes later, the ride picked up, but there was no audio. Then it froze again. Then it worked. Then it stopped. And finally, it was done. They offered us to go again and skip the line, so we headed down a special corridor to get to the front (although I was wondering how they could guarantee it wouldn’t break again). When we turned down the corridor, we saw how long the line was (no idea how that happened), so we just said forget it and left the ride.
We walked through Toon Lagoon again quickly (my wife took a second and decided she would not go on Ripshaw Falls) and made our way to Jurassic Park. The line for the River Adventure was much longer this time, so my wife decided not to go on it again, and then we found the Discover Center, which wasn’t so exciting so I just included it above. We then went back to Harry Potter world and decided at that point that we would not go to the 2 attractions in The Lost Continent but would take the
Hogwarts Express (!) to Universal Studios and call it a day at Islands of Adventure.
Universal first built Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure and then a number of years later, they built Diagon Alley in Universal Studios. Once they had both HP worlds, they made the Hogwarts Express ride so you can travel between the two. You can only ride it if you have a Park-to-Park ticket (aka Hopper), and it turns out we did have that! (Who knew?) There was about a 15-20 minute wait in what looks like it could be a train station and then finally we saw the Hogwarts Express pull into the station.
I mean it’s a real freaking train, and it looks just like the one in the movies!! The crew leads you on and directs you to a cabin to sit in – just like the one Harry and Co. sit in on their trips! The only negative thing was that they squished 8 of us into one cabin, and I couldn’t even sit next to my wife – we were across from each other. As the train starts going, you realize that the window is really a TV and they’re playing a video that makes it seem as if you’re going through the London countryside to get to King’s Cross Station. I think that was a great idea, because if it was a real window, we’d just be staring at Universal back lots, which is far less exciting. The ride takes about 5 minutes and then you get out into King’s Cross Station, and it really looks like the actual King’s Cross, but better yet – once you pass by the sign that says 9 ¾ (more on that later), the station turns from a magical-feeling place into what looks just like a real London train station! There are ads on the walls for London sights and companies and train timetables with UK cities that actually update and change. Really, really cool! More on King’s Cross in tomorrow’s adventures!
The reason we saved the Hogwarts Express for the end, was because we thought it would be good to get to the other park at night (you could take the shuttle back to the hotel from either park, since they both meet at the same parking lot) and go on 1 ride. I left this out earlier, but 1 of our express passes was a special one that let you skip the line only on certain “special” rides, such as the main Harry Potter castle ride. The pass was also good for the Minion ride, which is in Universal Studios. However, the passes were printed with an expiration date of today, so they wouldn’t be good the next day. BUT, at the HP ride… no one collected our pass! To each his own in this situation, but based on recent Psakim from my Rabbi, I decided that it’s their responsibility to collect the passes (they did at every other ride), and since they didn’t, I could use it again. So, that’s part of the reason we took the Hogwarts Express now at the end of the day to try and catch Minion Mayhem once we were done with the first park. I already described the train ride, and after we exited in London

, we made our way around the park passing through Sunset Boulevard, which was really cool all lit up at night with old-school diners, theaters and shops. We actually stopped in one theater that had a magic show starting soon. The show was only 12 minutes (yes, that time was listed on the banner outside; I didn’t actually time it), but it was fantastic. The magician pretends like he’s explaining how the tricks are done, but he doesn’t really. He did some very impressive floatation tricks. At the end, they try to sell you the tricks with DVDs teaching you how to do them, but they were >$20 a trick, so I passed. Very fun and entertaining. We continued on and finally made it to the
Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, which is very close to the entrance/exit of the park. The line was over an hour long, but we walked right in

I forgot to mention that my wife loves the Minions, and stopped at every store selling Minion stuff to check them out (yes, at one point I did get her a Minion doll), so she was really excited for the ride. The ride was another @Yehuda’s Ideal Ride, although a bit different. Instead of being in a car that moves around a track relatively slowly, this is one of those rides where you sit in a theater (with 3D glasses) and the whole section your sitting in shifts, tilts, etc. with the movements of the video. Gru and the Minions attempt to turn the crowd into Minions themselves to work for him, but ultimately… ah, I won’t ruin it for you.

The effects were intense, including the fake drops, but we didn’t get nauseous from it, it wasn’t too scary, and overall it was a great ride!
After the ride, we looked around the stores a bit more and then caught the shuttle back to the hotel. I originally thought we would catch the last shuttle at 8:10 (the park closes at 8PM), but we ended up making the 7:20, so all in all, we did Islands of Adventure in about 7.5 hours going on most of the interesting rides and walking slowly throughout. The ride back to the hotel was shorter than the ½ hour on the way there because we were the first stop. Interesting how we were the first stop in both directions, but I wasn’t complaining. Like I said before, the hotel was just a 10 minute walk to Chabad and Kosher Gourmet, but I noticed on the map that it was technically just behind the hotel. I asked the clerk if there was a way to cut through to get to International Drive and he said we could just walk through the hotel’s parking lot and through the parking lot of the building behind us. We did that and popped out right by the strip mall with Chabad and the restaurant and were there in 5 minutes!
Kosher Gourmet – this deli-style restaurant is what you’d expect from a place that’s 1 of 2 Kosher restaurants in an out-of-town place. It looks nicely modern, but isn’t fancy or totally clean. There’s no clear person who’s seating you, so we kinda just made our way in till someone saw us and gave us a seat. They have a classic Kosher deli menu, and my wife got the hot wings, the chicken fingers from the kid’s menu (and got a little bit of a snide remark from the waiter), and I got the grilled chicken salad. The salad was blah – I didn’t like the chicken, so I shared with my wife (which was kinda the plan anyway) and the wings were good although I don’t love wings and the chicken fingers were great. Fountain soda was unlimited refills, so that was nice. The total was around $50, and I paid most of that with a $40 gift certificate that I bought from GreatKosherDeals.com (which I paid $30 for minus $10 from credits I had there from SBS), which shows you that their prices were pretty reasonable. We walked back to the hotel, I Davened Maariv (unfortunately, Chabad only has a regular Shkia Minyan and only has an 8:30PM Maariv when there is high demand), and we called it a night.