Hogwarts and boyfriend Jake

What an awesome trip to Universal and Disney! Here is the day by day...

Saturday
Ryan took Ade to karate while I finished up packing. They returned home with, yes again, the camouflage belt!!! So proud of my little karate kid.

Then we had a nice, uneventful flight down and checked into our cool jungle hotel, the Loew's Royal Pacific at Universal. We headed to City Walk where we ate at Pat O'Briens. I got to see a lovely girl running up the stairs to the bathroom puking along the way. Nice. Ade immediately picked out the first of her 7 souvenirs (she earned them before leaving), and brought home the 3headed dog from Harry Potter, which we named Cerberus.

I had shipped a cheapo princess stroller, and bottled waters down, so we collected our packages and had an early evening.

Sunday
Harry potter! As a guest at Universal we got to go to Harry Potter world an hour early. It was freezing cold, and very early. The nice part is we were able to walk over from our hotel. We had a great time, including picking out a Hermione wand, and some chocolate toads. Unfortunately it was too cold for butter beer. Ade loved the Flight of the Hippogriff, and we went on twice in the front car. When the rest of the park opened we checked out Jurassic Park. Because Ade wants to be a paleontologist, she loved to explore in the dinosaurs center. She got her third souvenir, plastic dinosaurs.

Then she was on a character greeting streak. We saw the Grinch, Sam I Am, Cat in the Hat including Thing 1 and Thing 2, Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, the Lorax, Captain America, and Scooby and Shaggy. Ade loved anything resembling a roller coasters. After we did both parks, including a quick lunch at the superhero spot, we headed back to the room. We decided to try out the Emeril restaurant on site at our resort, and went to Tchoup Chop for a fancy and delicious dinner. Check out Ade's amazing dessert.

Monday
A leisurely morning, and some nice breakfast was needed after the hurry of the last 2 days. Then we headed over to the Waldorf for the next part of the trip in Disney. The suite was unbelievably amazing. This part of the trip made me realize how much I would like to stay in luxury suites ALL THE TIME.

After we settled in, we headed over to the worlds at Epcot and started our Duffy bear stamper collection. The weather was already so much warmed, in the mid60s. Ade was very excited to see Mulan, her favorite princess, in China. 

She picked out a stuffed baby hippo, since hippos are one of her favorite animals. While we had a soft pretzel snack, some crazy hungry ducks tried to basically climb in the stroller with Ade. We had dinner in the Mexican pavillion, and then headed back a bit later than we had intended.

Tuesday
Valentines day! I had snuck cards in the bedside drawer for Ryan and Ade with little snacks to say I loved them. Ade got truffles, and Ryan got beef jerky. ;-) We headed bright and early to our character brakfast at Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood Studios. On the way in we saw Lilo and Minnie! 

Once there, Ade was thrilled to see some of her favorite Disney Junior characters - Handy, June, Oso, and the best of all Jake!!! She was desperately in love with Jake, and it seemed he loved her too. He picked to dance with him, and also he took her off for some alone time on a bench. Here they are gazing adoringly into each other's eyes:

She met her buddies from Monsters Inc, and we hit all the kid rides. She loved the Great Movie ride, especially the Wizard of Oz, but she buried her head in my lap through the Alien part. With the weather already reaching up to the 80s, the rest of the week's weather more than made up for the first day in Universal.

After going back to the hotel early and resting a bit, including a lovely hot bath in the gorgeous suite bathtub, we made a reservation for the T Rex restaurant at Downtown Disney. Ade adored eating in the ice cave and seeing the meteor showers with all the moving dinosaurs inside. She got a set of Peter Pan figurines as a souvenir that day. The turn down service that night included a red rose on my pillow. 

Wednesday
Onto Magic Kingdom, with a first stop at Pixie Hollow. Ade loved Pirates of the Caribbean with Captain Jack Sparrow, but why oh why was there no Jake stuff to buy anywhere???

The tiki room no longer had Iago or Zazu for some reason, so that was a bummer. We had a yummy lunch at Liberty Tavern, one of our faves in that park. While we were there, I almost had a heart attack because Jenna called, and I know she wouldn't call unless she really needed to. Well, turns out she was at our house bringing the mail in, and the latter from Thales arrived. She wanted to let us know Ade had been accepted. Wow, talk about fast turnaround time! So proud, and relieved. ;-)

She decided she was old enough to go on the Haunted Mansion ride, and loved it. That afternoon, the longest wait we had was on the Pooh ride, which was the most annoying part of the trip to that point. We went back and decided to keep it low key. We ordered room service for dinner, and really enjoyed the fancy experience. 

Ryan and watched some Sons of Anarchy on my iPad that night after Ade went to bed, since the previous nights I had sacked out almost at the same time as Ade.

Thursday
We spent a very leisurely morning in the suite before hitting Epcot. We went straight on spaceship earth, and then to the energy pavilion to see the dinosaurs. 

We had a FANTASTIC lunch at the pub in England, including an awesome sampler of beer. Ade and I  got matching Canada bracelets made in the Canada pavilion and a baby snow owl.

It was a trip back in time for me after I took Ade on the Figment ride while Ryan hit Soarin, because they had brought back Captain EO!!! It was truly a trip to see that again; it felt like I was there with my family as a kid myself.

Another early return so we could hit the pool. We ordered dinner and drinks poolside and enjoyed the luxury of the Waldorf. 

Some more SOA that night, and chilling out. (Can you tell we were winding down?)

Friday
The weather took a slight turn for the crummy, as is our curse with the Animal kingdom, and we had some drizzly rain. In all it wasn't bad though. We were able to do all of the rides we wanted before it started raining with any real impact. In Dinoland USA, Ade got another set of plastic dinosaurs. We had some snack foods, and went back to the hotel early afternoon. We relaxed and started repacking. We went to Downtown Disney for some ropa vieja at Bongo's and a little more shopping. That night we got all packed up, and enjoyed our last night in our magical Waldorf suite.

Our return trip on Saturday was just as smooth as the trip down, and we enjoyed having the rest of the weekend to unwind from our vacation ;-) We missed our girlies very much, though I know they were spoiled as usual at Aunt Krista's.

My Cool Cat, v2 says - Until next time, Orlando! We love you!