Bahamas Cruise - Day 1-2 - Around the Ship

Our cruise was a 4 night/5 day cruise to the Bahamas out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. We cruised with Royal Carribean. They did not have any rooms big enough to fit our whole family, so we had to book 2 different rooms. The kids lucked out with their ocean view balcony room. Danny and I got stuck with a balcony over this outdoor park on the 8th deck. 't end up going out there much because it was a bit awkward facing all of the other cruisers balconies. We would have much preferred an ocean view. The first 2 days of the cruise were spent on the shop doing all kinds of fun activities. Here are some of the things we did.

The dinners: Formal night, Carribean Night, or just in regular clothes. It was always fun to meet up together for dinner together in the dining room. There was a mix up with getting us all seated at the same table, so we had to request a change on the first night and ended up at this big round table just inside the doors of the dining room. Our waiters did great with the last-minute change.

The Pool and Hot Tub: The kids spent hours at the pool and hot tub. It didn't help that this is also where the ice cream was located, too. They must have eaten over 10 ice cream cones a day.

The towel animals: We all loved our towel creations on this cruise. My favorites were the love birds on Valentine's Day and the bat wearing my sunglasses.

Flow rider: I think almost everyone in the group tried the flow rider at least once. The kids all tried it multiple times. They started with having you move from side to side and front to back. Then you got to lift your arms and move. Then they would have you get up on your knees and move around, and last was the one leg up other one kneeling or the sitting position on the board. Most people wiped out before getting to those last 2.

The zip line: I think we all tried the zip line, as well. Except for Tyler and Camden. They were not heavy enough. It wasn't that exciting. It just went from one side of the ship to the other over an opening that went down like 10 decks.

The Rock wall: located on the opposite side of the ship from all of the other activities was the rock wall. The kids tried climbing them a couple of times.

Sports Court: They had a variety of sports activities and competitions on their sports court. There was basketball, pickleball, soccer, and volleyball. Connor and I entered the adult volleyball competition. We rigged it so that we ended up on the same team, team #3 out of 3 teams. I thought we would not have a good team because we got all of the late comers. But we ended up winning the whole thing, which consisted of beating both teams once. The old guy on our team was our favorite teammate. He was like 70 and it made his day to be on the winning team. Connor and the guy in red were probably the reason we won. The red guy stayed in the setter position the whole time which gave us lots of opportunities for good hits, especially Connor.

  

Some other things that we did that I do not have pictured: we ate A LOT of pizza at this pizza place on deck 5. The boys watched the Mario Movie during the volleyball competition in a theater room. We played 1 High any chance we got. We ate A LOT. We played ping pong. We watched a couple of shows. We missed out on ice skating, mini golf, and a ride on the carousel (for the boys). We just never got around to those things. Mostly, we just enjoyed hanging out with the Knudsen's. We were shocked how long it took us to connect with them on Day 2. But then we learned that the kids slept until almost noon and Becky was at the gym and then getting cleaned up for the day. None of them were answering their room phones or the multiple knocks at their doors.

Florida Day 3 - Disney's Animal Kingdom

 We decided to do a day at Disney with the Knudsen's. We decided to go to Animal Kingdom because it is the least busy of the parks. Unfortunately, it was still a weekend and the National Cheer competition was going on that weekend. So we opened the park and ran straight to the Avatar ride. It was still an hour and a half wait. And the wait times only got worse. The avatar line was really well decorated so between cousins and the entertainment in the line, it went pretty quickly.

 The ride was amazing and everyone was so happy coming off of it.

Our next stop was the safari ride. We had heard that you want to go early because that is when the animals are most active. The line was about an hour and everyone was a bit disappointed that we waited an hour for a safari ride. And then the driver got upset with someone in the back that kept standing up, so about halfway through the ride he didn't stop anymore and seemed a little more rushed in his explanations. Later in the day, the safari ride only had a 5 minute wait. We totally should have waited to do it later.

After the safari, we walked through the little trail near the exit that had more animals to look at. However, our legs were already tired by this point so there were a lot of complaints from the group. The mom's tried to talk the rest of the group into going to "The Lion King" show, to give our legs a rest, but the kids all vetoed the show, and any other show we might think of taking them to that day. They were all eager to get to Everest, the only roller coaster in the park. So we headed there, hoping that if they got that ride out of their minds, then they would be more willing to try the other stuff. 

Everest was a BIG mistake. The line claimed to be 80 minutes, if I remember right. But we think it must have broken down because there was a 15 minute stretch when the line did not move AT ALL. We literally sat down in the line and didn't need to move for 15 minutes. By the time we finally got on the ride, we were so disappointed with the 2 hour wait that the ride did not seem worth it. It was cool, but not 2 hours of waiting cool.  Claire and Alyssa purposely posed in a very unimpressed way for the picture. LOL

After Everest, we headed to the last main attraction, Dinosaur. It had the shortest line of the day to that point at around 20 minutes. The ride was a little outdated and Becky later got a kick out of my and Danny's unimpressed faces in the picture compared to Alyssa's scared face.

By this point, we had done everything, without doing the shows, besides a little slow boat ride in the Avatar land. But the line was so long (75 minutes) when we got there, that most of us vetoed it. We decided to go eat instead. After dinner, we split up. Becky, Jake, Connor, Alyssa, and Claire went to the river float ride. Danny, Ashley, Tamma, Tyler, Camden, and I decided to go back to the Dinosaur ride which claimed to have a 15 minute wait on the app. By the time we got there, the line had gone up to 45 minutes so we went back to Everest instead. It was a much better experience the 2nd time through. The 60 minute line only ended up being 20 minutes. The river float group got done with their ride as we were heading back onto Everest for a second ride, so they joined up with us. We ended up riding it one more time all together and then we headed over to Avatar for the last ride of the night.

Here are some other pictures from the day.

Alyssa and Claire were twinning it.

In the line for Dinosaur

Also in the line for dinosaur

Some pictures of Ashley and Tamma.

We were exhausted by the time we got off of Avatar. The park was closed, so we headed out. We took this picture on the way out. We should have done it on the way inside because the lighting was all wrong. 

It was a fun and tiring day. The kids all had a lot of fun together. Animal Kingdom was a little less Disney-ish than other Disney parks we have been to. My biggest disappointment of the day was that it was sooo crowded. And with so little to do in the park and with kids that wouldn't go to shows, it just meant a lot of time standing in long lines and very little time actually riding rides. But at least there was a lot of bonding time while standing in line.

Florida Day 2 - Universal Studios

We got to Universal early and it is a good thing because the walk from the parking lot to the front gate was about a mile. We were in line with a bunch of others as they prepared to open the gate. We realized when we got there that we had forgotten about the early entry for resort guests. So on our Universal app, it said that the Hagrid line was already 150 minutes. We did not believe it and we raced with a bunch of others to the line. We ended up waiting for about 75 minutes, but it was well worth the wait. One of the coolest rides I have ever been on.

We were going to go to the Velocicoaster next, but we were not wanting to wait in another long line right away, so we decided to go on the Jurassic Work ride and then just continued on around the loop that the park was arranged in, hitting rides as we came to them. We didn't know anything about the King Kong ride, but the line had a lot of cool things that I'm assuming are from the movie.

There was only one ride that Camden could not go on in the park, the Incredible Hulk Roller Coaster. So I stayed with him while the others rode on the ride. They had to go through metal detectors, so Danny had to bring his phone to us after they had gotten in line. As a result, we timed the line wrong and they got off way before we expected them to be done. We rode this spinning ride and then went over to seuss land to see what we could ride there. I knew that was my plan, but I forgot to tell the others since I thought Danny would have his phone. So they were looking all over for us while we rode the carousel and went through a maze. We learned after this, to be better about communicating our plans.

We had a late lunch in this BBQ place. The food was good, but we were also pretty hungry by the time we started eating.

We brought a few of the magical Harry Potter wands along with us. We spent some time casting spells and were disappointed to find that only a few of the windows were actually functional. 

We almost walked right on to the Harry Potter ride, thanks to the single rider line.

The kids wanted to ride it again, but Danny and I chose to sit and rest instead since the ride made our adult stomach's slightly sick.

Universal loves their 3D rides. I think this was for the King Kong ride.

We finally made it on the Velocicoaster after dark. Alyssa had gotten to ride it with Ashley earlier, so she opted to sit out with our stuff so that we could all ride it. She had a lot of time to walk around the park and take pictures. 

We opted for the single rider line because the girls said it took them 30-40 minutes at about the same place it was at when we got in the line. Unfortunately, the ride broke down 3 times while we were waiting. I think it took us an hour and a half to 2 hours to get on the ride. But it was a super fun ride, so we were glad that we got to go on it. We just wish we had found a place to put the backpack so Alyssa could have ridden with us instead of being lonely waiting for us.

We finished the night off with Hagrid's motorcycle ride. The kids (and adults) were exhausted after such a long day and over 20000 steps. We got back to the house around 9:45pm and most of the Knudsen's (who had arrived around 7pm) were already asleep. We got to bed as quickly as possible since we had another early start planned for the next morning.

Florida Day 1

 For Alyssa's senior trip, she requested that we go to the Bahama's. We decided that the easiest way to get to the Bahamas would be to fly into Orlando and go on a cruise there. We chose a shorter cruise and decided to add a few days in Orlando to the trip. We left Utah on Feb. 8th around 5:30 pm. It was a direct flight, but it still got us into Orlando around midnight. 

We looked into all of the different resorts and hotels in the area, but we decided that a vacation rental was much more practical. We found one with a pool. So for our first day in Orlando, we decided to take it easy, sleep in, and enjoy the pool.

The biggest disappointment for us was that the "hot" tub ended up being a slightly warmer tub than the pool. We paid extra to have the pool heated for our stay and we expected the hot tub to be around 100 degrees for our stay. But we couldn't ever get it more than about 93 degrees. We still sat in it, but just didn't stay in it for very long.

We liked the speed limit sign behind the house. I had to point out the Harry Potter reference and the kids got it after I made the connection.

Besides the grocery store, our only outing that day was a trip to Disney Springs. We didn't know much about it besides knowing it had shops and restaurants. We expected it to be an extension of Disney with character sightings and shows, but it was really just a big outdoor shopping center with some fun themed stores and restaurants. We didn't buy anything (except Alyssa who got herself a Lulu Lemon clutch bag) but we did get a late lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. The kids especially loved the thunderstorms that rolled through a few times while we ate.

After the outing, we went back to the rental house and swam some more. We went to bed early to prepare for our early start the next day. We had planned to open the park at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure.