My Picture Review of the 10-10-10 Legend sailing and our Mega Vacation

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

 

We soon left the Wizarding World and made our way back thru the park to leave. Once agian the park was beautiful at night and once in the port of entry we turned around to bid fairwell to Hogwarts castle as we don't know yet when we will be returning. Before leaving the park though we stopped at the huge store in the Port of Entry to find some postcards of IOA and Universal Studios for a vacation book. I also wanted to try on some robes to and ended up in the Ravenclaw House.

 

[TeknikDC2]

 

We made our way back thru Citywalk which was hopping on a Saturday evening. The place really came alive and there were even live concerts taking place. I wish we could have taken our time and enjoyed it more but with everyone else back at the hotel we had to hurry and meet up with them.

 

 

Overall our impressions of the Universal Orlando Resort were much better then they were last year. The addition of the Wizarding World really sets the resort apart from anywhere else in the world. I dare say that Islands of Adventure even Rivals Disneyland as my favorite Theme park anywhere. If you haven't been to Universal or haven't been in a long time then take the time to go expericance it. The whole resort is awesome. My only complaint is that with the Rockit broken the studios really seem empty compared to IOA. Hopefully Universals next big project will be adding something big and new to the Studios.

[TeknikDC2]

We were soon making the walk back to the Hotel. We were about half way there when everyone pulled up in the Van. It was such a relief that they picked us up as my foot was starting to hurt again. They picked us up as we were on our way to the next distination for the evening. Downtown Disney. It turned out that some friends of Kyle and Valisas from Seattle were vacationing with there kids at Disneyworld prior to there Disney cruise so we were heading there to meet up with them for dinner. The drive from Universal to Downtown Disney wasn't bad. It usually only takes like 10 minutes or so. However this time we hit major traffic that turned out to be mostly people heading back to Disney from the Universal Area.

 

We soon made it to Downtown Disney though and made our way to go find Kyle and Valisas friends. Downtown Disney is a huge shopping and entertainment complex on the Disney Property. Its pretty cool and worth checking out if you can't go to any parks or just have one night to kill in the Orlando area. Theres alot of fun to be had and you still feel alot of the Disney Magic here. There are many Disney themed stores and also many good restaurants in addition to a movie theater, a Circ du sole show, and the Disneyquest indoor themepark. We soon found there friends and we decided to eat at the Earl of Sandwich for dinner.

 

 

Earl of Sandwich was very good. And very resonably priced. We had a good dinner and had a good time chatting it up. After finishing dinner we went outside and watched some kids play in the fountain. Everyone else decided to take the boat back to the other side of Downtown Disney where our cars were parked but Kiera and I decided to walk as there were many stores we wanted to peak around in like the World of Disney, the Lego Store, and Ridemakers. Ridemakers is a store like build-a-bear but instead of a bear you can make your own toy car. And since cars are pretty much my life I had to stop in.

 

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

 

We soon meet back up with everyone else and said our goodbyes and made our way back to our hotel. It was getting pretty late and many of us would be having a very early morning as Kyle and would be taking Mike and Emily to the Orlando airport to catch there planes home while the rest of us would be starting our next adventure on our Carnival Cruise to the Western Caribbean. We took some photos of all our Universal souveniors and were soon in bed to rest for our busy day tomorrow.

 

 

And with that the Universal portion of our vacation is over. Tomorrow starts the review i'm sure your all looking forward to. Embarkation day aboard the Carnival Legend. Once again thanks for all your many replys. If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will answer them as quickly as possible.

[starstruck05]

great review so far! You have me now trying to plan a cruise out of FL so I can go see all the Harry Potter stuff. (I'm a HUGE fan) I didn't know how detailed it really was!

[boaterette]

I have just loved it so far. Thank you so much and I am looking forward to the rest. Just an aside my daughter is attending SUU. Utah is really very pretty.

[flalady29]

The review is awesome so far. I live in the Orlando area and have not yet went to see HP I want the crowds to level out :-) My daughter and I sail on the Dream in March maybe when we get back I will take her. Can't wait for the review of the Legend. By the way they had on the local news tonight that Universal reopened the rip ride rockit today :-)

[DEERINH2O]

This review is great! We are stopping in Orlando for one night on our way to Miami for our December cruise. We are planning on visiting Downtown Disney for dinner. I am super excited because we just moved from the West Coast (CA-Anaheim) to the East Coast and I want to see the differences in the Downtown Disneys. I hear Floridas is better.

 

thanks,

Kathy

[Dedivah]

Loved the review! I can't wait for the rest.

 

We are planning a huge vacation next year. A week at Disney and then 7 day cruise on the Dream. So we just may squeeze in a day at IOA just to got to Harry Potter.

[TeknikDC2]

I have just loved it so far. Thank you so much and I am looking forward to the rest. Just an aside my daughter is attending SUU. Utah is really very pretty.

 

Yes we actually love living here and all the activitys we have to do in the mountains. I actually grew up in St. George wich is about 40 minutes from SUU. Cedar City is a very nice little town.

 

The review is awesome so far. I live in the Orlando area and have not yet went to see HP I want the crowds to level out :-) My daughter and I sail on the Dream in March maybe when we get back I will take her. Can't wait for the review of the Legend. By the way they had on the local news tonight that Universal reopened the rip ride rockit today :-)

 

Haha yeah I follow a few Disney/Universal websites as well and saw that Rockit was finally reopened. Makes me sad that we missed it by just a couple weeks lol.

 

This review is great! We are stopping in Orlando for one night on our way to Miami for our December cruise. We are planning on visiting Downtown Disney for dinner. I am super excited because we just moved from the West Coast (CA-Anaheim) to the East Coast and I want to see the differences in the Downtown Disneys. I hear Floridas is better.

 

thanks,

Kathy

 

The Disneyland Resort DTD doesn't even hold a candle to the Disneyworld DTD. The one in Florida is probably about 3 times larger then the one in California as because of such it has many more stores and restaurants. One thing though that I love about the Disneyland resort though is how close everything is (like the Universal Orlando Resort). At Disneyland all the parks, shopping, and hotels are within walking distance. In Florida it is all spread out so the Florida Downtown Disney isn't near any of the parks. But I enjoy the Florida one much more then the California one.

 

Anyways i'm starting to type of the Embarkation day recap of our trip. It will be posted shortly. Thanks everyone and feel free to ask any questions you might have.

[TeknikDC2]

Day 5: Embarkation Day

 

Our 5th day of Vacation started very early for Kyle and I. We awoke at 6am so that we could take Mike and Emily to the airport. There vacation was quickly coming to an end and we were about to embark on the next stage of our adventure.

 

We arrived to the airport shortly after 7am and said our goodbyes. We then headed back to the Hotel but not without a quick stop at Walmart. Kiera and I had bought too much stuff at the Wizarding World and would be over our baggage weight limits so I had to pick us up another bag to carry things home in. Once we got the bag we got back to the hotel and we took a short nap before we really needed to get up and ready.

 

We were soon awake again and ready for the day. We got all our bags packed and taken down to the car. We checked out of the hotel by 10am so that we had plenty of time to get the rental car back to Tampa on time. I can't stress enough how excellent our hotel was. I highly recommend it to anyone planning a trip to Universal Orlando. Everything was a short walk away and it was a very nice hotel. We will diffenitly stay there again. Just make note that there is an extra fee for parking ($12 a day) and internet in your room costs extra as well.

 

 

There was a Burger King a short distance from the hotel that we decided to grab breakfast at. This was a big mistake. For some reason this Burger King had to be the slowest one in the world. Seriously it took 20 minutes for us to get our food after we ordered. Then the poor people behind us in line were denied breakfast cause by the time there order was taken it was after 10:30. Really avoid this BK location at all costs lol.

 

After our breakfast delays we were soon on the road and making the drive back to Tampa. This is a much more interesting drive during the day then it is during the day and I was shocked to see so many roadside podunk tourist stops lol. The drive went quickly and we got the van back to the Airport right on time.

 

 

The plan once the car was returned was to walk back thru the terminal and to the taxi pickup. We chose this route because we found it the cheapest alternative then paying rental car relocation fees. The taxis have a flat rate of $25 to the cruise Terminals from the airport. And that cost is per taxi so the 4 of us were covered under that for a van. This was the first time we've ever really used a taxi before so the experiance was a learning one. We didn't know if we had to tip the kid who loaded the luggage in our taxi but we did anyways. The Tampa airport is also pretty close to the cruise terminal and in a matter of minutes we were driving thru downtown Tampa and soon caught a glimpse of our ship and the Port of Tampa. Awe it was finally time for another relaxing cruise.

 

[TeknikDC2]

 

The taxi was quickly unloaded. I paid our driver and tipped him $5 and then we gave our bags to the porters. Our bags were quickly on there way but our friends were still new to this. They still hasn't attached there tags (we did at the hotel) and then they didn't know they had to tip the Porters as well lol. Before we knew it we were in line to board the ship. A line that was very long as we arrived at the peak time of arrival (around 1pm).

 

 

Although the line was long it was continually moving. Besides after being in the parks for 3 days prior we were use to waiting in lines. To find it intersting enough the people next to us in line were an older couple and they too were also from Utah. Infact there were a bunch of people on the ship doing a LDS history tour thru Fun for Less tours on this cruise. So it was nice talking with them during most of our wait in line. Check in was smooth and quick but it still took around 45 minutes tell we were on the ship. Tampa had a much quicker embarkation process then Long Beach did but Port Canaveral was better then Tampa.

 

We soon finished checking in and got our sail and sign cards (Kyle and Valisa also got there Virgin Sail and Sign cards [as I called there blue cards]) and we were boarding the ship. Awe how I missed the spirit class ships. In my opinion they are much nicer then the Conquest class like our last cruise on the Glory. By this point we were starving so we headed strait up to the Lido deck to get some lunch. It felt so great being on the ship and being able to leave our worries behind. We made a few final phone calls and then the phones turned off for a week. After lunch we got the best thing about cruising. The free Ice Cream. Something we went back for probably 3 more times this day.

 

 

After getting our Ice Cream we decided to head down to see if our rooms were ready. This cruise we went with the cheapest option avalible for us and booked a 4A cabin on the Riviera deck. It was an inside cabin room number 1153 and was about mid ship. We had our worrys booking on the bottom floor of the ship as our previous cruises we had been on deck 7 and 8 but that was quickly gone. The room was just as nice and we didn't feel any extra rocking being at the bottom. The only bad thing was we chose to never use the elevator. We used the stairs everywhere we went. And being on the bottom of the boat that made for a very tough hike lol. We were also shocked to find some of our luggage already waiting for us when we got to our room. The rest of it arrived within about 15 minutes of us getting in. This was the quickest we had ever recieved our luggage on any of our cruises. Maybe that was a perk for being on deck 1 lol.

 

We decided after resting for a little bit to go wonder the ship. Ironically we found ourselves outside where the Muster stations are located when they made the announcement for the Muster drill. Being that we were already ther we decided just to stay put. It was really nice not having to bring your life vests but it was kinda sad at the same time. Kiera and I always loved the photos we would take in them but this year it didn't happen. The Muster drill was soon over and Sail away would be following shortly.

 

[TeknikDC2]

 

For the sail away we decided to go go to the top deck to watch. Of course we had to grab another Ice Cream first though. The views of downtown Tampa are excellent from the ship. It is a very pretty city. There was another cruise ship in port as well getting ready to disembark. I'm not sure what the name of it was but it looked to be a Holland America ship.

 

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

The ships horns soon blew and our cruise was officially starting. We decided to watch the sail away from the Lido Deck at the Aft pool. This pool area is one of my favorite things about the Spirit Class ships as I love how open it is. It always amazes me with how precise and well the ship can munover in the water considering its size. We relaxed for a little in the sun and dipped our feet in the water and then watched the sail away some more.

 

[TeknikDC2]

 

The Channel we were sailing thru to get to the bay and eventually to the ocean was very interesting. On the left side you could see very big, expensive, fancy, multi-million dollar homes. Yet on the right side there were a bunch of oil refineries. I just thought that was strange. Once we were on our way Kyle and Valisa decided to head down to there room to take a nap. I wanted to watch some more of the scenery go by so Kiera and I went up to to deck 10 and walked around the ship taking in the beautiful Tampa Bay area.

 

[TeknikDC2]

[TeknikDC2]

 

After walking the perimeter of the ship we too decided to head down to our room to relax some more and to get our suitcases unpacked. I don't know if you guys do it or not but we completly unpack our bags and "move in" to the room if we are staying somewhere longer then 3 days. This includes hanging things in the closest and putting things in drawers. We figured that was the norm since we've done it every cruise. However our friends though we were odd for completly unpacking everything. They chose to just live out of there suitcases the whole week.

 

 

We intended to try to take a little nap after unpacking. However that ended up not happening. By the time we were done unpacking it was nearing the time we were told that we would be going under the skyway bridge. I'd seen pictures of it on this website before so I was not going to miss out on this amazing sight. We tried knocking on our friends door to let them know we were going to go watch the bridge. But ther was no answer. They were sound asleep. So Kiera and I headed up the highest deck we could get to near the funnel. To our suprise though we were still pretty far away from passing the bridge.

 

[TeknikDC2]

 

Since we still had plenty of time to kill we decided go and get (you guessed it) more ice cream. We sat in the Unicorn cafe and talked and relaxed for a little while before deciding to go back up to the funnel tell we passed the bridge. Once outside we noticed many small boats around us again and a large city in the distance. We didn't know what city it is though.

 

[TeknikDC2]

The time was finally near. The bridge was drawing closer and closer by the minute. You wouldn't think that going under a bridge would really be anything that exciting. However it is very cool. Especially once you get close and actually go under the bridge. You kinda naturally get nervous for a moment as you think the ship won't clear it. If you ever sail out of Tampa do not miss out on this amazing sight. Really it is crazy that the ship gets so close to the bridge (clearing it by only 5ft). Our friends were pretty sad that they missed it later when we showed them the pictures.