Orlando Trip 2023

Back towards the end of the summer two of my younger cousins and I booked a trip to Universal Orlando for Thanksgiving weekend. We decided to go from Thursday-Sunday with 2 days at the Universal parks and it was so fun!

This post is going to be picture heavy and just know that I’m only sharing a fraction of all the photos and videos I took! Also, a highlight reel of the trip is going to be on my Instagram this morning!

Thursday – We arrived in the early afternoon and took an Uber to our hotel. We stayed at a Universal resort – the Universal’s Endless Summer Resort Dockside Inn & Suites – so that we could get early access to the parks in the morning. Guests at Universal hotels can enter an hour earlier. After grabbing lunch at the hotel we took a Lyft to Disney Springs since our park tickets were for Friday and Saturday. It was our little dose of Disney while in Orlando! We got lucky and were able to get a table at Morimoto for dinner without a reservation and then we grabbed dessert at the place that serves Dole Whips and shared a Christmas Tree Sundae!

Friday – We got up really early so we could stand in line for the hotel shuttle over to Universal at 6:40am. As soon as the gates opened we walked over to Hogsmeade and stood in line for the new Hagrid ride, which was amazing! One of my favorite rides! Since it’s one of the only rides that you can’t use Express Pass for we wanted to go there immediately with our early access. After riding that and the Forbidden Journey ride we went to Three Broomsticks for breakfast. Then it was more walking around the parks, riding rides, taking the Hogwarts Express over to the other park and walking around there including Diagon Alley and riding things like the Gringott’s ride, The Mummy, etc. We took a snack break with churros and Starbucks. We ate dinner at The Minion Cafe, which was so cute. We went back over to Islands of Adventure to see the light show on the Hogwarts Castle and go on some more rides over there including the new Velocicoaster ride which we didn’t realize you could use the Express Pass for and were able to go on twice!

Saturday – We headed out early again to take advantage of the early access to the parks. Again we went straight for the Hagrid ride and then Velocicoaster. To give you an idea of how awesome the early access is for rides that don’t have Express Pass – we went straight to Hagrid’s when the gates opened and it’s a good 5+ minute walk from the entrance. We got onto the ride within 15-20 minutes. When we got off the ride the wait time was 105 minutes! After the first two rides we went to Croissant Moon Bakery and had a delicious breakfast. The Strawberry & Cheese Pop Tart was the star of the show. We went souvenir and sweets shopping, walked around more, had a snack break of pretzels and Starbucks again, stopped at Voodoo Doughnut on City Walk to get dessert for when we got back to the hotel at night, and then headed back to the hotel for a short afternoon break. We did this to rest up a little and also because we didn’t get Express Passes for day 2 so most rides had very long waits so we decided to take a break and then head back out in time for our dinner reservation. We got lucky and were able to get a reservation at Mythos which is a top theme park restaurant and it was delicious! We then went back to the Universal side and walked around Diagon Alley at night and got a few more rides in before heading back to the hotel to pack and eat doughnuts.

Sunday – We woke up a little after 4am to get ready and head to the airport for early morning flights home!

It was a really fun trip and I’m so happy we went. It was a nice escape from reality and things I have going on, but of course I got smacked in the face by reality when I returned and had to go straight to urgent care from the airport cause I wasn’t feeling well. I ended up having to stay home from work yesterday to rest and let my antibiotics start working.

Anyway, we had a great time and are already talking about wanting to plan a Disney trip!