Life, The Universe & Everything

Well, I’m back. I guess the good thing about international trips is it usually brings me back to this blog! So as usual, I didn’t finish the last trip (though I did do fairly well I think). I still do have a draft with some more thoughts about Universal, I’m not sure whether I’ll post that or not. This trip is shorter and arguable less happened, so maybe I’ll be able to document the whole trip. Saying that, today is my last day so I am behind already! At the moment I’m in Starbucks (shocker I know) but let’s start at the beginning. I did start typing some of this on one of my flights, so let’s start with that!

Well I’m off again. Actually at this point I’m just under an hour out from landing in Dallas. But it’s the start of what seems to be turning into my annual pilgrimage to the US. That’s not a bad thing at all – FPS has been a part of my life for a long time and I still see a lot of value in the program.

This year is a much shorter trip – travel is not super cheap and while having the airfare paid helps a lot, 3 weeks in the US still adds up. So this year I’m mainly going for the finals. I’ve got a few days after in Indianapolis, but in general it’s a much shorter trip.

So my travel started about 24 hours ago, this point yesterday (the date line is involved so this could get confusing so ~4am 3/6) I was jumping in the shower to get ready after lying awake in bed for about an hour. I went off to sleep OK (with the help of Tamazepam) but I woke about 3 and because the wake up time was soon I couldn’t really get back to sleep.

Nothing exciting, showered, dressed ordered an Uber. I’m glad I didn’t end up reserving one – it cost my $18 while if I had reserved one if would have been $45! I had to quickly thrown the last few things in my bag as the Uber that was supposed to be 6 minutes away arrived one minute after I ordered it.

I was super lucky this time to manage to use points to upgrade to business both from Perth – Melbourne and more importantly Melbourne to Dallas/Fort Worth, but more on that to come. As usual, I was checked in but had to go to the counter because they need to see your passport. They gave me all my boarding passes, including my internal flight DFW-IND on AA. Unusually and some what annoyingly it won’t show me my boarding passes in the app so I have to use the physical ones each time. I did manage to get the AA boarding pass from the AA app, but the other ones aren’t working. Generally I prefer the app because it live updated information – not all of which is available when you leave ~25 hours before your last flight.

Security at Perth was super busy, apparently early morning is a bad time. Even going through the priority line I reckon it took 20+ minutes. As usual my bag was pulled aside, but as has become more common they checked on the computer and I was told it was fine. So upstairs to the business lounge. I had time for a coffee and to look at a few email, less time that I thought and then I was boarding.

Being in business I was in group 1 so on of the first to board and had to find seat 5F – it took my a second because 5F is in the middle, but roughly in line with seat 4 on the window side – go figure. It was an A330, which made business worth it as it was the suites. Unfortunately it was an international A330 which meant no internet, so I couldn’t get any work done. So I browsed the entertainment system and found NCIS Origins. When I watched the Pilot I thought it was decent but hadn’t got back into it. Having watched several episodes on both flights now, I am enjoying it.

Breakfast was served and was typical good business fare. Bircher muesli with berries and nuts and coffee, so I was happy! It was a super short flight they says 2 hours 50 minutes but with no internet I decided to take advantage of business class and had a rest / dose for about half the flight.

Being in business meant I was one of the first off the flight and it’s a very quick walk from Melbourne terminal 1 to terminal 2. Security and immigration were the polar opposite to Perth, it was almost straight through both, basically now wait at all. I worked out where my gate was. This turned out to be conveniently close the the lounge precinct. This was a new experience as whenever I’ve transited through Melbourne it always been inbound, so I’ve only experienced the domestic lounges before.

Melbourne International Business Lounge is nothing to rave about, it’s downstairs so there’s no natural light and the food wasn’t that impressive. The good thing was the internet – it was very fast. I arrived and order a coffee (yes that’s number 3 for anyone counting.) I’m going to pause this entry now as the cabin crew have been told to prepare the cabin for landing so I have to fold down my iPad. This looks lik…

That’s were the post ended and it looks like it’s really long so I’ll end here and pick up with Flight #2.

It’s about half and hour later and we’re in the air. I’m comfortable ensconced is my 8F business class seat. I do love the space in business – I can actually use my laptop and my mouse.

So, universal! I’m probably not going to give you a detailed account of what I did when – after all, look up a universal day plan and you’ll have a pretty good idea. My plan for the first arvo/evening was to get my bearings in the park and maybe see jump on a ride or two if the lines were short. So I entered Universal Studios and set off to the left, through Suess Land, just checking out the sights. I got to the MIB ride, which I had seen on my plan, and the single rider queue was <5 mins, so I took advantage of that. It was fun, one of my reflection from Universal, at least early on was that I like the ‘in the dark’ motion rides.

After this I kept walking and found myself approaching Diagon Alley. Here’s a few photos to start, there will be more later.

I only had a quick look around Diagon Alley at this stage, but I knew it would be something I would explore much later, probably tomorrow! It occurred to me that this might be a good time to catch the Hogwarts Express. I had been ummimg and ahhing over when the best time would be and how it wouldn’t interfere with time in the parks. This seemed like the perfect time, so I headed to King’s Cross station. Unfortunately no single rider line for this so it was a long wait.

The excitement of getting on the train was exciting, so the actual ride wasn’t that amazing – it was a pretty short train ride. However, the windows were screen so that did provide some exciting scenery and some things such as flying cars and Hagrid on his motorbike. There was also audio – you could hear Harry, Ron & Hermione walking past our compartment. We disembarked at Hogsmeade (point of trivia – in the books do they actually arrive at Hogsmeade station? I think they do in the movies.) I decided not to take any time to look at Hogsmeade at this point (now in Islands of Adventure) and I pretty much headed straight out of the park, back to City Walk and the bus back to Adventure hotel. It was getting late and I wanted to have some dinner and get a good sleep anticipating big days in the parks ahead.

I had dinner at Bar 17 Bistro, the rooftop bar at Adventure hotel. Briefly, the Chicken Katsu I had was excellent and the cocktail I tried (I can’t remember which one) was very ordinary, I didn’t like it at all. Bed time. I’ll also finish this post, it’s not that long, but the pictures take up lots of room!

Well, I’ve done a lot better with the blog this year than I did last year but I haven’t quite finished the trip and I’ve been home over a week and half. I’m going to see if I can at least get some thoughts down to commemorate the last few days of the trip as it was fun. (Edit: That’s as far as I got, I’m trying again now as my memory has been jogged doing some of the finances for the trip!)

I left Fort Lauderdale on the Wednesday morning. It always seems like a mammoth effort to get packed and out of my accommodation on time, no matter how much I’ve done the night before. Admittedly, when I have a 6am flight it is harder, but this morning I didn’t have to be out until 11am. Admittedly I had time to kill – Universal check in isn’t until 4pm and it’s only about a 3.5 hour drive so I wasn’t keen to leave any earlier than 11. But I said farewell to one of my favourite vacationing spots and headed up to Orlando. There’s nothing really to note about the drive, but as I already mentioned the car wasn’t as nice and I did miss adaptive cruise control. After two stops at Starbuck’s to kill time I made it to Universal pretty close to 4pm. I did all the check-in, parking etc. The room was nice, but once again I forgot to take photos. I did take the view from my room – you can just see the tip of Volcano Bay’s mountain.

After sorting out parking, shifting stuff from my car and everything I decided I may as well head off to the parks. The parks were open til 8pm (Universal Studios) and 9pm (Islands of Adventure) so I thought I’d head over for a couple of hours and at least get an idea of how things worked so I could make the most of my time over the next few days. I had a 4 day ticket (because the bundle with that was cheaper than 3 days), so I thought I may as well make use of it. Getting to the parks was very easy, there are buses from right outside my resort (indeed, all of the universal resorts) that take you to the city walk entry. From there you have to go through metal detectors and then walk and take travelators to the park entry.

Edit: so it’s a few months later. I’m once again sitting in the Melbourne Business Lounge, but this time It’s because I’m about to head home from one of my weekend FPS work trips. I never did finish the blog. It won’t be as detailed as I like, but I’m keen to get a few thoughts down so I’ll see if I can manage at least a brief account of my last few days. So after re-reading where I’m up to, let’s see what I can remember.

I stopped for the obligatory photo you can see above, before heading into Universal Studios. I had spend some of the proceeding time researching day plans for each of the parks. My tentative schedule at this point (mostly based on weather) was Universal Studios, Volcano Bay, Islands of Adventure. I also though that would work well as Volcano Bay should be a quieter day so would be a good in between day. That’s not how it turned out, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself! So I thought I would take the last few hours of this day to familiarise myself with one of the parks and maybe stop in to any rides that had short queues.

A short excursus: Much like Disney, universal rides have an app that shows wait time and also wait times above each ride, which is super helpful. Unlike Disney almost every Universal ride has a single rider line (Disney only has one or two rides that do). I rate them highly! They are so much quicker than the standard queue. I’m biased because I was travelling by myself, but even if I wasn’t I’m pretty sure I would make use of them. For most rides it’s not super important to me to sit next to my friend (unlike many teenage girls I saw!) I’m very happy t experience the ride and then chat to my friend after the fact.

This post is getting long so I think I’ll break it up and start a new one with my time in the park.