We started the day with pancakes and French toast made in our room again.  We have a 4 day, multi-park pass at Universal.  Universal has 3 parks and a water park and with the multi-park pass we can hop from park to park throughout the day. 

Today we took advantage of an extra hour for resort guests and went to Islands of Adventure first, leaving the hotel on the first bus out at 7am.  We had never been to two of the Universal parks before so we watched a video overview of the rides to get an idea of what we wanted to ride.  Islands of Adventure is known for its bigger rides (think more Six Flags than Disney World).  About 5 rides were too high of a thrill level for the girls, so we planned to start with a few smaller rides. 

Unfortunately the area we wanted to go to was not part of the park that opens early.  Instead, we did two rides in the Harry Potter area.  The first one was  Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and it kind of earns its name.  It combines motion simulator screens with a track ride with animatronics.  Esme was nervous about it but, on we got.  We were warned by the video we watched that it was “known to cause motion sickness”.  I didn’t feel quite right after it but I recovered while we waited in line for Flight of the Hippogriff which was a kiddie coaster.

When we finished those two rides, the rest of the park was open so we went to the Pterodon Flyers which is designed to hold one person under 56″ and one over 56″.  If you don’t have a person under 56″ with you, you can’t ride it.  Only Nova was under that height so Esme went on the ride with Nova.

After Skull Island: Reign of Kong (I liked this one, it reminded me of the old King Kong ride!), we went to Seuss Landing, which the girls had been looking forward to. 

We rode 4 rides in this area including a carousel, a people mover, a story ride (similar to Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan for those that are familiar), and a ride similar to Dumbo but you get sprayed with water (note the girls in their rain gear in preparation for the water sprays).  There was also a little show here with some favorite characters and opportunities to get photos with characters. 

We headed back to the hotel after this, at around 1:30pm.  We managed to do almost every ride the girls were interested in at the park in just over 5 hours.  We had grilled cheese and salad for lunch in our room, swam, and took showers, before heading to Epic Universe at about 4:30pm.

We went to the Mario area first.  The ride lines were really long (90-120 minutes each) so we looked around (it was really impressive!) and then moved on.

We went to the horror themed area next.  There we went on Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment, a ride that was similar to the Forbidden Journey one we went on this morning but better (no motion sickness this time!).  The other ride in that area was one only I was interested in riding (Curse of the Werewolf). 

Nole took the girls to check out the How to Train Your Dragon area while I rode that and then we met at a How to Train Your Dragon stage show. 

Esme was looking kind of sad and said she just wanted to go back to the hotel after that.  It was about 7:30pm.  Nole decided to take her back and said she fell asleep right away.  Poor thing was pooped.  Nova and I stayed and decided to ride Hiccup’s Wing Gliders which was a big bigger of a coaster than she had ridden so far.  She loved it.  We ended up riding it 3 times in a row before taking the shuttle back to the hotel at 9pm. 

The girls have been taking selfies together in most of the lines we wait in and here are some from today.