Robby’s Rainy Visit

My big brother doesn’t get down to Orlando too often. He’s visited only four times in the five years I’ve lived here, so we tend to make his visits count and pack in as much we can. He landed late Friday night so we planned to hit the ground running first thing Saturday morning.

Last year when he visited, we did Typhoon Lagoon and the Behind the Seeds tour, in addition to Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Animal Kingdom was still overwhelmed from Pandora’s opening, so we decided to skip it. This year, we started with it. 

Normally, I would not choose to go to Animal Kingdom on a Saturday morning, but we were on a tight schedule since his trip was really only three and a half days. There were Extra Magic Hours, so I knew there was no real point in doing rope drop. We hit the park around 9:30 a.m. and headed straight for Flight of Passage. It was a rainy, dreary morning, so the park wasn’t as crowded as I expected, but Flight was posting a 135-minute wait. We cringed but jumped in line anyway. We stood in the outdoor part of the queue for a while, getting rained on, but once we made it inside things started to move quicker. We were into the bioluminescent part of the queue in no time. 

Robby said, “This is moving better than I thought it would!” “There’s only two rooms left. This is going really fast.” I replied. 

Holy cow, we were on the ride in under forty minutes. Never have I seen Flight of Passage’s line so short! Robby really liked it, and we celebrated our good luck by buying the specialty drinks at Pongu Pongu. I got the Rum Blossom, an alcoholic version of the Night Blossum that is Pandora’s iconic drink, and Robby got the Mo’ara Margarita.  

Our original plan was to ride Flight of Passage and then immediately head out to Magic Kingdom, but since we were basically almost two hours ahead of schedule, we decided to hit a few more rides. Expedition Everest was a twenty-five-minute wait, and Dinosaur was only a twenty! We knocked them both out in no time and headed out, with a quick stop for a Tree of Life selfie since Photopass was taking shelter from the rain. 

I spent the entire trip taking tons of photos with the intention of posting them on social media, and then kept forgetting to actually post them. 

We parked and hopped on the monorail to Magic Kingdom. As we walked up to the gate, I noticed Robby staring at the train station. 

“Sis, I don’t think I’ve ever ridden the train.” 

“Do you want to ride the train? We have time before our first Fastpass.” 

It was about then the smell of the popcorn cart hit us. 

“Can we get popcorn and ride the train!?” 

“Yes, we can.” 

We actually wound up taking the train one and a third times, since our first Fastpass was for Splash Mountain. We just stayed on for one more stop after we made the complete circle. The popcorn was gone before we were halfway through. 

We rode Splash Mountain with our Fastpass, and then wandered around the park to find a Joffrey’s stand. I don’t drink coffee personally, so it’s the one thing in Magic Kingdom I’m not super familiar with. This was the day after the fiery incident with the Maleficent float, so we caught part of the parade from the Hub grass. I was just dying to see what they were doing in place of the float, since I didn’t think they could edit out that musical segment overnight. I started dying laughing as I saw the gazebo float from Boo to You (from Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party) roll by with Aurora and Phillip on it, and had to explain why it was funny to Robby. 

We then went back for our Big Thunder Fastpass. The waits in the park weren’t bad at all. We managed to fit in Space Mountain with a Fastpass, plus we rode twice on Haunted Mansion, rode Pirates, saw the Tiki Room, watched the Country Bear Jamboree, and climbed the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. We even got to do Big Thunder Mountain a second time because Winnie the Pooh went down while we had a Fastpass for it! We ate dinner at Tortuga Tavern, which was actually the first time I’ve ever eaten there. We finished the night off with Happily Ever After, which Robby tolerated me singing along with. 

Sunday was Mother’s Day, and if I couldn’t spend it with my mom, my brother was a pretty good fill in. We got up and headed to Typhoon Lagoon despite the 40% chance of rain and forecasted afternoon storms. We were just going to try to get in as much as we could before the rain broke. 

I really shouldn’t have been worried, because there was NO ONE THERE! We literally walked onto every slide! We spent about half an hour in the wave pool, an hour in the lazy river, and still had time for all three water coasters, Miss Adventure Falls, Keelhaul Falls, and Mayday Falls. The only thing we didn’t get to was Gangplank Falls because lightning moved into the area while we were eating lunch. 

I pulled the forecast up on my phone and it looked like the storm was going to pass around 4:30 and the park closed at 5:00. Rather than sit around for two hours in the hopes of getting back in the water, we packed up and headed to Disney Springs. 

It was still sprinkling, so we tried to stay inside the stores as much as possible. We wandered around for a few hours, met the Coca-Cola Polar Bear, and checked out the new Disney Style store. Thank goodness most of the shirts have sleeves, or I would have bought a lot more than just the Jungle Cruise hoodie! (I pretty much only wear tank tops; t-shirts just end up sitting in my closet.) 

At World of Disney, we were looking at the coffee mugs and to my shock and surprise they had brand new Kanga and Roo mugs! My mom is Kanga and I’m Roo, it’s kind of our thing, and you almost never see merchandise that has Kanga on it. It’s usually just Roo. I was so happy to find those on Mother’s Day, I almost cried, and Robby bought two of them for us. 

We had dinner plans at Big Fin Seafood Kitchen, my favorite restaurant in all of Orlando, and we met Jay there. It was packed for Mother’s Day, but the service was top notch as always. The food was amazing, and the peanut butter Ooey Gooey Cake made me want to die of happiness. I took my stuffed Kanga since my Mom couldn’t actually be there with us. 

Our original plan for Monday was Busch Gardens, and I had pre-purchased the All-Day-Dining and everything, but the forecast was a literal 95% chance of rain for most of the day. So, at the last minute, at about 11:15 pm as we were heading for bed, I suggested switching to Universal Studios instead since most of their rides are indoors. 

“Sure, I’m game!” 

I texted my friend Lacey to invite her to tag along, and we hit the park around 11 a.m. It was raining steadily, but it wasn’t terrible. We decided to start with Islands of Adventure since it has more of the outdoor rides. We jumped in line for the Hulk, planning to knock it out first, in case the weather got worse. 

Riding a roller coaster in pelting rain is really interesting, I only kept my eyes open for about half the ride, because the water was blinding me! 

We moved onto Spider-man, which was a literal walk on, and then followed it up with Skull Island: Reign of Kong. Given it’s been a year and a half since I left, but there wasn’t a single person I knew. Thankfully, it had only a ten-minute wait! Lacey promised me the scareactors were no longer in the queue, but she lied, so I just kept my eyes on the ground and hurried. They jumped out at her instead of me though since she was in the front! (Serves her right.)

Our last outdoor ride was Jurassic Park River Adventure! We were already soaked so really, what did it matter? 

We made our way to Forbidden Journey, which was posting a five-minute wait so we rode it twice, before stopping by the Hog’s Head for water. 

Our last stop in Islands of Adventure was Seuss Landing. Robby loves Dr. Seuss! We rode the High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride and the Cat in the Hat. 

Okay, our actual last stop was Starbucks, but I feel like that doesn’t count. We walked over towards Universal Studios and stopped in the Toothsome Emporium, where I finally bought the giant cookie I’ve talked myself out of buying the last three times I went to Universal. 

We headed into the Universal Studios side, and headed to the right, to see what time the next Horror and Make-Up Show was. Since it wasn’t until 3:15, we had about forty minutes to kill, and headed to ride the strangeness that is the ET Adventure.  

I haven’t seen the Horror and Make-Up Show since before I worked at Universal, so that was a lot of fun. From there, we made a stop to get one of the giant pink doughnuts from the Simpsons. Robby asked about the Simpsons Ride, but since it’s the only theme park ride on earth that makes me sick, we passed on it. Instead we went to Men in Black, where, apparently, I should have told Robby to aim for the eyes. 

(In my defense, no one ever told me, because they thought I would figure it out.) 

Our next stop was Diagon Alley, where Gringotts was only a thirty-minute wait. We ducked through Knockturn Alley, so Robby could check out the dark arts stuff, and then hopped in line. Gringotts was one of his least favorite rides of the day, and then he didn’t like Butterbeer, and threw his away, so I feel like Diagon Alley was just a big letdown for him. To be fair, he’s not really a Potter fan though. 

The most entertaining part of the day was listening to him purposely mispronounce Harry Potter terms to annoy Lacey. 

Our final Universal ride was the Mummy, which I feel like was a good one to finish up on. We stopped back by Toothsome, so Robby could buy one of the collectibles, and headed back to the car. We dropped Lacey off and went home to watch The Greatest Showman with Jay. 

Since Tuesday was our last day, we started off bright and early at Epcot, and it was actually bright! They were calling for rain later in the day, but it was our first sunny morning! We hit the gate right at 9:00 a.m. and ran straight for Soarin’ Around the World. We followed it up with Living with the Land before our 9:55 a.m. Garden Grill reservation. We always do Garden Grill, but we usually do it for lunch. I saved it for the last day because I thought his flight was later in the afternoon, so we changed it to breakfast to fit it in. It was nice to do something new, but lunch is definitely much better. However, the characters are wonderful any time of day! 

We made a quick stop after breakfast to finally pick up my Passholder magnet for Flower and Garden, then went to ride Figment. We stopped by Pineapple Promenade to get the Violet Lemonade before going to Mouse Gear for some last-minute shopping. Our next Fastpass was Test Track at 12:30 p.m., and that gave us just enough time to ride and head for the airport. 

Robby’s visits are always great. We really are Lilo and Stitch! I was a little worried that the rain was going to ruin everything, but honestly since we were able to be flexible with our plans, it just gave us nice short lines to deal with. The longest line we stood in was Flight of Passage at forty minutes, and the next after that was the Hulk, at half an hour. That is amazing! We managed to pack in so much in just three and a half days! I already can’t wait for him to come back again!