jenseib
Mommy to Claire
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2006
Hi all!
Welcome to my Universal Studios vacation trip report.
This is part of a 3 part trip report and actually the second part I am writing. I started with the last portion first, which was a Disney cruise with a day and ½ of Disney World at the end.
You can find it here
For those that read it, you now can see how this trip actually started.
To get things started I will start with a mini intro.
For those that don’t know me, I am Jennifer, or as many of my friends call me, Jen! I like to travel, I like to take pictures and then I usually like to write about my adventures. I do that for 2 reasons. Number one is that I hope it helps others in their planning. I tell the good and the bad and even though my experience isn’t what others may find or even like, I hope to at least give people a little taste of things. I secondly write these for my own personal reasons. I tend to post this on a couple of message boards as well as my blog. If I want to go back and remember my trip, I can just go and read it. Or if there is something I can’t remember in a few years, like why I didn’t like this, or what made that so special, I can go and reread about it.
Of course even when I write it down now, I still can’t remember everything, but the pictures tend to jog my memory and I usually have it pretty close to how it happened.
I am a Mom to 3, but many of you who have read my past reports probably only know my youngest, Claire. Claire is 11 now…boy time flies. My other 2 are just as special but they are adults and rarely travel with me now so they just are not in my traveling reports.
skag35 by Jenseib, on Flickr
I am also a grandmother now. Yes…I know…I am WAY too young to be a grandmother. I know, I know….you make me blush with all your compliments! But yes I am! And little Gracie is now 20 months old and just as cute as can be
baby4 by Jenseib, on Flickr
(That's actually an old picture of her)
I am also married and if you have read my past reports you have probably seen Skip make appearances. He isn’t always a fan of traveling, and he is even less of a fan of me traveling without him, but sometimes I just have to go and he gripes a bit at first and then makes peace with it.
This trip was actually a work related trip. Back in Oct. of 2014, 2 of my co-workers and I were chatting like we do daily on facebook, and my co-worker Brook mentioned great cruise rates for Feb 2016. Wow! Of course, Deb and I go and take a look and there were several short sailings that were reasonable. We had been talking about doing a work related cruise for some time now, but no one was ever pulling the trigger. They elected me to post about it on our private business page to see if anyone would bite….and bite they did. Soon we were all talking about cruising and then it came down to picking a date and a ship. It was between the Dream and the Magic. I have been on both ships, twice each. I was game for either really. Some wanted one over the other, some it was more about price and in the end we priced out a few sailings and basically went with the cheapest option, which was on the Magic on Feb. 7, 2016.
It’s a long story, but in the beginning we decided to add days to the trip either pre or post. We talked about Disney World, Universal and Sea World. Some could go earlier and some preferred after the cruise. In the end a few days precruise at WDW was decided on for most.
I had 2 roommates for the Disney World and Disney cruise portion of the trip, Cass and Brook. I have roomed with both before and I like both as roommates.
Cass and I both really wanted to do Universal though. So did a few other girls.
In the end Cass was coming down several days earlier than I, so she was going to do 3 days at WDW and then move over to Universal the day before I was to arrive. We decided that on my arrival day (and her Universal arrival day the day before) we would like to stay at Cabana Bay. It’s still a new resort and it looked so cute. We decided the next morning we would move to Hard Rock Hotel so we would have express pass access for the parks.
All the plans were made and we just had to wait for the dates to arrive.
Join me as I relive this Universal vacation….there were a lot of laughs and good times during those few days.
Welcome to my Universal Studios vacation trip report.
This is part of a 3 part trip report and actually the second part I am writing. I started with the last portion first, which was a Disney cruise with a day and ½ of Disney World at the end.
You can find it here
For those that read it, you now can see how this trip actually started.
To get things started I will start with a mini intro.
For those that don’t know me, I am Jennifer, or as many of my friends call me, Jen! I like to travel, I like to take pictures and then I usually like to write about my adventures. I do that for 2 reasons. Number one is that I hope it helps others in their planning. I tell the good and the bad and even though my experience isn’t what others may find or even like, I hope to at least give people a little taste of things. I secondly write these for my own personal reasons. I tend to post this on a couple of message boards as well as my blog. If I want to go back and remember my trip, I can just go and read it. Or if there is something I can’t remember in a few years, like why I didn’t like this, or what made that so special, I can go and reread about it.
Of course even when I write it down now, I still can’t remember everything, but the pictures tend to jog my memory and I usually have it pretty close to how it happened.
I am a Mom to 3, but many of you who have read my past reports probably only know my youngest, Claire. Claire is 11 now…boy time flies. My other 2 are just as special but they are adults and rarely travel with me now so they just are not in my traveling reports.
skag35 by Jenseib, on Flickr
I am also a grandmother now. Yes…I know…I am WAY too young to be a grandmother. I know, I know….you make me blush with all your compliments! But yes I am! And little Gracie is now 20 months old and just as cute as can be
baby4 by Jenseib, on Flickr
(That's actually an old picture of her)
I am also married and if you have read my past reports you have probably seen Skip make appearances. He isn’t always a fan of traveling, and he is even less of a fan of me traveling without him, but sometimes I just have to go and he gripes a bit at first and then makes peace with it.
This trip was actually a work related trip. Back in Oct. of 2014, 2 of my co-workers and I were chatting like we do daily on facebook, and my co-worker Brook mentioned great cruise rates for Feb 2016. Wow! Of course, Deb and I go and take a look and there were several short sailings that were reasonable. We had been talking about doing a work related cruise for some time now, but no one was ever pulling the trigger. They elected me to post about it on our private business page to see if anyone would bite….and bite they did. Soon we were all talking about cruising and then it came down to picking a date and a ship. It was between the Dream and the Magic. I have been on both ships, twice each. I was game for either really. Some wanted one over the other, some it was more about price and in the end we priced out a few sailings and basically went with the cheapest option, which was on the Magic on Feb. 7, 2016.
It’s a long story, but in the beginning we decided to add days to the trip either pre or post. We talked about Disney World, Universal and Sea World. Some could go earlier and some preferred after the cruise. In the end a few days precruise at WDW was decided on for most.
I had 2 roommates for the Disney World and Disney cruise portion of the trip, Cass and Brook. I have roomed with both before and I like both as roommates.
Cass and I both really wanted to do Universal though. So did a few other girls.
In the end Cass was coming down several days earlier than I, so she was going to do 3 days at WDW and then move over to Universal the day before I was to arrive. We decided that on my arrival day (and her Universal arrival day the day before) we would like to stay at Cabana Bay. It’s still a new resort and it looked so cute. We decided the next morning we would move to Hard Rock Hotel so we would have express pass access for the parks.
All the plans were made and we just had to wait for the dates to arrive.
Join me as I relive this Universal vacation….there were a lot of laughs and good times during those few days.