Day 11 – Volcano Bay
We packed up as soon as we woke at 7.30, put all the luggage in the car and headed to the diner again for breakfast. Me and Fin both had bacon, sausage and breakfast potatoes. He also had scrambled eggs with his.
After this we headed to Volcano Bay as guests have early access from 8.30 am before the park opens to the general public. You have to catch a shuttle bus in from the main Universal car park if you are not on site.
I had read before we left that as it was newly opened, some people were arriving at 6.30am to start queuing and some were still being turned away as the park was at capacity.
From our hotel, it was a 2 minute walk into the park and we were there with sunbeds right in front of the volcano by 9.15am.
The park operates a Tapu Tapu system where you are issued with a wrist band upon entering the park. Then, if there are queues for a ride, you tap your band against the sensor and it puts you in a virtual queue and vibrates when it’s your turn to ride.
We decided to try and do all the rides beforethe official park opening of 10am to give us the best chance of walking straight on. We managed to do them all apart from the main drop slides in the actual volcano by 10.40am and didn’t have to queue for anything.
The Aqua Coaster which attracts the biggest queue was ‘Ride Now’ and we went around twice as there was no one waiting.
After we had done most of the rides we sunbathed for a bit while the boys played in in the waves which occur every 20 minutes and then went on the wild river which was good fun but the currents were really strong.
Lunch was carnage. You had to queue in a 4 deep line only to then be directed to a specific window depending on what you wanted to order and then queue again to actually order then wait for your food and queue again to pay! It was a totally ridiculous situation and took me 40 minutes from starting to queue until paying, by which time I had lost the will to live.
Then, as I was walking to the table with the 2 GF meals and 3 drinks, a boy walked backwards into my tray and knocked 2 of the drinks all over the floor. He was mortified and kept apologising. Told him it was fine even though I wanted to kill him but at that point was just relived that none of the drinks had tipped onto the food and just made do with the drinks we had left between us.
After lunch, I built up the courage to do the drop slides. I hate them but have this weird thing where I don’t want the kids to think Andrew is more fun than me so make myself do everything that he does!
I did the blue one first. You stand in a capsule, then the floor disappears and you shoot down and then corkscrew in twists and turns until the bottom. It was horrific and water shot into my ears making me partially deaf! Finally, I braved the red one which is pretty much a vertical drop into a horizontal tube. It looks worse than the others but in actual fact it was nowhere near as bad.
The worst part of both rides was the 200+ steps you had to climb to the top! I needed oxygen by the time I got there!
We left around 5.30pm even though the park doesn’t close until 7pm as we had a reservation at Bahama Breeze and wanted to pick up some presents on the way back.
We headed to Bahama Breeze by 8.30pm and was a bit disappointed with the place. There was no real atmosphere there and they had very little GF options meaning me and Fin both had sirloin and mash (which was lumpy) and even though I asked for the steaks to be Medium / Well they were quite bloody and chewy. My mojito was also probably one of the worst I have ever had.
Cian had chicken wings with fries, my mother had goat curry and Andrew had Seafood Paella. They all loved their food so think we were just unlucky. Fin ate half of his then laid out a napkin on the table and promptly fell asleep!
Water parks seem to wipe him out!
We paid the bill, headed home and went straight to bed as we were all exhausted from a busy few days.
Beth
Xx
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