Day 5 - On to Orlando

Doug dropped Meg, Cam and I off at the Indianapolis airport this morning well before sunrise.  It had started storming last night and I was extremely worried that our plane would not make it out.  It was delayed for about fifteen minutes because of lightening strikes.  The plane was fine, but they couldn't safely get our luggage stored underneath.  Fortunately, the lightening stopped in time for us to leave.  I noticed later in the day that many of the planes after us were well over an hour delayed.  Although we had to get up early to catch the first flight of the day it was well worth it as we were in Orlando before 8:30 a.m.  There was a lot of turbulence at the beginning, but once we made it south of Kentucky it was a smooth flight.

We checked into the Loew's Sapphire Falls resort and were impressed with the hotel from the start.  It wasn't quite the Boardwalk, but it was very nice.  We spent an hour or so getting acquainted with all of it's amenities.  We bought our endless refill mugs and breakfast at the bakery.  After we ate we caught the boat to Universal Studios.  I had not been to the park in almost 25 years and Cam and Meg had never been there.  We knew that they had a Simpson's ride and thought we would check that out first since the line for the Krusty ride was only forty minutes.  

We absolutely loved Krustyland.  The virtual roller coaster was based on The Simpson's show, and although it made Meg and I nauseous, we still enjoyed it very much.  They had a second ride that featured the aliens from the show that reminded me of the magic carpet ride at Disney World.  Besides the two rides we enjoyed the Quik-E-Mart store, Moe's Bar, the Krusty Burger and Lard Lad Donuts.  Cam and Meg even had their picture taken with the Jedidiah Springfield statue.  

After exploring the park, we started back to our hotel.  They had texted us at 2:30 to let us know that our room was ready.  On our walk we saw that Hard Rock Cafe was open for lunch, so we stopped there first.  Cam shared all of the knowledge that he gained during his History of Rock N Roll class while we waited for our sandwiches.  The food was delicious as always.  Our room was very nice with a beautiful view of the lagoon.  Cam and Meg spent the afternoon at the pool.  It was the perfect weather day to swim.  The pool was large and had a slide for them to use.  Beachballs were flying everywhere and Meg and Cam had fun batting one back and forth.  

Our last stop of the evening was The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Walking through Diagon Alley was just like stepping into one of J.K. Rowling's books.  We visited all of the stores including Fred and George's joke shop.  Cam tried his first Butter Beer.  It was very good.  I thought about buying some Gilly Water, but shared Cam's drink instead.  We rode the Hogwart's Express to the Island of Adventure before heading back to the hotel.  It was absolutely amazing, just like we were first years.   It was the perfect end to our first day at Universal.