The one where Steven chases Harry
Thursday 4th December
I fell out of bed at 4am. See what happened was Steven stirred and I thought he was waking up. Where I was sleeping I could roll over and hit the light switch to light the lamp in the corner of the room, which gave enough light for me to see what I was doing without illuminating the whole room. But I misjudged, rolled over, missed the switch and fell on the floor. Steven promptly went back to sleep.
Steven woke – properly this time – at 5am. By the time we had played a little, done showers, baths, had milk, got dressed, etc., etc., it was time to join the rest of the group for our now regular food court breakfast. I have no idea what we had to eat on this morning but it may well have been a western omelette. I had this on several occasions at the All Star Movies food court and can highly recommend it. Steven had either banana or toast. Or both. After food we let Steven crawl around on the floor for a bit which we did on most mornings, unless the floor had too many food particles on it, though I don’t seem to recall this ever happened at the food court. Anyway, Harry was playing on the floor too with a toy car and Steven crawled over to check it out. Harry thought Steven was going to take the car so he grabbed it and started to crawl away. Steven crawled after him. Harry didn’t have the sense to stand up and run, so just kept crawling. And Steven kept crawling after him. It was wicked funny. Eventually we put Harry out of his misery and retrieved Steven.
As we exited the food court Harry got his feet tangled up and threw himself on the floor, which we all found amusing. As we were walking back to our rooms he did exactly the same thing, again we found this amusing though the novelty was wearing thin with Harry by now. He told us all to stop laughing at him and ran ahead to check the RV situation out. He wanted his photo taken in RV outside Andy’s room but we were only ever there in the morning when it was wet with condensation, or the evening when it was dark. Once again RV was wet so Harry would have to wait a bit longer for his photo. He does get it eventually you’ll be pleased to hear.
Today is Islands of Adventure day so we load buggies, bags, babies, etc into the cars and we are off. We have by now discovered that we can put the buggies into the back of the 7-seaters without having to collapse them, which is darn convenient. I’ve told Big Steve and Lisa about Universal’s no food and drink policy so they have packed just a couple of drinks for Harry who drinks like a fish. We spend an amusing 5 minutes following each other around the parking lot trying to find each other. We were parked in different rows the night before so while Big Steve was driving to our row to wait for us, we drove to his row to wait for him. After doing this about 3 times we both stopped to wait for each other and then eventually we got it together enough to finally exit the hotel and get on to I-4. It is a smooth drive to the Universal area of I-4, no hold-ups, car wrecks, anything. Maybe I just get lucky, but I always wonder what people are on about when they say avoid I-4 during peak times. I’ve never had any trouble with that stretch of road. Oh well.
Anyway, I decide not to confuse Big Steve with the left exit from I-4 direct to Universal so we take the conventional right exit and make the short drive to the parking lot. The guy there asks, “regular or preferred.” I tell him regular and just pray that Big Steve would do the same. Luckily he seems to be still following me after we pass the sign for preferred parking so I would guess that he did. We end up parking on the ground floor in the King Kong section. Curious – he no longer has a ride there, but he still has a section in the parking lot. Anyway we locate the elevators, wait for a Spanish-speaking family who are holding an elevator so they can cram about 50 of them in. Um, excuse me, we have 2 strollers here, we can’t use the escalators, and we cannot call an elevator until your one has gone, can’t you just wait at the top for the rest of your group. Finally we get in an elevator and get up to the moving walkway level.
We arrive at the entrance to Islands of Adventure about 5 minutes before the scheduled opening time. I take the opportunity to taunt Big Steve. I have all the park passes and I dangle his family’s passes in front of him and remind him that he still owes me £168 for them. Actually come to think of it, he still hasn’t paid me for those. Anyway, we are soon let through the turnstiles, where we pause briefly to use the restroom, grab park maps and generally mingle about looking for a sense of purpose.
