I can’t even begin to talk about the parks until I introduce you to CityWalk!
It’s actually the main strip of Universal Orlando Resorts that you enter before even getting to the theme parks. First off, you have to pay for parking. It's $22.00 for general and $35.00 for VIP. Just go with general. They make it so it’s not a hassle anyways. Even if you park at the top of the deck, which we did plenty of times, you can easily catch the elevator down to the attraction entrance or ride the escalators down to the main floor. The decks are pretty big so each level and each section of rows on a level are themed. For example we parked in Kong, E.T. & Cat in the Hat parking spots during our trip.
Once you’re down to the attraction floor you can start taking moving walkways, perfect for minimizing your energy spent with all the walking you will end up doing, or on the trek back and your feet are burning and your body can’t take another step. Before getting to CityWalk you’ll run right into security. It's basically a big bubble, there’s a gift shop and then there’s like 20 lines for security open so they can check your bags and whatnot. After that you’ll take a few more moving walkways and run right into the entrance to the resort.
What is CityWalk?
CityWalk is like a small downtown eating, shopping, & entertainment area open until 2:00am. It’s a pretty decent size too. There are concession stands, gift shops, jewelry shops, a movie theater, putt putt golf, hella restaurants and a lot more. I didn’t even get to explore all of it, but it was impressive.
What did I explore and get to enjoy about CityWalk?
Here’s where my blog gets a little wonky. Since I’m talking about each part of the trip as separate places or activities I’ll be jumping all over the place to address something specific to that topic.
On Day Two - Tuesday, we had family dinner at the NBC Sports Grill & Brew. I was super tired from the days activities so I didn’t get to truly appreciate the inside of the restaurant, but it was very nice. From what I can remember, they had foosball high top tables, perfect for like a family of 6, but we were definitely a party of 9 so that wasn’t gonna work for us. Instead we were seated at a large regular table. I wouldn’t say their menu was super fancy. It has some pretty regular sports bar food, but it had a variety of options available.
I went with what I thought was a safe bet: chicken Caesar salad. Mind you I had just gotten both of my wisdom teeth removed from the right side of my mouth the week before. Let’s just say that was a bad option. First of all, I forgot how crunchy lettuce can be. Second of all, I got lettuce stuck in my closing hole in the back of my mouth; and started to panic because I thought it was my blood clot coming out instead.
Note to self: don’t eat salad or popcorn when I get the wisdom teeth on the left side of my mouth pulled. Moving on....
On Day Five - Friday, we were basically wrapping up. This was our last day to visit the theme park because we’d be leaving the following day. I wanted to save getting donuts from The Voodoo Doughnut shop for last.
Heads up: I spell it donut.
So here we are with a donut menu in our hands waiting in line to get our hands on some tasty treats. We settle on one of the assorted dozen donuts boxes because it had pretty much everyone's donut that they wanted in there, plus a few extras that people could have. The thing about their donuts is that they’re creative. There were some with Oreo cookies on top, others with peanut butter drizzle, others in the shape of a voodoo doll, and more. I think more than anything they were meant to look pretty. Don’t get me wrong the donuts were good, just nothing spectacular. Since I was on vacation I decided to go with the maple bacon donut (with real bacon on it lol). Not too bad in my opinion. It’s a weird concept to me to put bacon on a donut, but hey I loved it!
Here’s the cool part about CityWalk, you have to walk through it in order to get to either of the theme parks. You get to a point on the strip where instead of continuing to go straight the walkway forks off into a big rounded “Y” shape. If you go right you’ll run into Universal Studios with the big Universal globe on your left at the entrance. If you go left you’ll run into Islands of Adventure with the big tower looming over you on the left hand side of that entrance. Hopefully you guessed correctly about which one we went to first because we ended up going LEFT! Straight towards Islands of Adventure!
PS: My favorite park between the two.
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