Happy Alarm

All of our travels yesterday went smoothly, which I credit to Tony. He is now in charge of all of our travel, because when I fly things tend to go poorly. Luggage goes missing, planes break in the air, we dash across airports only to have gates close in our faces, etc. Yesterday all of our flights were smooth and on-time-ish, our bags popped of the conveyor one right after the other, and we got a free upgrade on the rental vehicle. To top it off, we barely got caught in any of the Tampa/Orlando traffic, and made it to the military ticket counter to purchase our 3-day passes about 5 minutes before closing. Whew! Our hotel was easy to find, even though it was dark by the time we rolled in. I could tell it's a huge property, but seeing it in the daylight today proves it's much larger and prettier than I expected. And our room is fantastic! It's basically a suite - kitchen, dining, living room all separated from a master bedroom, giant two-person jacuzzi, and bathroom. Last night we walked across the street to a grill and had red meat, even though it was Ash Wednesday. I think after so much traveling we were iron-depleted. Yeah, that's it, it had nothing to do with the amazing smell of steak and prime rib. Iron deficiency all the way.

Today we woke up around 0730 (that's Eastern time, so 0430 PST, after getting up at 0300 the day before, just to point that out) and took our time getting ready to go out, then stopped at Panera for breakfast, and still made it into Islands of Adventure before 0915. Due to the rain, it wasn't very crowded at Universal and lines were pretty short. We zoomed by a bunch of people by going into the single rider line wherever we could, which didn't bother us as we generally wound up on the same roller coaster each time anyway. Tony even looped back around to catch some rides twice, but I didn't want to push the motion sickness too much. By far my favorite ride was the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey, which simulates riding on a broomstick with the whole gang, along with dragons and hippogriffs and all sorts of cool stuff! And the butterbeer was just as delicious as I hoped; we tried the regular and the frozen, and both preferred the regular. Imagine cream soda with a caramel/butterscotch/maple flavored whip cream on top. Mmm, yummy.

Because of the rain, we popped into the movie theater to watch Frozen. I find it ironic we went to Universal and wound up watching a Disney movie, and it was really fun. I had no idea Kristen Bell could sing, but I thought she held her own pretty well against Idina Menzel. Or Adele Dazeem, as John Travolta would say. Anyway, very cute movie, and the animators once again nailed it with the horse and reindeer characters.

Tomorrow we'll head to the other side of the park and see what it has to offer. The rain has eased off a bit, but it was pretty annoying most of the day. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow, but even if it's not, I'm sure we'll still have a fantastic time.

Trivia - Guess who said what in the following exchange:

1) "I have the hiccups."

2) "Oh, I thought your happy alarm was going off."