Fingers crossed it opens for our trip on the 25th! And that it’s warm enough to get on the “water” rides.
2 Likes
Low 80’s forcasted atm 
1 Like
Sounds lovely 
1 Like
I’m going to try to finish this trip report and get the highlights of this trip. Our flight down was pretty full. No issues with luggage pickup, and we got an Uber to our hotel. I’d been wanting to stay at Portofino, and this was finally my chance.
We headed to check in, and they could see we had two back to back reservations. We got our room keys. I asked for something other than transformers, and I got Minions for my first room key. We headed to the parks on water taxi.
On this trip, I wanted to hit everything I had missed on the last two trips. Major goals were ET, Rip Ride Rockit, Fast and Furious, and Kodos and Kong Twirl and Hurl in USO. In Islands of Adventure, I wanted to hit Skull Island, Storm Force, and Dudley Do Right Rip Saw Falls.
We started with ET and had a pretty short wait with the Express Pass. Next we did Kodos and Kong and for quick fun ride. After that we did Simpsons because my SIL had missed it on the previous trip.
We did MIB as a single rider. This was the first time MIB was not a walk on for me. As a whole, the parks were MUCH busier than predicted on the touring plans, and it reflected in the wait times for everything. We did Mummy again, because i love it. We did the Express to Hogsmeade and went to check the test seats for Hagrid’s. The listed wait time was too long to want to wait in line. (I’m a spoiled princess and I hate waiting in lines.) The seats were a tighter fit than last time, and the side car was am easier fit for me.
As we were trying the seats, and TM came over and offered us skip the line passes. I was not going to turn down a 20 minute wait, so we accepted and went to the lockers to put our things away. My water bottle opened and got everything in my bag wet. I drained it and tried to make sure my power pack did not get damaged. The only thing that was ruined were the express tickets I had made for the trip in late January.
We headed to Toon Lagoon with the intention of riding Popeye’s before it closed. We decided it was too cold to ride it, but we did get two rides on Dudley Do Right’s. We then decided to head back to the hotel.
We had a short wait for the boat. However, we got on the water taxi, and then the captain said “you’re all going to hate me, but there is a medical emergency on the dock at Portofino, and we can’t take you there.”
We had a choice between waiting for the emergency to resolve, wait and take the boat to HRH or walk back to the hotel. We walked back to the hotel. We got new room keys. This time I got a Harry Potter key.
4 Likes
Make sure to keep it! I love looking at the dates of stay & hotel names when I see mine. It’s like a quick reminder of my trips!
Don’t hesitate to ask the front desk to make you a specific key! I figured out late in my trips the put the keys in the machine at the time they make them for you. It’s no trouble to sort through and find the ones you need. (maybe don’t ask for like 4+ unique keys or something!!) I found that asking for 2 was about as many as you could get without being too much trouble for the TM!
I do want to keep them. If I’m doing the math right, I have 2 from Cabana Bay (December 2018, Feb 2019), 3 from Royal Pacific (December 2019, Feb 2020(2)), 2 from Hard Rock (December 2022, Jan 2023) and 3 from Portofino Bay (Feb 2023).
I have three two night stays booked at Portofino for April, August and December, and a two night stay booked at Sapphire Falls for August. We’ll see how many of these I actually get to. I still want to give Aventura a try at least once.
1 Like
The hotels know people do this and they lave a laminated page at the front desk with all the designs on them! You can look at that page as a reference!
There are 13 of them!!
I saw it. Right now I wouldn’t care too much about which design I got, but I just didn’t want another Transformers one. At some point I will gather my room keys and tickets into some sort of display.
1 Like
I felt that way about Hulk!!! I got Hulk almost exclusively the first two trips. 
That’s when I got brave enough to ask!
1 Like