Hey everyone! It’s been a long while since my last post! (Mostly because I was embarrassed that I never finished my last trip report in August- Life really sucker punched us when we got home.) I’ve been reading but not commenting recently.
Anywho, we are going back to Universal in November. Some background on this trip: The original intent was to spend a one-on-one long weekend with each kid individually throughout the year, so each kid gets their own trip and their own quality time. But as I started picking weekends for each of these three trips, I realized that it might not be affordable for us. So I decided to lump the two girls in for a “Girls weekend” because they both want to see the Holiday offerings, and then I’d take my son later because he wants to see Mardigras.
My daughters told my mother that we were going, and she started asking me tons of questions about it. I started to realize that she was also planning on coming with us. I thought, okay I could probably use an extra adult. And I had already booked a split stay at Cabana Bay and Dockside Inn with the family suites so plenty of room. THEN she realized that the trip was happening over my niece’s 13th birthday and decided it would be great fun, after not having had any birthday celebrations for the past year (two years???) for my niece to join us for the ultimate birthday celebration. What was originally booked as a mother-daughter trip has snowballed into a full-fledged family “girls weekend” vacation. This is no big deal, and I’m so excited to spend this time with my girls. But it definitely has upped the planning factor.
When it was just me and my daughters, we were planning on travelling with just our backpacks. We are light packers when we fly, and can easily fit what we need for a four day trip into a backpack. I figured when we switched from Cabana Bay to Dockside we could just ride the bus to City Walk, and transfer to a bus going to Dockside. Or even rent a locker at the front of the park to stash the backpacks in while we did some things in the parks before going to Dockside to check in. But now we will have at least two checked bags. Complicating things, my niece has several severe food allergies and will have a grocery delivery when we get there. So instead of transferring three backpacks, we will now have five backpacks/carryons, two full sized suit cases, and a cooler of food. For me, this was supposed to be a strict budget trip, but am I correct in assuming that we will probably need to get an uber to transfer hotels with all this stuff now? I know Disney busses don’t allow luggage, is this the same for Universal busses? I’m thinking about cancelling Cabana Bay and just extending the whole trip to be at Dockside to be simpler, but my daughters are really looking forward to the pool at Cabana Bay on arrival day, and I think my niece is too. I do think that I’d have approached it differently if I knew when booking, that everyone was coming with us.
Thanks if you’ve made it this far!