I showed my son the IG picture of the fire breathing dragon. My mom read most of the Harry Potter books to our son. He may ask to go to Universal when we go to Disney.
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I donât think that I would try butterbeer. I am not a fan of creme soda. The foam might work.
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You have me really excited to do a trip with my girls to see Harry Potter world. They would LOVE it.
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We werenât big fans of the butterbeer, but we bought at least 10 pumpkin juice bottles over 4 days. Tommy tried the Fishy Green Ale (the one with blueberry boba tea thingies) and he thought that was too sweet, just like the butterbeer. I really think itâs all a matter of personal taste though.
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We didnât try the Green Ale, hopefully next time!
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I am not a fan of cream soda either, but the other things in it help balance it out. I feel that the frozen is less cream soda-y than the regular. Maybe get one frozen and let everyone try it. Itâs incredible!
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Day 2, early morningâŚ
We slept very well Saturday night. The Royal Pacific rooms are very nice. I especially liked the privacy of the bathroom area. It was easy for me to dry off and get dressed without scarring the childrenâs delicate psyches. 
Charlie woke up super early, so he and I took showers while David and Tommy were sleeping. We were just sneaking out to find something to eat at about 6:30 when Tommy woke up, so the three of us left David asleep and went down to find some breakfast at the little multi-purpose area in the main lobby. They donât have many options, but we each had a ham, egg & cheese croissant, and that was plenty for us.
Every day of our trip had early entry for hotel guests only at Islands of Adventure. Only the Harry Potter things are open during early entry, so that meant Hogsmeade on our days. I can see how it would be nice to have a choice of parks for early entry, but there are more rides in Hogsmeade, so it worked out fine for us.
We decided that since we were up early, we might as well take advantage of early entry. We had planned to do Universal Studios this day (no early entry.) David wanted to sleep, so I texted him with instructions to meet us near the Hogwarts Express in Universal Studios just after 9. We figured we could do Hogsmeade and then take the Hogwarts Express to Universal Studios when it started running at 9.
We left Royal Pacific at 7:20, did the bag check at the water taxi (super easy,) and took the water taxi to City Walk. From there, you either walk around the water to the left to get to Islands of Adventure or to the right to get to Universal Studios. We went left. We were in line for ticket scanning at 7:40. There were about 15 people ahead of us in each line, and I think they let us in a few minutes before 8.
I had purchased our tickets online and printed them at home, but saw that most people had credit-card sized printed tickets instead of our giant sheets of paper. I left the boys in line and went to guest services and asked them to reprint my tickets in the smaller format so they would fit in our lanyards.
Oh! I forgot to mention the lanyards! We bought lanyards in the hotel gift shop. It had a selection of about 30 styles. There are a lot more styles in the Universal gift shop right by the boat dock at City Walk, so if you donât like the ones available online or in your hotel, you can wait to get one there before entering the parks for the first time. You can find lanyards for a lot less money if you buy them elsewhere before your trip, but you really want to get ones with a secure zip-lock closure on the see-through card holder. It needs to be waterproof.
You DO want to have a lanyard if you are staying in a Universal resort that offers Express Pass. You donât really need one just for the ticket, because you only scan that to get in the parks or to ride Hogwarts Express. When you check in to a Universal resort they give each person in your room their own room key. Then you walk over to a kiosk and take turns getting your individual express passes printed. Put your park ticket facing one way in your lanyard, and your express pass facing the other way. This makes it really easy to use both.
Anyway, I asked guest services to reprint our tickets in the proper size. I only asked her to do mine and the boysâ since David wasnât with us. She didnât listen! Poor David was stuck outside the parks with a paper ticket that was no longer valid. He said it wasnât hard to get another one printed at guest services, but I still feel bad that my meddling made his morning complicated.
We scanned our new tickets and went into the park at a few minutes to 8. Everyone was directed along the path to Hogsmeade. Interestingly, anyone with a ticket was allowed in, but you had to show your room key or express pass later to get into Hogsmeade. People who werenât resort guests could hang out and wait until 9 to head towards the attractions.
I didnât take many photos because I was juggling boys. 
Tommy rode Dragon Challenge by himself and then we all rode Fight of the Hippogriff. Charlie loved that one, so we decided to split up. Tommy did Dragon Challenge 2 more times and Charlie and I rode Flight of the Hippogriff 4 more times. Most people were doing Forbidden Journey so there was little or no wait for us, especially with Express Pass.
We found each other (not as easily as Iâd hoped!) and walked over to the Hogwarts Express station at 8:40. We ended up on the second train of the morning. The timing for this ride from the early entry park to the not-early park is tricky. If weâd lined up earlier, we would have been on the first train, but then we would have missed out on more early entry time waiting for that first train. The line was starting to get long by 8:40 though, and didnât start moving until the first train was ready to go. I donât know if waiting even later to get in line would have resulted in a longer or shorter wait. I think we timed it ok, but itâs hard to know for sure.
We all enjoyed the different scenes on this Hogwarts Express ride. David was waiting for us at the Kings Cross station in Universal Studios, and hadnât had any trouble reprinting his ticket and making his way to the back of the park to meet us. We were ready to start our fun day together at Universal Studios. It was only 9:15!
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Wow!!! What a start to your dayâŚand loving the photos
Thanks so much for taking us alongâŚ
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My kids are Tommy and Charlie too! I like your style! Looking forward to hearing a Disney veteran familyâs opinion on how uni compared!
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Thatâs awesome! We have good taste in names!
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All of the yays!! 
(hurrying on to read more!!!..)
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Really enjoying this @SallyEppcot!!! Thanks so much for sharing and I CAN NOT WAIT to read more.
My apologies for shouting. 
Iâm excited!
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This is soooo helpful!! Thanks for posting. Keep them coming.
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Loving your trip report!
Keep going 
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Loving your report! We are staying at RPR next year too so Iâm very interested in your insights.
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I agree, the frozen is awesome! Would love some right now!
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I promise to write more soon. We had to hit the ground running when we got home. 
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That meal looks amazing! Canât wait to read more.
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Love the pictures! The boys look like theyâre having a good time.
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Day Two, continuedâŚ
We were planning to focus on the not-Harry-Potter areas of Universal Studios this Sunday between 9 am and whenever we got tired. Iâm pretty sure we saw everything we wanted to see before 12:30. The Express Pass was pretty amazing. I donât think we waited more than 10 minutes for anything.
I didnât take many photos, because we were going from one thing to the next pretty quickly. If you remember from earlier, we started at Kings Cross Station at the back of the park. Our plan was to do a big, counter-clockwise loop and to end up in the Simpsons area for lunch.
The Mummy was first. It ended up being my favorite ride, and Charlieâs favorite too. The combination of spooky things, rollercoaster in spurts and fire effects was great. We rode it all together once. Then charlie and I re-rode it, while David took Tommy to do Rip-Ride It Rocket.
We skipped Despicable Me because it was later in the morning than Iâd planned, and we worried that the wait would be really long. It looked packed. The boys werenât really interested anyway. We also skipped Shrek 4-D, also because they werenât interested.
We did Transformers all together. This one made both me and David queasy, and was the ride that convinced David that heâs not a fan of simulators. Charlie liked it. Tommy said (disdainfully) that he prefers coasters to simulators.
Terminator wasnât scheduled to begin until 11:45, so we skipped it. We never did make it back there to see it.
We did ET. It was so silly and trippy - very Captain EO. David joked for the rest of the trip that this one was his favorite, because it didnât make him queasy. We didnât do any of the other little kid things in Woody Woodpeckerâs KidZone
We walked through the Simpsonâs area and stopped to enjoy a lot of the details. Charlie loves the Simpsons.
We walked a bit farther past the Simpsons area to do Men in Black. Itâs very much like Buzz at Disney. Then we went back for the Simpsons ride. It was pretty hilarious. David sat this one out because he was tired of feeling queasy. Poor guy. I liked it better than Transformers.
We were finally ready for lunch at around 11:30. The Simpsons food court is great. I had a chicken & waffle sandwich, David had the Clogger from Krusty Burger, and Charlie had a pizza and a Flaming Moe to drink. Of course, we had to have a giant dohnut for dessert.
After lunch, Charlie was determined to do the Hurl & Twirl, even though itâs just like a county fair ride. He did not hurl, thank goodness.
We were ready to head back to the hotel at this point. It was about 12:30 and we were super hot and sweaty. As we were walking it suddenly started raining, completely out of the blue. We huddled under a tree with our hats on, but still got soaked. It was over after about 10 minutes. We decided that umbrellas would be our next purchase. Ponchos are just too hot and sweaty, and the rain wasnât continuous enough for them anyway.
We finally sloshed our way back to the water taxis. They donât run in heavy rain or when thereâs lightning, but we learned that they often start running again pretty quickly when it stops.
Our room wasnât clean when we returned. Bummer. David and Charlie threw on dry clothes and went down to the arcade. Tommy and I wanted showers. I was a sweaty mess and he had skipped his in the morning. The maid cart was still pretty far down the hall, so we took super fast showers and then took our books down to the lobby area to wait for them to clean. I did tell them that we were leaving for that reason, and our room was clean when we went back up about an hour later.
It rained a lot on and off throughout the afternoon, so Iâm really glad we did the parks in the morning. I wouldnât have wanted to be out in those storms.
We had plans to meet @MooreDisneyPlease and @jkizjkiz for dinner at Emerilâs Tchoup Chop at 5:30. Dinner was great! The mai tai was spectacular, and so were the ribs and bao that we ordered as appetizers. Tommy had the Korean Froed Chicken. David and Charlie shared an Ahi Tuna chop board that was a huge selection of 5 different preparations of sushi tuna. @MooreDisneyPlease had the fish, which came whole with bones, tail and head. Jayne and I had a selection of tidbits from the Robata grill. I think the Robata things were the least favorite from our selections. It was all very good though.
David took the boys up to bed after dinner. They were pretty tired. The girls and I decided to walk back over to City Walk to check out the new Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. It was maybe not worth the extra walking, because it was crazy crowded. We just looked in the shop a bit and bought some chocolates. They were good chocolates though, and it was nice to have some time to chat with my friends.
And thatâs it for day two!
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