Day 4 Islands of Adventure

After another wonderful breakfast at the Gingerbread house, and a couple of rides on the carousal, of course, we went to meet some of the Universal characters. Disney isn't the only one who has characters come to GKTW. Every week some of the Universal characters also come. This week was Scooby Doo and Shaggy...After meeting the characters and getting balloons, we were off to Islands of Adventure (one of Universal's parks). This park is divided into 5 Islands. First stop, Seuss Landing...a whimsical, magical island based on the books by Dr Seuss...

This was definately the kids favorite part of this park...and Noah was able to ride most of the rides in this part of the park. We thought Disney did a good job with wish families...until we got to Universal. Universal employees were absolutely fantastic...I think they spend their days scouting for wish families. We would simply have to wander by a ride, and an employee would be running out to us, pulling us towards the ride, right to the front of the line. One particular ride, we didn't see an employee right away. The line wasn't too long, so we just got in the regular line...no big deal to us. But when an employee spotted our button as we were boarding, they reprimanded us for waiting in line. We were given strict instructions to NEVER, EVER wait in a line at their parks...for them it is a huge deal to have a wish family wait in line. Really, they went over the top to make sure we had a wonderful day. My big regret is that we didn't make it back to one of their parks for a second day, but we had planned to go back during our second week.

The carousal...
Noah loved this ride, of course...
One fish, two fish...Noah HATED this ride and screamed through it, as the fish spit water at us. Didn't do that one twice!As we were finishing up in Suess Land, we spotted the Grinch. After we get autographs, the employee told us to head for the storytime show, and then after, they would set up a special meeting for us with the characters.
Storytime with the characters...
Our special meet/greet with Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 & 2, and whoever that yellow guy is...



After spending alot of time in Seuss land, we breezed through the next couple of islands pretty quickly. The Lost Continent island I think we just walked through...alot of it was shut down as they are building a Harry Potter Castle. Jurassic Park island we stopped and rode Jurassic (a fantastic flume ride), and the kids rode Pterandon Flyers, a kids roller coaster, which I think is one of the shortest rides ever, but people wait over 60 minutes for it! Of course, we had no wait at all.

The fourth island is Toon Lagoon...full of water rides. And these rides you don't just get wet...you get absolutely drenched to the bone! We had our rain ponchos and wore them on these rides, after seeing the state of the people walking off the rides. Even with the ponchos we managed to get pretty wet. Thankfully it was a very warm day and we dried quickly. Noah was too small for these rides, so we took turns riding as Noah entertained himself with a coke can. He was actually feeling pretty good today, so it was a really good day.Next up...Super Hero Island and a private meet/greet with the superheros.