Tuesday, March 23, 2010

So we made it full circle. This was our last day at the Village. So we packed up and said goodbye to our Villa, and stopped at the front desk to check out. Upon checkout, we received another package of stuff. It included:

-A Gold star for Jack to take home (like the one for the magic castle)

-A big picture of our family and Mickey and Minnie

-A disc of all the pictures taken of us at the village, along with a disc of pictures OF the village

-A family passport to 100's of theme parks across the US that we have free admission to each park, once, for a year. (Yes, Lagoon is on there, score.)

So our flight didn't leave till 5pm, so we used our tickets to Universal Studios. This park is amazing, because it is TWO parks (Universal Adventure Park) in one. (For us at least, our tickets got us into both.) So we went to the regular one first, because we knew there was something in there Jack loved. But first, we hit a roller coaster that he was actually tall enough for. It was the Woody Woodpecker Coaster and it was really fun. We went on it about 6 or 7 times. Then we took Jack over to his favorite place in this big, wide, world The Curious George House of Flying Balls and Craziness. You'll remember he went there last year, in California and never wanted to leave. It was a lot like that here.

There were endless guns to shoot, buttons to push, vacuums to suck and bags to fill, but unfortunately there weren't nearly as many balls in this one, so the shortage created a sort of hoarding frenzy. But Jack loved it. I took cover for awhile because there are stupid middle aged men that think it's funny to shoot at me, I don't know why, but it drives me nuts.

So after the huge fit from leaving there, we rode the roller coaster a couple more times, and decided that with our 3 hours of park time, we should head over to the other park.

However, on our way, we saw the Rock'n'Rolla roller coaster, and Josh and I each took a go. This is where I said goodbye to my sunglasses, that I had tucked away in my shirt. I didn't tuck enough. But this coaster was really fun, and each seat had an MP3 player for you to choose a rock song to listen to on the ride, then you could buy a DVD with your song, and YOU on the roller coaster. Hilarious. But fun.

From there we headed over to Universal Island Adventure, and we got a distant glimpse of the new Harry Potter Theme Park. It is built to scale, and Hogwarts is huge, and snow-covered.

This park was CRAZY. They had a whole Dr. Suess Land, that was like an acid trip. We busted right through there to the Jurassic Park. I don't know why I don't have any pictures, but we took a really fun ride on this Tera dactyl thing where we were hang gliding around in a jungle. Jack went twice, once with me and once with Josh. Then we played in this big rope jungle gym, that you could run around in, climb, and go down slides. Jack could have stayed there forever too.

But our time came to go, and we headed out of the last of the 6 amusement parks we hit this week. It was so much fun, and we were treated so well, SO WELL- that we can never return.

(Thank you to MAW, thank you to Westland Elementary School, and thank you to our families. This was a trip of a lifetime, and will never be forgotten or taken for granted. Jack will have many things to remind him of how special he is, and how much fun he had.)