Against all odds, I recently took an unprecedented fourth trip to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida this past weekend. The occasion was visiting my girlfriend’s family, and to take advantage of an Orlando Informer meetup.
Apparently, Orlando Informer is a blog dedicated to the major theme parks in Orlando—Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World, etc.—and various deals and special events in the parks. In scrolling through their website on our trip, I found, for example, a post about a one-day-only Beetlejuice haunted house that Universal slapped together for Halloween (I was able to get to the other two, longer-running houses on my last trip). For theme park enthusiasts, it seems like a great website.
The publication also organizes vacation packages, as well as twice annual “meetups,” special after-hour events that give guests extended park time and—and this one is huge—unlimited concessions. We had passes for the 12 December 2020 meetup, which meant we could stay in the park until 1:30 AM. Access with the passes began at 3 PM, so we used our Seasonal Passes to enjoy the park beforehand.
It truly made for an unforgettable—and long—park experience. We hit Islands of Adventure around 9 AM Saturday morning, and did a long stretch there until we went to get our meetup passes (we did manage a late lunch at Mythos, a must-visit on any trip to Islands of Adventure). As we were essentially in Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios for fifteen hours—essentially two park days—we managed to hit up almost everything we wanted to ride and see on Saturday (other than the ever-elusive Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, which is virtually impossible to get into via the Virtual Line feature).
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