Thursday morning did not start well. Our cab never showed up, so we raced to the airport in Rick's car, then saw the check-in line extending out into the parking garage! With a bit of luck (and the fact that we were getting upgraded to first class), we made it through what woul dhave been a two hour security line in about 25 minutes. Whew! Arriving in Orlando we picked up our rental car and headed to Universal.

We stayed at the Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Florida. It's a really nice hotel, located on a man-made lake.

We took a water taxi over to the park on Thursday night for dinner. What a crazy place! Lots of noise and commotion, and lots of people coming out of the park who wanted to eat at the same time as us! We ended up eating at Margaritaville, with Jimmy Buffet singing in the background. Afterwards, we were ready for bed (and anxiously awaiting the next morning!). We fell asleep to "American Pie 2", which was cute, but not as good as the original.

Friday morning we popped out of bed at 8:30 so we could get breakfast and head to the park. Because we were staying at a park hotel, we had special "Universal Express" cards which allowed us to use 'shortcut' entrances to all the rides. What a time-saver! We hardly waited on any ride, some of them we walked right on (the normal lines were 15 to 40 minute waits). We started on Spiderman, then rode the Tower of Doom, Dueling Dragons and Incredible Hulk. Then we rode several of them again! In all we rode 12 times before 1pm when we stopped for lunch.