The Jesters: Thanksgiving Break Trip

We had an action-packed Thanksgiving break! We flew to Orlando late on Saturday night, and visited three different cities during our week there.

On Sunday, we hit the road to Fort Lauderdale and stopped for lunch at a Steak and Shake for the first time.

Giant milkshakes!

Our destination was the Florida Panthers hockey game that night!

Dan's had a long-standing goal of watching a game at every NHL arena, and we were finally able to check the Florida teams off his list.

While we were in the Fort Lauderdale area, we touched base with Dan's cousins, Donna and Karen, who live in that area. We met them, along with Karen's daughter, Megan, and grandson, Liam, at Tom Sawyer's Restaurant and really enjoyed catching up with them.

After lunch with the cousins, we drove back to Orlando. We had planned on scheduling two rest days in Orlando, and visiting the Universal Studios parks the other two days. We've never taken the girls to Universal, and we knew they'd appreciate them more now that they're older. But as I was purchasing tickets for Universal Studios online, I saw that they had a promotion - buy two days and get two days for free! So ... we unexpectedly ended up going to the Universal parks four days in a row!

After our 4-hour drive to Orlando from Fort Lauderdale, we checked into our hotel and headed right back out to Universal's Islands of Adventure for 5 hours on Sunday night! We took the girls on the "Amazing Spiderman" ride first, and expected them to love it. Unfortunately, they thought one of the villains on the ride was terrifying, and they had to close their eyes through a lot of it. Oops!

We explored the Jurassic Park section next, and the girls discovered its incredible dinosaur-themed play area. There was a series of caverns to explore and high rope bridges to climb across.

They had so much fun, and the caverns were very realistic!

There was a nice view of the park from the top of the climbing structure.

We also visited Hogsmeade Village in the Harry Potter section of the park.

We liked their Christmas decorations.

They had an excellent light and fireworks show at Hogwarts Castle

We had just enough time to ride the "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" 3D ride before the park closed.

On Monday morning, we started the day at Universal Studios.

We visited Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter section of the park, and watched an excellent theatrical performance of "The Tale of the Three Brothers." After the performance, magical snow fell from the sky.

We also visited Ollivander's Wand Shop, where one child was selected from the crowd to try out different wands until they found the perfect match.

We enjoyed the "Escape from Gringotts" ride, and the dragon featured in the ride was breathing fire on top of the bank outside!

The girls found a "Trolls" play area to climb around in.

And Dan found a shady spot to take a nap in.

That evening, Hallie and I wanted to watch the Christmas parade, but Dan and Emma wanted to squeeze another ride in. So we split up for an hour.

The Universal Studios Christmas parade was sponsored by Macy's and it was like watching a mini Thanksgiving Day parade with smaller floats.

There were several floats featuring Universal's movie characters

After a while, Hallie wanted to leave the parade and catch up to Dan and Emma in line at the "Transformers" ride. But the parade passed between us and the ride, with no way to get through.

We positioned ourselves as close as we could. You can see the "Optimus Prime" character on top of the Transformers ride building, just behind the floating baby donkey-dragon from "Shrek." It took a while, but we were finally able to cross the street. In the meantime, the ride had shut down while Dan and Emma were in the already lengthy line, and Hallie and I had just enough time to get to them and walk right on the ride. Am I proud of line jumping? No. Would I do it again? Absolutely.

On Tuesday, we began again at Universal Studios, but only so we could ride the Hogwarts Express Train over to the Islands of Adventure park.

Turning the corner from the 9-and-3/4 platform and seeing the train station for the first time is truly magical.

We saw Harry Potter's luggage cart with his owl, Hedwig riding on top. The train ride actually takes you from one park to the other, but during the ride, a video shows scenery outside your window as you pass from London to Hogwarts Castle.

Once we were back at Islands of Adventure, Emma and Hallie wanted to go straight to the Jurassic Park play area. They also wanted to visit the velociraptor encounter show. Dan took this opportunity to ride the King Kong ride on his own, since I knew that it would be too scary for the girls.

The first encounter was with a baby velociraptor, which was a small and gentle man-eating predator.

It was cautious at first, but apparently Emma smelled very tasty.

There was a second Velociraptor Encounter with a large velociraptor, which I was entirely unprepared for. Although the attendant assured us that it had "just been fed," and "wouldn't harm us," it moved and sounded exactly like a hungry dinosaur.

It did a nice job standing in for Dan in our family photo.

But then Emma (wisely) backed away and it went straight after Hallie and I!!

We of course had to ride the Jurassic World VelociCoaster ride after that!

We walked back to Universal Studios later that evening, so we could see their nighttime show.

It was a fountain show with music, lights, videos and fireworks.

But the coolest parts of the show were the drone light images that appeared high in the sky!

Our fourth and final Universal Day was on Wednesday. We spent about 6 hours hitting the highlights again and visiting new areas that we didn't have time for on our other days.

Emma really wanted to take a picture with Jaws on the San Francisco pier.

Emma: Not appropriately terrified.

Hallie: Hollywood actress in the making.

We spotted the Knight Bus from the Harry Potter stories, and stopped to take a photo.

Hallie wanted to visit Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor before we left the park. It was very tasty!

We re-visited the Simpson's ride, Transformers ride, Escape from Gringotts ride, and the girls got to explore the Jurassic Park play area again.

We were absolutely beat by the end of our 4 days at Universal. Thanksgiving week is a crowded time to go, so the lines were extra-long for most rides. We normally like to have a rest day after one or two days at an amusement park, but Universal's promotion gave us a 50% discount to visit for 4 days, which was a terrific deal! Because of the crowds, we never could have ridden all the rides we wanted to in the two days we originally planned. With four days, we didn't miss anything important.

Dan and I started each morning with breakfast and a cocktail of painkillers and motion sickness pills to help us through each day filled with walking and rollercoasters. There's no denying that we're old now - ha! Once our bodies recovered from the soreness and exhaustion, all we remembered was the best parts of our days, and that we had an amazing time at Universal Studios!

We drove from Universal Studios on Wednesday afternoon to Tampa, FL, where we watched the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey game that evening.

Well, Dan and I watched the game. The girls played games on their tablets.

Both games we watched in Florida were high-scoring, exciting games!

Our last day in Florida was Thanksgiving Day, which we spent in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Out of absolute necessity, we made sure we finally rested. Dan looked for recommendations and found the perfect spot for us to visit - St. Pete Pier.

Super beachy Christmas decorations

There was a unique, fun playground for the girls

Beautiful parrots were feeding (and squawking) on the palm trees above us.

It reminded Dan and I of San Diego.

There was a splash pad to play in.

And a small beach!

Emma and Hallie had a great time splashing in the water and playing in the sand. It was a very nontraditional Thanksgiving Day!

It was the absolutely perfect last day in Florida! Our flight didn't leave until later that night, so we bought tickets to see "Moana 2" in the theater before heading to the airport.