Mistakes were made, but fun was had!

We know Disney inside and out around here! But last week we decided to do something out of our comfort zone. We went to Universal's Volcano Bay. My little boy was so excited to go to the water park. We always pass it on our drives to Disney and we know when we see that volcano we're getting close! Usually in the summer months we avoid Disney. It's just too busy and if you've never been to Florida in the summer it is HOT!!!! But a trip to a water park in the summer heat sounds FUN! We stayed at the Cabana Bay Hotel and it was so retro and fun! The room that we booked was the family suite, it features a kitchenette and living room that you can close off from the bedroom and bathroom. If you travel with kids this feature is a luxury that you will not find in many hotels. The room was nice! I would compare the amenities and room to any of the Walt Disney World's value resorts. The best feature of this hotel is you can walk to Volcano Bay's front gate! When staying on property at Universal you are allowed an early park entry of 1 hour. Disney is still only allowing 30 minutes. Yes, I am going to continue to compare the two!

We got up early and ate a mediocre breakfast at the quick serve in Cabana Bay. The lobby of this hotel does also feature a Starbucks as well. After breakfast we headed over to Volcano Bay. It was a very easy walk over. We arrived 5 minutes until early entry and the gate was just a little stacked. Right at 9:00 the line started to move. It took around 8-10 minutes to make it to the front of the line. Once there I confidently handed the gentleman our Cabana Bay Cards to scan for our tickets. But to my surprise our park tickets are not linked to the card. That was for our hotel room only. They room key acts only as a room key unlike Disney where your room key is also your park ticket and your Genie+ pass. So we were told to get out of line and head to will call to receive our tickets. While in line at will call I found them on the app as I had linked them to our Universal account already. So we get out of that line and return to the park line again..... After a few minutes we make it back up to the front. For the second time I confidently hand the gentleman my phone that has the linked tickets on the Universal app. He tries to scan but it doesn't work. Then he looks at the pass and tells us that this is our express pass not the tickets to the water park. A few days before our trip I sat down and purchased our tickets with the express pass added on, so needless to say I was really confused! The Express pass at just $40.00 sounded like an amazing way to experience Volcano Bay! We would be able to skip the lines and not have to wait in the virtual lines. Sounded good to me since we were only here the one day and we wanted to make the most of it. Anyway, back to customer service we went. I was beyond annoyed by now and again were told we didn't have tickets. So we pulled out the credit card and bought our park tickets. Not wanting to waste any more time, after all we arrived early for a reason! I figured I could just figure it out later at the hotel. We had arrived early to have fun not to waste time at the gate.

Later in the day after I sat down I finally figured out my mistake. I did only buy the express pass!!!!! Volcano Bay tickets are $80.00 for adults and $75.00 for children (3-9). The tickets I bought were $129.00 per person. The express pass starts at $40.00 but that is apparently for only like 2 weeks in January when the water park is not in peak season. In the peak season of summer they're $129.99. So in my head earlier when I was doing the math it was $40 plus $80 is $120 plus whatever taxes and fees made it $129.00. So needless to say the very expensive mistake was my own. I'm so used to Disney, you must have a ticket and a park reservation before you can do any add on. So we had a very VIP experience at Volcano Bay. We were able to ride all of the rides by simply tapping our TapuTapu bands and joining the line for the ride. That part was AWESOME learning that it was a privilege you could only use once per ride was not so fun. All this information is there but since we just did a spur of the moment trip I didn't do all the research I should have. We did have a great day and I'm working on just a post of our day in Volcano Bay so stayed tuned! It was the most fun I've ever had at a water park!!!!