It was great just to be able to show up, you know, whenever we want.

We didn't get there right when it opened.

We would just do what we felt like, you know, take it easy.

So that was, I think, the theme throughout the trip.

Welcome back, everybody, to another bonus edition of the DCL Duo podcast.

And as we've been doing with these bonus editions, we're talking to folks who have been down to Disney World during kind of the reopening period amidst COVID.

And so today I wanted to have Jennifer on.

Jennifer reached out. She had traveled recently with her family down to Universal Studios and Walt Disney World. And so I thought it would be great to hear

Jennifer's experience and that of her family. So welcome, Jennifer. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, no, this is great. I really appreciate you reaching out. Now, you were down in the parks. I think

you said starting July 3rd, you headed to Universal Studios, which I've been seeing a lot of posts from the folks over at touring plans about Universal Studios. So I do want to spend a minute there because as much as we love Disney, it's always nice to hear about the other parks too. So why don't we just start with your experience at Universal Studios? Did you stay on site at Universal or did you stay at an offsite

hotel? We did, I think, just for ease. We did rent a car when we got there. We just figured it was safer than doing taxis and Ubers and that sort of thing. So we got our rental car. And then we spent the first kind of half of our time at Universal at the Hard Rock. We were supposed to be at Portofino, which we were super excited about, but then they decided they, you know, weren't ready to reopen yet. So they moved us to the Hard Rock, which was good because we wanted to be able to walk, number one, just to kind of minimize the transportation, at least initially, because we weren't sure what to expect as far as what would be open and, you know, what the safety practices would be. And then number two, my daughter gets super motion sick, pretty much doing everything. So walking is always best for her. You know, the downside of that was certainly the heat. I mean, we're from Texas. It's really hot here, just like there. But, you know, we don't have to spend all our day in the mask outside here. You know, we're inside in the air conditioning.

So, and then the last few days, we moved over to Cabana Bay. That's one of the kids' favorite hotels.

So we did a lot of hotel jumping. We had the rental car. So that made that easier. The

downsides, of course, you got to repack. But I figured the upside is, since you don't get

housekeeping these days, at least we

could change rooms every three or four days to get no kind of freshen things up.

How were things at Universal in terms of did you save? I mean, I've seen some posts that they're,

you know, they're doing mandatory masks and temperature checks and kind of the same stuff that

we're hearing about at Disney. We were pretty impressed. I mean, I go out to work every day because I'm in the medical profession, so I kind of needed the mental break of getting away. You know, Chris and then the kids, they really hadn't left the house, you know, for months and months. So I think for all of us, we were really, you know, you kind of feel a little anxious and everything feels a little surreal when you go out to the airport and you fly somewhere. And then so when we got there, we got there at night. But we were really impressed. I mean, they had security at the front of all their hotels in Universal. They did temperature checks. You had to have a different color band on your wrist to show you'd been checked each day. And then, you know, there was, you know, the hotels were pretty quiet, understandably. Disney, you could check into the app. But with Universal, you did go to the front desk. But, you know, there were plastic dividers up and everybody had masks. And then, you know, we got our room right away at both places because the hotels were fairly quiet. So yeah, we felt pretty pretty comfortable.

That's interesting about the no housekeeping. Is that something new at Universal from COVID?

Yeah, it's COVID related. They're saying housekeeping's not going to come into the rooms. So of course,

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