Friday was supposed to be one of the less stressful days of the competition week. Madeline only had to compete her solo, and her call time was not until 3 pm. Instead it was crazy!

When I’d purchased our Universal package I originally planned to buy two-day park passes. But then I realized it would be great to have the option to go back another day, in case Madeline had a day where she wasn’t dancing. I asked our agent to look into the cost of three-day passes, but it turned out that Universal was running a special, and four-day passes were less expensive than three-day. Of course we got the four-day, which meant Madeline and I were able to go back to Universal Friday morning.

Again, Andy dropped us off on his way to work. We got to Universal nearly an hour before it opened and ordered Voodoo Doughnuts from the app as we entered and walked that way. We took the time to re-create a photo from our 2018 trip and then entered the park, doughnuts in hand, about a half hour before official opening time.

Madeline really wanted to ride the Rip Ride Rockit coaster first thing. Unfortunately, it was on a delayed opening. She wanted to wait for it, and there was a nearby bench in the shade, so we sat and waited. And waited. For a really long time. We agreed that if it started raining we would move on, and in the end we waited over 45 minutes and never got on the ride, We did ride The Mummy and Fast & Furious before we were ready for second breakfast. We tried to grab something at Moe’s, but it wasn’t open yet, and we were starting to get short on time, so we decided to just hop on the Hogwart’s Express to Islands of Adventure so that Madeline could ride VelociCoaster again.

I actually led us the wrong way to the Hogwart’s Express. I was thinking it was in Diagon Alley, but of course you don’t catch the train from Diagon Alley, even in the books. It was not much of a delay, but Diagon Alley was packed and miserable, and I was glad we weren’t staying there. There was no wait for the train, which was nice, but the ride itself was odd. We were in a car with another family, parents and two boys around Madeline’s age. The boys stayed on their phones the entire ride. I didn’t see them look up once. I know it’s the same every time, and the mom said they’d ridden it before, but still!

We hightailed it through Hogsmeade toward the VelociCoaster and, again, the Harry Potter area was crazy packed. I don’t know how anyone could enjoy themselves there as crowded as it was. The VelociCoaster wait was about an hour, and that was all the time we had left at the park, but Madeline really wanted to ride it, and I didn’t mind. I got in the single rider lane with Madeline and waited with her until the lockers, which was probably only about ten or fifteen minutes. Then I went outside the exit and sat on a ledge to wait for her to finish riding.

Where I was sitting was an area with a raised landscape behind me. While I was sitting there I watched a man walk by with a backpack that caught my attention for some reason. Then, about five minutes later, he came back, stashed his backpack in the bushes behind a post, and walked back into the ride area. That seemed odd to me, so when a Universal employee walked past, I asked if he wanted to know about an unattended bag. He said yes and, when I pointed it out to him, he contacted security. They came by a couple minutes later and took the backpack. The guy didn’t come back for another fifteen minutes or so, and when he did, I missed it. Actually another woman who was sitting near me when security came by mentioned that a guy came back looking in the area where they’d taken the bag. Right after that, Madeline returned and we left the ride area, so I never learned how things resolved.

By that time we should have been heading back to the hotel, but we never achieved second breakfast and were really hungry, so we grabbed cheeseburgers on the way out of the park. That turned into quite a quest! The cheeseburgers were easy, but Madeline really wanted an Icee, so I sat and ate while she went to get in line for one. She was gone a long time and came back empty-handed. It turns out she stood in line for a cart that didn’t sell Icees, and she realized it before she got to the front, but then the other line was long and she didn’t know if she had time to stand in it as well. By that point I was done eating, so I left her at the table with her food and went to stand in line for the Icee. It was a slow, hot line, and at the end I learned they didn’t have Madeline’s favorite flavor, blue raspberry. But I tried to make the best of the situation and got her strawberry. She was done eating when I got back to the table, so we cleaned up our mess and started for the park exit with the Icee. We made a wrong turn in the parking garage and went to the top of the wrong area to meet our Uber, but that was easily remedied and we still reached the meeting point before the driver arrived.

Madeline did a great job of getting ready quickly, and we were only a couple minutes late to the competition for her call time, despite leaving the park about 40 minutes later than planned. Friday was the day of her solo, and Andy was planning on coming to watch after he finished work and returned the rental car. I left her while she warmed up, and I went to the coffee shop for a pick-me-up. I had been looking to have a quick phone call with a work colleague, and I was able to connect with her outside the hotel before the end of the business day. While we were talking, Ellie called. She and her friend Francesca were babysitting the younger brothers of one of Madeline’s dance teammates, at the family’s condo rental nearby. I declined the call and went back to my work conversation, but she called back. This time I put my colleague on hold and took the call. Ellie said something to the effect of, We were playing a game in the pool and I accidentally kicked Francesca in the face and we think her nose is broken. Oh, boy.

I quickly determined that they didn’t need an ambulance, ended my work call, and let Ellie know someone would be there soon to take Francesca to the doctor. I called Andrew, who was between work and the airport rental car return, and asked him to divert to the condo, whose address I sent him via text. Unfortunately, with traffic he was about 45 minutes away, and I let the girls know. When I told the boys’ parents about what was happening, they asked if it was one of their kids and the girls were covering up! Ha!

Soon thereafter I received a text from Ellie saying Francesca was talking to her dad, who’s a doctor, and he said she probably didn’t need to see any doctor immediately, because they would only tell her to ice it and see a doctor when she returns home and the swelling subsides. I asked if she wanted to go back to our hotel and rest, but Francesca said she was fine. At that point, I contacted Andy and told him to go ahead and return the rental and meet me at the competition hotel.

That would have been enough stress for the night, but before I even had a chance to grab a beer I received another text from Ellie saying that she thought Francesca wanted to go home but just wasn’t admitting it. That was enough for me, and I asked the boys’ dad to take me to the condo so I could pick them up and uber home with them. We left immediately, but by the time we walked to where their car was parked, and drove in the horrible traffic to the condo, almost 45 minutes had passed. I was watching the competition live stream from the car, and when we arrived the dance before Madeline’s was already on stage. So when we got inside the condo, after I gave Francesca a hug, we watched Madeline perform and then, two dances later, watched her friend’s solo performance.

Immediately after the two dances were over, the big girls and I were getting ready to leave, and the boys’ dad suggested I take their car back to the competition hotel so that his wife could drive it back to their condo rather than ubering back. We left in their car, which was low on gas and also had a low tire pressure warning light on. That wouldn’t have been much of a big deal, but the car’s GPS system kept rerouting me to the nearest gas station, and it took me quite a while to catch on to that, so we made a lot of unnecessary turns in still heavy traffic. Since we needed gas anyway we stopped at a Wawa, which the girls had been wanting to try. They grabbed two pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which seemed like an excellent idea to me!

By the time we got back to our hotel the dance awards had completed, and Andy, Madeline, and our friends had ubered to our hotel to meet us there. We were all exhausted and hungry, so we ordered Mexican food. Andy went to pick that up while I walked to a drug store and got some saline spray for Francesca to use. After dinner we all turned in, happy to have the day over.