Day two of our trip was the first official day of the Nationals competition. But when the schedule came out Madeline didn’t have any dances on the first day, so we took the opportunity to reserve tickets for and a cabana at Volcano Bay, Universal Florida’s water park. Madeline invited her friend Khloey from the dance team to join us, and she said yes.

The bus from the Hilton left for Universal City Walk at 7:25, so I set my alarm for 6:15. I hadn’t slept well, but getting up wasn’t hard. Andrew got up around 6:30, and I woke Madeline about ten minutes after that. I wanted to leave the room at 7:10 to swing by Khloey’s room, but Madeline was actually ready by 7:05! It’s a good thing, because Khloey was actually asleep when we knocked on her door. But she got ready quickly, and we were at the pickup point by 7:25 when the bus arrived. It dropped us at City Walk, then we had to walk to a far parking garage and catch another bus to Volcano Bay. We got there just a little after 8, when the park opened for early admission.

The day before, Universal had called to confirm our cabana reservation. I missed the call, but when I listened to the voice mail I was super excited to learn that our cabana got us into the park an hour early, even though we weren’t staying on site at a Universal resort. That was a benefit of the cabana that I didn’t even know existed. We also learned that Universal had really improved the cabana check-in procedure since the last time we’d been there. Before, we stopped at a little concierge hut right by the entrance, and we waited in the hot sun until someone came to usher us to our cabana. This time, they’d moved check-in a little way down the path to a restaurant that wasn’t yet open. It wasn’t so far that we worried that we’d missed it. They had a few different stations to check in, and then there were tables in the shade to wait for our usher. They also had water available, and cooling towels for us to take. We used the opportunity to apply our first layer of sunscreen for the day.

Before we were even finished with sunscreen, our usher was there to walk us to our cabana. She was super nice, and we had a cabana in a sort of secluded area toward the back of the park. It was close to a lot of the ride entrances, and also to a bathroom/changing room. The girls immediately set off for some rides. Andy and I got some things in the cabana set up and then rode a couple rides. The park was really quiet until around 10 am, and even then it wasn’t insanely busy.

At some point in the morning our server, Stephen, came to introduce himself to us, and without thinking I interrupted him to ask, “Wait! Was he our server last time?” Without even a second’s hesitation, Stephen said, “Yes!” Sure enough, it was the same guy we had and LOVED two years ago! Stephen is the absolute best and brought us food and drinks all day long. Volcano Bay now has a service where we could text our orders to him, but we almost never needed to, because he was there so much checking on us. One thing that made our cabana great was that we were in the shade by about 10:30, and so we were able to get out of the sun whenever we needed to.

I can honestly say that I rode ever ride I wanted to at the park, even though it was crazy busy by noon. Andrew and I actually took naps mid-day. The only hitch in our entire day was that we got in the virtual line for the water coaster, Krakatoa, and after counting down for about an hour (from a 165-minute wait at the beginning), it would jump back up, then down, then up again. Eventually Andrew and I go out of that line and into a different line. Later we got back into the virtual line for Krakatoa, and it was less glitchy at that point. Madeline and Khloey had ridden Krakatoa earlier, but they wanted to ride it with the four of us in one car, and we were able to do that.

We stayed at the park until it closed at 8 — so we were there for twelve full hours! It was a great time, and totally worth it. We caught the bus to CityWalk, but the last bus from there to the Hilton had already run, so we got an Uber back to the hotel. I was so tired when we got back to the hotel that even walking Khloey to her room felt hard. In the room, I showered as soon as Madeline was out of the shower, and I fell asleep *really* quickly.