Welcome to another Universal Orlando podcast, I'm Nick. And I'm Melody. And you'll never know why Melody's laughing. Will I be a menace to edit today? Who knows? Why me? I was trying to spite Melody with my annoying drinking noises. We have a fun episode in store if you like to listen to people plan for things. This episode is mainly to help me get everything straight in my head. And I'm the other host, so I'm just here. And you're the other host.
You're the commentator, you're the one who tells me if I'm planning something stupid. So yeah, we're doing this to make it straight in my head. I always love listening to people plan their vacations because I'm like, oh, what could I do different or oh, I want to do that next time I go. So this gives you a little insight on how I'm going to do the night and maybe it'll guide your night. Who knows? Yay. Anyways, I was assaulted by a frog. So I started telling the story to Melody.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to tell this on the podcast instead. So I was driving the Jeep, getting groceries. For anyone who doesn't know, I drive a 2004 Jeep Wrangler. It is a soft top. So that means my windows are vinyl, so they zip up. And the windows are kind of old, so a little bit fogged over. I can see through them, but it's not ideal. I do need new windows, but the dude quoted me $700 just for the windows. So I will live with my foggy windows.
But I just roll down my, I unzip my windows as I'm driving so I can see my mirrors. So I'm coming home, I have my windows unzipped, doing 50 down the road because the speed limit's 55, but my Jeep doesn't go 55 before it feels like it's going to fall apart like a brick of Legos, like a pile of Legos. And I'm just sitting there listening to my music, enjoying my drive home. And out of the corner of my eye, a frog crawls out of my driver's side mirror.
Eww. Like, not a tiny frog, like a decent sized frog. Well, I'd prefer a frog than a wasp. A wasp likes to go into our nose. Well yeah, if a wasp crawls, it'll just fly away. But this frog slowly crawled out and then it kind of crawled towards the edge towards me and then I looked at it and it was like eyeing the inside of my car in my lap. And I saw it getting ready to jump. So I like panicked and I swatted at it and I think I may have killed a frog. Oh. Because I went flying.
So you didn't get assaulted by a frog. You assaulted the frog first. Maybe. Oh my word. It was planning to assault me. You would have been fine. No, it's slimy. I don't know if it's poisonous. It could have killed me. I was scared for my life. I've had several blizzards fly off the car before and I always thought that. Have they ever flown inside your lap? No. No. And they're also not slimy. Ooh. Whatever. Anyways, let's get to the episode.
The reason why you clicked on this episode is because I guarantee you Melody isn't going to title this episode, Nick Gets Assaulted by a Frog. No, but it might be in the bio. I would expect as much. Socials! Oh yeah, you do that while I try and find my list. Okay. We are on Instagram and Twitter slash X. You can find us at Another Universal Podcast. Yes, I have momentary brain fart, but that's okay. Another Universal Podcast on Instagram and Another UO Pod on Twitter slash X. Oh yeah, water.
What? I drank the water while I was away from the mic and I was not talking. So anyways, Melody's getting annoyed at me. How could you tell? Okay, so I made a list of all the food that I'm going to try. So should I go over that first or should I go over the plans for the night? Shouldn't it technically be plans because then you can say which place you're going to first and then what food you'll get when you get to that place? I mean, I could, but I don't even know how we're doing that.
So I'm going with my friend Connor and the thing is he likes to bounce all over the park. He does not like plants. So it's like when we did Mardi Gras, we were bouncing all over the park getting food. We didn't. We went in a circle. No, that's how you should do it. Anyway, so okay, I'll just go with plans. So night one, I am leaving our house at 530. In the morning. Six a.m. I'm leaving at six a.m. sharp. It takes me about an hour to get to Universal. We are staying at Aventura.
So my plan is I'm going to drive to Aventura, get there right at seven a.m. and I want to be the first one in line so I can hopefully either get a room right then and there or shortly after because when we went to Cabana Bay last year, I checked in around 745, eight o'clock ish and they gave me a room around 11 or 12.
So I'm hoping I can get the room either early in the morning or at noon again, because if I can get the room at noon again, my plan is to just lounge in the room all day, set up the computer, make sure all the recording equipment's all ready to go. Whoopsies. Make sure the recording equipment is all ready to go. Make sure the camera is all cleaned up and spiffy. Anyway, stay in the room, lounge, get stuff ready for the night. Around, I want to say two o'clock ish.
I'm going to head down to the lobby, either hop on the bus if I can't go over to Sapphire Falls and use their water taxi to go to CityWalk. Hopefully I can just use the water taxi. So I'm going to plan, so I'm going to get on the water taxi from Sapphire Falls, go to CityWalk, go to the VIP area and I still haven't gotten an answer because I haven't asked yet. But my question is, do I need to, for my RIP tour, do I need to go straight to the VIP booth?
Can people stop cutting lawns while I'm recording? How rude. So my question is, do I need to go to the VIP booth right at 530 and check in there or do I need to go to a stay and scream area and do stay and scream? I feel like you would have to go to the VIP area, not stay and scream. Well because my thing is I want to get in Cafe La Bamba as soon as I can because our RIP tour is at 630. And I think Cafe La Bamba opens at 530.
So my plan is to get into Cafe La Bamba as soon as I can, do the buffet, which I do have the food. I thought you only had the food for the private. No. Oh. So you completely didn't listen to me last night. No, you said you had them both and then you only ran off. I said I had the food that is for our tour, I think. And then someone said how the private RIP tour buffet has two more Halloween Horror Nights food items and I can't remember what they are.
Okay. Anyways, this is what I think we're getting. So somebody posted on Facebook asking what the non-private RIP tour gets for the buffet and somebody commented with these pictures. So whether or not this is going to be the offerings all event days or if this was just like I have returned, our dog decided to bark at the Amazon driver while both kids are sleeping. What was I saying? Last I can recall, you were saying something about whether the food is for certain time or all event.
Anyways, so I don't know if this is for just because I can't remember if this was posted on night one or night two. So I don't know if they were doing like different set of food and like to commemorate the opening of HHN. So I will not be able to comment on whether this food is their all event. So hopefully it's not to mention they could change stuff up like, hey, people aren't eating this so we're going to swap it out.
Yeah. So hopefully they have these items because there are some items on here that I want to try. So anyways, we have pizza fries, yum, classic, amazing pizza fries. You said you were going to explain a difference. No, I didn't. Potentially. I said no. And now you're trying to guilt trip me into saying something. Whatever. I don't know why he needs more pizza fries. Because they're I'm going to put asterisks next to this because technically it's not I paid for it free.
So obviously I would rather get it with my tour than go and pay 10 or 12 bucks at the Dreamworks Cafe for pizza fries. We have the forbidden falafel, which is also conveniently at the monster eternal bloodlines food booth. There's street corn riblets. It is corn rib jalapeno mayo, cotija, cotija, cotija cheese, tahin and micro with cilantro. Also I'm acting like I know what you're saying even though I can't see what the word is. Good job. They have the bloody goodie bag.
And that is at the triplets food booth. Yep. And that is if you don't remember from our food episode, that is the crispy chicken chunk with fries, pepper, onion mix and a bloody good sauce. Seasoned crackers. It's Ritz crackers. Wow. Queso fresco. And that is Queso fresco with dill, rosemary and paprika. Harrison's hummus, fruit platter and a vegetable charcuterie. Oh wait, no, there's more. Manchego cheese. Mary's macaroon. Ghost cookie and a funfetti cupcake. Woo. Potentially. Potentially.
I'm going to try 90% of that. See if there's anything I wouldn't try. I may skip out on the street corn riblets. Yeah. That's what I would skip out on. And the cupcake because a cupcake's a cupcake. Yeah. So anyways, we're going to do that. We're going to basically eat dinner at Café La Bamba for our pre-RIP tour buffet. We're going to go on our RIP tour, which starts at 6.30. And from what I am reading, I am supposed to walk over to the horror makeup show.
And that's where all the groups gather. Because like what I've been reading is when you're ready to go on your tour around your start time, which is 6.30, for me at least, you walk over to horror makeup show and there's going to be tour guides in there. And they're just going to shove you in a group. And then once you get enough people in your group, they're going to start the tour. So I don't know, like if you finish eating at like 6, can I walk over and start my tour at 6?
If I take longer to eat, can I start my tour at like 6.35 or 6.45? Probably not. But can I also be, you have a designated time. Then you're like, they're like, okay, you have to be around this time. Because when I did the Unmasking the Horror tour, there was a huge line of people and I walk up to a lady, tell her my name. She finds me on the list. She checks me off. She says, she gave me a letter. She said like D or something.
And there are some people holding letters and I walk up to the dude holding D and he takes me to my table and he says, okay, your tour guide will be around shortly. So my table fills up. Our tour guide comes around and he checks off names on his little list that he has. And then we start the tour. So I don't know if it's going to be like that. Or if it's going to be like there's a line of tour guides.
And once one tour guide is just full of people, he just takes off and it's just like a constant fill of people. Preferably not that. That sounds chaotic to me. It does sound chaotic because like I have two people in my group, me and Connor. What if somebody has like nine people in their group? Then they would have a private group. What if people have five people in their group? Then I don't know. Anyways, all these questions are going to be answered.
And for all of our listeners, who knows, maybe this might be your first year doing RIP. We're like, you don't know what RIP is. So I'll keep harping on Nick to take notes so that he doesn't forget. Yes. I'll take notes because like nobody's talking about this. People explain what RIP tour is. Everybody gives the general, oh, you go on a tour. You eat food at Cafe La Bamba. But they don't add the minor details that are still important. Yes. Like how to actually get on the tour. Yes. Where to go.
What to expect. Like even the official podcast didn't even say anything about walking over to. Did you say the official or the unofficial? Official. Oh. Because they did an episode strictly on RIP tours. Okay. Just lots of little information that you don't really think of until you're going on it. And then you're like, oh, where do I go for this? Or like my other question is, do we get bathroom breaks? That's a very small question, but it's a very valid question.
Because I did a four house tour and we took a bathroom break halfway through. So is it going to be like, oh, if somebody has to go to the bathroom, we just take a detour and we all just go to the bathroom right then and there. Or like, is there going to be drink breaks? Like can we either stop at a freestyle machine and fill up our cups, fill up our water bottles, so on and so forth? Because like all these problems that I'm thinking of are for non-private.
If you're in a private tour, the tour guide literally goes where you want to go. You want to go on Mummy 10 times in a row, he'll take you to Mummy 10 times in a row. You want to go do the immigration tour at MIB. Go do the immigration tour at MIB. You want to go through the Monster's House 20 times in a row, he'll take you through the Monster's House 20 times in a row. I'm pretty sure that's a limit to some stuff though. Probably not, because you get the tour guide all night long.
Whereas I get our tour guide for four and a half hours, I think. I don't remember. I think it's four and a half hours, but it's structured to where we do one house, one time, the show one time, and that's it. So anyways, we're going to do the RIP tour, we're going to get our questions answered, we're going to do the houses one time each. After that, I think our tour is going to end around 11 o'clock, if I did my math correct, and four and a half hours is the time that we finish. From 6?
From 6.30. Yeah, so around 11. So if we finish at 11, that gives us 11, 12, what, three hours left? Yes, if you stay up to two. Which I don't think we are, because we're going to do the tour and then we're going to go try like one more food booth. And that food booth is going to be contingent on where the tour guide finishes and sets us free. Bear with us as we take a momentary pause break so we can go get our tiny child. We now have a tiny child with us.
So anyways, we don't know what food booth we're going to go to. I'm thinking maybe triplets, because that's in the middle, or maybe the insidious booth. I don't know. A booth. We're going to go to a booth. After that, we are going back to our hotel room and going to sleep. And that is our end to night one. After night one, we have already done all of the houses, all of the shows. Oh, I forgot to say, we are going to walk through all of the scare zones and just do a brief walkthrough of them.
We're going to do a brief... Why must you interrupt me, baby? We're going to do a... See you in a good mood. Basically, we're just going to walk around and do a brief walkthrough of all the scare zones. And then we're going to go back to our hotel room. And they're also going to potentially record through the houses. Don't forget this part. False. I am not recording. I am audio recording. Don't get me in trouble, please. There's a difference. Well, I said for our podcast. No, you didn't.
You said they're going to record through the house. I'm pretty sure I said for the podcast. No, you didn't. Whatever. They're going to record themselves. No, that still doesn't work. No, it doesn't. We're going to record our reactions. Yes. Audio only, no video, because I don't feel like getting kicked out. And then their thoughts. We'll do thought recaps. Hopefully. It all depends on how fast the tour guide moves. We're going to head back to the hotel room, go to sleep.
We're going to wake up at... What time should I wake up? Eight? Seven? Eight? You're probably going to instinctively wake up at six. You're right. I'm going to instinctively... No, I usually instinctively wake up at seven. I'm going to wake up at seven. Try to sleep until eight? No, because then I'll hurt. If I sleep in now, my body just hurts. Oh. It's just like, oh, you slept too long. Throw on the swimsuit, head down to the pool, and go swimming until, let's say, ten o'clock.
The little baby needs a fake microphone. Probably. She keeps trying to grab mine. Anyways, go swimming until like ten o'clock or so. Hopefully there's a hot tub because we like to lounge in the hot tub. That's what we did at Cabana Bay. We did the Lazy River, which it's cool that they have a lazy river. It's a very small lazy river. I don't remember if I said that last year, but it's very small because we got in it and it's just like, it's very shallow and then like, it's very slow.
It's lazy river, but it's also very small. I mean, it's cool, but we ended just spending the rest of the time in the hot tub. So anyways, go in the pool, relax. We're going to try and take Sunday. This is the next day because we're doing the RIP tour on a Saturday. On Sunday, we're going to stay in the pool as much as we can. And then when it's time- Get lunch. When it's time to check out, we are going to get check out at 11. Get lunch either at Aventura or somewhere in the park.
But my plan is to do all the shows and stay off our feet as much as we can because we're doing Halloween Horror Nights on Sunday as well. And that one is not that quick. Oh, you just walk up to the front, walk through the house. This is no, you got to stand in hours of lines. Yes. So that Sunday, okay. To you too. So anyways, that Sunday, we're going to take it as easy as we can. Minimal rides, all the shows, sitting down as much as we can. I may unfortunately have to do Born back to back.
Unfortunately? Yes. Why? What? You just find it funny. Whatever. Mainly because it's like a long, like 40 minute show. So that's a long time we get to stay off our feet. Oh yeah, because you can sit in that room before the show. Yeah. Anyways, we're going to line up for stand scream bright and early at 3pm. I don't think I'm going to do the New York stand scream this year. Why? I have seen pictures of it and it looks like utter chaos.
Because they basically put all the IPs right next to each other. So we're probably going to go to the back of the park and do the back houses first and then go forward and do the front of the park. But Sunday, it's going to be very leisurely. If the wait time is over, like 30 minutes, we'll probably skip it. But also we're going to do our favorite houses again. So like if a quiet place is really good, we'll do that again. Or if Triplets of Terror is just amazing, we'll do that again.
Or if a potential house gets ruined for you by something. Or like if we walk through the house and there's like no scare actors, we'll do that house again. There goes the microphone. Anyways, do any houses that had like no scare actors or very minimal scare actors or if something happens, we'll redo that house. We'll only I'm planning on leaving the event at 11 o'clock and then heading home because I don't want to stay up till midnight and then drive home and get home at like two in the morning.
That just means I will be awoken at midnight. That's fine. Yes, you will. Mainly good. Anyways, our dog likes to bark whenever someone goes to the driveway. So I have to be prepared to keep him quiet. Yes, you do. Anyways, that Sunday is going to be the night when we redo the houses. We'll maybe do three houses. But that's the time for us to really check out the scare zones. Hopefully I can record in the scare zones and get some good footage of that for the YouTube.
Even though we still haven't posted anything for the YouTube. We are working on that. It's just it's it's a lot. It is a lot with very little time. It'll be a backlog of content because once we figure it out, it'll hopefully come much faster. But anyways, here's the food that I am definitely going to try. I am going to engorge myself. It is not going to be fun. What? Yes, it will. It'll be fun. But this is a lot of food to eat in almost one night. That's why he may eat some the night before.
We'll try. So the first place I got on my list, I have a quiet place. At this booth, I am going to try the Millbrooks baked beans and the wooden board eclair and the light bulb drink. For Ghostbusters, the only thing I'm interested in is the s'more. Yep. Because I have terrible track history with Korean corndogs. I may try the one Korean corndog that isn't a cheesecake. I think it's called Slimer's Korean corndog at the very end.
So if I do start feeling bad because of it, I can just go back to the room and not feel guilty for a Goblin's feast. I want to try the Goblin pie. Woo. What? The boring one. How is it boring? You said it was basically apple pie. It's basically an apple pie. Insidious. I want to try the last key pop, the red door. You said maybe the red door. Maybe the red door because it says it's basically just potato and onion. I don't know how I feel about that. He doesn't care for onion. I can eat an onion.
It's just. You can eat an entire onion. Yes. I am Shrek. Major sweets. I want to try the poison apple and the Cyclops cup and the sour cherry lemonade boba. Melody is not pleased with the last one. No. You will. Those are also, you said the only two drinks, right? It was the light bulb drink and the boba drink. No. No? There's one more. Oh. For Slaughter Cinema 2, I want to try the walking taco and the Shirley Black.
Oh, right. For Triplets, I am going to try the bloody goodie bag for free, hopefully, and the sweet sampler. What? I don't know. Sweet sampler just sounded boring to me too. And then for Monsters, I'm going to try the forbidden falafel and hopefully that'll be free and the bride cake. And that's all the food I'm going to get. Just that. You got to remember all of this food is not like meal portions. I know. Because I'm also, I'm not going to eat a big lunch.
I don't even think I'm going to eat breakfast. A small lunch, maybe tater tots. Who knows? There aren't really any many shows in islands though. I don't think there's any shows in islands. So then why would you go there for tater tots? Because tater tots. You'd be doing lots of walking just to get tater tots. I'll live. Then just get a crepe. The crepes? Oh, wait. That's in studios. They do have an, don't they? I think they have a peanut butter crepe. Up to you. But there you go.
Something in studios. Okay. Tooth, oh, I may try the tooth sums special Halloween Horror Nights drink. Milk shake. Milk shake. Dang. So anyways, do you have any questions about my plans? No. Because he's also already gone over what he's bringing in a past episode. Oh, I did edit my bag. He has it already pretty much packed. Yep. My. He's stealing my normal bag. So I have to trade. My content creator bag is all packed. It's true.
Like if I was not doing a podcast, I would not bring all of this stuff. Okay. What would I bring? It's the bag that I normally use to hold diapers and stuff. So now it's not. Okay. If I was going by myself, I would bring the ponchos, the shoe covers, and I added a waterproof bag that's kind of like roll up the top too and it buckles into itself to keep things dry. Dry. I used it before and they work. Yep. And then inside the bag, I put an extra pair of socks.
So that is one of my tips to Halloween Horror Nights. If you're going, bring a pair of socks. Yep. I keep seeing people say, oh, bring an extra pair of shoes because it's nice to get a refreshed pair of shoes halfway through the event. It's just easier to bring socks. Well, the socks are if my socks get wet. And then I heard a lot of people talking about this. I think it was the Rush of Fear podcast. They kept talking about loop earplugs.
So I was listening to them while I was working and I just stopped in the middle of my work, pulled out my phone, pulled up Amazon and I found loop earplugs and I bought a pair. Are they overpriced? Yes. Yes. Do they work? Hopefully. It's kind of hard to tell. Tell in a quiet household. So I think they have- I mean, you could try it later when Jack is awake and screaming. Is that you? Oh yeah, I could try that. So basically there's like three different kinds from what I saw.
There is like ones where it just blocks out all the noise. There is one where it's like, it says like event or something. It's basically for like concerts and it drops the decibels by like 13 or something. And then they have the one where I got it. It's called loop switch where it has three different noise, noise canceling settings. They have it fully opened where it only reduces the noise by 10 decibels, I think.
The next one up is like the event one where it's for like concerts and that one is it reduces by 13 decibels and then all the way close reduces it by 16. So last year I got a really bad headache halfway through the event and it didn't make- it made going through house is very not fun. So hopefully if I put these in, I can just keep them all the way open because when I put them in and you talked, I could hear you but you were quieter. So hopefully this works the way I want them to work.
But I'm also bringing the blue foam tipped purple normal earplugs that you have to like roll in your hand and put in your ear and then those reduce it by 33. So that's like if I get a splitting migraine and I'm about to call it quits and go back to the room because my headache is so bad. I'd rather not hear anything than leave. So anyways, that is what I added to the bag. I don't think I added anything else. I am putting these in the bag because they are very small. Any questions?
Nope. So anyways, that's the episode. It's a short one. This is going to get edited down hopefully a lot. What? If you didn't pause it so there's like an extra five minutes of quietness. I had to run downstairs and hush the dog. And getting rows. And got the baby. So short episode. This helped me plan my day a little bit better. Hopefully this plans your trip a little better. If you guys have any questions on how we're doing our night, like more specifically, reach out and ask us.
Or me I should say. If you have any questions about the process, please reach out and we'll try our best to answer it in our recap episode. We're not travel agents but there are some good ones out there. I came very close to using a travel agent this year. And in all honesty I probably should have because I would have taken some of the headache away. Probably. So anyways, that's the episode. Very short. To the point.
We are going to take a break next week because we're going to come with a two-parter episode I think. That's the way we're going to do it. Short one is going to be... Basically in-person recap. So the house audio, the voice audio of the houses. The quick little recaps right after. So like the quick immediate thoughts of both Nick and Connor. And just little, little quick one. Mainly it'll be the house audio.
This is just going to take a while to edit and compose because we have to take audio from two different microphones, pair them together and then shove them in an episode. Basically you're going to hear me say hi a whole lot and happy birthday to one house. And then the second episode will be more of an in-depth recap. In-depth. Where things lie on our... List. List of hype... List of hype list re... What's the word? Redone? No. Recap? Where things have moved on our hype list.
I don't think anything is going... I think things will move but I think everything is going to be tied for number one. This is why I hate being a New Time Halloween Horror Nights goer. Because everything is a number one to me. I haven't been going for 15 years and... I grew up putting stuff in rank lists. To me everything is number one. There might be a number ten house and then everything is tied for one. Oh we're going to do ranking a little different this year.
Yes. So we're still going to have our hype list one through ten but then we're also going to do a different list. Don't spoil. We can't find the post again but it was somebody on Facebook and they ranked... We saw two people do this and we thought it was a good idea. We're going to do it. We can't give credit because we can't find the post again. We scrolled and scrolled and scrolled through all of the Facebook groups and we can't find it again.
But we thought it was a good idea and a cool way to rank the houses. And I will do my best to actually rank them properly. Good job. Anyways, any questions? Baby's upset. It is time to watch Insidious Chapter 2. Bye bye. Bye bye. Say bye bye. Good enough. Say bye bye. Ballerina ballerina Ballerina ballerina Bye leahy! Bye! watching.