Wedding and Family Honeymoon Musings

Flowers in front of Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden where our wedding and reception was held.



Walking into our reception.



View from our room at Loew's Royal Pacific Resort where we took our family honeymoon - we will take our official "just the two of us" honeymoon later this year. See the roller coasters in the background? We definitely recommend this place, especially if you have kids. The service and activities, as well as the pool, were amazing. It was definitely worth it to stay on the club level, as unlimited soft drinks, coffee and tea, breakfast, snacks and early dinner were all included. It was really awesome not to have to worry about parking, and to be able to walk back to the hotel to take a break, then return to the parks for more time in the evening.



Entrance to Harry Potter area of Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure. Love this place!

When you stay on-site you get in 1 hour early to Harry Potter and Express Passes too - basically we never waited more than 15 minutes for anything other than Ollivander's Wand Experience - and that was SO worth it!



Potter fans delight!



Yay for butterbeer - and they have frozen butterbeer too! It was kind of like cream soda with a marshmallow cream topping.



Ducks in the hotel pool - so cute!



Islands Dining Room inside the hotel.



Soup.

Although we took advantage of the "free" food offered on the club level as much as possible, we did dine at several restaurants including Islands Dining Room in our hotel. The food we had there was good, although just as expensive as expected at a resort restaurant.

Dumplings.



Mahi Mahi salad.



Fish & Chips.



Tasty nachos and Grilled Chicken sandwich at Bula Bar & Grill at the pool.

In addition to tasty food and excellent service by the pool (setting up your chair, bringing samples of smoothies) they had fun games for kids every hour on the hour. These included water balloon toss and find the rubber ducky. They also had movies by the pool every evening. We truly had a wonderful time and would recommend any of the Loew's properties at Universal Studios.

One evening we ordered take out from the Orchid Court Sushi Bar. The sushi was much better than I expected - a nice change from the typical American fare served in the club room.