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Lombard’s Seafood Grille Review

March 1, 2023 By Lindsay Leave a Comment

I started writing my review of Lombard’s Seafood Grille in my Universal Orlando Mardi Gras Float Ride and Dine post. However, the original post quickly became too long (around 800 words). I thought it was best to make the review of the restaurant a separate post, so here’s my review of it.

Lombard’s Seafood Grille

Lombard’s Seafood Grille is one of the few table service restaurants in the parks at Universal Orlando Resort. It is located in the San Francisco section of the Universal Studios Florida park. As the name implies, it features lots of seafood as well as some other dishes. It has nice theming inside. You are greeted by the water fountain pictured above when you walk in, which kind of sets the tone for the whole restaurant.

Meal Review

For this review, I ate at Lombard’s Seafood Grille in early February 2023 with my mom. As it was part of the Float Ride and Dine experience, we were both able to get a drink, appetizer, entrée, and dessert! My mom got a diet drink, which made her happy. I got a glass of water and a frozen lemonade. That was really refreshing after getting a little hot in the park.

For an appetizer, my mom and I both chose calamari. I will admit that we didn’t know what that was when we chose it! Haha! Needless to say, my mom was quite surprised to discover it was squid and immediately lost interest in the dish once she learned that fact. I ate about half of mine as I found it to have a good flavor. While the texture was a little weird, I assume that’s just because it’s squid.

I chose a lobster roll for my entrée and was very pleased with it. It had pretty big chunks of lobster and tasted fresh. I loved it! My mom got the filet mignon and she seemed to enjoy hers as well. It was a 6 oz steak, so not the biggest steak, but adequate for my mom.

For dessert, I went with the key lime pie and mom got the chocolate cake. I liked the key lime pie as it was a good combination of tartness and sweetness. I was happy I chose it. My mom’s cake seemed like it had been frozen and just removed from the freezer. The frosting was still kind of frozen. So, it wasn’t a bad dessert, but I think mine was better.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it was a pretty good meal. Our server was awesome and everyone working here was super nice! So, if you are looking for a nicer place to sit down in the park, I recommend considering Lombard’s Seafood Grille.

Universal Orlando Mardi Gras 2023 Guide

February 21, 2023 By Lindsay Leave a Comment

Universal Orlando Mardi Gras is one of my favorite events at the resort. I love the parade and chance to try different foods. So, here’s my review/guide to the 2023 event.

Universal Orlando Mardi Gras

You can experience Universal Orlando Mardi Gras in 2023 from February 4th to April 16th. It’s the perfect excuse to visit the resort during spring break or to head down during the cooler months. This year’s theme is International Flavors of Carnaval, which alludes to the fact that there are foods from all around the world to try. The parade theme is Mythical Creatures.

International Foods

New this year, UO announced that it was going to have an International Flavors of Carnaval spin the event. This means that they have food booths around the resort featuring food from several different countries! New this year is the addition of a few food booths in Islands of Adventure and City Walk. I think it’s great that the party is expanding out of Universal Studios Florida so that there is more to enjoy.

Unfortunately, with a jam-packed schedule including the Float Ride and Dine experience, I didn’t get to try many of the delicious foods. I was able to try the Fried Green Tomatoes Po’ Boy and Beignets though. The Po’ Boy was really good. The beignets were a little small, but also tasty. I would totally eat both of these things again. Last year, we tried to King Cake and enjoyed it. My mom is still kind of sad that we didn’t make time to get another one this year. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

Parade

As usual, the parade is amazing! I viewed the parade twice in 2023 and enjoyed it both times. I loved seeing the mythical creatures this year. From unicorns/pegasus to dragons and phoenix, the parade is a sight to behold. There are some old school, traditional UO floats too, like the gator I got to ride. The combination of the old and new makes for a memorable parade.

People start lining up to view the parade pretty early. I’d recommend lining up 45 minutes early if you want a good spot up front. The parade times can vary, so be sure to check the app for the time. Also, it helps to make eye contact with the bead throwers if you want to catch lots of beads!

Concerts

One of the major perks of visiting Universal Orlando Mardi Gras is the chance to attend a concert! These concerts are included with the price of admission! So, it’s a neat way to experience a concert without paying concert ticket prices or dealing with trying to get tickets. On the Saturday we attended we got to see Patti LaBelle in concert! My mom was excited to see someone she grew up listening to.

It appears that most of the concerts this year are on Saturdays in February. However, there is a random Friday and Sunday as well as two concerts the first weekend in March. So, if you are visiting on a weekend before March 6th, check out the concert schedule to see if you can catch someone interesting performing! Also, make note that the nights with concerts have different parade times.

Tribute Store

Universal is in the habit of making a new tribute store for every season. This year’s Mardi Gras Tribute Store is pretty cool! Each room has a different vibe and I love it! It’s so much fun to just walk around and look at everything. Plus, you can grab some cool merchandise or food! My mom purchased a zip-up hoodie this year. I may have also purchased a t-shirt. You can also buy some beads here if you didn’t catch enough free ones in the parade.

Daytime Entertainment

A neat daytime treat is that you can see the parade performers in the park! I saw the jazz band out performing last year. This year, I saw the gator people on stilts during the day. So, keep an eye out if you want a unique photo opportunity.

Mardi Gras Fun

As you can see, there’s lots to see, do, and eat if you visit Universal Orlando during Mardi Gras. So, have you ever attended? What were your favorite parts?

Mardi Gras Float Ride and Dine at Universal Orlando Review

February 16, 2023 By Lindsay 4 Comments

Last year, my mom and I visited Universal Orlando Resort during Mardi Gras and had a blast. This year, we decided to visit again, but we wanted the chance to be in the parade and throw beads! So, when Universal introduced their Mardi Gras Float Ride and Dine add-on experience, we signed up almost immediately! Keep reading to see if we think it’s worth it!

Float Ride and Dine

This Mardi Gras Ride and Dine experience is the only guaranteed way to ride in the parade. We paid $55.24 each (after AP discount) to eat at Lombard’s Seafood Grille and to ride in the parade. This experience booked up quickly as did some of the more popular restaurants for our dates. So, if you are interested in this experience, I recommend booking asap. We did this experience on Monday, February 6, 2023 as the two days prior had already booked up by the time my mom called to book it.

Lombard’s Seafood Grille

For our dinner, we were allowed to choose a non-alcoholic drink, appetizer, entrée, and dessert from the regular menu at Lombard’s. I got a frozen lemonade, which was a nice surprise as the server initially told me I couldn’t have it. However, he checked with management who said we could have any non-alcoholic beverage. With it being the third day of this offering, they were still learning everything, so it’s understandable that my initial request was denied. My mom was content with her diet drink.

I initially was going to publish my entire review of the meal in this post. However, the post grew to around 800 words! If you are interested in reading my Lombard’s Seafood Grille review, you can click that link. Otherwise, I will just tell you what we had here. We had calamari for the appetizer. I had the lobster roll and key lime pie. My mom went with the steak and chocolate cake. Overall, it was good meal, especially for a theme park restaurant. You can see our food in the Instagram post below.

Riding a Float

I will say we were disappointed with the lack of communication from Universal prior to and on the day of this experience. It was hard to plan the day not knowing what to expect. Unfortunately, we were never told how to retrieve the pictures that were taken before or during the parade. The code I was given to retrieve pictures never brought any pictures up and the UO Twitter account told me that we were supposed to purchase pictures in the park up to 24 hours afterwards! So, we missed out on getting any of our pictures! The chaos of the event reminded me a little bit of our experience doing the Universal Holiday Tour.

At dinner we were given our lanyards, which instructed us to meet at 4:55 to begin lining up. Everyone put on an apron-like thing and sat with their assigned float group after signing a waiver. Team members did a good job of getting everyone hyped up for the parade. Then, they led us backstage to our floats and went over some general guidance before the parade started.

Aside from the confusion, we absolutely loved riding the float! It was amazing to be able to look a stranger in the eyes, toss them some beads, and make them happy. My mom has already said that riding in the parade was the highlight of this trip for her! Pro tip: pack light for this event as we weren’t told we could store our stuff anywhere and had to just put it in the floor of the float.

Is it worth it?

While the Mardi Gras Float Ride and Dine is an expensive experience, it is worth it in my opinion. If they offer this experience next year, we will probably book it again. So, have you ever tossed beads in the Universal Orlando Mardi Gras parade?

Christmas at Universal Orlando Resort

December 22, 2022 By Lindsay Leave a Comment

Having spent several days experiencing Christmas at Universal Orlando Resort earlier this month, I thought I would give everyone an overview as well as my thoughts on each offering. Thankfully, all but two of these holiday experiences are included in regular park admission!

Christmas at Universal Orlando

Personally, when I visit a location during the holiday, I can spend hours just looking at the decor. You can certainly do this at Universal Orlando Resort. Every resort has their own themed tree! Plus, there’s a Christmas Tree Hunt across City Walk and the two parks you can do for $12! If you complete it, you earn an ornament! I didn’t do the hunt, but I did enjoy looking at all of the themed trees and garland around the parks.

Breakfast with the Grinch

One of the two add-on events you can attend during Christmas at Universal Orlando is Breakfast with the Grinch. Booking The Grinch & Friends Characters breakfast guarantees you get to meet The Grinch and Whos! Plus, it also gives you a good meal to start the day! My mom and I paid $41.99 (plus tax) each and think it’s totally worth it. You can read my full review of it in my other post.

Universal’s Holiday Tour

The other add-on event is Universal’s Holiday Tour. It’s a 5 hour, mostly after park hours, walking tour of the two parks. I wrote a whole separate blog post reviewing it last week. You can click to read my thoughts on it at the link above.

Holiday Tribute Store

Another amazing experience that happens seasonally at Universal Orlando is a highly themed shopping experience called the Tribute Store. It’s so much fun to walk around and see all of the little details. There’s also lots of Easter eggs to be found! If there’s ever a Tribute Store open whenever you visit, you must go inside to see it!

Universal Orlando Holiday Parade

This is probably the thing I saw most heavily advertised prior to our visit. Every night (around 5:30 PM), there’s an amazing Holiday Parade featuring Macy’s! It features huge balloons, like the ones seen in New York for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! It’s awesome to see them up-close! The parade also features characters on floats as well as other fun Christmas surprises! Think walking snowmen and soldiers on stilts! It’s so much fun! We watched it twice and noticed different things each time! It’s a must-see for sure!

Christmas in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Christmas at Universal Orlando stretches to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, in both parks! The Harry Potter lands look fantastic, regardless of the time of year. However, Christmas is extra magical. I adored the Frog Choir and Celestina Warbeck and the Banshees holiday shows! So much fun! I highly recommend picking up a Butterbeer and just walking around these areas. It is sure to put you in a festive mood! I also really enjoyed the projection show on the castle, called The Magic of Christmas at Hogwarts Castle in Islands of Adventure.

Grinchmas

Even if you missed out on getting a breakfast reservation, you can still enjoy Grinchmas during Christmas at Universal Orlando! The Whos have decorated Suess Landing for the holidays and it’s amazing to see! They even have some special holiday foods, like the Grinch cookies and Roast Beast Sandwich. The sandwich had a really long wait. It took us about an hour to get one and it tasted just ok. We didn’t care for the sauce on the main sandwich. However, now we can say we’ve had roast beast!

If you wander around Suess Landing you may even spot some Whos to meet! Plus, you have to catch a showing of the The Grinchmas Who-liday Spectacular! It’s an adorable show featuring music from Mannheim Steamroller! The story manages to combine key elements from both the cartoon short film and the 2000’s Jim Carrey movie.

Meet Earl the Squirrel

A unique offering that only happens at Christmastime is the chance to meet Earl the Squirrel! In case you don’t know, there once was a real life squirrel that kept chewing the wiring in a tree. They named him Earl and now he’s basically the mascot for the holidays at UO. I love that he’s organically become this big thing. He’s featured on lots of merch this year. I met him wearing him on a shirt. It was a neat experience.

Mannheim Steamroller Concert

Last, but certainly not least, if you travel during the first two weekends in December (like we did), you can catch a Mannheim Steamroller concert! This concert is included with park admission and took place on Saturday and Sunday nights at 7 PM during the first two weekends of December. I really enjoyed the concert and was impressed that it was included with admission! It made for a unique and fun theme park day!

Holidays at Universal Orlando Resort

As you can see, there’s a lot to see and do during Christmas at Universal Orlando Resort! We spent two days in the parks, but didn’t ride many rides. So, if you are planning to ride lots of rides while there, you probably need at least 2-3 days to do everything. Have you ever been to Universal Orlando at the holidays? If so, what was your trip like?

Universal Holiday Tour Review

December 13, 2022 By Lindsay 2 Comments

Having just returned from Florida to enjoy Christmas offerings, I am ready to write several new posts. Today, I am reviewing the Universal Holiday Tour at Universal Orlando Resort! It is one of two add on options offered during the holiday season. The other is breakfast with the Grinch, which I also did. I will provide a look at it next week as well as a post with an overview of Christmas at Universal Orlando. However, this tour was a whopping 5 hours and I felt it deserved its own post.

Universal Holiday Tour

As stated above, this is a 5 hour walking tour crisscrossing between the two parks! What the tour includes appears to change from year to year. However, it is held every night of the Christmas season at Universal Orlando. My mom and I paid $79.99 (plus tax) each for the tour but the price appears to go up with time. So, pro tip: book early before it goes up or sells out!

Beginning the Tour

One of the emails we received mentioned allowing 45 minutes to check everyone in. However, it also said to arrive early. We left the parade early and lined up about 10 minutes before our scheduled tour time. I think we should have just finished the parade and lined up afterwards as almost the whole first hour of the tour was spent standing in line waiting to check in. It felt like a huge waste of time. I know in previous years, there was a special roped off parade viewing area for the tour. I wish they had included that this year.

Everyone began the tour by watching the Grinchmas Who-liday Spectacular with reserved seating. You can catch the show several times throughout the day. However, it was nice to have the reserved seating. Also, the show is really good. I love the music with Mannheim Steamroller and story that combines both familiar movies.

Universal Studios Florida

After the show, the tour groups went their separate ways. Mine went to Universal Studios Florida while some other groups went to Islands of Adventure. We proceeded to spend even more time waiting around. It seemed like maybe there were too many tour groups and not enough for them to do. We looked at some holiday decor in the park. Then, we went upstairs in the building of the Jimmy Fallon ride and looked down on an empty park.

Next, we met Santa! This is the only way you can currently meet Santa at Universal Orlando Resort, which is odd to me. Nonetheless, we did it. I believe in previous years they gave you a physical photo and souvenir ornament at this point in the tour. However, we received a digital download and no ornament. So, that part was a touch disappointing. After meeting Santa, we went back downstairs and into the park to look at the huge Christmas Tree. We took photos in front of the tree with a nearly empty park.

Next, we were ushered into the Holiday Tribute Store. While I love the Tribute Store, I didn’t find this to be a very beneficial part of the tour as you can visit the Tribute Store anytime. Upon exiting, we stood around waiting some more. Our tour guide ended up asking everyone their favorite Christmas movie/song, etc. and then looked up some Home Alone trivia.

Our last thing in Universal Studios Florida was a ride on the Jimmy Fallon ride. It was very unfortunate that a member of our tour group couldn’t get a seat belt to go around them and had to exit the ride. I felt really bad for them and their group ended up leaving the tour early. I believe they were extremely embarrassed and it left the group with a weird mood.

Islands of Adventure

Finally, we headed back to Islands of Adventure. We were led to Circus McGurkus Cafe Stoo-pendous for some food and meet and greets. Unfortunately, there were several other groups in here at the exact same time. So, there was not enough time to meet The Grinch, Max (the only time you can do so), and grab a bite to eat. Thankfully, we met The Grinch at breakfast. So, we focused on Max and the food. I appreciated the addition of Pizza Tots, Who Hash, popcorn shrimp, and chicken and waffles as previous years had only cookies.

Following our allotted 45 minutes there, we headed over to a closed Hogsmeade. It was neat to see it almost empty. However, it would have been awesome to have some additional shops open. We were able to grab some Butterbeer at Hog’s Head, which was great. However, there was a somewhat long line for it.

We hurried with our Butterbeer over to the castle for an after-hours showing of The Magic of Christmas at Hogwarts Castle. It was nice to have some room between us and other guests as we watched the beautiful show. It was a great way to end the long night.

Universal Orlando Holiday Tour Conclusion

As you can imagine, this tour involved lots of standing and walking. Unfortunately, I saw a few people who clearly weren’t physically ready for this type of tour and I felt for them. As such, I don’t recommend this tour for anyone who can’t walk and stand for long periods of time. Being an add-on event, it’s up to each person to decide if the money is worth it. However, the only things you don’t have to access to as a regular park guest included in the tour are: Santa meet, after hours park, after hours castle show, meeting Max and access to some food, and reserved Grinchmas seating. So, if those things sound like something you want, then sign up quick!