You guys know that I haven’t run a sponsored or gifted post in quite a while here on the blog. It’s not because I haven’t received offers… it’s just that I’m very, very, very picky about what I want to write about. With that in mind, when a contact of mine reached out to ask if I was interested in checking out the opening night of SIX the Musical in DC… I basically vibrated with excitement!
I first heard a taste of the SIX the Musical soundtrack on a Peloton ride with Bradley Rose earlier this year. I loved it and quickly clicked the ‘heart’ to add it to my Peloton Spotify list. SIX music came up a couple more times on other Broadway rides and every song was so fun and energetic that it kept me moving and grooving the whole time (while also sweating).
Just a week or two ago, I was considering planning another trip up to NYC to see the show, but decided to hold off since we are still working on (and paying for) our bathroom renovation.
And then, like an angel of Broadway musicals… I received an email with the opportunity to see SIX the Musical at The National Theater in DC!
I found out on Friday that I was invited to attend the show AND the fabulous pre-party, which had a dress-code of “cocktail with a royal flair” and you guys… this is a 44-year-old woman who has MULTIPLE outfit options that meet that criteria sitting in my closet waiting for me to take them for a spin!
Since both my friend and I live a bit further out in the country, DC can be a challenge to drive to. So, we decided to take advantage of the Metro, which was super easy and dropped us off just a 4-minute walk from the theater.
Here’s a cute picture of Jenni and I from the pre-party:
And yes, I wore a crown. Because… why not?
As for the show. OH MY GOSH. THE SHOW!
Here is basically all I knew about it going into it:
From Tudor Queens to Pop Princesses, the SIX wives of Henry VIII take the mic to remix five hundred years of historical heartbreak into an exuberant celebration of 21st-century girl power! SIX The Musical is the global sensation that everyone is losing their head over!
It was everything I hoped it would be. Girl power and hilarious and catchy songs and fabulous costumes. It was an amazing concoction of powerful voices, fantastic dancing and OHMYGOD the harmonies. It is not often that you see a show where all of the lead singers are similarly strong, but last night’s cast of SIX the musical was MAGICAL. We LOVED the performance and I’d totally see it again. And again.
As for MY favorite queen. It’s a tough pick (and may change as I start to listen to the soundtrack on a never-ending loop), but for me it’s Anna of Cleves. Followed closely by Catherine of Aragon. Dang it, actually I love them all!
SIX The Musical is playing at The National Theater in DC from July 5 – September 4, 2022. You can find more information and buy tickets here: https://www.broadwayatthenational.com/show/six/
Disclosure: I received 2 tickets to Six the Musical at the National Theater in DC in exchange for social shares about the show. All thoughts and opinions are my own and I loved it so much!
After 2 years of a global pandemic, we were VERY READY for an actual vacation once all of us were fully vaccinated. We had planned and paid for a Universal Studios trip for April 2020, which didn’t happen. So, when the money was refunded to us, I stuck it in a special account just waiting for the day that I could re-book a vacation.
Once Jack was finally vaccinated, I started thinking about the trip again… and this time thought it would be super fun to have it the week of Jack’s 10th birthday. So, that’s what we did! I mean, double-digits is a big deal so we went for it, took a week of work and school and escaped to Florida!
When previously visiting Universal Studios, we stayed at the Lowes Royal Pacific Resort. It is an on-site hotel and we stayed there in both 2010 and 2017 (you can read about our 2017 trip here). Since we were going ‘all out’ for Jack’s birthday trip, I looked into the Hard Rock Hotel. The Hard Rock is also an on-site resort but a little fancier than the Royal Pacific.
Just for funsies, I put in all the specifications for our dream vacation – arriving on a Sunday, leaving on a Friday, adding in park-to-park hopper tickets for 4 days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and also upgrading to the Rock Royalty Floor (more on that later)… and it ended up being just about $10 more than was sitting in our vacation money refund account!
Thoughts on the Hard Rock Hotel
We loved the Hard Rock hotel! Our room was great with a king-sized bed and a fold out couch bed for Jack. It was within walking distance to Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure. It also had some great food options at the hotel – in fact we ate at The Kitchen twice we liked it so much. They are currently doing some work to the outside of the hotel, including repainting and re-roofing the hotel. However, we were not bothered by noise during our stay. The pool was huge and had a slide that Jack LOVED.
Thoughts on the Hard Rock Royalty Floor and Lounge
By upgrading to “Rock Royalty” level, we had our room on the private seventh floor (you need a special key to access it). The main upgrade was that you have access to their exclusive Rock Royalty lounge for the whole length of your stay. The lounge had complimentary coffee, a fancy latte making machine, teas, sodas and water available for us to grab any time throughout the day.
Everything was included in the cost of our room, and for our family it was totally worth it. Each morning, we would have coffee and breakfast in the Rock Royalty lounge before leaving the hotel. They had a huge assortment of food, including: oatmeal cups, cereal, fruit, hard boiled eggs, bagels, the hugest and most fantastic donuts you’ve ever seen, pastries, juice, milk, and coffee.
We stopped by the evening reception once and had a nice snack of egg rolls, sushi, cheese and crackers.
Every night we made it a point to stop by for dessert too! My favorites were when they had the gourmet cupcakes, which were insanely delicious. They also had different cookies, tarts and sweets each night and really mixed it up so that you didn’t get bored with their offerings.
While it was a higher cost to stay on the Rock Royalty floor, it was absolutely worth it to us. To be able to walk directly from our room to the lounge in our comfy clothes before getting ready was a great way for us to start each day. Also, it took the time and decision-making out of figuring out breakfast at the park each day. And frankly, I need my coffee ASAP.
Our Universal Studios Park Plan
We had four park days, and this is the schedule that worked for us:
Monday: Universal Studios all day, Mardi Gras parade at night
Tuesday: Start day at Universal Studios and go over to Islands of Adventure after lunch (take the Hogwarts Express)
Wednesday: Islands of Adventure all day, Mardi Gras parade at night
Thursday: All favorite rides at both parks AND all water rides
Universal Studios celebrates Mardi Gras from February 5–April 24, 2022. Note: All the Mardi Gras stuff is only at Universal Studios though and not Islands of Adventure. We enjoyed the parade so much that we did it again later in the week. Jack was obsessed with catching all the beads!
One of the benefits of staying at an on-site hotel was that your room key serves as an express pass. For both parks, you can bypass the ride lines and go into an express pass line instead. This saves us SO MUCH TIME and allowed us to hit a ton of rides, rather than standing in line all day long. At the time we went, only two of the newest rides didn’t have the express pass line.
We also found the Universal App handy. You can access a map of rides to see if any were closed/delayed and it also shows you the minutes of the regular lines. So, if the regular line is 60+ minutes, we could expect the express line to be about 10 minutes. If the regular line was short, the express line was basically nonexistent.
Our Favorite Universal Studios Food
Favorite Food in the Park: Three Broomsticks and Finnegan’s Bar and Grill
We ate a lot of Fish and Chips on our vacation! We love Finnegan’s Bar and Grill, it’s a fun little Irish pub, and we all had fish and chips TWICE there during our trip. We also ate at the Three Broomsticks, where our fish and chips benefited from some butterbeer.
Favorite Snack in the Park: Butterbeer
Obviously! We had both the cold butterbeer and the frozen butterbeer and the frozen was our favorite this time.
Favorite Food at City Walk: Bigfire
Bigfire is located in City Walk just outside the parks and they use open fire cooking on all their food. One afternoon I went online and made some quick reservations over there for dinner and OHMYGOSH it was the best meal of the trip. The fire baked bread, steaks and side vegetables were all so good they basically had to roll me out of there when we were done!
Favorite Dessert at City Walk: Milkshakes at The Toothsome Chocolate Emporium
I mean… YUM!
All the Universal Studios Outfits
I shared these on my February Style post, but they deserve a spot here too. I brought a denim jacket for the plane rides also also when it would get a little chilly at night. To keep my skirts roller-coaster safe with no wardrobe malfunctions, I have a pair of lightweight bike shorts underneath. For shoes, I stuck with my comfortable Rothy’s sneakers and my Birkenstocks.
All in all, we had an absolutely wonderful vacation and I’d love to do it all over again.
A couple months ago, I was surprised with a bonus from work. Now typically, when there is extra money, I like to hoard it like Scrooge McDuck and put it in our savings account. If I could dive into it like a swimming pool and swim around it in, I totally would. But that sounds quite painful in reality. And dirty.
Anyways, at the time the Covid numbers were going down and we were starting to imagine a world where we could travel again. So, when this surprise money came, my husband encouraged me to do something fun just for me. Which honestly after almost 2 years of a pandemic seems quite decadent… something just for ME?! My first thought was that I could really use a girl’s weekend. And my second thought was that I REALLY want to get back out to NYC and see a show on Broadway.
New York City is only a few hours of a train ride from home, so it’s super easy to get up there and back. However, I haven’t made a visit to the “Big City” (as Jack calls it) since a work trip in 2017. I have NO IDEA how 5 years went by so quickly. Even worse, my last Broadway show was back in 2015.
So, I called up my friend Jenni and we booked ourselves a girl’s weekend.
Covid Safety Stuff:
Masks are required on the Amtrak train, unless you are actively eating or drinking. In order to enter any restaurant or the theater in NYC, we had to show our vaccination card and license. Every person who did a check really scrutinized them to make sure they matched. Masks were required indoors everywhere, including restaurants, stores, the museum and the theater. We wore them walking around outside too, because they kept our faces warm.
I wanted a hotel within walking distance to the show, so I opened a map of NYC and just clicked on all the hotel options. You would be surprised how many hotels only offer one bed in a room. However, I finally found The Row NYC with 2 full beds. It’s located at 700 8th Avenue and was less than a block from our theater. The room and bathroom was very small, but it was clean, convenient and not too pricey. The nightly rate was $133 and after taxes and fees and all that, it ended up costing $190 total.
As I mentioned, the Al Hirschfeld Theater was just across the street from our hotel. It couldn’t have been more convenient. The theater was gorgeous and the sets were incredible. The one thing that I really like to splurge on is close seats, so we had seats in Row F in the Orchestra Left section. We were the perfect amount of close to see everything going on, but not so close that there was awkward eye contact and incoming saliva from the actors. The cost for the seats with tax and all the fees was $250 per person.
The show was AMAZING. So, so, so good. Aaron Tveit was absolutely magical in the role of Christian. His voice was flawless and his acting was so fantastic I really believed that he totally fell in love at first sight. The actress playing Satine was… not as great. Her singing voice was amazing, but her acting had room for improvement.
We’re pretty sure that she doesn’t know what consumption actually is – as she seemed to think it involved a pained appendix and a weird cough face that was way too similar to a cat coughing up a hairball. At one point, both Jenni and I sat in our seats shaking with silent laughter. And then after the show, I had tears streaming down my face because we were hysterically laughing and recreating her hack-hack-hack face.
Oh and I also loved Robyn Hurder who played Nini. This woman is literal FIRE with her dance moves and voice. Absolutely amazing. All in all, the show was fantastic and memorable and hilarious and the soundtrack has been playing on my Spotify ever since.
What Else We Did
When we arrived on Saturday, after checking into our hotel we walked around a bit. There was probably 6 inches or so of snow and slush on the ground, but thankfully we both dressed in layers with boots so our feet magically stayed dry. We wandered our way around a bit and I ended up stopping by the M&M’s store in Time Square to get Jack a little souvenir.
That night we wanted to stay pretty close to our hotel and theater, since we didn’t have a ton of time and it was cold and snowy. So, we made some last-minute reservations at Carmine’s and destroyed a gigantic loaf of Eggplant Parm and a mixing bowl full of broccoli.
Then, on Sunday we hit up a nearby diner (The Times Square Diner) for breakfast. The breakfast portions were plentiful and the coffee was strong enough to put hair on your chest – as all good diner coffee tends to be.
After breakfast, we packed up our stuff from our room, checked out and dropped our backpacks off at the hotel’s bag check. We walked through Central Park and I made high pitched noises at every cute dog I saw. There were also lots of families sledding, but I didn’t make any noises at them.
From there, we decided to go to The Met and tickets cost $25 each. We spent hours walking miles around the museum. Some of my favorite exhibits were the sarcophagus exhibit (I can’t find a link online), the In America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibit where I wanted to go shopping.
The knit look from Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s line The Row called to me and I want to wear it from head to toe. I was also obsessed with this beautiful Carolina Herrera shirt and skirt set.
I saw some amazing paintings I remember from art class in college.
We also checked out the Inspiring Walt Disney exhibit, which I really liked but no photos were allowed.
Oh, and we ate again. This time we hit up a nearby pizza place called Serafina Fabulous Pizza where the restaurant was gorgeous, the pizza was delicious, but ohmygoodness the seating was squished. Jenni and I were at a little table for two in the mid corridor section and I swear every time someone walked by, they were centimeters from bumping into us.
From there we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags and then took an Uber to the train station. All in all, I think we were in town for about 30 hours or so and it was a cold but super fun girls weekend!
