Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Universal Orlando Trip - Day 2, Part 2

Tip:  Always take a ziploc bag with you to a theme park - it's great to slip your phone/wallet into on water rides, and comes in super handy if it rains.  Also, you still need to wear sunscreen on overcast days.

After Jurassic Park, we continued on and came to the newest attraction at Universal, Skull Island: Reign of Kong.

Just like the Harry Potter area/rides, Skull Island gets extraordinary marks for theming.  On the outside it really looks foreboding with a huge weathered black wall covered with skulls, spears and torches, giant carved gorilla head (through which you enter) and mist-covered mountains rising in the distance.  Off to one side there's a huge temple with massive doors that open for the ride vehicles to pass through.

My current wallpaper
Just amazing from the outside
The Temple of Doom...oh, wait, wrong franchise
Unlucky adventurers about to face their fate
The giant doors slowly open to admit the vehicle then close behind it as the temple swallows its latest prey 
The loading station, like the rest of the ride, is so well done


You enter the queue for Reign of Kong through the mouth of the snarling gorilla carved into the wall. The queue itself has a few surprises which I won't give away, but one large room where the line winds back and forth is presided over by an animatronic figure of the old tribal woman from the movie.  The very, very, creepy old tribal woman from the movie.  BigFatPanda has a video on YouTube of the animatronic:




Note:  If you use Express Pass you will bypass all or a portion of the themed queue and will instead go down a long rock-lined corridor.  Still totally worth it if the wait time is high, but if it's short it's a good idea to walk through the full line at least once.

After picking up your 3D "protective goggles" and boarding the vehicle, there is a short ride through the outside loop to enter the temple through the its impressive doors.  If it's raining, the vehicle can bypass the outside portion through a hidden side entrance (we rode a few times and experienced both).  There are a couple of warm of scenes, then the main event which is not much different from the Kong experience on the Universal Hollywood studio tour.  I wrote about it last September:

"The King Kong event is a long, dark, pitch-black tunnel of a building...Suddenly we in the middle of a prehistoric jungle.  In very short order we were not alone as the tram was thrust into an epic battle between several tyrannosaurs and Kong.  Some giant spiders even got in on the action.

The whole experience was accomplished with 2 giant curved projection screens which surrounded the tram.  Each screen was 187 feet wide by 40 feet tall - the equivalent of 16 movie theater screens - according to the USH website.  The entire tram track was also on a gimbal and there were wind and water spray effects.  Everything combined gave you the experience of being in the center of the dangerous action, which included sliding sideways off a cliff at one point.  It was really well done and thrilling.  After the film, the doors at the end of the building opened up and we took off our glasses, allowing us to see the giant screens.  The tram drove back out into the sun and continued the tour."


Whereas in California the Kong movie is just a singular experience on the studio tour, in Florida it's the whole experience.  The 3D movies may be the same, but Orlando's is all wrapped in a Kong-flavored shell.  Ugh, poor choice of words.  Instead of driving out of the building into the sun, before we reached the loading station we drove into another mountainous environment where a full-sized, battle-scarred, animatronic King Kong peered into our vehicle as he caught his breath.  Like the rest of the ride, it was incredibly well done, especially for something of that size.

After Reign of Kong we continued counter-clockwise around the park to the Toon Lagoon section.  Here we watched the flume ride Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls, decided we would get too wet, and instead rode the rapids ride Popeye & Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges.  Pure genius at work.  To quote Homer Simpson: "I am so smart!  S-M-R-T: smart!"  Needless to say we got soaked.





Slo-mo version



Nope
Looks harmless enough
On second thought...
This rapids ride has a fast current and a couple of tricks up its sleeve.  It was really fun.
Almost time for lunch
Spiderman was next - we walked through the freezing line (all of the indoor lines were blasting the air-conditioning - it didn't help we were wet) and right onto the ride.  The heat from the fire effect was very welcome.
After Spiderman we walked back to the other side of the park for lunch.  On the way we did Poseidon's Fury - a weird but fun show/walk-through attraction thing.  Our guide was very energetic and did a great job.
Poseidon's Fury exterior


Back in Hogsmeade and starting to rain again, we ate lunch at Three Broomsticks.  Like everything else Harry Potter, the theming and menu were excellent.  The food itself was much better than standard theme park fare, but still just ok compared to a regular restaurant.  I had the shepherds pie with corn on the cob.  The corn was flavorful but room temperature, and the shepherds pie was like eating a bowl of potato-topped taco meat with different spices.  It wasn't awful, and it was better than chicken fingers or a burger, but I expected better quality for the type of food they served.  The frozen Butterbeer was pretty good though.

By the time we finished lunch the rain had reduced down to a drizzle, so we walked over to watch the Sinbad-themed stunt show.  I'll preface this by saying the Waterworld stunt show at Universal Hollywood is awesome in every way.  The Sinbad show at Universal Orlando is awful in every way.  Bad acting, lazy "stunts", rushed, unfunny jokes, tiny cast, incoherent plot, etc. etc.  It may be we just caught it on a bad day, but next time I'll spend my time out in the park.  The silver lining is that we had a nice time to sit out of the rain and let our food digest.

By this time it was around 2pm, so after Sinbad we went for another ride on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, then left the park and walked back to our room for break.

Not good.  But one bad banana doesn't spoil the bunch.


After our rest we headed back to Islands of Adventure where we did another ride on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Reign of Kong and Spiderman, got giant rice krispie squares in Seuss Landing (yum!), rode the High in the Sky Seuss Trolly Train Ride (because, why not?), and walked once around the park again.  Then I rode The Incredible Hulk Coaster solo while Todd waited and held my hat and phone.  He didn't have long to wait as it only took about 15 minutes to queue, ride, and exit.

The coaster had been closed for a while for improvements/refurbishment before our scheduled visit.  The updates included a new sign and new coaster cars.  The coaster was fun, but it does a pretty good job of banging your head against the padded, but not necessarily soft, restraints.

New entrance sign hotness
The Hulk coaster, as seen from Seuss Landing












Jurassic Park Discovery Center
The Lost Continent area's Mythos restaurant and Seuss Landing.  We would eat at Mythos in a couple of days.


At that point we had done everything at Islands of Adventure we intended to, so we got in line for the Hogwarts Express train and rode it from Islands of Adventure to Universal Studios.  To ride Hogwarts Express, your park tickets must have the multi-park option added.  Otherwise you can only do one park per day and therefore can't take the train.  And the train is really something.

Like a "regular" old-time train you would see in the movies, inside the train was a narrow aisle with doors leading to individual compartments.  Each train compartment seats 8 passengers, 4 on each side facing each other, with a door and windows of frosted glass at one end and a window looking outside at the other end.  Through the window you could see the brick wall of the station and the steam from the train.

As the train departed, the frosted glass door slid closed.  Then through the window we watched as we left the station, Hagrid waving us on, and rode through the forest then countryside.  The scene slowly shifted from rural to urban as we entered London, and occasionally we could see shadows and hear voices on the other side of the door.  It was all very well done.

Before we knew we had arrived and disembarked on platform 9and3/4.  As we exited the station we saw that we had exited the King's Cross station and were now in London.  Neat!

After almost walking past and missing the entrance to Diagon Alley, we explored the area (more on that later), then walked toward the park exit.

Hogwarts Express pulling in to the station
Hello London
King's Cross Station

The Islands of Adventure Park closes an hour earlier than Universal Studios, so the only point of coming to the Studios park today was to experience the train and extend the day a little.  We didn't ride anything, just looked around the park then left.  The next day we would have a full day to experience the Studios.

After exiting the park we walked over to Citywalk and decided to have dinner at Antojitos - I can eat Mexican food every day of the week and be happy, so this was a good choice.  Despite the rain and the lack of people outside, the inside was crowded and hopping.  A live band played (they were good), and I ate my delicious street tacos while they did a Juan Gabriel tribute.

Antojitos restaurant

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and turned in for the night.  It had been a good day, and we were looking forward to the next.

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