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The Great Dyal Vacation of 2004 Trip Journal Entry #6: July 7th
So, we decided that being in front of the parking lot at 7:00 was maybe too early, and got there at 7:30, after half an hour of more sleep. To my dismay, the parking lot was already open, but we were still able to go park in the exact same spot, and were at the front of one of the lines to enter the park after all. We were next to a woman from Boston who was there with her daughter and niece, and who had apparently been there for almost a week already. She told us an interesting story about staying at a Holiday Inn in the area a prior year and how she had to be moved five times because the room was unsatisfactory. I think she meant it to show how bad the hotel was, but Julie and I both thought the story told us a lot more about her than about the hotel.
As before, we wanted to do the really big rides early when there were essentially no lines. We had also heard that a good deal of the rides at Universal get you wet, so I wore my big red swimming trunks in place of shorts, and Julie had a swimming suit with a pair of shorts over it as well.
When the park opened, again, half an hour or so before the stated opening time, we ran to the Hulk coaster in the Marvel Island location to the left a bit. We went straight to the front of the coaster without any wait. In fact, they ran the coaster just with just four of us on the front row and otherwise completely empty.
Hulk is pretty cool as far as coasters go; you start your typical ratcheting up on the chain when suddenly you hear Bruce Banner's voice yelling that something has gone wrong and gamma radiation is flooding through you. Then, you literally shoot up the rest of the hill and plummet while you're twisting through the rest of the coaster "splashing" through the lake (there's actually jets of water on either side of you, going through foggy tunnels, coming to a point where you think you're done, and then rocketing off for more. It's actually quite long.
After Hulk, we did Spiderman, which was probably my personal favorite. It's a simulator, but one that moves through areas inside a large building, and you have 3-D Spidey as well as various villains jumping on your car, throwing your car off skyscrapers, etc. Spiderman is highly recommended. In fact, I bought a Spiderman ride T-shirt; I'll scan the logo later and post it.
We then had to do Dr. Doom's Fear Extractor, which is one of those "go straight up and then fall straight down" rides, which for some reason I typically really hate. I actually didn't ride it, although I did later. It's not really that exciting, unless you like to go about 7-8 stories up and then fall, then bounce up and down a few times. Whatever.
The best part about Marvel was the look and feel of the place, we thought. It was a larger than life, colorful, New York cityscape, looking just about like it would out of a comic book, or cartoon based on one. There were giant images of the heros, all well done (I'm not sure by whom, but I think I heard Jim Lee at one point; they did look like they could be his style) which we took a lot of pictures of for our 2-year old, who's pretty crazy about superheroes. While you're walking through that part of the park, you also hear all kinds of techno; some of it is from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, including the instrumental "Control" by Traci Lords. I also recognized "Confusion" by Crystal Method, made famous as the song during the vampire rave in Blade.
After doing those three, we ran all the way across the park to the Lost Continent area, where they have the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster. This one was tons of fun; we ran through an (empty) queue that looked like part of the set for Dragonslayer or something like that, and then had to choose to ride Fire or Ice. There are two coasters on separate tracks, one light blue, one orange. The two coasters start at the same time, ratchet up parallel tracks and then diverge into two different experiences. Part of what makes it interesting, though, is that you come within a few feet of hitting each other a few times in the ride, including one point where you're headed right at each other for a while until you both turn upside down.
Dueling dragons was extremely fast, especially the fire coasters (although the ice one twists more.) We felt somewhat dizzy after getting off. Then we saw a re-ride door on the exit, turned around and rode it again. We rode it three times in a row, every time in the front, without waiting in line; twice on fire and once on ice.
We had a couple of more "big" rides we needed to do before the park got crowded, so we then went to Jurassic park, which is one of those big barge-like flume rides. The animatronics were a bit disappointing at times; the raptors in particular were not very realistic, although the T. rex that you can almost reach up and touch as you're falling to a watery splashdown is much better. After that, since we were already sorta wet, we decided to go do the Dudley Doo-right ride in Toon Island, which is one of those rides where you sit three or four in single file in a "log". This one was insanely wet, not only do you get soaked in the wild and hectic splashdown, but you get jets of water all over you as you go through the ride, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. We had a few Brits sitting behind us when we rode, who very politely thanked us for taking up the majority of the water for them, although they looked pretty wet to me too.
Since we were good and soaked by that point, we thought we might as well go do the Popeye river raft ride, which was pretty much like every other river raft ride I've done at every other theme park I've been too; pretty good but not worth writing home about.
By this time, we had to go in the bathrooms and stand under hand driers. I also realized I'd lost my admission ticket as well as my hotel room keycard somewhere on one of the rides, so we decided to chill for a bit, go to guest services and get a new ticket printed up so we could use the ExpressPass feature later in the day instead of waiting in ridiculous lines. We also found that we were wearing down faster than the day before (probably because of the day before), so we decided to just kinda wander around the park, take in the atmosphere, and otherwise see what stuff is all about.
Oh, and here's a tip -- walking around a theme park in a wet swimming suit all day can lead to some very uncomfortable chafing, which, I'm sorry to report, I'm just now recovering from because of the very active nature of the rest of our trip. Just something to keep in mind...
Speaking of park decor, probably our favorite was the Lost Continent. Part of it is "classical" kinda Greek/Sinbad/Bronze Age whatever, but then it turns into a kind of Merlin's village, with little thatched roof cottages (where you can buy T-shirts and grossly expensive hot dogs and stuff). There was a restaurant that had a giant statue of Atlas holding up the roof, but you really couldn't see it unless you walked somewhat behind the area itself, on the shores of the lake in the middle of the park. In fact, there was an entire area behind each of the islands where you could see all kinds of other things like that that you otherwise wouldn't see at all. Pretty fun.
We saw a few shows; there was a Sinbad stunt show, which was pretty cheesy but pretty fun. A few times the punches and the sound effects for said punches were off by a second or two, but otherwise I liked it well enough. Julie didn't think much of it, though. We also saw Mark Hoffman's Crazy Freakin' Stunt show which was all about bmx and skateboarding. That was pretty cool. Then there was this Lost Temple of Poseidon show, where you were herded into these big standing crowds, saw a part of a show, then were herded into other rooms to see the rest of it. It was pretty cheesy; apparently we were supposed to be guests of some archeologist, but of course, there was some curse, and Poseidon and some other "mythical" guy named Darkonen had a big fight with lots of splashes of water and big-screen fire effects. Julie actually liked this one OK, but I thought it was pretty lame. I wonder if some geeky employee of Universal by some miracle pitched his D&D campaign as a theme park attraction and the execs bought it? And who's named Darkonen anyways? Total cheese.
We did more; we did Spiderman again, we saw the Cat in the Hat ride, which was kinda like one of those disney rides where you sit in a little car that goes through room after room showing you animatronic attractions. Except that the cat in the hat was hyper and apparently on acid. Then again, that's pretty faithful to the source material there...
We were pretty tired again, but very pleased with ourselves; we had done the two main parks in two days; in fact by lunchtime when the crowds were starting to really get big, we had already done all the major attactions at both parks. It rained a bit in the afternoon, which helped thin the crowds, but having done pretty much everything we wanted for the day, and also being pretty worn-out, we left again before closing time to go back to the hotel and sleep.
So, we decided that being in front of the parking lot at 7:00 was maybe too early, and got there at 7:30, after half an hour of more sleep. To my dismay, the parking lot was already open, but we were still able to go park in the exact same spot, and were at the front of one of the lines to enter the park after all. We were next to a woman from Boston who was there with her daughter and niece, and who had apparently been there for almost a week already. She told us an interesting story about staying at a Holiday Inn in the area a prior year and how she had to be moved five times because the room was unsatisfactory. I think she meant it to show how bad the hotel was, but Julie and I both thought the story told us a lot more about her than about the hotel.
As before, we wanted to do the really big rides early when there were essentially no lines. We had also heard that a good deal of the rides at Universal get you wet, so I wore my big red swimming trunks in place of shorts, and Julie had a swimming suit with a pair of shorts over it as well.
When the park opened, again, half an hour or so before the stated opening time, we ran to the Hulk coaster in the Marvel Island location to the left a bit. We went straight to the front of the coaster without any wait. In fact, they ran the coaster just with just four of us on the front row and otherwise completely empty.
Hulk is pretty cool as far as coasters go; you start your typical ratcheting up on the chain when suddenly you hear Bruce Banner's voice yelling that something has gone wrong and gamma radiation is flooding through you. Then, you literally shoot up the rest of the hill and plummet while you're twisting through the rest of the coaster "splashing" through the lake (there's actually jets of water on either side of you, going through foggy tunnels, coming to a point where you think you're done, and then rocketing off for more. It's actually quite long.
After Hulk, we did Spiderman, which was probably my personal favorite. It's a simulator, but one that moves through areas inside a large building, and you have 3-D Spidey as well as various villains jumping on your car, throwing your car off skyscrapers, etc. Spiderman is highly recommended. In fact, I bought a Spiderman ride T-shirt; I'll scan the logo later and post it.
We then had to do Dr. Doom's Fear Extractor, which is one of those "go straight up and then fall straight down" rides, which for some reason I typically really hate. I actually didn't ride it, although I did later. It's not really that exciting, unless you like to go about 7-8 stories up and then fall, then bounce up and down a few times. Whatever.
The best part about Marvel was the look and feel of the place, we thought. It was a larger than life, colorful, New York cityscape, looking just about like it would out of a comic book, or cartoon based on one. There were giant images of the heros, all well done (I'm not sure by whom, but I think I heard Jim Lee at one point; they did look like they could be his style) which we took a lot of pictures of for our 2-year old, who's pretty crazy about superheroes. While you're walking through that part of the park, you also hear all kinds of techno; some of it is from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, including the instrumental "Control" by Traci Lords. I also recognized "Confusion" by Crystal Method, made famous as the song during the vampire rave in Blade.
After doing those three, we ran all the way across the park to the Lost Continent area, where they have the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster. This one was tons of fun; we ran through an (empty) queue that looked like part of the set for Dragonslayer or something like that, and then had to choose to ride Fire or Ice. There are two coasters on separate tracks, one light blue, one orange. The two coasters start at the same time, ratchet up parallel tracks and then diverge into two different experiences. Part of what makes it interesting, though, is that you come within a few feet of hitting each other a few times in the ride, including one point where you're headed right at each other for a while until you both turn upside down.
Dueling dragons was extremely fast, especially the fire coasters (although the ice one twists more.) We felt somewhat dizzy after getting off. Then we saw a re-ride door on the exit, turned around and rode it again. We rode it three times in a row, every time in the front, without waiting in line; twice on fire and once on ice.
We had a couple of more "big" rides we needed to do before the park got crowded, so we then went to Jurassic park, which is one of those big barge-like flume rides. The animatronics were a bit disappointing at times; the raptors in particular were not very realistic, although the T. rex that you can almost reach up and touch as you're falling to a watery splashdown is much better. After that, since we were already sorta wet, we decided to go do the Dudley Doo-right ride in Toon Island, which is one of those rides where you sit three or four in single file in a "log". This one was insanely wet, not only do you get soaked in the wild and hectic splashdown, but you get jets of water all over you as you go through the ride, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. We had a few Brits sitting behind us when we rode, who very politely thanked us for taking up the majority of the water for them, although they looked pretty wet to me too.
Since we were good and soaked by that point, we thought we might as well go do the Popeye river raft ride, which was pretty much like every other river raft ride I've done at every other theme park I've been too; pretty good but not worth writing home about.
By this time, we had to go in the bathrooms and stand under hand driers. I also realized I'd lost my admission ticket as well as my hotel room keycard somewhere on one of the rides, so we decided to chill for a bit, go to guest services and get a new ticket printed up so we could use the ExpressPass feature later in the day instead of waiting in ridiculous lines. We also found that we were wearing down faster than the day before (probably because of the day before), so we decided to just kinda wander around the park, take in the atmosphere, and otherwise see what stuff is all about.
Oh, and here's a tip -- walking around a theme park in a wet swimming suit all day can lead to some very uncomfortable chafing, which, I'm sorry to report, I'm just now recovering from because of the very active nature of the rest of our trip. Just something to keep in mind...
Speaking of park decor, probably our favorite was the Lost Continent. Part of it is "classical" kinda Greek/Sinbad/Bronze Age whatever, but then it turns into a kind of Merlin's village, with little thatched roof cottages (where you can buy T-shirts and grossly expensive hot dogs and stuff). There was a restaurant that had a giant statue of Atlas holding up the roof, but you really couldn't see it unless you walked somewhat behind the area itself, on the shores of the lake in the middle of the park. In fact, there was an entire area behind each of the islands where you could see all kinds of other things like that that you otherwise wouldn't see at all. Pretty fun.
We saw a few shows; there was a Sinbad stunt show, which was pretty cheesy but pretty fun. A few times the punches and the sound effects for said punches were off by a second or two, but otherwise I liked it well enough. Julie didn't think much of it, though. We also saw Mark Hoffman's Crazy Freakin' Stunt show which was all about bmx and skateboarding. That was pretty cool. Then there was this Lost Temple of Poseidon show, where you were herded into these big standing crowds, saw a part of a show, then were herded into other rooms to see the rest of it. It was pretty cheesy; apparently we were supposed to be guests of some archeologist, but of course, there was some curse, and Poseidon and some other "mythical" guy named Darkonen had a big fight with lots of splashes of water and big-screen fire effects. Julie actually liked this one OK, but I thought it was pretty lame. I wonder if some geeky employee of Universal by some miracle pitched his D&D campaign as a theme park attraction and the execs bought it? And who's named Darkonen anyways? Total cheese.
We did more; we did Spiderman again, we saw the Cat in the Hat ride, which was kinda like one of those disney rides where you sit in a little car that goes through room after room showing you animatronic attractions. Except that the cat in the hat was hyper and apparently on acid. Then again, that's pretty faithful to the source material there...
We were pretty tired again, but very pleased with ourselves; we had done the two main parks in two days; in fact by lunchtime when the crowds were starting to really get big, we had already done all the major attactions at both parks. It rained a bit in the afternoon, which helped thin the crowds, but having done pretty much everything we wanted for the day, and also being pretty worn-out, we left again before closing time to go back to the hotel and sleep.
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