We arrived at Universal at about 9:30, pulling into the huge parking structure and settling in King Kong row 409. As we did, we both complained about the sloppy way the Universal employees handled the traffic; they just stood there, without directing any cars or trying to make the parking more efficient. Disney spoils us, I suppose...
Although Disney's huge parking lots are a special part of the Disney mystique, I must admit that I like the idea of a parking structure like Universal's. Many people think it an eyesore; a huge concrete edifice with no character or esthetics, it certainly is boring compared to some of the building inside the parks. But I differ on this. I think Universal made some attempt to soften the building, with palm trees and landscaping, and I really do like the people-movers that get you out of the garage and into the parks. There's also an atrium between the two segments, with rest rooms and a small souvenir cart. I like this atrium, with its huge, segmented glass dome ceiling (Well, this certainly is a BIG, ROUND room!)
Frank had begun, yesterday, carrying my video camera around the park with him, taking video while I shot stills. Today, he had the camera out even before we got to CityWalk; the last time he'd been to Universal, CityWalk had been under construction, and the path from the parking structure to the park entrance had been an awful little trench between two wooden construction walls. This time around, the claustrophobic walls were gone, and Frank was able to get his first look at CityWalk. He seemed to like it, but was in a great hurry to get to IOA, so we didn't linger.
Universal, it seemed, had learned a few things from 9/11, so they had placed security people at the turnstiles to examine bags and packs entering the parks, just as Disney had. The Universal people, however, had little wooden sticks to poke around inside people's bags. A prudent idea, really, since it would prevent them from getting bitten by any little nasty stuff a guest might have in a bag, but it made me feel a little like a proctology patient. Oh, well, sometimes you just have to grin and bear it, so I opened up my waist pack and let it be searched, then limped through the turnstiles.
Port of Entry, the first of the 'Islands' of Adventure, is really little more than a shopping district; all the Orlando parks have them, and it's often fun to wander through the shops. First thing in the morning, as it was, we weren't ready for shopping just yet; we wanted RIDES! But Frank did feel the need to get some video of the place, to document his first trip to IOA, so we took a few minutes to pan the cameras, video and still, around POE before heading off to Marvel Superhero Island.
So, of course, we went right for the Spider-Man ride.
I'd been on the Spidey ride before, in October of 2000; at that time, there had been a reasonable 30-minute wait. Much of the queue winds through the offices of the Daily Bugle, and prerecorded announcements, pages, and conversations can be heard. Overhead monitors also play the ride's backstory, about a new news-gathering vehicle that will propel us, cub reporters, to the scenes of major stories, like super-battles. The 3d ride, with Spidey and a bunch of super-villains jumping on the hood of our Scoop news-vehicle, throwing us around, and shooting flaming pumpkins at us, is one of the most popular in IOA, and is certainly one of my favorites. On this day, we didn't have to wait. We walked right onto the ride, which made Frank miss most of the stuff in the queue.
After that, none of the kids would walk up to the fence to pet the dino.
In addition to the Trike trail, there's a kid play area in JP, with climbing stuff, rope bridges, tunnels, slides, and some water cannon in the shape of dilophosaurs (spitters). Frank and I positioned ourselves on the top row of cannon, looking down on the dino-water cannon, and waited. Sure enough, some unsuspecting folks walked right through the splash zone, and we gave them a good rinsing from our water cannon. the look of surprise on their faces, and the jumping off the ground they did, was most amusing.
Hey, it was already hot that day. Another hour, and I guarantee that those folks would have been back in the spitter area, looking to get spit on for coolness.
Shooting people with jets of water always makes me hungry, so we headed back to the JP Visitor's Center for lunch at Burger Digs. Lunch was cheeseburgers and fries (good ones, almost as good as the Electric Umbrella), and while we were eating, we compared notes with a fellow from New York who had driven to Orlando the day after we did, which is to say September 12. We chatted a bit about our respective drives; he claimed to have made it from NY in about 18 hours, which is pretty good time. We also commiserated on the awful events of 9/11, as so many people had been doing all week.
We needed a nice, quiet place to digest our lunches, so we walked back to the JP River Adventure, which was finally open, and took the ride. Ker-Splash! Even though we were sitting in the back of the boat, I took a few gallons right in the face.
As we were leaving the River Adventure, though the JP gift shop, we ran into an old friend. Luckily, Frank had the video camera going, so we had a complete record of our encounter with John Hammond, owner and founder of Jurassic Park.
As we entered the Lost Continent, cameras whirring, I whipped out the guide map and looked it over. Hmm, I thought, there are several shows here that I've never seen. So we headed over to the 8th Voyage of Sinbad. We got there about fifteen minutes before the next show, but the crowd wasn't too heavy (it was very light all over the park that day), so we got pretty good seats near the front of the arena, left side.
Sinbad is a great show; it has lots of very talented stunt performers, some incredibly corny dialogue (Sheesh! Kabob...), and some hot pyrotechnics. And maybe I'm crazy, but doesn't the voice of Sinbad sound just like... Perry King, from Riptide?
Anyway, we enjoyed the show, then went on to Posiedon's Fury. I'd seen it last year, and just raved over the effects... the incredible water tunnel... and how they make a whole room appear and disappear while you're standing in it is beyond me! I was floored by the whole show, and so was Frank. Too bad we couldn't get any of it on film; it's too dark.
Somewhere along the line, I wound up getting my picture taken with a guy in a wizard's outfit. Straight out of a Tolkien book, the guy had the gnarled staff and white beard, and kept calling me 'My Lord'. If nothing else, the 'My Lord' part was cool.
Aha! Up ahead is Dueling Dragons, the twin racing roller-coaster. I usually hate rides that leave my feet dangling, but DD has a nice, snug safety harness, so it's not too bad. It's a great coaster! It's smooth, fast, and high. At one point in the ride, the two coasters run up a hill toward each other, looping back into a full outside loop each, but as you're going up the approach, your feet pass within 6 feet or so of the feet of the other cars. At the speed you're traveling, it seems much closer; you feel like your feet are going to hit the other coaster!
Ice cream time. I got a root beer float and Frank got a strawberry slushy from places within the Lost Continent. Not bad at all, very tasty, but nothing compares to the float I had at The Wonders of Life in Epcot. Frank was disappointed in his slushy.
With a little walking to settle the confections in our stomachs, we sauntered up to Marvel Superhero Island and rode the Incredible Hulk coaster. The Hulk is one of the park's signatures; a sit-down steel coaster, it starts with a WHOOSH!, accelerating you to 40 or 50 mph immediately, not bothering with a big slow hill. And it never slows down! The whole ride is twists, loops, spirals, and hills, at full speed. My knees wobble a bit after leaving the Hulk, but I usually enjoy the ride.
At the Hulk exit, I bought a t-shirt for my nephew. He'd been in love with my Hulk shirt, which I'd bought on my last vacation, for nearly a year, and I promised him that I'd bring one back home for him. I wound up getting him and adult small size; I was worried that it would be too big, as he's only 7, but it actually fit him. He's huge for his age; probably, he'll wind up taller than me when he's grown, and I'm 6'4".
Frank got a bit of a headache from the Hulk, so after securing my nephew's shirt, we wandered back into Port of Entry and checked out the shops, then went back to CityWalk to shop there. There's a Universal merchandise shop in CityWalk that has marked-down and discontinued merchandise. There were some pretty good bargains there, but what I wound up buying was a nice cloth lanyard to keep my park pass around my neck. I still wear that lanyard, every day, with my company ID badge on it. It's nicer than the ones my company issued with the badges.
We still had some time left before the parks began to shut down, so we headed out toward the rear of Universal Studios and did a bunch of attractions right in a row: Back to the Future, Men In Black: Alien Attack, Jaws, and Earthquake. But when we went to get a bite from Richters, we found the place closed up tight as a drum. What a gyp! Richters is my favorite place to eat in Universal; we theorized that they closed it early, as part of an austerity measure. Either way, we were hungry, so we went to Mel's Diner. And again, I felt gypped... my burger was awful, the lettuce wilted, the tomato so mushy it was nearly catsup, and the bun was not completely fresh. Were I the kind who complains about such things, I'd have asked to see the manager, but I usually just let things pass.
Sometimes, I wish I were somebody else; like, maybe somebody who complains about bad service or food.
At about 6:30 or so, we left Universal, driving down International Drive to have a look around. Since Frank hadn't been to Orlando in over three years, he enjoyed looking at I-Drive and spotting changes.
When we got a little farther down I-Drive, we spotted the Orlando Premium Outlets mall. I'd shopped there on my last trip, and knew that there was a Disney outlet store there, so we went in for a little browsing. Character Premier, the Disney outlet, was not very busy; in fact, the whole mall was pretty scarcely populated. I bought a great Mickey Mouse polo shirt for $14.95 (original price $34.95), but aside from that, we found few real bargains. Sure the merchandise was marked down from it's originally inflated price, but nothing was what I'd consider a truly great bargain.
The mall had a pretty nice food court, so we walked through it on the way back to the van. In the middle of the food court was an information booth, manned by Universal Studios employees. They sold Universal passes, tickets to several local dinner shows, and could book rooms at the Universal hotels. We chatted briefly with one of the guys, discussing the low crowds in the wake of both terrorist attacks and a tropical storm. He informed us that Universal's Hard Rock Hotel was currently at only 9% occupancy. I was taken aback at this; 9% occupancy at any hotel is pretty bad, but at a tourist hotel like HRH, it was a disaster. I wondered if they were even able to pay the light bills!
The Universal guy also informed us that two of my favorite dinner shows in the Orlando/Kissimmee area were closed permanently: Wild Bills and King Henry's Feast. Both had been enjoyable shows with fairly good food; fun ways to spend a vacation evening outside the parks.
Frank didn't see anything in the food court that made him hungry, so we left without eating. The day was almost done; we went back to All-Star Music and ordered a (very expensive) pizza to be delivered to the room. I made a call home (my family like me to check in every couple of days), and we ate the pizza while watching TV.
Day over.