Crowd levels at all the parks had been extremely low all week, and were falling off even more. It seemed that, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, people were canceling their trips left and right, and as the current crop of vacationers completed their stays and headed home, Orlando emptied itself of tourists, leaving the parks looking like ghost-towns.
As was my habit, I immediately went into the big shops near the park entrance, browsing for anything that caught my eye. Then we went over to Twister: Ride It Out! I'd always wound up standing in the back row of this attraction before, but today I was in the front, and when the rain started, I got soaked through. Fortunately, it was a hot, sunny day, and I dried off very quickly once we were back in the Florida sunshine.
We went over to Kongfrontation, noting as we left it that Richters was still closed. We skipped Earthquake, since we'd been on it two days before, and went on to Jaws taking a picture of Frank standing inside the hanging shark's mouth first. After Jaws, we paused to take some forced perspective shots of each of us standing under the space shuttle.
A trip through Men In Black: Alien Attack, some browsing in shops on that side of the park, and skipping Back to the Future, and we were ready to sit down for a while, so we sat through a show of Animal Planet Live!, a terrific mixture of live animal performers and projected film (actually, I think it was an LCD screen). After that, we sat through the Gory, Gruesome and Grotesque Horror Makeup Show, then worked our way back to the front of the park. It was nearing lunch time, and we wanted to eat in the Enchanted Oak Tavern, in IOA's Lost Continent. We took some pictures and video on the way.
The Enchanted Oak had terrific food, and pretty large portions for a walk-up counter-service restaurant. We had a pretty good meal, then started on our way toward Jurassic Park. But I stopped to look at a cart selling glass and crystal work. I had a gift to buy; my cousin Rachel, who was about to turn 16, had injured her back that week. She was in a lot of pain, and had to be bedridden for two or three days, so I decided to get her a little something special. I settled on a beautiful little blown-glass sculpture of two dolphins, mounted on a wooden base. Rachel loves dolphins; I knew the sculpture would cheer her up. Because it was fragile, I had it shipped to the front of the park, where I'd pick it up before leaving for the day.
At Jurassic park, we looked through the Visitors Center for a while, watching a raptor hatching, and playing with the big dinos. Most of them were broken, though, so dino-vision was something of a let-down. But I took a terrific picture of the tyrannosaur. And during the raptor hatching, Frank couldn't resist quoting from the JP movies (You bred raptors?!) The 'technician' in the hatchery either didn't get it, or completely ignored it, but a few people in the small group watching thought it was hilarious.
We also rode the JP River Adventure again.
While at the cart, buying the dolphins for Rachel, we had chatted with the sales guy, and he recommended riding the Flying Unicorn for some nice elevated pictures of the park. The Flying Unicorn is a pretty tame steel coaster, made especially for younger kids; this was evident not only from it's slower speed, but from the fact that each car was just big enough to fit two children. Which meant that Frank and I, each being somewhat larger than average adults, had to take separate cars. I managed to get a couple of fairly good aerial shots from the top of the lift hill; and I also enjoyed the ride. I recommend the Unicorn to anyone who is a little scared of coasters; it's a smooth, tame ride that will ease your introduction into thrill rides.
After the Unicorn, we walked through Toon Lagoon, where I took Frank's picture in the Marmaduke set. This is a clever setup; flat cutouts of Marmaduke, coupled with a hanging rope, set the scene for a picture that makes you look like you've been pulled off your feet and dragged down the road by that huge doggie. I didn't frame the shot very well, but it still looks funny.
Mine is awful; you can still see my feet sticking out, standing flat on the ground. Maybe next year I can take a better one.
Then it was on to Marvel Superhero Island, where we rode the Spidey adventure again, and I had my picture taken with ole' Web-Head himself. After so many years of the big stuffed characters, none of whom can talk, I was somewhat taken aback by Universal's human characters. At the old park, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Munroe, the Marks Brothers, Doc Brown, and a dozen more can routinely be seen. In IOA, we ran into Boris and Natasha, John Hammond and Ian Malcolm, the unnamed Wizard in Atlantis, and now Spider-Man. And all of them are real people, in costume and in character, who move and talk like no stuffed character can. This particular Spidey was perfectly cast; for one thing, the guy was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and wearing the spandex Spidey outfit... well, the ladies, especially the teens, were clustered around him quite a bit. But what got me was his manners. He knew Spidey; he knew the character's history, backstory, and many appearances on TV (anybody else remember The Electric Company? I sure didn't, till he reminded me!) And the guy had the pose perfect. So getting my picture taken with my childhood idol not only made for a great addition to my photo album, it also made my day in the same way a 5-year-old's day is made by a picture with Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh.
After the picture stop, we browsed the shops in that area. Frank was never a big comic collector, and neither was I, but I spent my share of time in comics store when I was in high school. Most of the merchandise in the comic shops at IOA appeals directly to the hard-core comic fan, but there were also some really great shirts. Too bad they all cost so darn much. I'm sorry, but $45 for a simple button-down shirt, even if it is one of the coolest looking shirts I've ever seen, is just too much. So I passed.
We also walked through the arcade, where we videotaped a game that you actually get inside and punch and kick to operate. The technology behind this game is a mystery to me, but the idea of actually moving your game character by moving your own body is intriguing. It's a form of virtual reality without the helmets and gloves.
We felt we were done for the day in IOA, so we headed out, and walked back toward USF via the Hard Rock Cafe side of the lake, as opposed to the CityWalk side. In doing so, we discovered that this is the short way; any time you just want to get from one Universal park to the other, take this route!
We didn't really know what we felt like doing then, so we took the opportunity to experience T2:3D again (I never get tired of it!), and just browsed around in the shops at the front of the park some more. A nice ice cream seemed in order then, so we went to Schwabbs Pharmacy. I got a root beer float; I was into comparing them on this trip, and had yet to find one that compared with the ones I'd gotten at Epcot. Schwabbs made an excellent float, but not good enough to beat Epcot.
It was getting close to 6pm, so we left USF and went back over to IOA; I was under the impression that IOA was open till 7pm that night, but I was wrong. We got to the turnstiles just as they were closing. Luckily, the employees watching the entrance gate were sympathetic and understanding when we told them that we had packages to pick up, and let us in (after the obligatory bag check). Even though the gates were closing, there were still plenty of people in the park; any theme park takes a while to clear out after closing time. Actually, the majority of people in the park had congregated to the still-open gift shops in Port of Entry, which delayed us a bit in picking up my package. We were delayed even further by my addle-brained, rookie mistake of handing over a Disney World merchandise claim slip instead of the proper one. It took me several minutes of searching my wallet and utility belt to find the right claim slip; the USF employee must have thought me a moron, but was completely polite and understanding about it.
Well, with both parks closed, our day at Universal was done, so we got in the van and left, taking I-4 this time. We got off at 535, and found ourselves driving past the Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores. We had been searching for this outlet mall all week, because I had found it by accident last year, and knew that there was a great Disney outlet in there. When we pulled into the parking lot, we immediately spotted the Disney outlet, Character Corner. In fact, we spotted 2 Character Corners. We went into the larger of the two first, and began our usual browsing, but we found to our delight that this Disney outlet was a true Disney outlet. Let me explain:
In years past, the only Disney outlets we knew about were the two at the Belz malls, Character Warehouse and Character Connection. And in years past, those two stores had bargains that made your head swim; one- and two-year-old merchandise, stuff that hadn't sold in the parks, was on sale in the Belz outlets for as much as 60%-90% off. Sixty-dollar embroidered t-shirts could be found for as little as ten dollars; hundred-dollar watches were sometimes marked down as low as twenty dollars, and all manner of less expensive items could be had for one or two dollars. But over the years, as word of these stores has spread, Disney has taken to marking their merchandise down less and less. Bargains can still be had, but discounts these days are more likely to be in the 10%-15% range. Ditto for the newer Disney outlet store in the Orlando Premium Outlets, Character Premier.
But here at Character Corner, we re-discovered the old Belz magic; $1 post cards were 10 cents, books and t-shirts that sold for thirty to forty dollars in the parks could be as little as ten dollars, and I picked up a field guide to Disney's Animal Kingdom, and some WDW photo mailers, each of which originally sold for $13, marked down to $1.99. Bargains galore! We spent a good hour in that store, searching every shelf, pouring over every bin, and we each spent about twenty or thirty dollars (which would have been, by my estimation, about a hundred dollars or more in the parks). Afterward, we checked out the other Character Corner, but it seemed to be stocked with exactly the same merchandise. It appeared to me that they were actually in the process of moving the store from one small location to the other, larger, storefront, but were keeping both open during the move. I could be wrong on this, however; I will be certain to check on it the next time I'm in Orlando with a means to get over there.
When we finished in the outlets, we made a quick stop at Walgreens to pick up my latest batch of pictures, and a 12-pack of coke for the long drive home on Saturday, before calling it a night.