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Thoughts on Universal Orlando

Posted by Mark | Filed under Travel

I recently went on a vaca­tion with friend down to Uni­ver­sal Orlando with some friends. We went in part to see the new Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter sec­tion which opened this sum­mer. This was my first time going to a major theme park, so below are some tips and com­ments from my vacation.

Tips

1. Con­sider stay­ing in one of the park hotels to save on trans­porta­tion costs. If you’re not will­ing to pay the price for stay­ing on park, there’s a Dou­ble­Tree hotel just a mile out­side the park entrance, a taxi from there to the park is only $5.
2. Get to the park as early as your tick­ets let you inside the gates. Lines form quickly, espe­cially for pop­u­lar rides, and dur­ing peak times really pop­u­lar rides can have wait times over an hour long. This is dou­bly trou­bling as the lines have a ten­dency to go in and back out again of air-conditioning with only min­i­mal fans & mist­ing devices to keep the heat down.
3. Carry a water bot­tle and refill it from the water foun­tains. Water fights off heat stroke bet­ter than soda, and refill­ing a water bot­tle is much cheaper than buy­ing drink after drink (though the lemon slushes –sold in a few places around the park– were really, really good).
4. If the lines for a ride are very long, con­sider try­ing the sin­gle rider line. The parks use the sin­gle rider line to help fill-in empty seats on the rides, if you use this line you aren’t guar­an­teed (and can­not ask to be) seated with a friend. How­ever when we used it; we fre­quently got seated on the same car. Plus some of the time we got through a 30 minute line in only 5 minutes.
5. Take the time to go to one of the sit-down restau­rants for lunch every day. That hour or so in the air-conditioning is vital to one’s san­ity & health. Plus some of those restau­rants are really good.
   • Mythos was our lunchtime favorite.
   • Lombard’s is known for its seafood but we found both the food and ser­vice to only be mediocre.
6. The best restau­rant for sup­per is called the Latin Quar­ter and is located in Uni­ver­sal City­Walk (the free/shopping area between Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios & Uni­ver­sal Islands of Adven­ture). We ate there twice and ordered their gua­camole (made at your table side) 4 times. It’s that good. Oh and when you’re there, ask for Micheal aka “the bald guy” (they’ve only got one bald guy) to be your server. He was ours the first time we were there and he was great!
7. The new Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter sec­tion is like a mag­net to the park vis­i­tors. The closer you get to that sec­tion, the big­ger the crowds (espe­cially the closer you get to peak times). If you want to see any of this, go as early as you pos­si­ble can to avoid as much of the lines as possible.
   • When we were there our first day was Thurs­day, we had tick­ets for early admis­sion and it still took around 2 hours to get through the line into Ollivander’s.
   • Lines for Harry Pot­ter and the For­bid­den Jour­ney were similarly long.
   • If you’re going for mul­ti­ple days and want to see all of the Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter sec­tion, start each day with one thing you want to get into and wait in the line for that first. Then get out of the Harry Pot­ter sec­tion and enjoy some of the rest of the park while the crowds are still fil­ing into Harry Potter.

About the Rides and Shows

As Uni­ver­sal Orlando is divided into 2 sep­a­rate parks, I’ve sep­a­rated my com­ments about each ride and show into their indi­vid­ual parks.

Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Flordia

• The Simp­sons Ride: This ride is entirely sim­u­la­tion. The car jerks you around while huge, pro­jec­tion screens dis­play whats hap­pen­ing around you. It’s a lot of fun, though I found sit­ting in the front row of the ride to be hard on my neck.
• Revenge of the Mummy: This ride is all indoors and is part roller-coaster and part sim­u­la­tion ride (though it is more roller-coaster than sim­u­la­tion). I rode it three sep­a­rate times while I was there and loved it every time. :) It was my favorite ride and I highly rec­om­mend check­ing it out while you’re there.
• Men in Black: Alien Attack: Dur­ing this inter­ac­tive ride, you’re sup­posed to shoot the alien invaders. Unfor­tu­nately, the “guns” don’t have good sites or any­way of indi­cat­ing what you’re shoot­ing at. True all the guns dis­play a red dot, but the ride has 2 tracks going side-by-side with 6 per­sons to a car so you’ve got 12 red dots all over the place. This makes it all but impos­si­ble to tell who’s shoot­ing at what.
• Ter­mi­na­tor 2: 3-D: This show is sup­posed to have some of the most advanced effects of any of the parks, but the major­ity of the show was mediocre at best. Though the actress play­ing the direc­tor of pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions was pretty funny.
• Shrek 4-D: Meh. The story for this show appears to take place between the first and sec­ond movies. The effects are noth­ing spe­cial and if you get stuck sit­ting in the back row of the the­ater, then you can hear the actu­a­tors which move the seats up/down for some of the effects.

Islands of Adventure

• The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Spider-Man: This is another all sim­u­la­tion ride. It’s based on the old Spider-Man car­toons and not the movies, but bas­ing it on the car­toon really helps with the 3-D effects they use. At one point dur­ing the ride, Spider-Man jumps on the front of the car and talks to you. Regard­less of where you sit, it looks like he’s talk­ing directly to you. While the lines tend to be long for this; the first time you go through them, it’s good that they are because it gives you time to watch all the back­story to the ride. You’ll def­i­nitely want to pay atten­tion to the back­story, it’s suf­fi­ciently hokey to be highly enter­tain­ing (at least it’s enter­tain­ing that first time).
• Eighth Voy­age of Sind­bad: Speak­ing of hokey, this show takes the hokey prize with a fair bit of camp. It’s a fun why to kill a bit time, espe­cially if the sky cuts lose with a tor­rent of rain.
• Poseidon’s Fury: This is a show where you walk through sev­eral rooms to get to dif­fer­ent parts of the show. It’s a lot of fun and the finale uses cur­tains of water as screens to dis­play some of the effects. While the cos­tumes of the show’s major char­ac­ters look a bit dated, I still rank this as my favorite of the shows we attended.

Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Potter

As this sec­tion is so new and its open­ing was a major influ­ence on our decid­ing to go this sum­mer, it gets a bit more cov­er­age than the rest.

• Dragon Chal­lenge: Woosh, this ride goes by fast even though the line doesn’t. My taste in roller-coaters tends towards the clas­sic coast­ers rather than these mod­ern steel mon­sters, but it was still a heck of a ride.
• Flight of the Hip­pogriff: They claim this a child’s ride but it still whips around mighty fast. It’s a lot of fun and the atmos­phere of the wait­ing line and ride itself are nice.
• Harry Pot­ter and the For­bid­den Jour­ney: Like Revenge of the Mummy, this ride is a com­bi­na­tion of sim­u­la­tion and roller-coaster. How­ever they greatly increased the num­ber of screens for the sim­u­la­tion expe­ri­ence; which I found unfor­tu­nate as the roller-coaster whips you around so fast that it is hard to focus on what’s hap­pen­ing as you go through the ride. NOTE: Absolutely no bags are per­mit­ted on this ride, lock­ers are avail­able at the entrance to the ride; how­ever the lock­ers are too short for some of the wands avail­able at Ollivander’s or the wand cart to fit in them. If you have bags that don’t fit; the ride atten­dants will let one of you wait in the child swap area with the bags while the rest of your party enjoys the ride and then they can take the bags while you go on the ride. The ride’s final exit goes through Filch’s Empo­rium of Con­fis­cated Goods (a fancy gift shop stuffed with all the same Harry Pot­ter mer­chan­dise as Dervish and Banges).
• Three Broom­sticks: Cafe­te­ria style food at theme park prices with lit­tle atmos­phere. I’d sug­gest skip­ping it and eat­ing at Mythos instead.
• Ollivander’s: Whew, the line was insane to get into this and I’m not entirely sure it was worth it. Once you’re in the shop, you get a 5 minute show of the shop­keeper doing a recre­ation of Harry Pot­ter first get­ting his wand (using some lucky child from the audi­ence) and then you’re herded into a shop that com­bines Ollivander’s, Dervish and Banges and the Owl Post.
  • All the Harry Pot­ter mer­chan­dise except for the wands at Ollivander’s and pos­si­bly some of the candy from Hon­ey­dukes appears to be avail­able at the larger gifts store near the entrance to the parks. If you want to buy some Harry Pot­ter gear but don’t like to wait for hours to be crammed into tiny shops with hordes of other peo­ple, avoid the shops in the Wiz­ard­ing World. Shop with the mug­gles for less suf­fer­ing and more comfort.
• Hon­ey­dukes and Zonko’s: Like Ollivander’s, these 2 shops from the sto­ries have been com­bined into a sin­gle shop. Sort of. There are sep­a­rate exte­rior doors but inside it’s one room and the park atten­dants will force you to go through a sin­gle line to get into them through the Hon­ey­dukes entrance.

Update 2010-08-16: Doh! I can’t believe I for­got to men­tion But­ter­beer & Pump­kin Juice. These are 2 spe­cial­ity drinks only avail­able within the Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter. But­ter­bear is a rather sug­ary cream soda with a non-dairy, but­ter­scotch fla­vored whipped top­ping “head”. If you don’t buy it in the plas­tic, collector’s mug; it cost some­thing like $3.50 a glass. I’d say it’s worth hav­ing at least once, but it’s so very sug­ary that I wouldn’t go for a sec­ond cup. Pump­kin juice is sim­i­lar to a home­made apple cider, but with pump­kin pie like fla­vor­ings. It was good; but.… At $6.50 a bot­tle, it’s not some­thing I could see drink­ing much of.

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