Finally another true update!
January 23rd - Islands of Adventure
We woke up earlier as I knew that we needed to be at rope drop to see The Wizarding World of Harry Potter with minimal wait.
We stopped for breakfast at Ponderosa Steakhouse at International Drive (I remember it being a bit cheaper, but it was nice to have a hearty breakfast!) and continued on our way to Universal Orlando!
Why do they insist on leading you to the top level (5th) of the parking lot and having you park in the sun instead of letting those who arrived early to park on 3rd level which is shaded and doesn't require elevators or escalators to get to the walkway?
We passed directly through CityWalk and headed to the Will-Call machines to get our tickets. DMIL had paid for these so I asked for her credit card to confirm her identity on the machine. She left that card in Brazil and was travelling with another one!
I almost freaked out, but we managed to get our tickets from the regular booth with her passport as confirmation! After this we joined DFi and DBIL in line for the park.
When the park opened we rushed through Port of Entry, turned right and then took the shorter path through Seuss Landing (turn left just after you enter the Island) into The Lost Continent and then continued into Hogsmeade!
We did Ollivander's first (I believe we were in the first or second group of the day!
) and it was amazing! That guy was totally in character as was the room! Really cool and it was good that we did that first as lines did grow up fast!
We then headed to the castle and HP & the Forbidden Journey! What a great queue! On our first time we passed it rather quickly as there was still minimal wait, but on the second time (just me and DFi as the others thought it made them a little too dizzy to go a second time back-to-back!) we managed to enjoy it a bit more (enjoy a queue! That is something you don't see everyday!
).
In addition to the queue, this ride is incredible, mixing animatronics with projected screens (the parts that made them dizzier!) and lots of special effects in an adventure through Hogwarts grounds meeting some of its most famous inhabitants as well as some of the villains (not he-who-must-not-be-named though). The attraction as well as the whole of the WWoHP is focused on the first 4 movies/books and set during the TriWizard tournament of the Goblet of Fire (4th book/movie).
You can see construction on the side of Dragon Challenge where it is rumored to be built a train ride to connect to Universal Studios and the former Jaws site where a new part of WWoHP is supposedly being built (there is a huge construction site on that area as well). These new areas/rides will most likely bring to life the last 3 books / 4 movies!
After this we continued into Jurassic Park as Hogsmeade was getting crowded already!
We did the River adventure first (I love this ride! But again, I'm in love with Dinosaurs since I was a little kid, so what's not to like!
)
We then walked around the island for a bit and tried out the exhibits in the Discovery Center. Too bad that Triceratops Encounter was closed! I heard it opened for the holidays, but it always closes soon after to reopen only in the summer! I've seen it in 2000 and it was pretty cool!
We then decided to have an early lunch and I had read a lot about Thunder Falls Terrace, but it didn't appeal to us, it was dark and closed, while the Discovery Center's Burger Digs had some tables on the balcony overlooking the center lagoon! What a great choice! The view was great and the burgers were pretty good, specially with the big toppings table!
After lunch it was time to do something mild, so we chose the Eighth voyage of Sinbad! This is a funny show and in its entrance there is the always great Mystic Fountain!
We walked a bit through the smaller Lost Continent compared to what it was before WWoHP (the armory store is still open though!) and tried to go to Poseidon's Fury, but there was a wait time of about 40 minutes (a show must have just begun, because this attraction isn't usually crowded enough to have people waiting in line for more than 1the current presentation).
So we continued to Seuss Landing, an island where I previously had only walked through quickly, but we decided to try on The Cat in the Hat. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was just like the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride, with one important difference: with Seuss characters that us in Brazil have little to no contact during childhood! Apparently nowadays it is at least available, but not really a part of our culture, while 20 years ago when we were kids there was nothing! So it was interesting but we left with the impression that these stories are WAY too scary for children!
I stopped by Guest Relations near the park's entrance to try to get our Blue Man Group tickets, but since it was already the day of the show, we would have to get them from the theater's box office.
Finally we headed into Marvel Super Hero Island! The Hulk coaster had a short line so we hopped in, twice! DMIL decided to try to get a picture of us on the ride, so in the about 20 minutes it took us to go on the ride twice, she managed to take almost 300 pictures of pretty much all roller coaster cars! Heavy duty, but she managed to get us!
We're the ones in the last viewable row. From top to bottom is a random guy, DBIL, DFi and me.
We then went into Spiderman, which was a great attraction in the past, and now it is even more Amazing!
The 4K resolution really makes a difference and we were really enjoying it, when suddenly everything stopped! The movie shut down, the car stopped and a little later lights turned on throughout the attraction! We stayed stopped there for about 10 minutes before they managed to turn it back on. When we reached the exit point, team members already told us that who wanted to get on it again for a full ride as they had solved the problem, so they transported us to the front of the line and we got on again!
Here is a pic of an Iron Man poster inside the attraction where we stopped!
We got ourselves some Dippin Dotz, made a quick stop to browse the comics shop and continued into Toon Lagoon! This island has a great theming, but I'm not much into getting wet (anything more than Splash or Jurassic Park already bothers me, except in hot days, which this was not!) so we looked around, took some pictures and continued through JP back to Hogsmeade!
Time for some butterbeer! I had heard a lot about it so I wanted to try, originally I thought of getting both a regular and a frozen one, but DFI and DMIL weren't at all interested in trying the famous wizards drink, so I shared a regular one with DBIL! It is good, but super sweet! We sat down for a while and continued to walk around Hogsmeade and browse all the cool shops!
On this day Dragon Challenge was still in rehab, so we would have to return to IoA on another day to do it!
We decided to try Poseidon's Fury again and on our way there we stopped at the magic shop in The Lost Continent where a short magic show was about to start! It is a cool show, the magician was funny and knew how to entertain his audience, but all tricks are there to sell their kits, of course!
We finally did Poseidon's Fury (this is a strange show, but I always enjoy it!) and decided to do a few more runs on Hulk (including one on front row!
) before leaving the park.
With out BMG show at 8pm we decided to stay in this part of the Citywalk lake (my original idea was to have dinner at Pastamore or Bubba Gump) and grab a pizza at NBA City. It was actually pretty good as it was not crowded and our waitress was super helpful!)
The last part of our day was the Blue Man Group show. Me and DFi had seen the previous installment in 2007 as well as their "How to be a Megastar 2.0" tour. This new show was funny and still had the best musical numbers and sketches, but we felt that they made more scenes with participation of "volunteers" and reduced the number of musical numbers. For us those were the best parts, so this new version is still good and a lot of fun (specially the ending which I won't describe for those who haven't seen it), but not as good as the other shows we had seen of them!
A strange thing was that in the row in front of us (we sat in the second row of the non-poncho zone) there was a couple with 2 dogs! And they weren't guide dogs! They were even being transported in pet transportation duffel bags! This was the first time we saw such a thing in a major theater!
Next - Universal Studios