Welcome To... Jurassic Park

We got up early today so as to get to Universal right as it opened and avoid all the crowds that come later in the day. Because, even on their off season, those parks are busy. We ended up getting there at 8:30am, half an hour before the parks opened. It took us so long to get organized and walk over though, that they were already letting people in by the time we got there. I decided to go to the Islands of Adventures park today, which is the newer of the two. We headed straight over to the Harry Potter section since that area is the one that always gets the busiest. It was quite cool today so all of us were all bundled up in sweaters, which is rather unfortunate since we are in Florida after all. On our way over, we stopped once to go on the Sneetches ride because why

not. It was pretty bad. It’s basically a train that takes you over the entire Seuss section and, while your riding, it tells you the entire alphabet along with word associations for each letter. How exciting, am I right. We then continued on our journey over to the Hogwarts castle to the Forbidden Journey ride, which is set inside the castle itself. The walk through the line is really neat by itself. You start in the greenhouses where they do Herbology and then head right into the castle past the house point hourglasses and the entrance to Dumbledore’s office. Then there are a few rooms full of talking portraits before you end up in the headmaster’s office

where Dumbledore gives you your instructions for your visit. It’s a very elaborate set up. The backstory is basically that Dumbledore has opened Hogwarts to Muggle tourists and you’re supposed to be going through the castle to get to Professor Binns’ lecture. After Dumbledore’s office, you go through the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom where Harry, Ron and Hermione find you and tell you they’re going to sneak you out of the castle to go see a Quidditch match instead of having to sit in a boring lecture. When you get on the ride, Hermione enchants your bench to fly. That’s always a fun ride to go on, although the simulation parts make Mum sick. After that we walked through the

shops of Hogsmeade before heading over to the Lost Continent section where I had an amusing conversation with a magical fountain. Then we headed over to the interactive show called Poseidon’s Fury. It’s supposed to be inside an ancient temple of worship where archeologists are doing a dig, trying to find hidden chambers. Of course, while you’re on the tour, which is

being lead by an assistant since the head archeologist has conveniently gone missing, you accidentally awaken Poseidon’s ancient enemy. The enemy’s name is Darkenon, which is pretty bad. As you go further into the temple, the assistant finds Poseidon’s trident and then there’s a big battle at the end. It was lunch time by the time we got out of there so we ate before walking to the other side of the park and the Marvel section. The boys and I rode a couple of the rides there while Mum was putting the lunch kit away, since she can’t do any of them. The first one we did was Storm Force, basically the teacup ride, and the second was

Spiderman, which is a simulation ride. After the rides I got a picture with Captain America, because he’s my favourite. Well, Bucky Barnes is my favourite but Cap comes in close second. After we finished over there we started back towards the back of the park and the Jurassic Park section. We lined up for the Pteranodon Flyers and, when we got to the front, we discovered it was for small ones only. That was a waste of time, but we got a free Express Pass out of it, to use on a ride of our choice. The boys and I did the River Adventure, which is a log ride. We didn’t get too wet, which was good considering the temperature and we dried off while we were in line waiting for our chance to encounter a velociraptor.

We’d never done it before and it was pretty neat. It was basically a guy in a velociraptor suit but it was very well done and they had sound effects and a trainer and everything. The raptor sniffed my head and became agitated when Mum raised her hands at it. She got a time out for that, which was rather amusing. We walked a little ways along and ended up back in the Wizarding World where we bought some hot butterbeer before going on the Dragon Challenge rollercoaster, modelled after the first task of the Triwizard Tournament in the fourth book. There are two tracks, one red, the Chinese Fireball, one blue, the Hungarian Horntail. We chose the red track. It’s quite loopy and goes upside down about four or five times. It also has an above track, so your feet dangle. It made me pretty dizzy and Mum was done after that. We left shortly after that, ahead of the crowds. After dinner, the boys and I finished watching Terminator. I thought it was pretty good, considering how low the budget for the first one was. I’d like to was T2 soon. Peace out m8s.

#camping #orlando #florida