UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, ORLANDO

Our second adventure trip was to Universal Studios which is one of two connected theme parks—Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure.  We purchased a 2 day, get one day free (meaning 3 day) park-to-park pass so we could take as much time in each park as we wanted.  The drive to the parks took about 15 minutes and for $15 a day, you can park in one of the parkades and walk to the entrances.  We went early for the 9 a.m. opening and were among the first few people to start going on some of the rides/adventures.  

Men in Black: Alien Attack was our first ride where you travel inside a large building on a moving car that has lasers guns for shooting aliens.  You travel along a track and get spun around at times to face aliens that pop up from the sides and above you.  It was a very interactive ride and lots of fun.  If we do it again, we’ll be better at shooting the aliens.

  

Our next stop was the Revenge of the Mummy ride and we didn't know much about it going in.  It started out as a fairly slow ride past displays of Egyptian statues and replicas of scenes from the movies.  Then all of a sudden the cars came to a stop, quickly backed up and then plunged down a steep slope to the right.  We were on an indoor roller coaster!!  Well, I don’t like to ride roller coasters so I closed my eyes and hung on for dear life and only peeked once or twice until it was over.  Stuart said there were lots of things to see along the way—not sure if I’ll have the courage to try the ride again.

We continued on to a number of attractions including Disaster, a major motion picture ride where you end up in a subway car that is rocked by an earthquake, crashed into by a tanker truck, sandwiched between flames on one side and flooding water on the other side.  They made a short movie using audience participants and showed it to everyone at the end.  Cool.

Twister: Ride It Out had film clips of the original movie and interviews with the actors showing how some of the scenes were filmed.  At the end, we stood on a set while the twister came in with wind, rain, explosions, crashes, shaking and even a flying cow.  A fairly realistic experience.  

Our next activities were more like shows rather than rides and included Shrek 4D where your theatre seat moves up and down, shakes and bangs at appropriate times with the 10 minute movie that you are watching with 3D glasses.  In all the water scenes, you get misted with water, the fire scenes have heat blasted at you and the wind blows at you as well.  Almost like being right there with characters in the movie.

The Terminator 3D show had huge robots on each side of the auditorium that shot lasers around and then live actors did stage work that segued into part of the original movie.  Again, there was some seat movement and at the end, the actors were back on stage and there was lots of fire and explosions.  Great entertainment.

There were plenty of shops with merchandise for sale and some were tributes to various celebrities like Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy show).  

We attended the Horror Make Up show and learned how they do some of the scary stuff like appearing to cut arms and how they make the fake blood.  All the shows have audience interaction and plenty of humour.

We spent about 6 hours in the theme park and still left some attractions to check out on our third day.  It was definitely as great place to go.