Reporting from an AirBnB
LAT 28.1, LON 81.3 degrees
It’s back to the theme parks--specifically, Universal Orlando. But first, the traffic in Orlando—ugh! Took us about an hour and a half to go 20 miles. We ran into an artifact of the early real estate boom in Florida.
There’s actually multiple parks--we went to the ones that aren’t “Epic”. We started off with donuts from Voodoo--really good!
You go through “City Walk” (aka an outdoor mall) to get to the parks.
Random Universal exec stands in for Walt.
The main reason I wanted to go there was the Simpsons, and fortunately that was first on our journey. Great themed shops, restaurants, displays, and Simpsons: The Ride, which was hilarious. We also got a taco from Bumblebee Man. After that, the group split up, and Mindy and I went off on our own.
The main reason Mindy wanted to come was Harry Potter, so we visited two separate installations (Daigon Alley and Hogsmeade), joined by the Hogwarts Express train. The train became quite a bottleneck as the day progressed. I had Butterbeer for the first time, we saw a fire-breathing dragon, and innumerable visitors were wearing robes and flinging wands about. We rode the Harry Potter motion simulator, which was impressive without thrashing you about too much (there’s also a rollercoaster--no thanks).
There was an interesting presentation from one of the books. At the end, they offered photos with the cast, but there were very few takers. Muggles!
After that, we visited the “Islands of Adventure” aka “Random Intellectual Property Land”. Universal really doesn’t have a coherent theme like Disney. Marvel characters, comic strips, King Kong, “Lost Continent” (really random), and Dr. Seuss. We rode a Spider-Man 3D ride and the Kong ride. The latter is basically a bumpy bus ride.
ACK!
Looking forward to the gritty Mark Trail reboot.
The comic strip area was particularily perplexing. Snuffy Smith? Gasoline Alley? Betty Boop? Who is this aimed at--90 year olds? Kids today don’t even know what a newspaper is, much less the “funnies”.
Never did find the Katzenjammer Kids t-shirt I was looking for.
After some delays, the group got back together, and some went on a few more rides before splitting up again--and we left.
Tomorrow, back to Mickey.
#parkhopping