Monday, June 3, 2019
Today was our visit to Universal Studios. I will admit to being somewhat disappointed by Islands of Adventure so I was hoping that Universal would live up to the hype. Again we had the fast pass so we could skip lines at all the rides and again it was worth it.
We started our morning with a visit to Springfield - home of The Simpsons. I don't think Emily has ever actually seen The Simpsons, but she liked the area. The ride was just OK as far as I was concerned. You watch a movie and your car moves back and forth. The real fun was walking around and seeing all the things from the show.
From there, we visited E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. I still remember this ride from my last trip to Universal in the early 1990's. Love that movie...and the ride too! Plus the photo ops after were priceless!
Then it was off to save the world from aliens on the Men in Black ride! This one was kind of like Buzz Lightyear where you ride in a car and shoot at things, only the cars in this one spun around for you. It was fun. We ended up riding it a couple of times.
After that, we decided to go back to The Simpsons land for lunch. They had the biggest variety on the menu (it was like a little food court) and they had giant pink donuts for dessert!
After lunch, we hit up the other side of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley! Glad we watched the movie before we did this because it did make it so much more fun and interesting. First stop was to ride the train over to Hogsmeade and then back. The train ride was really neat. You didn't really see "out" the windows. Instead, you watched a little movie and things went by your train car.
And, just like in the movie, when you got to platform 9 3/4, you disappeared into the wall. So cool!
After our round trip tour to Hogsmead and back, we went to Diagon Alley and rode Escape from Gringotts. Gringotts was the bank in the movie and the ride que did not disappoint. It was easily the best attraction at Universal. It was so well done and the ride was amazing!
After the ride (we actually rode twice), we explored Diagon Alley. It was so neat and really hidden out of the way from the rest of the park. You really had to look for it or it would have been really easy to walk right on by the entrance area.
During the afternoon heat, we took a break and went in for a pet trick show! It was fun and they had loads of different kinds of animals doing tricks. Hard to photograph, but super fun and very cute animals.
It wasn't possible to top the Harry Potter world or the cute pets, but next up was the Transformers ride (a movie), the Mummy (roller coaster of sorts), Race Through NYC with Jimmy Fallon (movie) and the Minions (movie).
I guess no trip to Universal is complete without a ride on Rip Ride Rock It! I sat this one out, but Daniel and Emily braved the vertical climb, big loops and more. The reported that it was fun, but neither asked to ride a second time.
We definitely got to see and ride everything we wanted (sometimes multiple times) so it was a very successful day and we finished up just before dinner. Hummm...that meant there were still quite a few park hours available for fun....what should we do?
