Having just gotten back from our honeymoon, I thought I would write down our experience at Universal Studios to any curious. I'll be breaking it up into sections, so keep a look out for future blogs on it as well.
We got up first thing in the morning to make sure we arrived at the park before the patrons began flooding the streets with gibbering nonsense and long lines. Deciding to go in a roughly clockwise pattern around the park, primarily to hit some of the more popular rides first, Susan and I began our sojourn into theme park territory with the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit roller coaster.
Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit
The line for this coaster was mercifully short, owing to our excellent of strategy of getting to the park early. The coaster features a stadium-seating style arrangement with each seat having its own set of speakers and a small touch console in front of you. The console features six different styles of music to select from. I initially selected the Rock & Metal, hoping for something awesome. Unfortunately Universal deems nonsense such as Limp Bizkit roller coaster-ready. So I backed out and went to the Electronica section where I immediately set my eyes on and jammed my finger at the awesomeness of Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger”. So if you’re wondering what the music selection is for, in case you haven’t already guessed (and God help you if you haven’t…), the roller coaster blasts your music selection into your brain and it’s twisting you about and plunging you through several loops and twists. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Unfortunately, due to a heavy breakfast and a few too many inverted 540 helixes, the Rockit left Susan feeling nauseous and uneasy for most of the morning. In an attempt to help her calm her stomach, we decided to proceed to an attraction that’s more of a show than an actual ride, Twister: Ride It Out.
Twister: Ride It Out
While waiting on the ride to start in a queuing area, we were treated to not one but two extended trailers for the movie Twister. As much as I enjoy watching Bill Paxton discuss how harrowing his movie-making experience in central Oklahoma was (“right in the middle of TORNADO ALLEY!”…that Jean De Bont is so dangerous…), I was anxious to get the thing started. The attraction is basically presented as a tornado simulator. We were led to three rows of platforms under what appeared to be a shed with standing room only. The set where the tornado was to occur looked not unlike Belk, Alabama, with some rusty pickup trucks sitting by an old gas station. Then the sky gets cloudy; tornado weather is at hand. This is actually one of the neater effects of making an indoor area look like a stormy sky through the use of special effects. Then the winds began picking up greatly with the tornado materializing in the middle of the set. A truck began spinning its wheels as it’s pulled backwards toward the funnel and a very cheesy cow on strings is pulled across the set. Somehow on the opposite side of the stage from where we were standing, a fire was started by an power pole falling onto a gas pump igniting the whole thing as the fire got pulled into the tornado. The fire was real. I could feel the heat, and it was a gratifying climax. As far as a recommendation, it was kind of neat and I could see it being a good break from the heat in the afternoon since the whole thing was air conditioned. Susan was still feeling sick after this one, so I decided to go it alone for the next ride, Revenge of the Mummy.
Revenge of the Mummy
Revenge of the Mummy is a sort of mixture of haunted house and indoor roller coaster. The queue for the ride (which I waited on next to no time at all like most of the rides in the park) features Brendan Frasier hamming it up in an interview, as he often does. Once on the ride, it features an animatronic mummy telling you to join him and he’ll reward you with gold… or be punished… You know, that sort of thing. The ride seems to assume you do not want to join him as it then sends you into another room with the mummy’s booming voice proclaiming ominous threats of doom as bugs crawl out of the walls. This effect was done using giant projection screens. The card then flies backward out of the bug-filled room and more crazy stuff happens which culminates in you climbing a big hill that leads straight into the mummy’s mouth. The mummy has apparently eaten a lot of spinning scarabs of varying colors since that is mostly what you see as the ride then whips around lots of tight twists and turns in mostly darkness. After a minute or so, you go into what appears to be the exit area with a theme park operator on a video screen thanking you for riding and hoping you had a great experience. At this point, the operator then bursts into flames as the mummy’s voice comes back in yelling more threats at you. The ceiling then catches on fire, real fire, before the ride shoots you back into the darkness of the roller coaster section once again. After more rotating beetles and coaster fun, you then head to the real exit with Brendan Frasier hamming it up again as you leave. Overall, this was possibly my favorite ride in the Universal Studios part of the park and was a great experience that I highly recommend to visitors. After this, Susan was feeling a little better so we made our way over to her most anticipated ride, The Simpsons Ride.
The Simpsons Ride
The queue for this one was in typical Simpsons form, pretty entertaining. It definitely made the wait more bearable, which didn’t matter too much anyway since we only waited a few minutes. The whole ride has a very carnival-esque feel to it with fake ads for different booths and various supporting characters running booths in the queuing line, for instance Groundskeeper Willie running the booth that involves hitting bottles with a baseball. After being ushering into a second queuing area with just the group that will be in the car with us, we were treated to an original Simpsons short that lays out the premise of the ride, that being that Krusty has opened a new theme park called Krustyland but that Sideshow Bob has connived his way into getting the Simpsons into the first pilot group with a plot to kill them. Meanwhile Maggie is left in charge of Grandpa, who promptly falls asleep allowing Maggie to wander into a nuclear radiation-infested room. We, along with the Simpsons, were then ushered onto the ride where Bob proceeds to change the ride’s setting from Thrilling to Killing, setting off a whole sequence of ridiculously rough-and-tumble events, culminating in a giant, radioactive Maggie saving the day. The ride is motion simulator-based where we were basically seated in an eight-person car that shakes, spins and tilts around using a series of hydraulics while the action is projected on a massive 80-foot high IMAX screen. I thought it was pretty neat but ultimately nausea-inducing. It was pretty much the only ride in the park that made me queasy and it certainly did nothing to make Susan feel any better.
After this we made our way over to the Animal Actors on Location show which unfortunately had not started yet. So while Susan was recovering I decided to wander into the E.T. Adventure ride.
E.T. Adventure
E.T. Adventure is a very tame dark house-style ride in which a group is seated on these bicycle-looking contraptions that hang from a rialto facilitate the illusion of a flying bicycle. It was fairly primitive but got the job done. Before boarding the ride I was issued a passport to E.T.’s home planet, or some such nonsense, where I gave them my first name and they gave me a bar-coded card to give to the ride operator. The reasons for this become apparent later. I was also treated to a video explaining the plot by Spielberg. So I boarded the ride, and the first part involved E.T. fleeing from the nefarious F.B.I. After escaping and doing the whole “flying across the moon” deal, you know what I’m talking about, I then arrived on E.T.’s home planet, where I was treated to a semi-grotesque menagerie of E.T.’s friends celebrating his return. I want to point out that the set design on this portion of the ride was very impressive with lots of vibrant details from E.T.’s home planet that children should really enjoy. At the very end of the ride, I was treated to E.T. then thanking myself and the other guys on the ride by first name (Aha! You see what they did there!). I thought it was ok and a pleasant diversion. I have a sort of soft spot for these old rides like this and the Monster Plantation at Six Flags over Georgia. As a side note, I came back with Susan and rode this one again because I thought she might like it, and I was correct. She thought the little mini-E.T. creatures that I found kind of creepy were cute.
Susan was still feeling kind of crappy, so we decided to watch a show to let her relax a little in some air conditioning. So we made our way over to the Horror Make Up Show.
Horror Make Up Show
This one is basically intended to demonstrate how the make up in horror films were done. The make-up specialist they brought in was way, way too hammy and got on my nerves almost immediately. He did demonstrate a couple of interesting special effects on an elderly Philippine woman with a heart condition that they kept picking on in the audience. It had a fairly cheesy ending involving a guy in a monster suit chasing the effects guy around. If anything, the show didn’t feature enough behind-the-scenes special effects looks. Overall it was an ok distraction, but nothing I’d recommend wholeheartedly unless you wanted to get out of the heat.
We then made our way over to Finnegan’s Bar & Grill for lunch, which featured traditional Irish food. I thought my Bangers and Mash was actually very good but Susan seemed to be disappointed with her veggie burger. After lunch, Susan was feeling better so we headed over to the notorious Jaws.
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