Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 5 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

It’s summer so our schedules are pretty open. This allowed us to take advantage of Universal Studios’ “buy 1 day get a second day free deal” for Florida residents and plan a quick, last-minute trip to Orlando for the weekend.

Universal still charges extra (with surge pricing) for their skip-the-line service, Express Pass. Paying for this would have doubled our ticket prices (especially with the second day free promotion). It turned out to be cheaper to stay at on-site at the Royal Pacific hotel, since the one-night rate included Express Pass for the three of us. We drove over first thing on Saturday morning and parked at the hotel. If you’re staying on-property, you can park at the hotel and “pre-register” at the front desk so you can get your room keys, which also double as your Express Pass. This way you can start skipping lines at the park even before you can officially check in and get your room. After checking in, we walked over to the ticket desk in the front lobby to pick up our 2-day park tickets and then walked over to Islands of Adventure.

Having the Express Pass definitely helped … we were able to ride everything we wanted to without a long wait as we worked our way clockwise around the park: Incredible Hulk coaster, Doctor Doom’s Fearfall, Incredible Spider-Man, Skull Island: Reign of Kong (a new one for us, and pretty cool), Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and Flight of the Hippogriff. We were surprised to see that the Dragon Challenge coaster is gone and construction is underway on its replacement. That coaster was one of my favorites when it was Dueling Dragons and the trains actually “dueled” each other. Once they started staggering the start of each train (to avoid injuries and people doing stupid things) it wasn’t as cool. Still, we’ll miss it.

By now it was mid-afternoon so we took the Hogwarts Express over to Diagon Alley at Universal Studios. My daughter was chosen at Olivander’s to get a wand, and of course she purchased it. 🙂 She had always wanted one of the newer interactive wands and now that she had her own money, I was fine if that’s what she wanted to buy. But then we spent time wandering around Diagon Alley so she could practice her spell-casting. Eventually we wandered out of the Harry Potter area and watched the Fear Factor Live! show (I can’t believe the audience volunteers actually drank the insect smoothie … ugh!). We continued to explore the back-end of the park riding the Simpsons ride (yes, I still miss Back to the Future) and Men in Black.

At this point the late afternoon rain clouds were building and we had received the text message that our hotel room was ready … so it was time for water rides! We took the Hogwarts Express back to Hogsmeade and then started walking counterclockwise back to the entrance. On the way we rode the Jurassic Park River Adventure and in the front row got decently wet. Next was the Ripsaw Falls flume ride and we got soaked! Afterwards, with the storm clouds rushing in and a light drizzle starting, we sloshed/walked back to the hotel. Not that it mattered, since we were already soaked, but we made it back to our room the Royal Pacific before the heavy rain started falling. While it stormed outside, we cleaned up, changed into dry clothes, and prepared to go to dinner.

Our original plans were to go to Emeril’s but we couldn’t get a reservation (what we didn’t know was that Saturday was the last day the restaurant was in operation). Instead, we decided to try a new place, the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. It had stopped raining so we walked back over to CityWalk and just made it into the restaurant before it started raining again. There was a bit of wait, but being a hotel guest apparently gets you on a shorter list. The restaurant is themed like a steampunk factory, complete with a “robot” that wanders around. We were on the second floor which had tall “windows” showing views of the factory (really just a repeating video, which got a little boring). But the food and drinks were excellent and we had a very nice time.

After dinner, it was still drizzling but we walked back to Islands of Adventure to catch the night illumination show at Hogwarts Castle. We got there just in time to see the end. It’s a projection and fireworks show similar to what Disney is doing on Cinderella’s castle at Magic Kingdom, the Chinese Theater at Hollywood Studios, and the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom. Except, of course, it’s all Harry Potter-themed. When the show ended, the park was officially closed so we walked back to our hotel and turned in for the night.

On Sunday morning we got up early since hotel guests get early admission to Diagon Alley at Universal Studios. We wanted to stop for breakfast at Voodoo Doughnuts at CityWalk (another new addition since our last visit), but the line was too long. So instead we went into Universal Studios and let my daughter run ahead to cast spells in Diagon Alley while my wife and I picked up breakfast at Starbucks. It was relatively uncrowded so my daughter got to cast all the various spells in the area, including some secret ones not on the map. She even found that there are hidden areas (in Nockturn Alley) where there are blacklights that illuminate secret markings on the map (a nice touch).

For a snack, we went over to Springfield and had to wait in an unnecessarily long line to get into what is basically a food court (which from the outside looks like Moe’s, Krusty Burger, and the Android’s Dungeon). For some reason they make you wait in a single long line, which then splits into the different options. So even if there is no one in line for the place you want to go (like Flaming Moe’s or Cletus’ Chicken Shack) you have to wait in line. They don’t want you reserving seats while your party waits in line, so you get seated once you have your food. It seemed a little inefficient and it took us a while just to get a side of french fries from Krusty Burger which we then ate outside anyway).

Again today we took full advantage of the Express Pass to ride all of the rides with little waiting: Escape from Gringotts, the new (to us) Fast & Furious Supercharged (which replaced Disaster!) and the Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon (which replaced Twister), and I finally got my daughter to ride the Revenge of the Mummy coaster. We had lunch at Finnegan’s Bar & Grill and then watched the animal actors and horror make-up shows (this one is great!) to let our food settle. Then we hit the remaining rides: E.T.’s Adventure (he speaks your name again!), Transformers 3-D, Shrek 4-D, Minion Mayhem, and, of course, Rip Ride Rockit (on which my daughter and I both did secret tracks: “Immigrant Song” for her, “Wheel in the Sky” for me).  I was disappointed, though, to discover that the Terminator 2: 3-D attraction had closed last year.

Since we were now at the front of Universal Studios, we walked through CityWalk back to Islands of Adventure to finish out the portions of the park we hadn’t gotten to yesterday. We watched the Eighth Voyage of Sinbad stunt show and then finished with the Cat in the Hat and High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride in Seuss Landing. I didn’t realize that the two trains have two different audio tracks: the last time we went on it was the Sneetches story, but this time was the Seuss alphabet. It was now late afternoon and time to head home so we walked back to our car in the Royal Pacific parking lot (we had checked out and loaded our luggage before heading to the park this morning) and hit I-4 back home. Quite the fun weekend for something planned at the last minute!

Thoughts on Universal

It’d been four years since we last went to Universal so I was curious to see if any of the problems and annoyances I had last time had been addressed.

• Planning our trip didn’t start out well, as their web site and mobile app kept failing with errors as we tried to book our hotel and get other info (see all the screenshots below). Very frustrating. We eventually had to call and speak to someone on the phone to get our questions answered and our reservation booked. We continued to have problems with the mobile app even while in the parks.
• The theme park tickets are still a separate piece of paper for some reason, so you have to carry your plastic room key to show you have Express Pass and then your paper ticket to get into the park … why can’t this be combined? At least since last time they combined the room key and Express Pass so we only had to carry two items instead of three.
• Bio-metrics are everywhere. Like Disney, when you use your ticket you have to supply a fingerprint. With Express Pass, you have to submit to a photograph for facial recognition! I realize this is probably to prevent fraud (people sharing Express Passes) but the fact that Universal has my face and my fingerprint is a little disturbing.
• Express Pass is cool in that you can just go on a ride as many times as you want, whenever you want, as opposed to Disney’s FastPass which gives you a scheduled hour window (and you can only reserve three FastPasses initially, and then one at a time after that). So at Disney you’re more tired to a schedule than at Universal. That being said, FastPass is included with admission and Express Pass is an up-charge on your ticket.
• Quite a few of the attractions at Universal seem to be the same underlying physical ride with just different video playing and theming. For example both King Kong and Fast & Furious have you in a long tram-like car with movie screens on both sides so the action is happening on either side of you. Spider-Man and Transformers have you sitting in a vehicle that moves from room to room where you watch videos on tall screens to simulate vertical movement, cityscapes, etc. (even Escape from Gringotts could be classified here, with the slight twist that it’s a roller coaster moving from room to room). Shrek 4-D, Minion Mayhem, and Race Through New York are big theaters where you watch a movie and the room moves and shakes in coordination with what you’re watching (like Honey I Shrunk the Kids at Disney).
• One thing I do like about the Universal setup: both of the parks are very easy to walk to from the hotels, and with CityWalk in-between connecting them, you’re a short walk away from everything. Very convenient, unlike Disney which is so spread out you need to drive or take a bus a lot.
• Since you must go through CityWalk to get to either of the parks, the metal detectors and X-ray machines for bag check are all at the CityWalk entrances. For us, that meant a very short line at the checkpoint on the walkway from our hotel into CityWalk. And overall, this made getting into the theme parks themselves at lot easier and seemingly less congested since you already had your bag checked by then and just needed to scan your ticket and go in. I also like how they use X-ray machines instead of having security personnel root around in your stuff with a stick and a flashlight light Disney.
• There aren’t just metal detectors at the entrance to CityWalk … there are some in ride lines! They are serious about making sure people don’t bring loose articles like cameras, cell phones, etc. on certain rides, like the Hulk coaster, Rip Ride Rockit, etc. We had stored all our stuff in a locker before riding Hulk but my daughter left her cell phone in her pocket and the metal detector caught it. They wouldn’t let me put the phone in a velcro’ed pocket of my cargo shorts, they made her run back to the locker to store it. This did have the nice benefit of forcing us to actually talk to each other in line since we didn’t have our phones. 🙂 And since they require you to store your gear for some rides, it’s very nice that the lockers are free (for two hours). This is something I wish Disney would implement.
• A lot of the movies used at the parks were scored by John Williams. You can just hear the cha-ching of the cash register as his iconic music plays everywhere (Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, E.T., etc.).