So you are probably wondering if there is anything else other than Harry Potter going on at Universal. Well there is a ton! Firstly, I am a huge Jurassic Park fan so that ride was high on my list of priorities. You slowly start by riding through the ionic doors, then gently sail through jungle, dinosaurs, a destroyed Raptor enclosure before plummeting down a steep drop off! It’s not my video but it was the best one I could find that shows the full ride. That drop off is really steep!, and you get wet. Another reason why it’s not my video :).
Another cool ride was Kong – Skull Island. We were told it was a kid friendly ride on a big RV and you didn’t even need your seat belt……hmmm, I think we all would have preferred one! This was another full on 4D ride complete with ‘real’ bug guts splattered in your face. There is a fight between Kong and a T-Rex where the truck you are traveling in gets thrown off a cliff. Ayrlie found it a little intense but Benjamin just loved it (after the initial freak out waiting moment).
Now Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges are another story. We were thinking it would be like Dreamworld’s Thunder River Rapids. We love that ride and you don’t get too wet so we thought we would be good to go… how wrong we were!. It’s cool, so I’m in jeans, jumper, kids have their jumpers on. We take the first corner and bam! Full bucket of water straight on our heads! There are water cannons on top of the barge around the next corner and kids (and adults) are able to fire them at you as you float past and they are way to accurate for my liking. Tho the kids loved having their turn when we hopped off. It went downhill from there and we came off looking like drowned rats! Completely soaked and very cold. It was a fantastic ride, but they need to give people some notice.
There were a ton of meet and greet opportunities the favourite being Shaggy and Scooby. The Minion ride had been talked up on some of the blogs I had read and we were really looking forward to it. Unfortunately it didn’t quite live up to the expectations. It was rough, real rough. You were thrown around, bumped and bashed. We noticed a lot of the rides were this way. Although the 3D effects were something else, most rides were similar in their execution.
With 54.5 hours, 58.9km of walking and countless rides/photos and experiences to remember, we can officially say we loved our time in Orlando!
