Just in case you've been living in a cave, Universal Studios in Florida opened another park in 1999 called Islands of Adventure and their answer to Downtown Disney called Universal Studios CityWalk. The entire experience, including the original theme park is called Universal Studios Escape. Definitely hefty competition to Disney World. Here's the lowdown on the whole shebang.
Hate waiting in line? If you can get up early, you could do a whole park in 3 hours! Universal Express is another entry in the race to keep you from waiting in line. From 7 to 10 a.m. every day, you can get on just about every ride once without waiting in line. When you enter the park, you get a card with the list of rides-go up to the attendant at the ride, let them punch the card, and then you go through the line that gets on the ride instantly. Definitely worth getting up for.
Tickets
2 or 3 day passes
Since there are 2 parks, you really need at least a 2 day pass to experience them both. If you want to experience the parks fully, you need at least a day for each, and if you buy the 3 day pass, you can spend an extra half day in each doing the stuff you want to do again. (Both parks are within walking distance of each other through the new Universal CityWalk complex.)
The Flexticket?
We have had no experience with this, but it seems like a good deal. There's a 3 park flexticket, which is unlimited admission to Universal Studios, Sea World, and Wet 'n' Wild (a waterpark) for 7 consecutive days. There's also a 4 park flexticket which also includes Busch Gardens Tampa (about 1 1/2 hour drive) and is for 10 consecutive days. These flextickets would be a good idea for people who don't want to do Disney World at all. You could easily spend a week doing lots of stuff without ever seeing the ol' mouse ears!
The Original Universal Studios park
Our Ride Picks
Twister-Our new favorite. The 2 pre-shows (videos in a holding area) you have to go through have a look at the making of the movie, with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton explaining it all. Then you go to the theatre (all standing room against railings) to experience a real (controlled) tornado. We've never really been around a real twister, but it seemed real to us. The scene being recreated is the one in the drive in theatre, which is devastated by the 2 twisters you experience. The best place to stand is the bottom row (closest to the action) as far to the left as you dare-it's the wettest and windiest. We loved it!
Men In Black Alien Attack The best ride in the park. It's interactive! You're on a training mission to join the men in black. Get into a car with 5 other people and use your laser gun to knock out as many aliens as you can. There is a scoreboard in front of you so you can keep track of how well you're doing. When you're not knocking out aliens, make the other cars around you spin by pointing your laser at their car's exhaust. Really cool, and since you make the action, it's different every time.
Earthquake-Still pretty cool. You start with a look at how the movie was made, including a display of the real miniature city built for many of the earthquake scenes. Then, you go to the ride portion, where you board a San Francisco subway car, which is subjected to an earthquake that'll scare the life out of you.
Kongfrontation-Board a Manhattan tram car bound for disaster as King Kong attacks. Really cool ride, especially when he practically knocks your car off of it's overhead track.
Back To The Future, the Ride-Biff steals the prototype of a new time travelling car and your group is responsible for catching him. 6 people are loaded into a car just like the Delorean in the movie, which is connected to hydraulics that make the chase seem pretty real.
E.T. Adventure-Get on your bike and do your best to get E.T. to his rendesvous with the spaceship that will take him home.
Jaws-It's gotten better since the last time we went. This is the ride that started it all at the Los Angeles Universal Studios. Board a boat on it's way to Amity island, then get chased by a ferocious great white shark. The shark was kind of scary, but the scariest part is the pyrotechnics. In all these kind of rides there's always the obligatory gas station (Twister has a gas station, Earthquake has the oil truck coming toward you)or oil pump, which blows up with lots of fire-in Jaws the fire practically gets super hot and surrounds your boat, which was pretty cool.
Terminator 2 3D-A show that's a combination of 3D and live action. The movie brings back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger from the original movies in a brand new adventure. Once again, they've got to save the world-this time by bringing down a satellite system that will control an army of robots out to eliminate the human race. The 3D and live action is combined neatly-the characters pretty much jump out of the screen to do live stuff on a stage, then go back into the 3D movie to do more stuff. The action really does go on all around you. Pretty neat.
The Funtastic World of Hanna Barbera-A cartoon that's also a ride. All of the theatre's seats move with the aid of hydraulics to simulate a chase through the many worlds that Hanna-Barbera cartoons take place in, including Bedrock and the earth of the Jetsons.
Non-Rides
Alfred Hitchcock's The Art of Making Movies-Start off with a reenactment of the shower scene from "Psycho", then go on to see scenes from "Dial M For Murder" in 3D! After that, there's another area with a number of interactive exhibits. If you're into the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, don't miss this.
Dynamite Nights Stuntacular-At dusk each day, a spectacular show takes place in the lagoon in the middle of the park. Lots of stunts and pyrotechnics make this really cool. Be careful where you stand to watch, however. The show uses lots of boats and jet skis that will soak you when they splash by certain areas.
Lucy: A Tribute A nice little exhibit exploring the life of Lucille Ball, everyone's favorite redhead. Lots of costumes and other original memorabilia to look at as well as videos and interactive stuff.
Nickelodeon Studios-Go on a tour of Nickelodeon's Florida studios and see where some shows are taped.
Food
Finnegan's Irish Pub-If you're on vacation, it's always neat to try different stuff. This is the place for authentic Irish food, in a pub atmosphere. The food is good and the prices are reasonable.
Richter's Burger Co.-Only 2 choices here, a burger or a chicken sandwich (with fries). The burgers are big, but not anything to write home about. Good for a quick food stop, but it's best to go somewhere else that has more choices if given the opportunity.
Islands of Adventure
The newest park with the coolest rides. When you're hungry, your best bet is to get a handstamp, leave the park and walk over to the restaurants at Universal Studios CityWalk. (Described later in the page.)
Cool Attractions
The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man Super cool. Believe it or not, it's a 3D ride. Put on your glasses and follow Spider Man around on his adventures. The 3D effects look so real-the characters are jumping all over your car while it's moving. This is the best ride in the park.
Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls A typical log flume ride taking you through one of Dudley Do-Right's adventures to save Nell. A huge hill guarantees you'll be drenched. Good 'n' wet fun.
Dueling Dragons Two roller coasters in one. Choose Fire or Ice and hang on tight as you twist and turn your way around one of two intertwined tracks with hanging cars. Pretty scary, especially when you come extremely close to the cars swinging around the other track. Neato.
Jurassic Park River Adventure What starts out as a nice river ride tour of the Jurassic Park complex turns into a terror filled escape from dinosaurs run amok. This also has a nice long hill which will get you pretty wet. Pretty neat.
Popeye & Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges Not only will you get wet, but you will get absolutely soaked on this fun white water rafting ride. Get in the round raft with 7 other people and hang on tight to the bar in the center (which will hold the stuff you want to keep dry). Lots of fun and great on a hot day.
Poseidon's Fury: Escape from the Lost City A really cool walk through adventure. You are invited to tour Poseidon's underwater kingdom, but your adventure goes awry when he decides you will be a permanent guest. Really neat effects, including a water vortex that you walk through and great pyrotechnic and water effects during the battle between Zeus and Poseidon. Be conscious of where you stand- the closer to the front you are, the more likely it is you'll get wet, but you'll also get a better view.
Incredible Hulk Coaster The best roller coaster. We don't know how they did it, but it goes super fast up the first hill, and keeps it up throughout loops. The coolest!
Universal Studios CityWalk
Their answer to Downtown Disney. Shops, restaurants and nightclubs. If you arrive after six at the parking garage, there's no parking fee. To make your restaurant reservations really early, there's a booth as you enter CityWalk, as well as booths in each theme park.
NBA City The NBA's answer to the theme restaurant glut. This is the first one so far, and hopefully there will be plenty more. The food is really good and priced reasonably. The Shanghai Chicken salad was huge and really yummy. They also have sandwiches, full meals, and personal pizzas (we recommend the BLT-bacon, spinach and tomato), which are very good. Our server was very attentive and the food came quickly. The decor is pretty neat-lots of giant TV screens playing basketball clips, and the whole place looks like a court.
Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville Jimmy Buffet has a chain of restaurants, too. The food is great here, and also priced pretty reasonably. Definitely try one of the frozen drink specialties-yummy and refreshing on a hot day. As an appetizer, don't forget to try the conch fritters. They're good-reminds you of a hush puppy, but they've got conch meat in them (you know-the great big shells you try to hear the ocean in.) Salads are huge-try the Port-au-Prince shrimp salad. For a neat sandwich, get the Third World Fish sandwich- a huge grilled grouper filet on bread.
Latin Quarter Latin food and music at its best. The food here is excellent! Our appetizer here was "mil hojas tostones con cangrejo"-layers of fried plantains with crabmeat in a white wine sauce. Excellent-we've always liked plantains and combining them with crab was a tasty idea. We both chose the "lomo de puerco asado" as our entree, and it was an excellent choice-pork loin marinated in sour orange and cilantro, which was also very tasty. Try to get a table where you can see the stage-there's always live entertainment. Our server was attentive, and the food came in a reasonable amount of time. Beware, though-they add their tip to the check for you, so don't make the mistake of adding a tip-they count on people not paying attention so they'll get double.
Hard Rock Cafe The new location (the old one that was shaped like a guitar is being used as part of the Hard Rock hotel being built for Universals new hotel complex) is in the middle of the CityWalk area. You know the drill-good food, good prices, lots of rock memorabilia.
Motown Cafe We like this theme restaurant-the one in New York occasionally had live entertainment, but we've never been in this one, so we don't know the setup. If it's like the others, the food is pretty good-they give you alot, even with the crab cake platter, and the prices are good. Lots of Motown memorabilia.
Pat O'Brien's Orlando Straight from New Orleans, this bar even looks like it's N'Awlins counterpart, right down to the building's exterior. Unfortunately, we didn't eat here, even though we wanted to. They've got a small menu, which had a couple of things we wanted to try, including their famous Hurricane drink, which will knock your socks off, and poboys, the southern equivalent of the hoagie or submarine (but oh so much better!). What they didn't have is a non-smoking section. They claimed that since they are a bar, they don't have to have one, but they lost our business that way. We can't stand to be in a smoking section, but if you'd at least give us non-smokers someplace to go, you can smoke all you want.
Emeril's You've probably seen our complaint about the Emeril's in Las Vegas, and the same stands with this version of the popular New Orleans restaurant. The first thing we thought was funny was that the description in the Universal CityWalk website says "jackets recommended". O.K., you're in the middle of 2 theme parks and you want people to wear jackets? Hah! So, we decided to ignore that, considering that noone else walking in was wearing a jacket. As we are passing around the side, we see lots of empty tables through the windows, so there shouldn't be too much of a wait. However, even with at least 20 empty tables, they claimed that they were booked for the rest of the night. BALONEY. This is the same crap they pulled at their Las Vegas location and we won't stand for it. FARTS ON EMERIL'S and we won't bother to even LOOK at your restaurant ever! BAM Kick THIS up a notch. HAH!
Email / knighton@cablespeed.com
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