That may have sounded a bit harsh, but no, I'll look forward to every day, month, and year to follow with joy.
So, what has been happening in the mean time?
Well, Victoria just recently got transfered over to the higher-class restaurant in the wilderness lodge. With that change, she had her days off changed slightly. Now, instead of getting Monday-Tuesday, she's getting Friday-Saturday. Finally, she gets a schedule that gives her some weekend time off! Of course, this is kind of lucky in the fact that her first 'weekend' off happened between my B-day and our Anniversary. So what did we do?
First, we got my parents to watch the kids for us, and we took off on Friday morning towards Universal. We haven't been there since 2005 or thereabouts. Figuring we'd do both days there, we decided to purchase 2 day 2 park passes. Now, this is where our day started getting hairy. Florida resident? Best get your passes online, because you CAN'T GET THEM AT THE GATE! ...Wait, WHAT? ... That's right, even though if you purchase the tickets online, you have to go to the ticket counter to prove you're a Florida resident, you can't purchase them at the gate. I was asked if I was a triple A member, or military. I calmly pulled out both my AAA card and Military ID from long ago. She said that the military discount was more than the AAA so she gave me that. I didn't think to ask at that time what the difference between military and Florida discounts were. So, we entered the Studios to spend the day there, and perhaps do the Islands of Adventure the next day, thus making use of our passes to the best we could.
In Studios, is a new roller coaster that we hadn't been on, that of some 'rip roaring rocking roller coaster' or some such nonsense. Now, we walked in about 9:15 (park opened at 9:00), but that ride was not running yet, something about maintenance not there yet to double check everything. Continuing around the park we came upon 'Disaster' (AKA: Twister) ... which was closed when we walked by. Up next around the bend was the Monster show, which we've never been impressed by, and besides, there wasn't a show this early for it. Following that was the Mummy ride. We've been on this one of course long ago, but there was a 5 minute wait supposedly (for the Universal signs, 5 minutes is the shortest they can put on the timer) ... which ended up being about 5 minutes worth of walking the FULL QUEUE layout before reaching the cars, where there wasn't a team member to tell us what seat to take, we were expected to just find a row and board at our leasure ... granted, there were very few people there in line, but still.
Getting off our first ride, which seemed to be a bit darker than before (not a bad thing), we walked back over to the roller coaster thing, which, was closed still. So, we walked over to Amnity ville area... yes, the Jaws area. The area just before Jaws usually has all kinds of midway games, Unfortunately 90% of them were CLOSED, and the final 10% were busy setting up their displays, and thereby unplayable. Jaws itself was also closed, by this time it's already 10:00 mind you. So, we continued our way around to MIB, and rode that (another 5 minute wait line).
It started raining about this time, and we stopped at the Simpsons ride. If you haven't been to the park lately, this is where Back to the Future used to be. The ride carts for Simpsons = ride car for Back to the Future with a paint job. The theatre was still the same as well, just different movie. The problem with this ride's movie: There is TOOOOOOO much going on in it. Your mind will flay from one 'scene' to the next (which change so quickly you don't know where you are, nor which way you're going ... and at times wondering how you got to one location that shouldn't be there). It was like 20 different 'scenes' stuck in a 2 minute film ... figure that one out and how much your mind will flipflop. Add in the cramped space of the cart, and jerky behaviour of the cart itself (which was so bad it was knocking us into the other occupants of the vehicle). I got to feeling pretty dang ill, to the point where I was forcing myself from hurling, causing a sick-sweat to form all over. Luckily it had stopped raining while we were in the ride.
Leaving that ride, both of us were feeling ill and not really daring to risk our stomach contents on the new roller coaster (which looked kind of cool, had our stomach's not been feeling bad, we might have rode it), which was finally open and already had a 45 minute wait on it at 10:30. We left that park as there basically wasn't anything else to do with everything closed, and our stomachs completely out of whack from the Simpsons.
Entering into IoA, we noted that the population of the park seemed to be 10 times more than Studios. We walked around towards seus land, noted that they had the slow-sky-rail ride operational ... which had a 45 minute wait to get on, and continued over to the lost continent area. We had a lovely lunch at Mythos, which we hadn't been in before as the menu always didn't look pleasing to go into with children. Walked around to the coin minter people, and got us a couple necklaces, then continued around the bend to the Harry Potter area. This place was immaculately done for the visuals... It looked GREAT ... except for one slight problem, it should have the nickname of: Toonarrow Deadends. The path between the building were so cramped that if 5 people in wheelchairs wanted, they could stop just half a foot from each other, and blocked the entire path in some points. Other areas weren't as bad, but the vast majority of it was. Now, this wasn't only due to the fact that the path itself was narrow, but because some of the shops (read: most, if not all of them) had a queue ... yes a flipping QUEUE to get INTO the store. About this time it starts raining again, and, we're not allowed to just enter a shop, because there's a line at the other end of the line of shops. Yep, they've got 2 or 3 shops tied together, and to get into the last one in the 'line' you have to work your way through the first one or two.
There were a few missed opportunities that they could have done in the area, but the majority of the 'shops' were just false shop fronts. What was behind them? Probably storage for other shops next to it. These shops were also so crowded, that had I been in a wheelchair, I don't think I would have been able to navigate them without running into someTHING or someONE ... they were so crowded with people it was difficult to even walk with my cane.
Leaving the horrendous area of the shops, we went to the end of the alley to where the harry potter ride was ... we didn't go on it because it was a 90 minute wait, and we weren't interested in standing out in the open for probably 80 minutes in the rain before getting inside. We walked around to the front of the park, and it had stopped raining. The Hulk was closed for some reason when we passed by it, so we didn't go on that, besides, at least my stomach was STILL not right from the Simpsons slammer earlier. We went back around and went to Poseidon's fury, then back around to the harry potter area ... it was a bit less people there now, but this time I also noted that they'd changed the entrance of the Dueling Dragons ... no wait ... they re-named it ... it's now the Dragon's Challenge ... The entrance of which was so camouflaged with the shop fronts and other items around that you didn't even see it. The wait for the Dragon's? ... 5 minutes ... I watched an entire car go by, EMPTY. Back when I worked there we were jammed pack full throughout the day, much of the time wait was around 30-60 minutes.
We left the parks and Universal shortly after noting that the wait time for the Harry Potter ride had climbed to 120 minutes... I'm sorry, I'm not waiting in line for 2 hours to see a 2 minute show. We discussed as we were leaving on getting to the parks early and heading directly to that ride just to ride it...but in the end, we ended up deciding to sleep in, then going to Disney's Hollywood Studios.
We got to the studios around noon, and left around 5. We rode the rockin roller-coaster, and went in to a lot of shops and stuff. It felt almost like we'd accomplished MORE in a half day at Disney, than we had done in the whole day spent at Universal.
In the end, we were very happy that we got to spend the days with each other and had some fun while doing it. We also now know that unless we get something from Universal stating a senciere apology for the atrocity that has become their parks, we're not going back there anytime soon. Next year: We'll be going to Sea World! Victoria's never been, and I haven't been there since just before Penguin Encounter was built.
Well if I ever go to Florida, I know where not to go IN Florida! :-P
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