Universal Studios

12 Dec 09--We went to Universal Studios yesterday, and for those of you who have never been there, it is actually a 2-park system made up of Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure...And as far as Universal Studios is concerned, YOU HAVE MISSED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AND IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING GOING IN THE FUTURE CHANGE YOUR MIND FAST!!!!

What appeared to be the best ride in the park, this roller coaster looked like it went the length of the park, was closed for maintenance, so we will have to go to it when we go back to see what Islands of Adventure has.



The Revenge of the Mummy ride was the only ride we went on that we would consider to be a 5-star ride. It is an indoor roller coaster, where you are in the dark and can see very little, and has some great drops and twists and turns.

At about 2 1/2-stars were the Shrek and Jimmy Neutron rides. Shrek was in 4-D (thus the glasses) and Jimmy Neutron was one of those that because of the shape of the theater you feel like you a flying thru air (slowly) while actually just sitting in your seat. These would be preety good for little kids, but it was a stretch for me and Cathy to say we liked them.

We also went to Men in Black, Disaster, and Twister "rides" (I don't know what I did with the Twister picture.) These didn't even rate one star! Twister was the 1st thing we went to in the park and pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. It was a total rip-off. Basically you waited 10 minutes to get in, spent the next 10-15 minutes in a dark room standing up listening to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxson shout over loud special effects talking about twisters and making the movie, and then entering another room for about 3 minutes of a fake twister experience...including the flying cow that you could see the 10 ropes it was swinging on.

And Disaster was an audience participation thing where they got about 8 people to volunteer to act a little foolish and then we all went on a fake bus/train ride where they jerked us left and right and had fake fire and rain on the outside. Pathetic!!!

The park is really just a giant place for restaurants and novelty shops to sell their gods...of course all of the so-called rides let you off inside their particular specialty store.

The bottom line is this--If I had actually paid admission to this park ($100 for adults/$90 for kids) I would have been totally and completely pissed off...I don't know how it has stayed in business all these years. And to think that most people are going here during the summer when it is 100 degrees and the lines are over an hour long, I am surprised someone hasn't gone postal on them. I only took so many pictures because Ellen and Hallie told me they wanted them (haha). We will be going back to go to the Islands of Adventure park...it looked like it had a few rides that were better than here, so we will let you know.