Universal Studios

Last year we flew to Australia for a nice relaxed summer Christmas with my famiy. This year we went to Universal Studios and Disney World with Emily's family. This was a fantastic treat for everyone involved. :)

Now, the Christmas/NYE holidays is the busiest period of the year for the Orlando theme parks. To avoid the crowds, we spent December 26 - 28 at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure (two parks run by the same company). It was such a huge trip I will have to talk about Disney World in a later post:

First Times

Timothy likes to play Elebits at home on the Wii. We figured that he would enjoy the "Men In Black Alien Attack" ride. He seemed to have mixed feelings about the ride, probably because there was so much happening. Anyway, our first ride through resulted in this awesome photo. Notice who still has her wits about her and is shooting the monster in front of us... :) We now have this as a print and I need to get it properly framed.

We also rode The Simpsons ride, the Jurassic Park ride, a Jaws-themed river cruise, and plenty of others. Few of them were worth repeating, and unfortunately they started scaring Timothy. By the third day Timothy would refuse to get on a ride that he couldn't first see for himself.

We established some new rules: we would take Timothy on rides that (a) he could see for himself and (b) he would point at and say 'yes'. Using these rules meant we rode much 'safer' rides like the merry-go-round and the "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" ride in Seuss Land. We still did manage to get him on a small kids roller coaster twice, but at least he would trust us, and he knew that he had control over what rides he went on. This strategy would work wonderfully in Disney World, though with some amusing results.

Dueling Dragons

We had to spend some time on rides that Emily and I would enjoy, and that led us to Dueling Dragons. I have never been on a roller-coaster that I loved so much, both for the feeling of safety and the sheer exhilaration of the ride. You are always pushed backwards or downwards into your seat thanks to the sheer number of loops and corkscrews. It is so smooth that your head never touches the side of the headrest, and you almost never need the seat restraints.

It is named 'Dueling Dragons' because it is actually two interlocking rollercoasters representing a Fire Dragon and an Ice Dragon. The 'dragons' launch together and are timed so that there are several near-misses, including a simultaneous inverted loop which brings your feet within a metre of the other people. Watching vides of the ride, I think you'll agree that Dueling Dragons is far superior to the The Incredible Hulk coaster at the same theme park.

In total, we rode Dueling Dragons six times (three times on each dragon). Most of that occured in just one night (I insisted we come back after one of our Disney World days :). We arrived just when most people were leaving the park and so we could ride multiple times very quickly. The first four times we rode somewhere in the middle of the dragon and I would whoop the whole time. Emily suggested that, for the last two rides, we sit the front of each dragon. On those times I didn't make a single sound; my mouth just opened and that was all I could manage. Definitely worth it. :)

Blue Man Group

Timothy loves music, and Emily was keen to take us all to see the Blue Man Group show at their permanent home next to Universal Studios. The entrance to the theatre looked too much like a ride, and so it took us a good 20-30 minutes to 'coax' Timothy inside and take his seat. I don't know what to say about the show except it was amazing. There was unfortunately a lot less music than we expected, but there was plenty of colourful showmanship, audience participation, and glowing reams of toilet paper.

I am not joking about the toilet paper either. Near the end of the show they started alternating between black lights and strobe lights, and then covered the audience in huge reams of a soft paper. The audience had to just keep pulling the paper over their heads until it reached the front of the stage. For a few seconds, Timothy was scared of these piles of 'stuff' coming over him, but he very quickly got the idea and absolutely loved it. I've included some photos here that I've pulled from other sites.

That's all I can say about Universal Studios. At least, all I can say in one blog. I'll have to do a couple of posts about Disney World next. :)