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Published: October 20th 2013
Ok, I’m gonna start off by saying that although this blog will cover the events of the last six days or so, we actually only took pictures on about two of these days as we didn’t take the camera out with us when visiting Seaworld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica. This was mainly because of the lack of free lockers at Seaworld and Busch Gardens when going on the rides, and also having the pass to these parks worn around our necks, it meant that we could just put our debit card/some cash in the little plastic sleeve that we had been given for our Universal photopass and therefore not need to take a bag at all. Aquatica is a water park so we wouldn’t be able to take the camera around with us anyway so we couldn’t see much point in taking it with us. We will be returning to Seaworld tomorrow and will be taking the camera, however we probably won’t get any pictures of Busch Gardens this year, as we go here mainly for the roller coasters! We do have pictures of all three parks in older entries from our last trip, if you feel the need to see
what the parks are like!
Anyway, back to the events of the last few days! As promised, now that we had a working camera, our aim was to take lots of pictures at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure on our visit on Sunday. We were up early, left the hotel at around 8:30am and decided to walk the 30 minutes to Universal from the hotel rather than waiting around for buses. We arrived at the park just after opening, where we first went over to the Hulk coaster, getting a few pictures of the ride once we were off. Our photopass was still valid so we were also sure to make use of this and again get as many photos as we could from the photographers that were dotted around, and also from any rides that we went on during the day! On the way through Marvel Island, we spotted the Green Goblin, so Emma got a picture with him, as he snarled in her face just as we took it! We next went on Dr Doom’s Fear Fall which had no queue, but skipped Spiderman as the queue for this was already 30 minutes – it seemed
to be a lot busier today!
We had a walk through the Toon Lagoon area, getting a few cheesy snaps with the speech bubbles, before passing the Jurassic Park area and watching the ride at the bottom of the drop for a while – we’re still convinced that no one else seemed to get as wet as we did the other day! Not wanting to get the camera wet (they don’t do free lockers for the water rides for some reason), we carried on through to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, where we found the queue for Forbidden Journey to be 60 minutes! This was way over our limit, so we decided to give this one a miss for today, instead opting for the ever-queueless Dragon Challenge roller coasters, riding both the red and blue versions one after the other.
We were starting to feel quite hot so decided to purchase a butterbeer to cool us down. It was every bit as delicious as we remembered, and overheard the person selling them that they were made with butterscotch and shortbread – yum! We passed through the Lost Continent area (spotting a turtle swimming around in the lake
as we passed over a bridge) before arriving in Seuss Landings. We’ve never actually done any of the rides around here, so after spotting that the ‘Trolley in the Sky’ ride was only a 5 minute wait, we ended up walking straight onto a car and taking a little trip along a track that runs above the area, which gave our feet a bit of a break!
We had done the full loop in Islands of Adventure now, so decided to head over to Universal Studios for the rest of the day, where we would then be staying for the Halloween event that evening. We shared a plate of Orange Chicken, Teriyaki Chicken and Beijing Beef with rice and noodles from Panda Express in CityWalk, before taking a few pictures just outside of the gates in front of the Universal globe. Once in the park, we went first to Rip Ride Rockit (the only ride that we hadn’t yet got a photo from) but this had a huge queue, so we decided to instead ride it later that evening, when hopefully most people would be in the scare mazes rather than on the rides. The long queues were becoming
a bit of a theme (there were not many under 20 minutes), which we later realised was probably due to the fact that it was a bank holiday weekend for Columbus Day – d’oh!
Thankfully, The Mummy had a queue of fifteen minutes, which always moves fast due to the high capacity of the ride, so we got a ride on this before messing about in the gift shop, pretending to be Egyptians! Outside the shop were some actors on stilts, and we got a couple of photopass pictures next to one of these guys too. We then walked around to The Simpsons area to get some photos of the new expansion (and also getting some funny pictures on the Simpson’s couch in front of a green screen from a photographer) before reaching the Woody Woodpecker area of the park. We completely missed the E.T. ride last time we were here, and Emma was determined to go on it this year (having to persuade Craig that it wouldn’t be TOO much of a kiddy ride), so we were quite happy to find it only had a ten minute queue. We first watched a short pre-ride video hosted by Steven
Spielberg, before walking through a wooded area (spotting the device they made in the movie to try to contact E.T.’s family) and eventually boarding our bikes and then taking off to the skies! It was pretty cool for an old ride – the trains consist of several rows of ‘bicycles’ that you sit on and then you are taken through the woods as the police and NASA are chasing you, before a police car pulls in front of you, seemingly leaving you with nowhere to go. Of course, like in the film, the bikes then fly in the air and soar over the car, taking you up higher and over the miniature city below, whilst being blasted by the awesome theme tune! The ride then gets a bit weird and you end up on E.T.’s home planet, surrounded by weird looking aliens and baby E.T.’s dancing around lol – a bit of a contrast to the dark first half of the ride, but never mind! E.T. is also meant to say your name at the end (a guy at the beginning of the ride asks you your names before you board and types it into a computer), however we didn’t
quite catch ours – most of the names he came out with sounded a bit strange actually!
Once off the ride, we spotted an area where you could get pictures taken on a bike with E.T. and also in the closet with E.T. dressed like a woman, so we of course stopped off here to get more photos! An ‘Animal Actors’ show was about to start, which was right opposite, so we got a seat and watched the cuteness unfold, again getting some pictures and videos of the show while we had the camera! We also got some pictures of the train and car from ‘Back to the Future’ which sit in front of the Simpson’s ride – the ride actually used to be the ‘Back to the Future’ ride, so it’s a nice little reminder of the park’s history. It was now approaching 4:30pm, so we went over to the holding area in the Woody Woodpecker land (being passed by the Blues Brothers in their car as we walked over), where we would wait for the Halloween event to open. This area seemed to be much quieter than the other area that we waited a few nights before,
so this gave us hope that we would be able to get the mazes done on this side of the park much quicker. We sat at a table to wait and were joined by an older couple who were at the Halloween event for the first time. They, like us, were avid ‘Walking Dead’ fans so were really looking forward to the evening’s events, and apparently their kids (who were about our age) were extremely jealous that they were there! We chatted for a while about the Walking Dead (we were both excited that the new season would be starting that evening, though of course we were all going to miss it, being there!) and also talked about some of the mazes, giving them pointers to head over to Cabin in the Woods as soon as they had done the mazes over this side of the park, hopefully beating the rush of people who would go there once the main gates were opened.
Eventually we were let out into the holding area at 5:45pm, and everyone made a dash to the Walking Dead maze. We were soon passing hoards of walkers as we walked through Woodbury and then into
the prison, and were really impressed with the attention to detail in the maze. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside, but there were loads of references to the show and the sets looked exactly the same, especially inside the prison. Near the beginning, we passed the Governor’s tank of floating heads, and his zombie daughter then lunged out from nowhere with the sack over her head – we assume it was just a really small woman and not actually a child! We also spotted Hershel’s leg lying on a table from when it had been hacked off after he got bit by a walker!
Once out of the maze, everyone seemed to be directed straight around to the ‘La Llorona’ maze next door, which again we didn’t have to wait for at all. This maze is based on a Hispanic urban legend of a woman that drowned her two children to be with her lover, who then rejected her. The woman then drowned herself but was condemned to spend eternity searching for her dead children, wailing as she did, earning herself the name ‘The Weeping Woman (La Llorona)’ by all that heard her screams. Pretty creepy
stuff, and the old-fashioned cart outside the maze carrying two small coffins certainly set the scene! It was all quite disturbing, passing various scenes such as the lake in which she drowned (with the bodies of the children floating face down in the middle), all the while being screamed at from every angle as the woman jumped out unexpectedly.
We had done the mazes on this side of the park within half an hour – good going, we thought – so we then took a walk through the park, getting lots of pictures of walkers and the scenes from the show that were dotted around the park. You will notice a picture of a girl who seemingly has no legs – we thought that this was probably a trick and her legs would be underneath the platform that she was lying on. That is, until she started moving around and we realised that she was actually a double amputee! Props to the casting team - and to the girl of course – definitely creeped out/shocked a lot of people when they realised! Once we reached the other side of the park, we went into the ‘Evil Dead’ maze, which
we had missed the other night, which only had a fifteen minute queue. We were both impressed with this one – again there was lots of attention to detail from the film, passing characters and scenes that we recognised as we walked through the cabin and into the basement, and of course coming across the various stages of the main possessed girl.
The queues for the mazes were now starting to build up, so we decided to skip the only other maze that we hadn’t yet done (Resident Evil) and do this when we returned for a final time on Thursday night. Instead, we made use of the much shorter ride queues and got rides (and photos where we could) on ‘Men In Black’, ‘Rip Ride Rockit’, ‘The Mummy’ and ‘Transformers’, whilst taking leisurely walks between rides to snap more pictures of walkers and to just soak up the atmosphere!
We had done our research this time and knew that we could catch a shuttle back to our hotel at 10pm from the #87 shuttle stop, so we started making our way out of the park at around 9:30pm. There didn’t seem to be anyone else waiting, but
we sat on the kerb and took a few pictures of the moon using the awesome zoom on the camera (you can see craters and everything, our last camera couldn’t even focus on it at all!). 10pm came and went and we were starting to doubt whether the shuttle was going to turn up - we didn’t have the phone number for the Travelodge to ask about it either. By 10:15pm, we were about ready to get a taxi back, and had got up and started to walk over to the queue of taxis, when a shuttle turned up and pulled into our stop – phew! Once back at the hotel, we literally collapsed into bed – it had been a looong day and our feet were definitely feeling it after we had been on them for 14 hours!
Now, as I said at the beginning of this blog, we didn’t actually take any pictures over the next few days, so I won’t go into too much detail of what we did, as I’m sure it will just be incredibly boring to read without the pictures to back it up! We actually didn’t do much at all the next
day – we had planned to go to Busch Gardens but after getting out of bed the next morning and realising that there was no way that our feet could take another full day at a theme park (there is only one shuttle to and from Busch Gardens, as it is an hour away in Tampa), we decided to have a rest day instead. We had a pretty lazy day of watching TV, browsing the internet and playing games on our phones, but it was definitely worth it just to give our feet a break! We also downloaded the previous night’s season premiere of the Walking Dead, which was awesome – definitely excited to see how this season will unfold! It was also later this day that we realised that it was Columbus Day, which explained why the parks had been so busy the day before, and we figured that it was probably a good job that we hadn’t gone to Busch Gardens as it would have been packed!
So after a nice relaxing day, we were raring to go on Tuesday morning, and had a full day at Seaworld (the Busch Gardens shuttle was fully booked so we
rearranged this for Wednesday instead). We went first to Manta and then around to Kraken – we rate these as two of our favourite roller coasters so loved being back on them. We then went to the new Antartica area and were lucky enough to be able to walk straight onto the new ride ‘Empire of the Penguin’ – we had heard horror stories of two hour queues for this in recent months. The ride is pretty cool – you board a circular vehicle that then seems to glide around on ice, spinning around and bobbing up and down as you follow the journey of a little penguin named Puck. We assume that they use either magnets or the same technology as the ‘Rumba’ robot cleaners, as there is no obvious track that the vehicle follows. At the end of the ride you reach the penguin exhibit, where you are free to stick around and watch the penguins as they stand/swim around. It was, however, VERY cold in here – there is no wall-to-ceiling glass so you are literally standing in the -1 degree temperatures of the penguin exhibit – not ideal when you’re just wearing a vest and shorts!
The rest of the day was spent making our way around the shows – watching the ‘Blue Horizons’ dolphin show, the ‘Pets Ahoy’ show and the ‘One Ocean’ killer whale show – all amazing shows that we will get pictures of on our next visit!
The following day, we caught the free express shuttle from the car park next door to our hotel at 8:45am, which was a nice bonus as last time we had to go all the way to Universal to catch a shuttle from there! We watched about three quarters of ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop’ that the driver played on the TV screens on the coach before reaching the park. Once in, we spent the day riding and re-riding all of the awesome roller coasters, such as ‘Cheetah Hunt’, ‘Montu’, ‘Sheikra’ and ‘Kumba’. Although we came across a few small queues early on in the day, most rides by mid-afternoon were completely walk-on, which is always nice! We also had a ride on the train that passes through the safari area, spotting lots of different antelope, giraffes, zebra and rhinos as we rode by. We also made sure to visit some of the other animal exhibits,
such as the elephants, orang-utans and tigers. There were actually three six-month-old tiger cubs in one enclosure with their mother, and we got to watch them being fed right in front of us – the keepers were just pushing bits of mince meat through the wire fence and occasionally giving them a chin-rub as they were quite fussy!
On Thursday, we had a bit of a lie-in before returning to Universal Studios mid-afternoon to stay for one final time at the Halloween event. We had plenty of photos from the other day so we again left the camera in the room. We got a couple of rides in before we waited again in the holding area, then re-visited the American Werewolf house first as this was the first to open and we were one of the first in the area. Once out, we then had to wait until 6:30pm for the Resident Evil house to open, which passed pretty quickly as we watched people being terrorised by walkers. Finally we entered our final scare maze, and again we were impressed by the attention to detail from the games – we even spotted a green herb and a typewriter, though
we didn’t have an ink ribbon with us so we weren’t able to save… ha ha (ignore this if you have not played a Resident Evil game)! Along with the zombies, there were also a few familiar bad guys from some of the later games such as lickers and the nemesis monster – pretty cool! The rest of the night was spent wandering around the park and going on all of the rides – most of them were walk-on so I think that we literally went on every single ride that was open!
Friday was Craig’s birthday! As we’re travelling, he didn’t actually have any cards or presents to open, but we had planned to go for a meal that evening at ‘Texas de Brazil’ to celebrate him turning 25! We spent the morning and early afternoon at Aquatica water park, where we actually spent a lot of our time whizzing around ‘Roa’s Rapids’ – a fast-moving river that you literally just get swept around. We loved it last time we were here and we loved it just as much this time too! Of course, we made our way around the slides too, re-riding our favourite ones multiple times
such as the ‘Taumata Racer’ slides, where you speed head-first on a mat down a tunnel before emerging onto the bumpy slide down to the bottom. We sat on a couple of sun-loungers in the shade for about an hour after a few hours of sliding around, before jumping back into the river for a quicker ride over to our locker, where we retrieved our belongings and made our way to the showers. Once showered and changed back into our clothes, we returned to the hotel for a few hours to relax and get ready for our meal.
We had actually signed up for a few different restaurants emailing lists, as we had heard that most of them would offer a free meal on your birthday. We ended up with a choice of a few different restaurants for Craig’s birthday, but Texas de Brazil, though not the cheapest, was the most recommended and sounded lovely – the appeal of unlimited steak was a bit of a no-brainer for Craig! We had made a reservation online for 7:15pm, so we set off at 6:30pm and rode the I-ride trolley to the restaurant, which was a couple of miles up from
where we were staying on International Drive. We were there a little early but they had a table for us anyway, which our server showed us to, before explaining the procedure. We were able to go up to the salad buffet whenever we wanted, but were also given little coasters with a green side and a red side. Basically, waiters were walking around with huge skewers of different meats – all different cuts of steak, lamb, pork, chicken and sausage. When you had the green side of the coaster up, they would then stop at your table and offer you a portion of the meat that they were serving, and if you wanted a rest (or if your plate was full) you just turn your coaster over to the red side and they would not stop at your table. The waiters were constantly walking around the tables so they would always return if you had missed anything.
We each visited the buffet first and got a plate of the things on offer that we fancied trying. As well as the usual salad items, there were also things like smoked salmon, potato salad, sushi and various cheeses. We returned to
our table where our server brought over some garlic mashed potatoes and some fried bananas to “cleanse the palette” (though Emma skipped these as she can’t stand bananas) and we tucked in! I apologize for the lack of photos – it appears that we only got pictures of our first plates from the salad buffet and none of the actual meats! The meat was cooked beautifully – we even got to eat the usually more pricey cuts such as filet mignon, which was SO tender and juicy! Soon enough, we were both starting to get very full and even after trying to have a rest for a little while, neither of us could eat anymore – the smell of meat was actually starting to make us feel a little nauseous! We asked our server for the bill and paid up – a meal would normally cost $45 each, but Craig’s meal was free as it was his birthday – awesome!
We made our way back to the trolley stop and Craig took more pictures of the full moon before the bus arrived to take us back along I-Drive where we then limped back to our room – trying not
to breathe in the smells from the nearby restaurants as the smell of food was pretty much making us heave, though we had no regrets! We threw ourselves on the beds and agreed that it was probably one of the best meals that we had eaten, even though food definitely defeated us both – we would probably suck in a real food-eating challenge! With full bellies, we both had an early night and had a really good night’s sleep after a lovely evening.
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