Days 56, 57 & 58 - Arriving in Orlando, Universal and Halloween Horror Nights!

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Once again, we haven't updated the blog for a few days, mainly due to a combination of bad internet and just being so damn tired after spending too many hours on our feet! This entry will therefore cover the events of the last few days, however, as the internet in our room is pretty rubbish, we won't be able to upload any photos just yet.

On Tuesday, we were due to leave Washington and catch a train to the Baltimore/Washington airport followed by a plane down to Orlando. We were up early at around 6:30, and got showered and dressed before going downstairs for some toast for breakfast. We came back up to the room, packed away the rest of our stuff and left the hostel at around 8:20. We walked down to the metro station and caught the orange line, followed by the red line to Union Station.

We found a ticket machine where we could purchase our tickets for the 'MARC' train that we needed to catch, then sat by the gate that our train would depart from for around 15 minutes or so. At 9:20, the board that we were watching told us that our train was now boarding, so we walked through the door and up the platform to the train. Once on the train, we found a seat, wedged our cases next to us so that they wouldn't block the aisle (this is the second 'airport' train that isn't very airport passenger friendly - there is nowhere to put large cases!) and waited for the train to depart.

At 9:30, the train left Union Station and started to make its journey to Baltimore. It took us around half an hour or so to reach the stop for the airport, which turned out to not really be by the airport at all! We got off the train, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but thankfully noticed a sign for a free shuttle bus which would take us to the terminal. We waited around 10 minutes for this bus, which then took around 10 minutes to drive us to the terminal that we needed, stopping at various different terminals first for the other passengers on the bus.

Once off the bus, we walked over to the 'AirTran' check-in desks and quickly checked in our cases and received our boarding pass. We then passed through security without any problems, before walking down to our gate to wait for our flight, which would be leaving at 12:30pm. We grabbed a bite to eat from McDonalds while we waited, and at around 12pm, they started to board the plane. The plane wasn't that big, and there seemed to be quite a few empty seats on it, so we didn't have long to wait before it started to make its way towards the runway, where it set off right on time.

The flight to Orlando only took around 2 hours, which flew by compared to other journeys that we have made on our trip! In no time, we were landing at Orlando International airport, and we were soon off the plane and making our way down to baggage claim. Our cases were off pretty quick, so we followed the signs over to 'Ground Transportation', knowing that there was a number 42 bus that would take us right outside our hotel on International Drive. After a bit of confusion as to where we actually caught the bus (it turned out that we were on the wrong side of the terminal at first), our bus picked us up at around 3:30. The airport is quite a few miles away from International Drive, so it took us around an hour to actually reach the 'Days Inn International Drive', where we would be staying for the next 14 nights.

Once there, we checked in and were given our key cards to our room on the first floor. The room is pretty spacious, it's actually very similar to our very first room in Hollywood. We have a fridge (which we requested specifically, as we are staying here for 2 weeks and will really help with food/drink costs), a TV, our own bathroom (yay!), a safe, a king size bed and several places to store our belongings.

We didn't really have much planned for the rest of the day/night, but after noticing that there was a laundry room right next to our room, we decided that we should do some washing while we had nothing better to do! However, we first decided to check out the area surrounding our hotel, and to get some food/drink for the next few days. We had checked online and knew that there was a large Walgreens just down the road, and a 7-eleven right next door. We had a quick look in 7-eleven, before heading over to Walgreens to pick up some cereal, milk, pop and some snacks for the next few days. We had a little look in a couple of gift shops next to Walgreens (looooads of Disney stuff, of course!), then came back to the room to put our shopping away.

We gathered all of our clothes that needed to be washed, before going to the laundry room to put them in a machine. Knowing that it would take a while, we came back to the room to watch TV while we waited, figuring that we could just pop our head around our door every now and again to see if it had finished. We spent the rest of the night watching TV, transferring our clothes over to the dryer at one point, and then taking them out, folding them up and putting them away. We eventually went to bed at around 11pm, ready for a day at Universal's Islands of Adventure the following day!

On Wednesday, we were up at around 7:30am, as we knew that there was a free shuttle bus (provided by our hotel) that would take us to Universal at 8:40am. We had some of the cereal that we bought the previous day, before getting washed and dressed and packing our bag ready for the park. The shuttle picked us up from right outside our room (mainly because it is on the ground floor at the front of the building!) and picked up a few passengers from a couple of different hotels before making its way down Universal Drive.

Once off the bus, we walked the short distance to the main entrance, where we went through a security bag check before getting to the main gates of the park. Our tickets were scanned and we were finally in! We headed first to the 'Incredible Hulk' roller coaster, knowing that it would be pretty empty, as most people would head to the 'Wizarding World of Harry Potter' first. As expected, there was no queue at all and we walked straight onto the ride. Again, as expected, it was pretty awesome! You get launched out of the tunnell at the beginning (which is quite unexpected), before hurtling over the lake on the track, going over various loops and corkscrews and through tunnels of mist at high speeds. The ride was longer than we expected, and we got off ready for more!

We decided to head next to the Harry POtter area, as we knew that it would probably just get busier over the course of the day (plus Emma had been very excited at going there and couldn't wait any longer!). We walked around the park to the area, seeing our first glimpses of the very impressive-looking Hogwarts castle on the cliff. We reached the fork in the road, at which there was a sign pointing in opposite directions to 'Hogwarts' and 'Hogsmeade', so we headed towards Hogwarts first, where the main 'Forbidden Journey' ride is.

We reached the entrance to the queue, which said that the queue would be around 30 minutes long. We put our bag in a locker and walked through the dungeons of Hogwarts, before emerging into the greenhouse, where we met with the end of the queue. The theming for the whole of this area/ride is absolutely incredible, they really haven't missed a trick. If you are a fan of the books/films, we strongly recommend that you come here, it is really like you are walking around the castle. The queue eventually lead inside, where we passed through various rooms and corridors, full of statues and talking portraits. We passed through Dumbledore's office, where a hologram of Dumbledore spoke to us, followed by a room where a hologram of Harry, Hermione and Ron unveiled themselves from under an invisibility cloak and told us about what was ahead. At once point, Hermione accidently made it snow in the room, which was quite strange; it was real snow too!

We eventually came to the sorting hat, who informed us that we had reached the start of our journey. We boarded 'enchanted benches', which moved along a moving conveyor belt, and pulled down our harnesses over our heads. The bench then moved off the end of the conveyor belt onto a track and the ride started. Wow. We weren't really sure what to expect, as we knew that it was some sort of simulator ride, but it was absolutely amazing. I won't go into detal on the whole storyline of the ride, but you basically move along the track, being thrown into various positions (on your back at some points) as you pass simulator screens that make you feel like you are flying over the grounds of Hogwarts. However, as well as the simulator screens, you also pass through real rooms, coming face to face with dementors, snakes and fire-breathing dragons as you fly around. It is all very hard to explain, but it was just incredible!

Once off the ride, we picked up our bag from the locker and went to explore the village of Hogsmeade. Again, this area is very well-themed, with the quirky little shops all being covered with snow on their roofs. All of the shops from the books and films are there, such as Ollivanders wand shop (which we didn't actually go into, as there was a queue to get in - apparently they do a small show in there so it's quite popular!), Zonko's joke shop, the owl shop, a Gringott's bank (which was basically an area full of ATMs!), Honeydukes sweet shop and The Three Broomsticks pub, where you could buy proper British comfort food! There were also various stands selling 'Butterbeer', which Emma decided that she would try a bit later on. The Hogwarts Express also stood near the bottom of the street, which Emma got a photo next to.

After spending a while looking around Hogsmeade, we went over to the 'Dragon Challenge' ride, which unfortunately was experiencing some technical difficulties, and was closed temporarily. We checked our map for the other attractions, and decided to head back to the 'Marvel Super Hero Island' area, where there were a few more rides that we wanted to go on. We went first to 'Doctor Doom's Fearfall', where we queued for around 15 minutes. The ride has 2 towers, which riders are seated around at the bottom, before being shot up the top of them and boncing back down. It was short, but fun, and gave us great views of the park from the top.

We then went to the 'Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man' ride, where we again queued for around 15 minutes, passing through the offices of 'The Daily Bugle' newpaper, where Peter Parker works. The ride was a little similar to the Harry Potter ride, with a mix of simulators (which this time used 3D technology, for which we had been given glasses) and real scenes, all of which we passed on a track - it was all pretty amazing again!

Once off the ride, we were getting a little hungry, so we walked around a few of the different eateries, checking out the prices. We eventually settled on a burger and fries each, before checking out our map to see what other attractions were available. As it was now getting very hot outside, we decided to go on a water ride to cool down. We decided to go on 'Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges', a rapids ride, thinking that it wouldn't get us too wet, but should splash us enough to cool us down a bit. How wrong we were. There was pretty much no queue for the ride, so we got a whole boat to ourself (it was big enough to seat about 12 people), and strapped ourselves in with the seatbelts. We then set off down the river, noticing that they were quite a bit rougher than the usual rapids-style rides that we are used to, such as the one at Alton Towers. As soon as the first wave hit, it was just a constant onslaught of more huge waves, water being sprayed at us from all directions, and passing under waterfalls, leaving us absolutely drenched. Even when we thought we had reached the end, we were lead into a false sense of security, assuming that the upwards conveyor belt would be taking us to the exit. Instead, it reached the top of more rapids going into a tunnel, the start of which was a massive, almost-vertical drop down, which we were convinced was going to tip the raft! Thankfully, it didn't, but we did pass through more waterfalls, were hit by more rapids and were sprayed by more water jets before reaching the real end of the ride. We got off, not one bit of us dry, and just stood for a while in shock. We sat on a wall for a while, having to wring out most of our clothes as best as we could, and taking off our shoes and sock to allow them to dry in the sun for a while.

After about half an hour, and feeling a little drier, we walked over to the Harry Potter area, where Emma purchased a frozen butterbeer (which apparently is much nicer than the regular one). It was basically an iced frappuchino, but was vanilla/butterscotch flavoured, and full of little bubbles. It was very tasty, and we spent a while sitting in the sun and drinking/eating it. As we sat, we noticed that the 'Dragon Challenge' ride was now running, so we walked to the queue entrance. The queue was pretty much non-existant, and we decided to first ride the 'Hungarian Horntail' side (there are basically two roller coasters, to choose from). The ride was pretty good, being an inverted roller coaster (like Nemesis), and going very fast around the track, throwing us upside down at various points. We got off and went round again to ride the other side, which was a little less intense but just as fun!

Since we were in the area, we decided to ride Forbidden Journey again, this time taking the camera so that we could get some photos whilst in the queue line. We went to the entrance, dropped our bag in a locker, then joined the queue. It was shorter than earlier - about 20 minutes according to the notice board - but there did seem to be a problem about half way through which made the queue stop moving for about 5-10 minutes. We got photos of all the things we had looked at earlier, and finally ended up on the ride a short while later. We did try and get a sneaky video actually on it, but it was far to dark/quick for the camera to actually focus on anything at all and it ended up being a video of 3 minutes of black lol.

After we had exited the ride, we decided that since our feet were aching we would go and see one of the shows at the park so we could actually sit down for a while. We walked to the nearest one, which was called Posiden's Fury, and joined the queue. We noticed whilst walking towards the queue-line that the board said the next show was at 4:00pm, since it was 3:30pm already, we agreed that we might aswell wait since we wouldn't really have time to go somewhere else and come back within 30 minutes. We reached the small queue inside the building, where we sat on the floor as our feet were too tired to stand for half an hour! Eventually, a staff member took us all into a room, where the 'tour' would begin. What we thought was a show where we might be able to sit down for a while turned out to be a walk-through show, where we moved from room-to-room with a 'tour guide', through the temple of Poseidon. It was actually pretty good, at one point literally walking through a swirling tunnel of water, which was quite strange!

Once we were out, we had noticed the 'Eighth Adventure of Sinbad' show was due to start, so we headed there, hoping that this one would actually be a seated show! Thankfully, it was, and we took a seat in the centre of the stalls. The show was a stunt show, but was also probably aimed more at children, with a lot of 'silly' humour to make the kids laugh. Nonetheless, the stunts performed were pretty impressive, with people swinging around on ropes, sword-fighting and performing high dives into water.

We got out of the show at around 4:45pm, and decided to head over to CityWalk (an area of shops and eateries just outside the park, which was almost identical to the one at Universal Hollywood) to relax for a while before going to the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios. We sat at a table for a while, grabbing a bite to eat from a 'BK Whopper Bar', and then just allowing our feet to have a break.

By around 6:45pm, we knew that Universal Studios would have opened again to let people in for the halloween event, so we headed over to the entrance. We once again went through a security bag check and got our tickets scanned, before entering the park. We grabbed an event map, which showed that there were 8 different 'Haunted Houses' (basically places that you walk through that have a certain theme, filled of people dressed up to jump out and scare you!) and several other 'Scare Zones', where people dressed as all sorts of monsters and ghouls would be roaming around, creeping people out!

We decided to just walk in a certain direction and go into any haunted houses that we came across. We stopped to watch a bit of the 'Death Drums' show, in several people were playing on drumkits set up on large steel frames whilst zombies danced around underneath to the beat. We carried on walking and came to our first haunted house; 'The Forsaken', which had pretty much no queue at all. We walked through the maze, being scared by people with glowing green eyes that kept jumping out from behind various objects and walls. Once out of the maze, we went straight into a maze right next door, called 'The Inbetween'. This one was pretty cool, as we were given 3D glasses before going in. This made the people inside very hard to spot, as most of them were camouflaged in flourescent clothing that merged with the backgrounds behind them, and the glasses made everything look very distoted and weird. At one point, we were both almost falling over as we walked through a tunnel in which the walls span around us, but as they were covered in flourescent colours that popped out towards us, it was all very disorienting and made us feel like the floor was moving!

We left 'The Inbetween' pretty impressed, and we headed next to some of the other mazes on the other side of the park. On our way, we passed through various scarezones, full of people with horrible masks and face paint, wielding chainsaws and knives as they lunged towards us, snarling. By this point it was pretty much pitch black outside, so the whole park had a very creepy atmosphere, enhanced by all of the fog and lighting effects around. We eventually reached the next haunted house, called 'Saws 'n' Steam'. There was a bit more of a queue for this (we figured that everyone had gone the opposite way to us when we first got in) and we had to wait around 20 minutes for this one. As we joined the queue, we noticed a small group of people standing around who turned out to be some mentally disabled people (a couple in wheelchairs) and their carers. Aside from the question of whether it is right for the carers to be bringing these people into these pretty intense, scary mazes, it appeared that they had lost one of their patients, when one of the carers asked another where "Daryl" was, and the other carer responded "OH SHIT!" before throwing down his drink and launching into a sprint back down the queueline to try and find him! We never saw them again in the queue so we still don't know whether they did find Daryl, or if he spent the night wandering around, being terrifed by chainsaw-wielding zombies!


We eventually reached the front of the queue, and entered the haunted house. This one was full of monsters with chainsaws, and their 'victims', who had limbs missing and blood spurting from their wounds. It was all pretty gross (especially one bit where a girl was seemingly having all of the skin on her legs cut and peeled away by a monster, revealing the bone underneath :S Once we were out, we continued our haunted house tour and joined the queue for 'Nevermore', which was also around 20 minutes or so. This maze was based on the works of the writer Edgar Allan Poe, and was all very strange, but terrifying at the same time. At one point, we were being attacked by people dressed as birds, then by weird-looking creatures with horrible masks, followed by shadowy figures that made us jump as we thought that they were just curtains hanging above us at first! This was probably the maze that made us jump the most, so we came out fairly shaken!

The final maze that we did on this night was 'H.R. Bloodengutz presents Holidays of Horror'. By this point, it seems that the park was getting very busy, as the queue for this turned out to be around 40 minutes. The maze was themed on the different (some American) holidays of the year, such as Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but each of these had grotesque versions, with the main characters associated with the different holidays appearing to have been tortured/murdered (e.g. we saw Santa's body, with his head missing). It was ok, but not really one of our favourite mazes, even though it was the one that we queued the longest for!

By the time we got out, it was around 9:40pm, and we knew that the shuttle bus back to the hotel would leave at 10pm, so we walked back towards the entrance, taking some pictures of some of the scare zones that we passed through, one of which was based on the seven deadly sins. We soon realised that we were running out of time, so we had a bit of a mad dash back to where the bus picked us up, and just about made it with a couple of minutes to spare! The bus dropped us right outside our room and we pretty much just collapsed into bed, absolutely shattered after a long day at the Universal!

Today, we decided to have a bit of a lie-in, as we had planned to visit Universal Studios in the day but stay until late again to experience the rest of Halloween Horror Nights. We slept in until around 10am, then spent a few hours slowly getting ready, writing some of this blog and watching TV. We eventually set out at around 11:45am, and we walked down to Universal Studios, knowing that it wasn't too much of a walk from the hotel. It took around 20 minutes to get there, but it was very hot today, so we were really feeling the sun burning down on us as we walked!

We decided to eat first outside the park, so went to Panda Express at CityWalk for some noodles with some Beijing Beef. We entered the park and went straight over to the main roller coaster; 'Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit'. There was pretty much no queue for the ride, so we got straight on and sat down, pulling the lap bar over us. On the bar was a small screen, where you could personalise your ride by picking one of the songs available, which would then play through speakers by your ears during the ride. Emma went for Evanescence's 'Bring me to Life', while Craig chose Limp Bizkit's 'Rollin', and we set off up the vertical lift hill. The ride was pretty cool, spinning round as it went over the loop, which felt quite weird, then shot over various hills and banked turns for the rest of the ride, as we rocked out to our chosen songs! We enjoyed it so much that we went straight back around for another ride, this time waiting a couple of trains so that we could get on the front row. We swapped songs so that we could see what the other had experienced first time round, and went around again, enjoying it even more on the front row with the track right in front of us!

Once off the ride, we made our way down the path to see what else Universal Studios had to offer in the daylight! We came first to 'Twister', which was basically a walk-through show type of thing, where we experienced what it would be like to be in the middle of a tornado, with high speed winds, lots of rain, and various objects flying around (including a fake cow!). We went next to the 'Return of the Mummy' ride, which we expected to be like the one at Universal Hollywood, however, it was a little different. Rather than having a launch near the beginning, it went over a bit of track at first fairly slowly, then going backwards for a bit, before launching us up a hill and around the main roller coaster track. Like the one in Hollywood, it was full of theming such as mummies, Egyptian treasure and scarab beetles. There were also several fire effects, with the whole ceiling at one point catching on fire, which felt rather warm!

Next, we went to 'Disaster', which was another walk-through show based on making a disaster movie, which starred various members of the audience. We went through several different rooms as they picked the 'cast' members and filmed them as they were requested to perform different actions. At the end, everyone got onto a fake subway train, and we were told to act scared as we experienced an earthquake/flood in a subway station - which was almost identical to the one that we went through on the Studio Tour in Hollywood, with the twhole ceiling caving in, a truck falling down and exploding, another subway train entering the station and crashing, and loads of water crashing into the room. We then watched the result of the stuff that was filmed, with added 'scenes' featuring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as the main hero. It was all quite entertaining to see the scenes once all of the special effects had been added!

Once we got back out into the park, we started walking towards the 'Jaws' ride, making a quick stop at a kiosk to buy a funnel cake - something we had been wanting to try since seeing one way back in Venice Beach! We ate it fairly quickly (as we shared it), basically it's like crispy/fried Belgian waffle batter. We had it with a scoop of chocolate icecream and drizzled with chocolate sauce - yum! After finishing up, we got up to carry on our walk to Jaws, but after checking what time it was (about 3:35pm), decided to go and watch the Animal Actors show at 4:00pm. We waited in the shade just outside the entrance, and were let in a little early at about 3:50pm. We were pretty much at the front of the queue so we had our pick of the best seats, ending up pretty much right in the middle of the front row. The show was very similar to the one we saw in Hollywood; dogs, cats, birds, pigs and a few other animals all doing tricks and displays of how well trained they were. Some highlights were seeing the dog that played Marley in 'Marley and Me', the (now grown-up) pig that played Babe in 'Babe', the pug from 'Men in Black II' and a really cute, baby orangutan who looked full of stage fright. The show lasted about 20 minutes, so once it was done we went back out to the park to get a ride on something one last time before the park temporarily closed at 5:00pm.

We decided that since it was fairly close, and we enjoyed it so much in Hollywood, that we would have a go on the Simpsons ride. The queueboard said that it was 15 minutes, however, we were pointed in the direction of the platform upstairs, while the queue downstairs seemed to have quite a lot of people in it. At the top of the stairs, we walked straight into the waiting room and then were on the ride within minutes, seeming to have completely bypassed the 15 minute queue that just seemed to be downstairs! The ride itself was exactly the same as the Hollywood version, being a simulator which made you feel like you were in 'Krustyland' theme park, being chased down by Sideshow Bob trying to kill us throughout.

At this point, the park was just about ready to be closed, so we went through the exit and out onto CityWalk just outside. We were ready to grab something to eat, so went in the direction of a food-court-type-thing that we had dinner in. Craig went to 'Moes Grill' and ordered a nacho plate, which seems to actually be a nacho mountain (see pictures). It was literally a basket PILED high with nachos, drizzled with some sort of cream cheese, with beans/bean sauce, a handful of shredded cheese, some lettuce and nice chunky pieces of steak. As delicious as it was, we couldn't finish the darn thing between us - literally leaving about half of it! After we were full, we went out into another seating area to relax a little until the park re-opened. We entertained ourselved by playing a few silly games like 'I Spy', '20 Questions' etc. Eventually it was time to head back into the park so we got up and made our way back through CityWalk to the entrace.

The park was exactly the same as it was yesterday, with live actors and scare zones set up frighten you sensless! We went to finish off our tour of the mazes, catching up on the 3 haunted houses that we didn't get chance to do yesterday. We firstly went to 'The Thing' (loosely based on John Carpenter's horror movie), which had various creatures and ghouls that were meant to be the shape-shifting alien from the film, jumping out from behind walls and curtains with strobe lights and smoke machines. It was pretty scary, so whilst still in a fearful state of mind, we immediately went to the next maze; 'Nightingales: Blood Prey', this was quite unique because you walked through WW1 trenches with soldiers and gunfire, whilst being stalked/chased by screaming banchees in the dark. once again, straight after this maze, we went to queue for the one that was left; 'Winters Night'. This was set in a cemetery with snowfall, where spirits and ghosts from within were rising from the grave with their sights set on you. The biggest scare inside, however, was one of the first things to confront us... what can only be described as a Weeping Angel! It was terrifying, it was an actor in a very convincing statue costume, with a horrible screaming face, that was completely still until you walked near, this is when it would lunge forward from the dark surrounding archway and try to grab you. All in all, the haunted houses were just as scary as you might think!

After finishing the mazes, we went to ride a couple of the regular rides that we hadn't fit in whilst it was still light. However, as we were by the Mummy ride, we decided to have a quick go on that as we quite enjoyed it earlier! We then went over to the 'Jaws' ride, where we had to queue for around 10 minutes before boarding our boat around the waters of Amity Island. Of course, we encountered the giant shark from the movie, who 'attacked' our boat several times throughout the ride, rising up out of the water, accompanied by the famous music from the film. There were also explosions and fire effects (one of which literally felt like it was burning our faces!), before the shark eventually electrocuted itself, allowing us to escape back to shore. The ride was probably better experienced in the dark, so we were quite glad that we didn't do it earlier, as we may have skipped it tonight.

The final ride that we had not yet been on was the 'Men in Black' ride, which is a laser-shooting ride where you travel around trying to blast aliens. There was a short queue for this, but we were soon on the ride after passing through the MIB headquarters (which looked JUST like the rooms from the movie. The cars passed through various scenes full of aliens, which we shot at with our guns, but it was made a little more difficult when at certain points the car span round in a circle along the track, making us a little dizzy! It was pretty fun, and between us we beat the score of the car that we were running parallel with, even though they had four people in theirs!

Once off the ride, it was around 9pm, and we had planned to catch the 10pm bus back to the hotel again. We checked a queueboard and saw that most rides/mazes had a queue of around 40 minutes. As we didn't want to have to rush to catch the bus, we decided to just spend the next hour just walking around the scare zones as we slowly made our way over to the park exit. By around 9:45pm, we had reached the bus stop, and the bus actually came early (we assume that he went round again to pick up the people that had turned up at 10!), so we were back in our hotel room by 9:55pm! We spent the rest of the night watching TV and writing this loooonnng blog, and we are looking forward to a nice relaxing day tomorrow around the pool, with some afternoon shopping on International Drive.

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