Return To Hogsmeade

It's back to the vacation recap - hope you aren't tired of hearing about it. On Wednesday of our vacation week, my dad and I made a return visit to Universal Studios. This time, however, we spent the majority of the day on the Universal Studios side of the park.

My dad took the wheelchair again which worked to our benefit because we were able to get in to a lot of the shows without having to wait in line - not all of them, but some. The first show we saw was the Shrek 4D show which was really great. I've always been a fan a Shrek, the dry humor cracks me up and I love the Gingerbread Man; so, I was looking forward to seeing what the show was all about. The movie portion of the show was in 3D, I guess the fourth dimension was the fact that our seats moved and there were other effects as well such as water being sprayed on us at times like when Donkey sneezed, air blowing on our legs that were supposed to be and felt like spiders among other things. It was a really fun show.

I think the next show we went to was called Twister which was based on the movie Twister and showed video of the movie and then you went into a room and watched a simulation of a twister coming through a town. Let me tell you, when you live through a tornado about once a month, the show was pretty mild in comparison, but it was still fun to watch.

After the Twister show, I rode The Mummy roller coaster which is based on the movie The Mummy. This roller coaster was a lot of fun. Tony had told me about it before I went down there and some people from church had been down for Spring Break and also mentioned that it was a good one and it lived up to my expectations. This was an indoor roller coaster and was an absolute thrill. Towards the end, the room you are in catches on fire and the heat is very intense. I rode this one five times in a row while my dad watched a Blues Brothers show. It was in this area of the park that we ran into a really tall Egyptian dude.

Throughout the day we watched other shows, including a Fear Factor show throughout most of which I kept my eyes closed - I cannot stand to watch people be covered in snakes or eat disgusting things. We also saw a Terminator show (I think the seats moved in this one too, but mine didn't because I was in the wheelchair companion seat and I don;t think it was set up to move; either that or it was broken) and a show with animals in it which we both loved. One of the best shows was called Disaster and they used people in the audience to make a "movie". the movie was about an earthquake on the subway and we all rode a subway like ride into the subway station and had to act like we were dying, screaming, crying, having a heart attack, etc. My dad made the film too. It was pretty darn funny.

I rode some other rides on this side and then we took a break for dinner. There are a lot of restaurants and shops at the entrance to Universal and so we ate there at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. The food was good, but overpriced in my opinion. Fortunately I finished my dinner before a little kid walked by and lot his right to my left. It was less than pleasant. Call me crazy, but I think if I were the restaurant manager I would have offered to pay for the food of the folks who were almost puked on, or at least offered a free dessert or something, but that didn't happen. We had to pay for our dinner despite someone losing their dinner basically right on our shoes.

We then headed back to the Universal side and rode the E.T. ride which I thought was neat. It was a slow paced ride so my dad rode it as well. I also took the time to ride the roller coaster at the front of the park which is called Hollywood Rip Ride RockIt. the initial hill on this one was so tall that I kept my eyes closed on the way up. After that we headed back over to the Islands of Adventure side to visit Hogsmeade one last time. At this point, my legs were so tired from walking that I actually had to request that we stop for a break for a minute or two. We finally made it back over and I rode the Dragon Challenge a few times and that awesome Forbidden Journey ride one last time. I got a final frozen butter beer and then it was time for the park to close. I actually wanted to check out the water rides which I was saving for last but unfortunately, I once again ran out of time. I don't know why, but the parks closed at 9:00 which seems way early to me. I guess they must be open later in the summer, but you would think they would stay open until at least 10:00 or 11:00 in the spring as well. A lot of folks vacation in the spring. In all it was a really good day and we probably could have knocked it all out if we had just one more hour; despite running short of time, we still enjoyed the day and it was a much more successful trip than our first visit.