Date:10/31/2020-11/8/2020
Destination: Orlando, Florida
Goal: Orlando Parks, Cape Canaveral
Distance: 961 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight
Potential Credits: 24
Day 2
Our second day began as an early morning, one of a few on the trip, to head to Universal, check into our hotel, and gate crash Hagrid. So we did that. Headed to Royal Pacific, checked in, snagged our Express, and made a beeline for the water taxi. Not that much excitement there. From there we grabbed a bite from Voodoo Donut at CityWalk and got in line to gate crash Hagrid at Islands of Adventure!
Time to make the chimichangas! I knew once I saw that lighthouse in person we were in for something special so with that in mind, I laced up my running shoes and prepared to gate crash Potter!
Universal is kind of Ben's thing. When I met the dude back in 2015, he had never even set foot in the park that would go onto become his place of employment. But over the years as a friend to him I've gotten to see him just get more and more into the place and everything they do, so he was very excited to show it off, both as a fan and a team member. On the other hand, my Disney vacation experience as a kid not only did not contain Universal, but when my parents were asked if they had been to Universal Studios they would, for years, respond with how much they loved Tower of Terror and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster until I informed them they weren't the same. Meanwhile, he had said so many great things about this park I was entering very excited but also with very high expectations. We had plans to enjoy the park at a slow, non-credit run pace, but for now it was go, go, go! Gotta get to Hagrid before the line gets ridiculous!
There was no grand reveal here because the line into Potter stretched all the way back to Lost Continent. So here's Ben and I tearing through this absolutely beautiful park past some great scenery, a nice little sneak peak of the day to come, before getting in line around the talking fountain. But regardless, we were here!
I had been to WWOHP in California so I knew what to expect, but Universal Florida's was so much more expanded that I was walking in with magic still to experience: Hagrid, Hogwarts Express, and all of Diagon Alley primarily. I always considered myself a casual Harry Potter fan, my mother read the first book to my sister and I when we were kids around the time the first movie came out and we sort of grew up with it on and off. But knowing that this was a literal whole universe from the imagination of a transphobic woman I was about to dive into, I decided to pad my Harry Potter knowledge starter pack a bit more. Before I came out here, I did my homework and watched/rewatched several films that had rides I would be riding down here in Florida, and all eight Harry Potter films were among my viewing list. Watching them as an adult there were several themes/details/story connections I didn't pick up on as a kid, so I was coming into this as a bit more of a fan than I was before the trip.
The wait in line for Hagrid was, volume-wise, pretty lengthy. However, you're constantly walking on it, like the line never stops. The thing has that lovely omnimover station that keeps you constantly in motion all the time so while there are props to look at, there's not much explaining behind them because there's simply so little time to take in information. Just waltz on past, look at the cool magical creature shit, and keep looking. Thought these bird nest things were cool, though.
After a very bearable wait in the really cool queue for this ride, Ben and I rushed into our motorbikes, me on the bike and him in the sidecar, and got ready to go!
Welcome to Universal, Jarrett! Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is just as much a barrel of laughs as it is a mouthful to say its name! I'd come up with some clever way to explain the essence of this ride as a whole, but Ben said it best himself when he first rode it and told me it was like Verbolten but better. There are two focuses on Hagrid's: speed and theming. That's it. No airtime, no crushing forces, no violently rag dolling you around, it's just meant to be fast, straightforward, agile, and do so while telling a story. I like to think of it as a coaster with the soul of a dark ride, several scenes that use special effects to tell a story with some fun thrills and tricks thrown in between to break it up. However, those fun tricks involve racing through the forest that Universal literally planted for it and then having something clever sprung on you from out of left field. So you're white-knuckling these handlebars pretending you're revving a motorbike full speed through the forest when out of nowhere you're on this inclined spike about to be blasted backwards with no idea where you're going. This was my third drop track after Wonder Mountain and Verbolten and while I do think Virginia's is better, it's still fucking terrifying here and I love how there's two to boost capacity. My only gripe at all with this ride was simply how fast it ended. It launches, there's fire along the track as you race away from the drop track, and there's a few elements...and that's it. It feels a smidge anticlimactic but when you're dealing with the most expensive coaster ever built that's clad to the teeth in all the bells and whistles, can you complain?
After we got off Ben ran into a fellow team member that allowed us to dip back around and ride again, so we got to ride this amazing, innovative ride twice. All in all, obviously it doesn't top ten along with batshit crazy terror machines like Railblazer, Copperhead Strike, or Skyrush, but that's not what this is. You don't get on Hagrid to fear for your life, you get on it to go on an adventure. And it nails that experience wonderfully.
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey was next, something I got to experience last year out in California. All in all, familiar experience, but I still have appreciation for it. This one also had that Chamber of Secrets scene with the basilisk skeleton, so considering how Chamber of Secrets was my crack when I was a kid, that was nice.
Wanting to pad my credit count, Ben and I snagged Flight of the Hippogriff, another familiar addition that's also in California, though this one is older. Still a fun little family coaster, standard layout, but the theming is pretty damn good.
We headed over to Isla Nublar next, where Ben got this photo of me with a baby dinosaur. This area is really cool but it certainly felt incomplete because of one major obstacle...
Jurassic World Velocicoaster was supposed to be on the trip when it was originally planned before COVID, but with the delay this joined Iron Gwazi in the reptilians loser's lounge of awesome-looking coasters that didn't make the trip due to delays. Just an excuse to come back, I suppose...
I mean, seriously, look at this thing, how can you not think it looks amazing? We seriously might have the Taron of the new world going up over here.
Up next we cut through Toon Lagoon and went over to Marvel for two rides: Spiderman and Hulk.
Spider-Man was a familiar ride system to me, Curse of DarKastle was a favorite of mine at Busch Gardens Williamsburg before it met its untimely end, one which I'm still bitter over. So I was happy to see something like it. This ride is so cool! It combines the simulator aspect of a dark ride beautifully with props, and sometimes I wasn't quite sure where the screens ended and the props began. It reminded me a lot of Six Flags's Justice League dark rides which I love, however, that scene where you're hanging off the building? That's what set this apart from that for me. You're sitting upright in a room consisting of two walls that look like skyscrapers on their side, and two screens, one representing the sky, the other showing the streets below. So you're getting passed back and forth in this bungee-like sequence, the ride sells it beautifully, and it does this with two themed walls, two screens, and some clever motion of the ride vehicle.
But why trick the mind when you can just flip a dude around willy nilly for real?
The Incredible Hulk was the main reason we came over here, a ride I'd had my eye on since I heard one of dad's relatives bring it up at Thanksgiving during one of those cringe discussions about my parents' taking us to Universal Studios to ride Tower of Terror. I heard positive reviews of this coaster a lot as well, right down to Ben having the onboard audio as his alarm in the morning. But what interested me about it was the fact that it's not the original trackwork. To me this unique trait represented, to me, what should be the perfect fusion of old and new school B&M, combining forces with fluid pacing.
Or at least, that's what it should be...
The presentation of this ride is great. The queue looks awesome, the trains look awesome, they even managed to theme the plexiglass social distancing dividers to look like sleek sci-fi glass accents in the station. Ben and I took the front and I was honestly getting chills. I mean, you're in that launch tunnel, it's iconic, everyone's seen and heard it, this is one of the more recognized moments on any Orlando coaster. You blast out of the tunnel, go through some absolutely sick inversions over the water, that soundtrack adds so much emotion to it, this thing is awesome!
And then Bruce Banner takes a giant stinking green shit in the tank of the toilet and leaves it there.
The second half of the ride, everything after the MCBR, is shit. It's slow, shamelessly bangs your head around, not at all like new school B&M. It started about as good as Superman: Krypton Coaster or Dominator, ended like Rougarou and Wildfire. Nothing designed, fabricated, and built in the 2010s, even based on an older design, should ever ride like that. Such a damn shame you start powerfully looping over the water and end up getting beat up in a sandy parking lot.
Still, though. The first half of the ride more than makes up for the lackluster second half and landed this coaster in a secure spot as my favorite B&M sitdown coaster.
We rode it in the front first, then in the back. Front is honestly so much better, smoother throughout and much better visuals at the start of the ride. Not usually one to be impressed by inversions on a traditional seating arrangement but I did think it was awesome on this coaster. That's some fucking perfect element sequencing right out of the launch.
Is it the baddest cat in Orlando like it's been made out to be for years? No.
Moving on, Ben and I were getting hangry so we made our way back to Hogsmeade and hopped on Hogwarts Express! Destination: Diagon Alley!
Ben had worked Hogwarts Express before and told me all about what it was like being a conductor on the most magical train in the land, so I was eager to ride it. It's pretty cool, I loved how it utilized more than just the screen in the window to make it an immersive experience. You've got Harry and the boys conversing outside the cabin, stuff like that. It's just a nice, relaxing way to transition your day from one side of Universal property to the other.
I was told that Diagon Alley was call for a big reveal like we did at USH so Ben made me keep my head down until I was in and had me look up so he could get my reaction on camera. This looks phenomenal! It definitely has the Harry Potter magical feel nailed, everything looks so whimsical. It really feels like you've stepped into a secret magical world, I was impressed.
Getting hangry, we got in line at Leaky Cauldron and hit "Prepare Our Order" on the app, not knowing it would take us a full hour in line to get our food. Not sure why they didn't do this reservation style considering it's in the most popular themed area of the park and there's a global pandemic, but we starved it out and were rewarded with some great food and butterbeer! I got the fisherman's pie and some Scotch Eggs to try. The pie was good, would have preferred it without peas, and the eggs were a lot to eat and I would have preferred them hot with runny yolks, but those complaints are minor when you consider how great this meal was.
And we were also celebrating! Since the pandemic started and I stopped feeling safe going theme parking, I've gone from a huge nerd to a huge nerd with no life. Back in May I took up an interest in playing in Survivor Online Reality Games, or ORGS for short, online competitions meant to simulate the CBS reality show on the island. Since May I had played in six and after so many tried and failed attempts, I won my first the week before coming out, so we toasted to that!
Diagon Alley is absolutely incredible in every little detail, it's easily better than Hogsmeade in every category except rides. This is the most detailed themed area I've ever seen in a park, hands down.
Ben and I then went to Olivander's so I could purchase my wand. I looked at the character wands, I thought about getting Dumbledore's because he was my favorite character in the series, but I also wanted something a bit more me. So I talked to one of the employees and asked what wand would suit me. I was asked all kinds of things, what I did for work, what my skill set was, my Hogwarts house, and the next thing I knew an elm wand had chosen me for my problem-solving abilities and knack for helping others.
THESE THINGS ARE SO COOL!!! Ben said I looked like a kid with how amazed I was when I successfully casted my first spell, and I know roughly how the illusion works, but at the end of the day, this is a mindless trick that amused the hell out of me. You can turn lights on, make things move, and more in the elaborate storefronts. The wands are honestly the icing on the cake that make The Wizarding World of Harry Potter as magical as it is. There's an interactive surprise around every corner if you've got one of these! Best mindless $50 I've ever spent!
Wanting to finish the Harry Potter ride lineup strong, we then went to Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, the only ride in Studios's Potter lineup. The main thing I hear about this is that it sucks as a coaster, Ben was telling me to count it as a coaster but judge it as a dark ride because that's what it is. I loved the queue and everything for this! It looks just like the movies, the goblins are amazing, and the station really feels like you're deep underground in a cavern suspended over a huge drop off. The actual coaster portion is just there to fit the theme of a chase on a rail system, the real magic is in the dark ride hardware. It reminds me a lot of the Revolutionary Rides system CTR for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, I think it was called AP-DR or something, with the two linked cars that could be independently controlled. You've got some really convincing simulation scenes, one of which you literally launch right into. There's no real "wow" illusion on this aside from maybe that, but the entire package is incredible and it's definitely the sleeper hit of Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Heading back into the Muggle world, Studios has a different feel to it that's really apparent the second you leave. It looks and feels exactly like those movie sets we saw out in California. It looks nice, don't get me wrong, but it feels a lot more realistic and grown up than fantastical Islands of Adventure. The two parks play the "two sides of the same coin" game perfectly together.
Mummy was next, which I regret not getting pictures of because I absolutely loved that coaster! The dark ride scenes were somewhat familiar, somewhat new, I really liked the fake station trick and the coaster portion kicked major ass. New favorite Premier coaster, hands down!
Another ride Ben had worked, Race Through New York With Jimmy Fallon, was next. It's an old school flying theater, recently updated, and had an interesting queue system that we didn't even need to use. The Tonight Show props in the queue were cool so we looked at those a bit and then got in line to actually ride. It's fun! I chuckled at a few of the jokes, the visuals looked cool, my only gripe is that it was a little too ridiculous with going underwater and to the moon and stuff, I feel it would have been a better ride had it just been tearing through New York City. Still a hell of a time, though!
Thank you, simulator rides, for making me question why I spend thousands of dollars to experience being thrown around on roller coasters when I can just stare at a big fucking screen and it's the same shit.
Next up was a mistake. Both Maurer's mistake for building it, Universal's mistake for asking for it, and our mistake for riding it. That's right, it's my first, and hopefully last, X-car coaster ever, Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit! I hated the concept for this thing when I was getting into enthusiasm, I watched a video on the X-car technology that sold it as a comfortable way to do prolonged inversions and tight turn radii at the expense of rider capacity, something like a Eurofighter that could get even crazier. Seems like a cool concept right? And I thought it was stupid that Universal ordered it without inversions.
Nowadays, I look at it as a business decision that must work for a reason, and cringe at all the stupid comments I made about how Universal was stupid for building this when I was in high school. I was lowkey excited to try an X-car out on this trip. However, Ben warned me that the restraints are super uncomfortable and that the ride's design problems, which caused Universal to finish it themselves, made it an absolute turd of a ride. Walking up to it, I thought it was cool, I remembered the code for Stockholm Syndrome by Muse on the ride, and got kind of excited to ride it...
Sixteen year-old Jarrett did not have a lot of good ideas, but hating this piece of shit was one of them! This coaster is absolutely awful! Those restraints, while similar to Gravity Group's Timberliners which I love, are awful! The problem is how bulky they are, it digs into your gut and makes it hard to breath as the ride throws you into it. I'm not normally one to have any problem with restraints unless they're absolutely horrible, but I had a problem with these restraints. And it's because they're absolutely horrible. Add in the fact that it's aged like milk, gotten rough, has no standout elements of any kind, and had to be finished by the park, just as you get excited for this horrible experience to be over it gets even worse and pummels you twice as hard before finally letting you go. Maybe some of my problem with this comes from being a chonkier dude, but even with the Soviet torture restraints aside I saw nothing redeeming about it. Terrible coaster, worst thing on the trip, one and done!
Walking away with several bruises and several life decisions leading up to that moment questioned, I wanted to do something fun so Ben and I got our Karen on at a ride he currently works: Despicable Me Minion Mayhem! It was fun, obviously for kids but cute and enjoyable. Some of the jokes were also a good laugh, I know we all think of Facebook moms posting stupid memes when we think of minions but they were genuinely funny in the first Despicable Me movie and this is the same kind of humor.
We were on the way out so decided to do Transformers, which felt a lot like Spiderman but way more chaotic and less cohesive. Not a huge Transformers guy but I found it to be some good, mindless fun.
With the park closing down shortly, Ben and I elected to head out and go back to our hotel to rest a bit before going to dinner at CityWalk. But it was a great day at both parks and I couldn't wait to go back and experience them again tomorrow!
Antojito's was our choice for dinner that night, looking for some good Mexican food and mariachi music. The wait was about half an hour so we strolled around and explored CityWalk until our table was ready.
A couple we ran into about was drinking something called a 190 Octane from a place called Fat Tuesday, which they described as tasting like gasoline mixed with Sunny D. I was gonna get one but after getting there and realizing what it was, I was honestly too scared to try something with moonshine or 151 or something that strong mixed in large quantities. So we waited around for our table and I promised myself I would make one when I was home. This looks like a great place to go make bad decisions, such as getting arrested or riding Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit.
Antojitos is beautiful! We were treated to some nice mariachi covers of familiar songs, these guys really know how to spice things up!
Being a good boy and drinking a margarita, not a 190 octane.
We ate our dinner and headed back to the hotel, at which point Ben was fucking dead. He hit the hay but I elected to explore the hotel and found this cool little bar on the first floor where I grabbed a Mai Tai to close out the day!
Good night, Universal! See you tomorrow!
UP NEXT: Some of the lesser appreciated Studios attractions, the best grilled cheese ever, and Jarrett gets fucking WET!
