Date:6/11/2021-6/13/2021
Destination: Orlando, Florida
Goal: Jurassic World Velocicoaster
Distance: 1665 Miles
Means of Travel: Flying
Potential Credits: 2
"Hm," I shrugged, "looks like Universal's getting a Jurassic Park Intamin Blitz in 2020." When Jurassic World Velocicoaster's plans leaked in 2019, when Florida 2020 was being planned, I knew that whatever this cool Jurassic Park coaster was would certainly be an earth-shattering showstopper on the trip. However, delays happened, and COVID happened, and the ride was delayed to 2021. And to further add insult to injury, the ride was half built when I was there on the region trip, glaring at me, not letting me ride. But dammit, I wanted on that thing! It looked so cool!
Flash forward to spring of 2021, they finished it, they tested it, and before I knew it, passholders were on it! And it was soft opening to incredible reviews! Ben was in town the weekend of my birthday to ride Orion and we were chatting, and hatched this crazy plan to fly me down the following week to trade: I hosted him to ride my home park's new ride, now he would return the favor for the new hotness at one of my favorite parks ever: the not very big, but still very very bad, Jurassic World Velocicoaster.
Day 0
Work dragged this day, as usual. I was doing super easy gravy work all day, but the harder I worked, the faster time passed at least. Wasting no time when we let out, I darted to my car, floored it home, changed, I threw on my Jurassic World mask I got last year, and waited for my ride to DAY. My father, and Zoey the lovable Great Dane, picked me up and ran me around the block to my home airport, conveniently located right across the street from my place, Dayton International Airport!
However, I already knew it was a horrible day for anyone in my family to be traveling. My mother was flying home from Fresno on business, and her plane had already made an emergency landing in Salt Lake City of all places because her engine was vibrating...a problem I solve in my line of work every day! I joked with her that I just wanted her to have a fun time in Utah too and we had a laugh about it, but then she missed her connection out of Chicago because her flight there couldn't land with weather, and dad informed me she couldn't get home until 10. So I already knew this had to be a bad omen of some kind for how my flights would go...
I have recently discovered the AMAZING high risk high reward option of flying standby, paying a reduced fare to fill empty seats on a plane. I used it for Utah and loved it, and elected to use it here as well. My plan was to get from Dayton to Detroit, connect, and get on a flight from Detroit to Orlando. However, as the day went on, it looked less and less likely I would make the Detroit flight. The plan became attempting to get on this Orlando flight, and if I couldn't, try to get on the Tampa flight that left 30 gates down the terminal...30 minutes after this Orlando flight.
I took a picture of my plane!
The plane was this god awful Fisher Price toy plane for some slobbering three year-old to play with, all it needed to qualify as a toy for children were annoying repetitive sound effects for mom and dad to endure. I'm only like 5'11 but I felt like I was going to bump my head on the roof of this horrible excuse for an aircraft.
I got on DAY-DTW super super easy, with no danger of getting bumped at all. But while waiting on the tarmac to go...I heard a shrill buzzing noise from the front of the plane! Looking forward, I see the flight attendant clutching one of the infamous cicadas that have swarmed southern Ohio in full force the past few weeks. She's standing there, horrified, clutching this loudly shrieking insect wondering what to even do with it. I mean, I'm no flight attendant but I'm sure the FAA doesn't have an SOP for plagues of insects. The decision was made to tie it in a bag so it didn't fly around during the flight. Plus, the plane was so small it probably would have bumped someone from the standby list had it not been put where it belongs. Meanwhile, I look out on the tarmac to see it absolutely swarming with Brood X, I even had a hitchhiker on my window! Plane takes to the skies, I kick back and relax and enjoy the flight, and before I know it we're at DTW!
I headed to Terminal A, snagged Popeye's, and found my gate, where it was looking less and less likely I would make my flight, and even the gate agent didn't seem too optimistic. I was literally preparing to run to the Tampa flight and see what I could do, but the gate agent told me to stick around because I could get on. I stood around the standby kiss & cry, the crowd of standby travelers in front of the monitors waiting to see who's fucked and who's not like it's the NFL draft...and then I see it! I got a seat! I ran to the gate agent, gave her my pass, got my seat form, and parked it as the heart attack waned, accepting that I was on my flight and going to Orlando.
Play the Amazing Race theme and get this thing off the ground! Let's fuckin gooooo!!!
...or just sit there in the rain for half an hour waiting to take off. That's fine too. Ben, being the aviation nerd he is, decided to eavesdrop on air traffic control, and man did he give me the tea! There was all kinds of arguing, he told me DTW was a dumpster fire at the moment. And with my already stupid late arrival time, that was something we didn't need!
Milk, a biopic about Harvey Milk, America's first openly gay elected official, was my Pride Month-themed viewing of choice for this flight. It was either this or the documentary on Simone Biles, and I flipped between the two a lot (no pun intended), but ultimately decided on this. Amazing movie, I knew who Harvey Milk was but I never really knew his story, so this was something I felt it was important to at least be familiar with. Honestly a pretty sad and tragic film in parts, a lot of the stuff in there actually made me mad to see people treated that way or suffer some of the fates they did, but I feel I'm a better person for having known about it. It's one of those films that should be required viewing for everyone.
After a long, dark, rainy flight, I made it to Orlando! I got distracted and went the wrong way trying to navigate my way out of the dark airport, but Ben got me anyway like the good friend he is, then we went to his place, swung by a 7-11 to get snacks and beer, chilled for a bit...and realized it was 1 in the morning. And Universal opened at 8. Gonna be an early morning for us, time to hit the hay! Time for some raptor running the next morning, and I just wanted a shower and a place to sleep!
Day 2
I was actually up earlier than I needed to be, maybe I was just excited, maybe my brain was just deciding it didn't need sleep, maybe my attempts to nod off on both flights actually worked, I don't know. But it was time to get up, get to the park, and do the Velocicoaster thing!
Good morning, Universal!
Waiting outside the park to get in, I had brought my wand and sheathed it in a little elastic pocket in my camera bag...and it stupidly fell out and chipped the corner of the handle on the pavement! Ben told me they could do a wand repair in the park but first...Velocicoaster!
By the time we were even back there, cutting through the Port of Entry, Marvel Superhero Island, and Toon Lagoon, I felt like I had already been chased by velociraptors before even getting on the ride! This was a hike, but a very worthwhile one. "Might want to steer clear of Delta," the ride op informed us as we entered the queue, "she's a bit nippy today." Time to go!
Velocicoaster's queue, as one would expect, is super, super well-themed, from the cattlepen in the front to the walkthrough inside. There's a large curved atrium housing a cattlepen to welcome you here, with this statue of the four raptors and coaster in the background, accompanied by these screens showing b-roll of the ride and safety instructions.
In the next room is the viewing area for the second launch, which actually shows raptors chasing the train. The lights on this coaster are synced up in a few rooms, and go from a beautiful blue glow to an ominous red flash when she launches.
The following room is a locker room that doesn't last very long, and then you go to this room, featuring the two animatronic raptor heads where health checks are supposedly performed. These animatronics are pretty simple but still really cool, you can actually feel them exhale onto you when they snort and huff.
After this is the actual ride locker room, where I got no pictures in a rush but they look like normal Universal lockers. There are banks of lockers, denoted by not only a number but a color and dinosaur (green stegosaurus, purple pteranodon, etc.) where you lock your stuff up, with open backs allowing you to retrieve them after your journey. To exit the lockers, there's a metal detector that leads up the stairs and into one final cattlepen, where you see Chris Pratt arguing that building a roller coaster in a pen of dangerous velociraptors is a bad idea, and everyone else is like "naaa it's fine" in classic Jurassic Park fashion. Once you're through that, it's time to ride!
Holy steaming pile of dinosaur shit! Goddamn that's good! Like, really good! Velocicoaster has elements from all kinds of coasters I like, there's not a single thing this doesn't bring to the table! I rode in the front and fucking loved it! It's like Copperhead Strike meets Steel Vengeance!
Ben informed me Velocicoaster has two halves. One half is like Cheetah Hunt and focuses on pacing and terrain, the other half is over the water and deals more with airtime and aggression, a la Steel Vengeance. So you enter this launch tunnel and there's the raptor cages where Owen was arguing in the preshow on either side, you can see them all riled up and ready to go. They take off and the train launches through this rock cave and into this Immelmann loop, with airtime on the twist. This was an extremely familiar sensation, as this rolling airtime is exactly like it is on Cannibal's inversions, which I later had confirmed for me is done by twisting the track around a line below the heartline, putting the riders' CG off center and putting Newton's Second Law to work. It does this again through another inversion, and both flip over these jagged rocks that look like you're about to be impaled on them upside-down. It then goes through a few turns and hops around the rocks, with a few close calls with the raptors, before rolling into the tunnel for the second launch.
Coming out of the second launch, you're blasted into this top hat that dishes out great air in the front and back, and while it isn't terribly tall, provides a great view of the park!
After this is where the shit hits the fan and things get absolutely insane. This second half is very, and I mean, VERY RMC. You have some more twistjector into the stall, which throws you into your restraint before you hang upside-down in it for a few seconds...and then it tries to throw you again when it snaps you out of it! Afterwards is a wave turn, outward-banked hop, both of which deliver airtime, and an overbank. But to finish out, the ride gives you a little toss once more over an airtime hop...and then into the signature element of the ride: the Mosasaurus Roll. Again, rotated around an axis of rotation beneath the heartline so as to fling you up and out of your seat, this high-speed snap leaves you kissing the water below, not just hanging from your lap bar, but actually pressing against it pretty hard as the ripples move beneath your head. There's a double up into the brakes, with two more pops, before you're sitting in this grated steel tunnel, awed, shaken, and wondering what the hell just happened and why you loved it so much.
After my first ride on Velocicoaster in the front, I ranked it 4th in my rankings, behind Railblazer, Steel Vengeance, and Lightning Rod in that order.
This is the perfect coaster for the velociraptor. It's fast, small, keeps going and going, and man is she a clever girl! Intamin was super innovative with this ride! 420+ coasters later and this thing probably did at least 3 things that were totally new to me, not seen on any other coaster. I loved it! Move over, Skyrush! Got a new favorite non-RMC in town! We rode again, this time in the third row from the back, and it was even better! I loved being yanked out of the flips as the train was pulling us forward, only complaint back here is that it's already got a bit of a rattle.
Okay, but the lighting here fucked me. Taking pictures in the overflow queue, the sun was pointing into my camera, when it should be pointing away, lighting my subject in the front. Ah well, we'll come back during the golden hour!
And speaking of things that fucked my photos over, I was getting this shot when this STUPID FUCKING IDIOT put his hand in my shot for no fucking reason, I was so mad at him! And later in the queue with the raptors...the same travel party asks me to take their picture with it! After being flabbergasted that these dipshits can do that and have the audacity to ask for a photo, I just kind of cooked up, "eh, I don't feel like it" and blew them off, and photographed the raptors as I wanted to. Ben took their photo and told me I was rude to them, and I told him I simply refuse to take photos for people that do rude shit like that when I'm trying to take them for myself...
...it wasn't them. My face blind ass recognized completely different people as this idiot's travel party and I felt horrible!
After Velocicoaster we hopped on Hogwarts Express and headed over to Studios for another Universal ride that wasn't running when I was here last: the ultra-awesome super cool insanely immersive Fast & Furious: Supercharged! Also known as Olive Garden, because when you're here you're family!
The queue for the ride was actually pretty cool. There's all kinds of cars in what looks like a mechanic's shop, it looked very Grand Theft Auto. One of the chairs had a jacket hung on it with a nametag reading "Luis," who Ben informed me was sadly one of a few Universal team members that passed away in the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, five years ago from the date of this trip, so that was sad but nice to know. Further on, the acting in the preshows was actually really good and the party bus vehicles were cool!
...and then this ride gets really stupid really fast. The first few scenes of the actual dark ride were pretty cool, but when you get to the tunnel scene, the same exact one used on Universal Studios Hollywood's studio tour, it's fucking stupid I'm sorry. You see on the screen that the bus is moving forward and accelerating to the same speed to race these powerful beefed up import sports cars while you're feeling the bus slow to a stop. Then it's just watching shit explode on a screen while you're banged around these uncomfortable seats with no seatbelt or padding while these stupid water sprays hit you to represent blink and you miss it shit on the screens.
Honestly, not a fan of this ride concept, and both this and Kong failed to really wow me in the way that other screen-based simulator dark rides have. This should have gone to Universal Hollywood in my opinion, it's the perfect love letter to LA car culture and would have fit in great as an attraction that takes up no space as its own thing aside from the studio tour segment. Hell, Universal Orlando could have easily gotten a Maurer racer like GT Challenge or something to represent this franchise in a way that would impress people way more. At least I counted 12 uses of "family" throughout the whole experience!
Done with family hour, Ben and I were feeling hungry and had not eaten all day, so we chose to be bougie and grab a bite at Lombard's, a seafood place in the Fisherman's Wharf area right across from Furious. I splurged a little bit and got this seared tuna with cucumber salad, mango and carrot chutney, and rice with some sort of decadent vinaigrette and spicy aioli. It was so good! By far the best thing I've eaten in a park!
Mummy was next, which gave me serious flashbacks to that escape room from last weekend! I love this coaster, both for the cool theming and because the ride itself kicks some major ass as well. Ben and I got stuck on it briefly while it was stacking, but I still love it!
And what's this? Force readings from Mummy!
We swung by the Jurassic World tribute store, which was pretty cool! It's like a well-themed store containing all kinds of Jurassic World merchandise, not only souvenirs but also like baked goods as well. It's cool they do this! All parks should have a store they retheme seasonally like this.
Continuing around Studios, I wanted to try Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit's test seat to see if I would fit better than the literal chokehold it put me in back in November, and I fit just fine! Still awkward to get in and out of, and I still needed a shove, but it wasn't so bad I'd struggle to breathe on it.
I thought about riding it, but I wasn't waiting an hour for this piece of shit.
They had this really cool Olympics thing going on in the grassy field in front of Rockit, sadly the food tasting stands weren't open, but this was still cool to see! Wish I could be here during the games to watch here!
This was cool to see on this day, this was the memorial Universal put up in honor of the team members that were killed in the Pulse shooting, including Luis from Fast & Furious who I mentioned earlier. It's subtle and in a corner near Bourne, but it's definitely worth at least noticing if you're here. It's amazing the park put it up.
Continuing back around, we swung by Diagon Alley to see what I could do about the busted wand from earlier. I just strolled in, found a team member, and told them that my wand, a keepsake from the region trip in November, got dropped at the park gate and asked if there was any way they could spellotape it up or something. I get told "I'll go see if I can repair it" and the guy heads to the back, and comes out with the same wand without the chip! Now I know, my old wand was tossed and replaced with a new one, but that was so cool that they just did that on the spot with no receipt or proof of purchase or anything.
We headed back around to Islands, the vastly superior park, and got in line for Velocicoaster. Look at this lighting, it'll make for some great photos, right!?
Let's run some raptors!
Well it did...but not with a train in it! What was supposed to be a sexy photo sesh with this beautiful coaster turned into walking past a quiet coaster as the queue emptied and bad weather barely clipped the park, leaving us to shelter inside the outdoor cattlepen...with an annoying kid in front of us and one of Florida's infamous Brazilian travel parties behind us. So these girls are having a hell of a time clapping and cheering and singing as I sat glued to my radar, phone plugged into my portable charger, praying this thing would open up.
Rain rain, go away, come again another day! Preferably when I'm not here!
But when it did...damn! We rode in the back, and the airtime you get through the other elements is just as good as it is through the front, but back there, the twistjector (I'm inventing this term now, it's a thing) out of the first two inversions is stronger, and it also tries to throw you a lot harder coming out of the top hat. Favorite seat on the coaster easily! I came back into the brakes wagging my finger number one, Ben asks "wait, better than Railblazer?" and I quickly put up a second finger. That gesture was in response to it besting Steel Vengeance, not Railblazer, and somehow I had forgotten about my real number one in the moment, and how it's not the coaster everyone expects. So Jurassic World Velocicoaster now ranks #2, above Steel Vengeance, and below Railblazer. And honestly, that's an appropriate spot for this coaster. Velocicoaster feels like a longer version of Railblazer, same types of elements, same amount of airtime, but without the crazy pacing and terrifying fifteen inch track. The only thing that could really make Velocicoaster better than Railblazer I think is, ironically, RMC's Raptor Track!
Why didn't Universal make this a launched raptor track, anyway? Surely that had to come up in discussion!
I took accelerometer data with my watch, but it sadly started moving the second I hit record, so I couldn't get accurate data.
I needed Sky Trolley's purple side next, so we headed over and waited in a short twenty minute queue to get the credit. The ride itself was better than I remember the teal side being, it counts as a credit because it uses Mack's powered coaster ride system and I actually felt it gain momentum down one of the smaller slopes. Unlike the teal side, however, this one tells a continuous story. It goes through the circus restaurant and tells the story of the star-bellied sneetches, which I don't remember from childhood, but deals with these weird bird things that some of them have stars on their stomachs, and the ones with stars are better than the ones without, they learn that with or without a star a sneetch is a sneetch, we're all the same inside, yada yada yada. "What'd you think?" Ben asked me. All I could say? "Dude, I think we just rode a children's ride about racism!" And sadly, there are several people that I know, enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike, that could still stand to learn the simple lesson told here.
We did Hulk next, where I accidentally set off the metal detector by forgetting to lock my phone up (actually me being a fucking idiot caused us to use 3 different lockers, I felt horrible!) but the ride was way worse than usual! It beat the hell out of Ben and I like Wildfire does, completely different from the glass smooth curvy B&M I rode in November. A newly rebuilt coaster should not ride like this ever!
Force readings on this POS for those interested.
Ben and I headed around to Velocicoaster...and saw it was down! Oh no! So we took the time to sit down and look at my flight options for tomorrow, and saw that there were a few flights from MCO to CVG. My mom was busy the next day so I had no ride home there, but I knew I could figure something out, so I decided to just go direct.
Velocicoaster was still down when we got over there, but they were clearly getting ready to open it back up since it was cycling. I wanted to catch it at the magic hour, when the sun was pointed right at the track to illuminate things as much as possible, so I was stoked to get in line as the sun went down...but that meant no good lighting at all because the delay went so long! Ugh! My morning pictures were all the good close up shots I had of this thing, I made it work in Photoshop Express, but I went home with concerns about how much better they could have been...
Time to ride! Line didn't move fast enough to get two night rides, but by the time we were at the front, it was pitch black outside.
So...the ride op barely put my bar down and I had a good inch or so of space to get tossed around! And man oh man, getting tossed around in the darkness, it's barely lit up a dim orange in the paddock and pitch black over the water like a Magnum night ride, it's insane. But when you're getting your ass literally lifted out of your seat??? I literally had to hang on through some of those elements because my brain was convinced that I could be going for a swim!
Islands of Adventure was a park that I felt had almost everything it needed to be among the best I had been to when I first visited, but I felt it was lacking a world class coaster. And they gave it just what it needed: an incredible machine on par with Universal's level of theming that could run with the most insane coasters in the United States. Hats off, Universal and Intamin. You did what you needed to do, and you did it well.
After park close, Ben and I swung by Wendy's and went back, and saw that my first opportunity to get home was actually a flight into CVG that left at 7 am, and I had no way to get back from CVG, but Ohio was better than nothing! I had to be up in four hours, so I showered, washed the sunscreen and sweat off of me, and hit the hay.
Day 3
Ben wasn't feeling well the next morning, probably my fault to some extent for the super intense day we just had, so I Lyfted to MCO with this really cool Lyft driver that had a child that liked roller coasters. So I told him about my blog and we conversed and I just learned this stranger I had sort of run into was super cool! Usually I hate meeting people when I travel but this guy had done some great things in his life, so that opened my eyes a bit. You never know what the wind will throw your way on the road!
I got into MCO, past rude TSA, and made it to and onto my flight no problem. So long, Orlando! Back to pretty much the same state but with snow!
And back at CVG, I texted Drew to see if he could get me, and being the awesome friend he is, he popped down the second he got the text and picked me up after sitting on my ass and eating a bagel for two hours. We snagged Popeye's on the way home and also swung by Scene 75 for a spin on Dayton's SBF spinner for a laugh. I'd have hung out with him longer, but I was so tired and just wanted to get home and go to war editing these photos.
Shoutout to everyone that made this trip possible. Intamin and Universal worked together to create a fantastic coaster that I grew to love within a few rides that's one of the best I've experienced to date, and I can't wait to see what both of them cook up going forward. Also a big thanks to Ben and his roommates for hosting and helping out, you guys are all awesome even if you flip my inversion photos for cheap humor! And last but not least, I want to thank all the Universal team members, from the ride ops on Velocicoaster helping it devour that huge line to the merch employee in Potter that "fixed" my wand, you all kicked ass and did so much to make today special!
Good girl, Intamin. Now do it again...
