I'll try and be a better blogger and write every couple of days rather than something awful like once a week (or worse..).
So, I'm starting with Tuesday 21st July when we went to Universal Studios. I absolutely love it there, I would say it's definitely the best theme park around here. Liv and I have annual passes as we go there so often it makes sense to, we get our money's worth, even if we are only here for 5 weeks in the summer and 2 weeks at Christmas, that's how much we go there!
First of all we went on the Hulk, I feel the need to mention a specific detail of this ride. In most roller coasters when you're going up to the top before the big, fast dive down, you go up quite slowly which gives you plenty of time to regret your decision to go on this ride and question life, but that's definitely not the case on Hulk. Instead of going up really slowly, you're shot up really quickly and then thrown around the roller coaster, they talk about some G-Force but I can't remember enough about that to accurately mention it in detail. It's a blimming good ride, over in a matter of seconds as most roller coasters are, but brilliant.
We then decided since it was early and most people are sensible enough not to choose to get completely soaked at about 9 o'clock in the morning, that we would go on the water rides. The queues were 5 minutes which is practically unheard of at Universal in mid-summer. They get extremely busy at midday when the temperature is at its peak for the day, you can't really blame the frying masses for flocking to the water rides at that point. Anyway, we came water-ride prepared and had rain ponchos, we looked ridiculous, but sucked it up anyway. For the ride you sit in a big circular 'Barge' that can fit something like 8 people in, you then proceed to crash down some rapids and get completely soaked. There were some very wet shoes by the end of that ride!
After that we went on a ride called Ripsaw Falls. It's much like a lot of classic water rides, it's like a log flume, very high and steep. We went on Ripsaw Falls twice since the wait is usually an hour and we were pretty much able to get straight on.
Okay, this is taking longer than I thought, I'm unable to be concise. To dry off from the water rides we walked to the Harry Potter section. Any HP fans like me, until you see the Harry Potter section at Universal you have not lived. It's insane. There's the castle, which is actually a ride, there's Hogsmeade with loads of shops to go in and you can get the Hogwarts Express from Islands of Adventure to Universal Studios where Gringotts and Diagon Alley is (Universal is made up of two parks). We had a Butterbeer in Hogsmeade and watched the Durmstrang boys perform on the stage outside Hogwarts (Apologies to those who have no idea what I'm talking about, virtual high-five to those who do). We looked around some shops, we went into Honeydukes and admired the beautiful array of sweets.
We didn't go on any of the rides there as we weren't prepared to wait 45 minutes (even though that's probably a decent wait time..). We figured that we would come back another day and the Harry Potter rides would be the first ones we'd do. We got the Hogwarts Express to Diagon Alley and had a look round there. Details about the shops and places there will have to be in another post when we go back as we only briefly looked around.
We went to the Mummy which is the ride conveniently associated with the Mummy Films. Unusually it's an inside roller coaster which is largely in the dark, there's fire and "broken glass" (a.k.a water droplets..) and it's genuinely a really good ride. The wait time is usually about 15 minutes when we go but it's a really long walk to get to the actual ride so we usually find we're straight on, and it's never 15 minutes anyway. When we went this time we had to wait a bit longer but we did go as 'Single Riders' so it was a bit quicker.
Afterwards we went for lunch in the Simpsons section, in particular in Mo's Bar. Perfect timing too as it started tipping it down.
We then did the Men In Black ride, E.T (I love the E.T ride, very cute) and finally the newest Harry Potter ride, Escape from Gringotts. That was an ace ride, we went Single Riders again although this time the queue was long and boring. It was made slightly better by the fact some Australians were talking to us and they loved Sharknado. Two things I love, the Aussie accent and Sharknado.
And talking of Sharknado's, we watched the second one that night. It definitely wasn't as good as the first one, so much so that I actually fell asleep and missed a good chunk, although whether it was actually "good" is another question!
And that brings me to the end of Tuesday. Wow, that took me wayyy longer than I was anticipating.. Reading it you have no idea how long it takes me to write these, but trust me, it's a long time...
I guess I should get back to the whole 'Today the Big Wide World has taught me' thing, so I'll just pass on this one gem of advice: "If you're stuck in a Sharknado, find yourself a chainsaw." (But on a side note, avoid a Sharknado at all costs!).
I suppose I better get started on Wednesday's activities.. Thank goodness tomorrow is a chill day where I can hopefully *fingers crossed* catch up!!
Sorry it's been so long,
L
xxx
First of all we went on the Hulk, I feel the need to mention a specific detail of this ride. In most roller coasters when you're going up to the top before the big, fast dive down, you go up quite slowly which gives you plenty of time to regret your decision to go on this ride and question life, but that's definitely not the case on Hulk. Instead of going up really slowly, you're shot up really quickly and then thrown around the roller coaster, they talk about some G-Force but I can't remember enough about that to accurately mention it in detail. It's a blimming good ride, over in a matter of seconds as most roller coasters are, but brilliant.
We then decided since it was early and most people are sensible enough not to choose to get completely soaked at about 9 o'clock in the morning, that we would go on the water rides. The queues were 5 minutes which is practically unheard of at Universal in mid-summer. They get extremely busy at midday when the temperature is at its peak for the day, you can't really blame the frying masses for flocking to the water rides at that point. Anyway, we came water-ride prepared and had rain ponchos, we looked ridiculous, but sucked it up anyway. For the ride you sit in a big circular 'Barge' that can fit something like 8 people in, you then proceed to crash down some rapids and get completely soaked. There were some very wet shoes by the end of that ride!
After that we went on a ride called Ripsaw Falls. It's much like a lot of classic water rides, it's like a log flume, very high and steep. We went on Ripsaw Falls twice since the wait is usually an hour and we were pretty much able to get straight on.
Okay, this is taking longer than I thought, I'm unable to be concise. To dry off from the water rides we walked to the Harry Potter section. Any HP fans like me, until you see the Harry Potter section at Universal you have not lived. It's insane. There's the castle, which is actually a ride, there's Hogsmeade with loads of shops to go in and you can get the Hogwarts Express from Islands of Adventure to Universal Studios where Gringotts and Diagon Alley is (Universal is made up of two parks). We had a Butterbeer in Hogsmeade and watched the Durmstrang boys perform on the stage outside Hogwarts (Apologies to those who have no idea what I'm talking about, virtual high-five to those who do). We looked around some shops, we went into Honeydukes and admired the beautiful array of sweets.
 |
| Honeydukes |
 |
| Hogwarts Castle |
 |
| Hogsmeade |
We went to the Mummy which is the ride conveniently associated with the Mummy Films. Unusually it's an inside roller coaster which is largely in the dark, there's fire and "broken glass" (a.k.a water droplets..) and it's genuinely a really good ride. The wait time is usually about 15 minutes when we go but it's a really long walk to get to the actual ride so we usually find we're straight on, and it's never 15 minutes anyway. When we went this time we had to wait a bit longer but we did go as 'Single Riders' so it was a bit quicker.
Afterwards we went for lunch in the Simpsons section, in particular in Mo's Bar. Perfect timing too as it started tipping it down.
We then did the Men In Black ride, E.T (I love the E.T ride, very cute) and finally the newest Harry Potter ride, Escape from Gringotts. That was an ace ride, we went Single Riders again although this time the queue was long and boring. It was made slightly better by the fact some Australians were talking to us and they loved Sharknado. Two things I love, the Aussie accent and Sharknado.
And talking of Sharknado's, we watched the second one that night. It definitely wasn't as good as the first one, so much so that I actually fell asleep and missed a good chunk, although whether it was actually "good" is another question!
And that brings me to the end of Tuesday. Wow, that took me wayyy longer than I was anticipating.. Reading it you have no idea how long it takes me to write these, but trust me, it's a long time...
I guess I should get back to the whole 'Today the Big Wide World has taught me' thing, so I'll just pass on this one gem of advice: "If you're stuck in a Sharknado, find yourself a chainsaw." (But on a side note, avoid a Sharknado at all costs!).
I suppose I better get started on Wednesday's activities.. Thank goodness tomorrow is a chill day where I can hopefully *fingers crossed* catch up!!
Sorry it's been so long,
L
xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment