Rob Coasters
Rob Poster
I remember planning this the year before, but I pushed it back because I thought to myself, "nah I'm not ready for this", but this time I absolutely was, and I was itching to finally get out there. Some overseas friends from America were so excited to see my reactions to the rides that one of them was willing to fly out from Indiana just to be there for my first ride on Spider-Man, but some last-second changes in plans ultimately made that impossible.
Around three weeks before our visit, our flight to Orlando was suddenly cancelled due to a shortage in some technical thing that escapes my brain. This required us to rebook onto a different flight, and while we were refunded in full, we had to do the second cheapest option (which required forking over an extra £300) and either
-a six hour layover at JFK (New York, USA)
or
-a two hour layover at KEF (Reykjavik, Iceland)
The decision was made to layover in Iceland, which ended up being the right call, because despite the short time, it was still plenty because both of our flights departed on time and were with the same airline (Icelandair) so we would have been compensated had any complications arised. For my first ever layover, it went fantastically, and it was at possibly the best airport in the world for layovers as well. So good for layovers in fact, that Icelandair jokingly reminds people "hey, we do tourism here as well!"
Anyway, we landed and I got a mini heart attack and almost went insane as my phone wasn't connecting to any sort of internet AGAIN, even with my eSIM, but thankfully all it required was a phone restart. Border control went swimmingly, and we got an Uber in a Ford F150 to our hotel for the night.
Our cancelled flight there was the only reasonably priced flight to Orlando that day, so our new flight was a day earlier which allowed us to have an extra day in the USA. We allocated this day to some random sightseeing, and also meant that every park day was a full one from open to close.
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Day 1 started us at Universal Studios North Campus, which we had a park-hopper ticket for, and OBVIOUSLY our first ride was going to be #502 Jurassic World Velocicoaster. What are you doing if your first ride in Orlando isn't an early morning lap of Velocicoaster? Come on. Our first ride was in the back, row 12, and my goodness was this a simply wonderful experience. The first half is filled with Taron-esque twists and turns, as you race under, around and through the enclosure of dinosaurs and trees and rocks on your magical coaster vehicle sightseeing thingy. The second half introduces you with a launch up to the highest point of the ride and an absolutely wicked drop off the top of it, leading you to then speed upside down over pathways before encircling the bridge and ending with a fast-paced roll over the water and into the brakes. "You did it!"
Most people refer to Velocicoaster like it's the be-all and end-all of roller coasters, the greatest thing ever conceived, but after one lap it doesn't even make the top ten. This thing had a STRONG rattle to it to the point where I already came off with a bit of a headache, and honestly the roll over the water fell a little flat as the finale. Dubbed the "mosasaurus roll", it was hailed as the world's greatest inversion, but I definitely didn't feel that way. I honestly came off thinking "I wish that whole ride did a little... more for me", but it was early morning so it was bound to never break my top 3, I have those "I'll get back to it later" thoughts. I'll get another ride that doesn't try to rattle my brains out, but it has strong foundations to be a truly incredible roller coaster and currently stands as around an 8/10.
Islands of Adventure opened an hour earlier than Studios, so it was wise to rope-drop two parks in the same day. We did this the long and fancy way via Hogwarts Express, which we used to hop over. It's a really cool way to switch parks, and takes excellent advantage of the fact that they both have a Harry Potter area. The ride system is basically a funicular, and shows some cool little scenes during your journey.
For some reason Universal Studios Florida invoked by far the biggest "oh my goodness I'm finally here!" reaction out of any park in this week. Perhaps this was where everything suddenly "hit" as my mouth was suddenly agape.
We didn't quite manage to make it for rope-drop due to us taking the scenic route so the target had already built up a substantial queue, but that can be the mission for our second visit here later on. Instead we headed towards Men in Black Alien Attack, a very different take on the classic shooting dark ride genre. I honestly wasn't a fan of the fact that it didn't have any targets on where exactly to shoot - I was just shooting randomly and gaining points for no apparent reasons. We pushed a red button when the dude demanded us to do so and for some reason that must've been wrong because we spun out 6-7 times.
I understand that it tries something new, but I do think I prefer just knowing what I'm supposed to be looking for by quite a significant margin.
From here on out we start meeting a lot of my Orlando local friends, who started giving us cool and interesting facts and history about the park. In the queue for Simpsons Ride we saw where the Halloween Horror Nights houses are kept, and how the park really does feel like their old roller coaster Rip Ride Rockit never existed.
Simpsons Ride was really cool, one of the park's multiple simulator rides, and honestly one that I really enjoyed, but it was the start of a growing trend of rides in this park that seriously feel one-and-done. The majority of attractions in Universal Studios Florida feel like things I only needed to do once ever. Something that I would really, really enjoy on my first go, and have zero desire to ever do again because all of the cool tricks and jokes would be completely lost on me by round two. They're a pack of excellent rides that you'd never want to do again.
Photo by Ben S
ET Adventure was very nice, it felt like the American equivalent of Eteling's Droomvlucht and a tasteful love letter to the original films with a great queue under the indoor trees. My main takeaway from this ride was that if you queued an hour for this thing and were made to sit in the rightmost half of the ride vehicle, you would miss out on damn near everything, as for some reason almost every scene is designed to be seen from the left.
Photo by Ethan S
However, I'm joining the club in saying that Villain Con Minion Blast is AWFUL. This ride mainly serves as a tech demo for a shooting dark ride where you stand on a moving conveyor belt, and it's mind-numbingly boring as you shoot some screens with an unresponsive delayed gun and you have no idea what you're even doing as you get bored and want off by the halfway point. It's a real flop of a ride, and the ten minutes we queued for this still managed to feel like a complete waste of time.
Photo by Dominic B
Meanwhile, Bourne Stuntacular managed to be my favourite attraction in the park and my new favourite theme park show (although the competition isn't... much). Clearly they were having issues with finding enough people to warrant keeping this thing around as they were practically begging people on the midway to come into the show, but we filled almost the entire venue this time around which was neat. The general idea is that Jason Bourne is this John Wick wannabe who likes shooting guns and pushing baddies off rooftops.
Bourne Stuntacular's signature move is that it absolutely seamlessly combines physical props with screens, an illusion that caught me off guard on multiple occasions and was seriously impressive - sometimes Mr. Bourne pushed a physical guy off a building and I saw him fall to the ground with my very eyes until he suddenly disappeared and he was actually on the screen the whole time. I loved it a lot, truly a stuntacular show.
Photo by Ben S
Finally it was time for another highlight, #503 Revenge of the Mummy. Hosting an extended queue featuring multiple black tents of hell that multiply the voices of everyone surrounding you by four times, this was an incredible dark ride that immediately became one of my favourite indoor roller coasters. Being full to the brim of Things To Look At is shockingly difficult to come across nowadays when riding indoor coasters, and Mummy has something to see every step of the way, which was so refreshing to finally come across. Coupled with an absolutely insane fire effect that had my jaw on the floor, a punchy coaster section and a brilliant finale to end everything out, it's not hard to see why this was the favourite attraction ever of one of the Orlando friends that I was with. I've found a ride in this park that's worth doing more than once! Although you could argue Men in Black has those qualities too.
Next was arguably the single worst attraction on Universal property, Fast and Furious Supercharged, whose demise we will see later next year. And I'm happy I got to ride this, because this is one of the funniest theme park attractions I have ever ridden. With sarcastic pre-show actors who absolutely know how awful this ride is and make it very known, the actual ride section leaves you in uncontrollable hysterics at the absurdity and utter stupidity of everything that happens around you. Boarding the Fortnite Battle Bus, you get squirted with water for no apparent reason, see a man the size of a helicopter, and overall witness chaos and destruction while having no idea what you're doing or why you're here. In terms of being a serious theme park attraction, this is one of the worst rides ever created. In terms of being a hilarious joke of a ride, it nails that aspect. I won't be sad to see it go, but I will be sad that I might not be able to take a first-timer on this to see their reaction.
Some exploration of the park occurred next with some wandering down the streets of Diagon Alley, visiting the Gong of Resounding Resemblance, trying to ride Transformers until it broke down and died before we even entered the indoor section of the queue, and having the time of our lives in the SpongeBob Store before finding ourselves in the Horror Make-Up Show which is due to close for refurbishment imminently. This was a really cool look into how physical special effects are created with a side of excellent humour in it as well and six-seven related shenanigans which is always welcome too. The ending was hilarious as well, and left me with a fantastic first impression on a show that otherwise didn't sound that interesting on paper. It's really good.
With that, we headed back to Islands where the sun started to set. Incredible Hulk was skipped for now, but instead we rode Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man which immediately cemented itself as my favourite execution of screens in a dark ride. I absolutely adored how much you were "involved" here. The enemies on the screens zap you and your ride vehicle (scoop) vibrates with it. They see YOU as an actual threat just as much as they see Spider-Man as a threat. You're not just a bystander to it all, you ARE the story and I thought it was all so amazing. Featuring the single most impressive fire effect that I've seen in my travels for entertainment, and the absolutely wild finale where everything just turns up to eleven and you start going up all these buildings, damn is this thing sweet and leaves me so impressed every single time. I fully understand my Indiana friend who wanted to fly over just to be there when I rode this for the first time, this thing is over thirty years old and is somehow still a prime example of how to do screens almost perfectly.
My only complaint is that I would've liked to have been splashed a little more when the water guy appeared against us, but other than that, this is so close to perfect.
Some aimless wandering led us to Camp Jurassic, a really cool walkthrough cave which was beautifully lit up at night.
And we had to leave our Velocicoaster night rides for later as queues for that were breaching the 150 minute mark, so instead we walked onto Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey for a night ride which had a zero-minute wait in the single rider queue, and this was already a contender for the biggest disappointment of the week. To be fair, my standards for this weren't the highest in the first place as this is older technology that has not aged well at all, but man it shows. You could certainly tell that this was insane for its time back when it opened in somewhere around 2010, but it's fallen behind very quickly. The ride system basically being a four-seater compartment attached to multiple robot arms that rotate in their own wacky ways to simulate flight, but it falls short in several ways. Sometimes it throws you in front of a projected screen where you briefly fly on a broomstick, but this is especially lost on you with the lack of any wind effects so you're just sort of watching TV while swaying around a bit.
The rest of it involves some interesting props but a lot of dead space in between them, and generally the whole ride feels a bit like it doesn't really know what to do. It's trying to be its awesomely impressive thing, but it's 16 years old technology that was absolutely revolutionarily insane for its time, but has unfortunately not aged that way.
An Orlando friend in the ride vehicle behind me noted me looking around confused, presumably trying to get a better view of the ride system, while going through an empty dark corridor waiting for something to happen.
Our final ride of the day was a pitch-black night ride on #504 Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure which we were highly recommended to hit at the end of the day, because the Express Pass has obliterated the standby capacity of this poor thing, and this was substantially noticed once Express had emptied out when we started moving through the line at triple the speed that we were.
Onto the ride, this is one of the most mechanically complex roller coasters in the world. Featuring onboard audio, animatronics, seven launches, a rolling switch-track, a backwards section and a drop track, it's no wonder that this was the world's most expensive roller coaster when it opened, beating out a mine train built into a 199.5ft recreation of Mt. Everest. Force-wise this isn't the most impressive ride in the world, and it ends very abruptly - two turns after the ride reaches its top speed on the final launch - but in terms of a joyous family coaster that tells a great story, it's a winner. With Harry Potter rides you probably don't want too much intensity anyway, as Forbidden Journey seems to be by far the most nauseating ride on Universal property, so they knew what they were going for here and won. Unfortunately with its extreme popularity and Express Pass priority, unless you're willing to queue-close it or wait three hours, this is notoriously difficult to ride, so that singular go must be cherished.
Photo by Ben S
That wraps up our first park day of Florida and a fantastic first impression.
Tomorrow - Cosmic Rewind and Rise of the Resistance
Around three weeks before our visit, our flight to Orlando was suddenly cancelled due to a shortage in some technical thing that escapes my brain. This required us to rebook onto a different flight, and while we were refunded in full, we had to do the second cheapest option (which required forking over an extra £300) and either
-a six hour layover at JFK (New York, USA)
or
-a two hour layover at KEF (Reykjavik, Iceland)
The decision was made to layover in Iceland, which ended up being the right call, because despite the short time, it was still plenty because both of our flights departed on time and were with the same airline (Icelandair) so we would have been compensated had any complications arised. For my first ever layover, it went fantastically, and it was at possibly the best airport in the world for layovers as well. So good for layovers in fact, that Icelandair jokingly reminds people "hey, we do tourism here as well!"
Anyway, we landed and I got a mini heart attack and almost went insane as my phone wasn't connecting to any sort of internet AGAIN, even with my eSIM, but thankfully all it required was a phone restart. Border control went swimmingly, and we got an Uber in a Ford F150 to our hotel for the night.
Our cancelled flight there was the only reasonably priced flight to Orlando that day, so our new flight was a day earlier which allowed us to have an extra day in the USA. We allocated this day to some random sightseeing, and also meant that every park day was a full one from open to close.
-
Day 1 started us at Universal Studios North Campus, which we had a park-hopper ticket for, and OBVIOUSLY our first ride was going to be #502 Jurassic World Velocicoaster. What are you doing if your first ride in Orlando isn't an early morning lap of Velocicoaster? Come on. Our first ride was in the back, row 12, and my goodness was this a simply wonderful experience. The first half is filled with Taron-esque twists and turns, as you race under, around and through the enclosure of dinosaurs and trees and rocks on your magical coaster vehicle sightseeing thingy. The second half introduces you with a launch up to the highest point of the ride and an absolutely wicked drop off the top of it, leading you to then speed upside down over pathways before encircling the bridge and ending with a fast-paced roll over the water and into the brakes. "You did it!"
Most people refer to Velocicoaster like it's the be-all and end-all of roller coasters, the greatest thing ever conceived, but after one lap it doesn't even make the top ten. This thing had a STRONG rattle to it to the point where I already came off with a bit of a headache, and honestly the roll over the water fell a little flat as the finale. Dubbed the "mosasaurus roll", it was hailed as the world's greatest inversion, but I definitely didn't feel that way. I honestly came off thinking "I wish that whole ride did a little... more for me", but it was early morning so it was bound to never break my top 3, I have those "I'll get back to it later" thoughts. I'll get another ride that doesn't try to rattle my brains out, but it has strong foundations to be a truly incredible roller coaster and currently stands as around an 8/10.
Islands of Adventure opened an hour earlier than Studios, so it was wise to rope-drop two parks in the same day. We did this the long and fancy way via Hogwarts Express, which we used to hop over. It's a really cool way to switch parks, and takes excellent advantage of the fact that they both have a Harry Potter area. The ride system is basically a funicular, and shows some cool little scenes during your journey.
For some reason Universal Studios Florida invoked by far the biggest "oh my goodness I'm finally here!" reaction out of any park in this week. Perhaps this was where everything suddenly "hit" as my mouth was suddenly agape.
We didn't quite manage to make it for rope-drop due to us taking the scenic route so the target had already built up a substantial queue, but that can be the mission for our second visit here later on. Instead we headed towards Men in Black Alien Attack, a very different take on the classic shooting dark ride genre. I honestly wasn't a fan of the fact that it didn't have any targets on where exactly to shoot - I was just shooting randomly and gaining points for no apparent reasons. We pushed a red button when the dude demanded us to do so and for some reason that must've been wrong because we spun out 6-7 times.
I understand that it tries something new, but I do think I prefer just knowing what I'm supposed to be looking for by quite a significant margin.
From here on out we start meeting a lot of my Orlando local friends, who started giving us cool and interesting facts and history about the park. In the queue for Simpsons Ride we saw where the Halloween Horror Nights houses are kept, and how the park really does feel like their old roller coaster Rip Ride Rockit never existed.
Simpsons Ride was really cool, one of the park's multiple simulator rides, and honestly one that I really enjoyed, but it was the start of a growing trend of rides in this park that seriously feel one-and-done. The majority of attractions in Universal Studios Florida feel like things I only needed to do once ever. Something that I would really, really enjoy on my first go, and have zero desire to ever do again because all of the cool tricks and jokes would be completely lost on me by round two. They're a pack of excellent rides that you'd never want to do again.
Photo by Ben S
ET Adventure was very nice, it felt like the American equivalent of Eteling's Droomvlucht and a tasteful love letter to the original films with a great queue under the indoor trees. My main takeaway from this ride was that if you queued an hour for this thing and were made to sit in the rightmost half of the ride vehicle, you would miss out on damn near everything, as for some reason almost every scene is designed to be seen from the left.
Photo by Ethan S
However, I'm joining the club in saying that Villain Con Minion Blast is AWFUL. This ride mainly serves as a tech demo for a shooting dark ride where you stand on a moving conveyor belt, and it's mind-numbingly boring as you shoot some screens with an unresponsive delayed gun and you have no idea what you're even doing as you get bored and want off by the halfway point. It's a real flop of a ride, and the ten minutes we queued for this still managed to feel like a complete waste of time.
Photo by Dominic B
Meanwhile, Bourne Stuntacular managed to be my favourite attraction in the park and my new favourite theme park show (although the competition isn't... much). Clearly they were having issues with finding enough people to warrant keeping this thing around as they were practically begging people on the midway to come into the show, but we filled almost the entire venue this time around which was neat. The general idea is that Jason Bourne is this John Wick wannabe who likes shooting guns and pushing baddies off rooftops.
Bourne Stuntacular's signature move is that it absolutely seamlessly combines physical props with screens, an illusion that caught me off guard on multiple occasions and was seriously impressive - sometimes Mr. Bourne pushed a physical guy off a building and I saw him fall to the ground with my very eyes until he suddenly disappeared and he was actually on the screen the whole time. I loved it a lot, truly a stuntacular show.
Photo by Ben S
Finally it was time for another highlight, #503 Revenge of the Mummy. Hosting an extended queue featuring multiple black tents of hell that multiply the voices of everyone surrounding you by four times, this was an incredible dark ride that immediately became one of my favourite indoor roller coasters. Being full to the brim of Things To Look At is shockingly difficult to come across nowadays when riding indoor coasters, and Mummy has something to see every step of the way, which was so refreshing to finally come across. Coupled with an absolutely insane fire effect that had my jaw on the floor, a punchy coaster section and a brilliant finale to end everything out, it's not hard to see why this was the favourite attraction ever of one of the Orlando friends that I was with. I've found a ride in this park that's worth doing more than once! Although you could argue Men in Black has those qualities too.
Next was arguably the single worst attraction on Universal property, Fast and Furious Supercharged, whose demise we will see later next year. And I'm happy I got to ride this, because this is one of the funniest theme park attractions I have ever ridden. With sarcastic pre-show actors who absolutely know how awful this ride is and make it very known, the actual ride section leaves you in uncontrollable hysterics at the absurdity and utter stupidity of everything that happens around you. Boarding the Fortnite Battle Bus, you get squirted with water for no apparent reason, see a man the size of a helicopter, and overall witness chaos and destruction while having no idea what you're doing or why you're here. In terms of being a serious theme park attraction, this is one of the worst rides ever created. In terms of being a hilarious joke of a ride, it nails that aspect. I won't be sad to see it go, but I will be sad that I might not be able to take a first-timer on this to see their reaction.
Some exploration of the park occurred next with some wandering down the streets of Diagon Alley, visiting the Gong of Resounding Resemblance, trying to ride Transformers until it broke down and died before we even entered the indoor section of the queue, and having the time of our lives in the SpongeBob Store before finding ourselves in the Horror Make-Up Show which is due to close for refurbishment imminently. This was a really cool look into how physical special effects are created with a side of excellent humour in it as well and six-seven related shenanigans which is always welcome too. The ending was hilarious as well, and left me with a fantastic first impression on a show that otherwise didn't sound that interesting on paper. It's really good.
With that, we headed back to Islands where the sun started to set. Incredible Hulk was skipped for now, but instead we rode Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man which immediately cemented itself as my favourite execution of screens in a dark ride. I absolutely adored how much you were "involved" here. The enemies on the screens zap you and your ride vehicle (scoop) vibrates with it. They see YOU as an actual threat just as much as they see Spider-Man as a threat. You're not just a bystander to it all, you ARE the story and I thought it was all so amazing. Featuring the single most impressive fire effect that I've seen in my travels for entertainment, and the absolutely wild finale where everything just turns up to eleven and you start going up all these buildings, damn is this thing sweet and leaves me so impressed every single time. I fully understand my Indiana friend who wanted to fly over just to be there when I rode this for the first time, this thing is over thirty years old and is somehow still a prime example of how to do screens almost perfectly.
My only complaint is that I would've liked to have been splashed a little more when the water guy appeared against us, but other than that, this is so close to perfect.
Some aimless wandering led us to Camp Jurassic, a really cool walkthrough cave which was beautifully lit up at night.
And we had to leave our Velocicoaster night rides for later as queues for that were breaching the 150 minute mark, so instead we walked onto Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey for a night ride which had a zero-minute wait in the single rider queue, and this was already a contender for the biggest disappointment of the week. To be fair, my standards for this weren't the highest in the first place as this is older technology that has not aged well at all, but man it shows. You could certainly tell that this was insane for its time back when it opened in somewhere around 2010, but it's fallen behind very quickly. The ride system basically being a four-seater compartment attached to multiple robot arms that rotate in their own wacky ways to simulate flight, but it falls short in several ways. Sometimes it throws you in front of a projected screen where you briefly fly on a broomstick, but this is especially lost on you with the lack of any wind effects so you're just sort of watching TV while swaying around a bit.
The rest of it involves some interesting props but a lot of dead space in between them, and generally the whole ride feels a bit like it doesn't really know what to do. It's trying to be its awesomely impressive thing, but it's 16 years old technology that was absolutely revolutionarily insane for its time, but has unfortunately not aged that way.
An Orlando friend in the ride vehicle behind me noted me looking around confused, presumably trying to get a better view of the ride system, while going through an empty dark corridor waiting for something to happen.
Our final ride of the day was a pitch-black night ride on #504 Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure which we were highly recommended to hit at the end of the day, because the Express Pass has obliterated the standby capacity of this poor thing, and this was substantially noticed once Express had emptied out when we started moving through the line at triple the speed that we were.
Onto the ride, this is one of the most mechanically complex roller coasters in the world. Featuring onboard audio, animatronics, seven launches, a rolling switch-track, a backwards section and a drop track, it's no wonder that this was the world's most expensive roller coaster when it opened, beating out a mine train built into a 199.5ft recreation of Mt. Everest. Force-wise this isn't the most impressive ride in the world, and it ends very abruptly - two turns after the ride reaches its top speed on the final launch - but in terms of a joyous family coaster that tells a great story, it's a winner. With Harry Potter rides you probably don't want too much intensity anyway, as Forbidden Journey seems to be by far the most nauseating ride on Universal property, so they knew what they were going for here and won. Unfortunately with its extreme popularity and Express Pass priority, unless you're willing to queue-close it or wait three hours, this is notoriously difficult to ride, so that singular go must be cherished.
Photo by Ben S
That wraps up our first park day of Florida and a fantastic first impression.
Tomorrow - Cosmic Rewind and Rise of the Resistance
