Welcome to Universal

Welcome to Universals Islands of Adventure.
Once Yacky the GPS finally found the place, the parking was quite efficient. The trip from the parking garage was made easier by moving walkways occasionally broken by kiosks to relieve the excited of money Before they could get in the park. Finally, one enters the Walk lined with bars and restaurants to relieve one of money Before one gets in the park and After the park closes. Reaching the entrance of the park, one presents ones ticket and has a thumbprint electronically taken so that identifying the body is easier.
Ah, we have entered the park. It’s the Monday after Easter, Spring Break is in full swing and we’re packed in like NAZI prisoners in a cattle car. As we enter the park, we see………more stores. Dozens of them beckoning for your wallet. We bought a meal pass that a harried mom said was a good deal. It wasn’t but we learned that later. Forcing our way through the crush of humanity, we made our way to Dr. Seuss Land.
Most people there were just passing through. We rode the Who Trolley. It was nice.
Leaving there, we went to the Lost Continent. After standing in line for an hour or so, we went through Posieden’s Adventure. Sorry, not worth it. The actors in the Sinbad show tried but failed. Stacey did find a guy with a Lenny Da Vinci designed coin press that made her a nice medallion. Saying farewell to the imaginary Continent , we entered ………
HARRY POTTER WORLD
And more shops. It’s hard to suspend belief effectively when it’s 80+ degrees and Hogsmeade has snow covered roofs. It just wasn’t working for me. I admit the scenery and layout were good. The representation of Hogwarts was very well done.
Forcing our way through the walls of human flesh, we found ourselves in a line. It was a very long line. It was moving fairly quickly so we kept with it. After an hour or so, we found it was the Harry Potter ride. I admit it was excellent. It did a better job of suspending belief than anything else in the park. I was also glad to get off.
Escaping the gift shop, we left Potterworld behind for Jurassic Park and fewer shops. Jurassic Park isn’t bad. My one complaint is that the best ride there is in Camp Jurassic and only available to children. We did go on the water ride. Stacey asked the attendant to put her in the most splash free part of the boat. For future information, there is no splash free part of the boat. The animatronic dinos were pretty good.
We left the dinos behind and made it to Toon Town. This was composed almost totally of shops. It was good artwork and a fun-looking place but everything we found was either Betty Boop merchandise or the Simpsons. There was a water ride and some type of boat ride but neither interested us.
On to Marvel Comics world and more shops. If we hadn’t been exhausted, we might have gone to the Spiderman show or ridden the coaster but neither really appealed to us by that point. We made our way out, bought some t-shirts and went to our rooms to rest.
Some notes on Universal: The ticket is $90 per person not including parking. The meal pass was $22 a piece and this let you eat at 4 different food service facilities. Drinks are extra and we really needed the liquid more. The food wasn’t that good. Cedar Points coasters could eat Universals coasters and crap out bumper cars. It wasn’t worth it to us and turned us off of going to Disney. I'll have to post pictures one at a time due to bandwidth limitations.