Seriously, Were Was I? Part II

Welcome to another installment in my continuing effort to fill people in on what I've been up to during my recent hiatus. I've already told you about my continuing battle to keep the lawn in check, but luckily for me it hasn't been all work and no play. Megan and I had been looking for the right time to escape for a few days and since our good friends Nathan Weinert and Katie Suttle were getting married in Alabama, we took that as excuse for a much needed vacation. I'll fill you in on Nate and Katie's wedding in a later post, but right now I'll share the details of what Megan and I were up to before that.

Megan and I decided that since we were heading South anyway, we'd take a little trip to Orlando and visit the theme parks, in particular Universal Islands of Adventure and "The Most Magical Place on Earth"© aka DisneyWorld. Now, I know that some of you are probably going "What the...?" at our choice, but let me give you a little background. First off, Megan and I love thrill rides. This is particularly amusing since Megan gets motion sick when riding in the front seat of a Jeep and I was once afraid of amusement park rides. Deathly afraid, in fact, until after we got married. Yes, I was still afraid of roller coasters when I was 24, alright! Quit snickering and we'll get on with it. Anyhow, I got over my fears at Cedar Poinin Sandusky, Ohio (which, for my money is the best roller coaster park in the world) and have been addicted ever since. Megan and I had such a good time there, that a couple of years later we checked out Magic Mountain in California as well. And since we were enjoying our time together at amusement parks so much, we decided to visit the Mecca of amusement parks, Orlando Florida.

Before leaving on our trip, Megan did some serious research on the best strategies for hitting the theme parks. She came up with a plan of attack that would have been the envy of any military strategist. Megan's plan not only broke down which parks to hit on which days, but the order in which to hit certain rides. The plan served us well, extremely well in fact, as we never waited in line for longer than 20 minutes (except when there were issues with the ride), but as with Napoleon and Waterloo, we had a bit of a misstep our first day there. We had wanted to hit The Disney Wildlife Refuge "on the way" from the airport to our condo, but due to bad Google Map directions, we ended up on a scenic drive that got us there too late. Undeterred, we stuck to our plan and were able to hit Universal Islands of Adventure the next morning running.

We got to Islands of Adventure the next morning just before it opened at 9:00 AM (after a wrong turn at DisneyWorld. Don't ask) and the first thing that struck me was the lack of a crowd. Since I had never been there before, I couldn't tell if it was because it wasn't that popular, or if the low numbers were due to it still being hurricane season. I'm willing to give Universal the benefit of the doubt here, since, as we would later find out, lines at DisneyWorld were abnormally short as well. The second thing was that how much of a wannabe DisneyWorld it was. To be fair, I think that most amusement parks are wannabe Disney Parks, but the way Islands was separeted into areas like Seuss Landing, Marvel Superhero Island, and Toon Lagoon really seemed to channel the way Disney's Magic Kingdom is separated into areas like Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and Fantasyland. The major differences being that Universal lacks the mystique and majesty of the Disney Parks and that their animatronics can't hold a candle to Disney's. Universal also dispenses with any veneer of being educational, which, depending on your point of view is either a plus or a minus.

One thing Islands definitely has going for it, though, are it's thrill rides. Sure, Universal makes a go of the family friendly stuff, but if you want that, go to Disney. If you're in Orlando, and you want thrill rides, Islands of Adventure is the place to be. The best of the bunch are the Incredible Hulk Coaster, the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, and the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster.

The Incredible Hulk Coaster is really just a run of the mill rollercoaster, but a damn fine one at that. By that I mean it doesn't really do anything fancy, you just buckle your safety belts, hang on, and enjoy the ride. It starts off by literally launching you up the track at around 60mph and doesn't seem to slow down until the ride comes to end. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed at first, but when we rode it a couple of more times, it grew on me. It was also the first ride we rode that day, and therefore the first ride of our vacation. It was definitely a heck of a way to kick things off.

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride is sort of a simulator/track-ride hybrid that moves passengers around in a car through a set and incorporates projection screens and 3D effects to make it seem like you're in the middle of a fight between Spidey and some supervillains. It's hard to do it justice with words, but you can watch a video here. Even that video makes it look like it's just another simulator, but trust me, it's a one-of-a-kind ride that's innovative and almost worth the ticket to the park alone. It's so innovative, in fact, that I'd be surprised if Disney's Imagineers aren't working on similar rides for their parks. It's enough like a simulator, though, that it made Megan feel not-so-good, whereas I liked it enough to ride it twice.

That brings us to Dueling Dragons, which has a couple of things going for it. The first is that it's inverted, meaning instead of being in a car that sits on top of the track, the riders are suspended below the track with nothing but air under your feet. This is nothing new in the world of rollercoasters, but is definitely my favorite style. The second aspect that makes this coaster so fun is that ride actually consists otwo separateee coasters, switching back and forth close to each other, hence the "Dueling" part of Dueling Dragons. Both coasters are made to look like dragons as well, with one called Fire and the other Ice. Megan and I rode Ice only once, but took Fire for a spin three times. As you can probably tell by the fact that we rode multiple rides multiple times, we were not only having a good time, but because of Megan's game plan and low numbers of other riders, we pretty much had the run of the park.

Like I said, it was a good time, and if you're ever in the area and you like that sort of thing, you should check it out. However, it's not really worth making an entire trip for. Even with it's fair share of kickass rides, something that the more family friendly DisneyWorld doesn't really have, there's not really that much to do there. In fact, even with riding pretty much every ride at least once and riding certain rides several times, Megan and I left the park around 6:00. Which was nice, since we were able to recuperate somewhat before we left the real world behind for the "Magical World of Disney"©. More on that next time!