Universal Islands of Adventure (and U. Studios)- Thursday, August 21, 2014

After a quick night's sleep we attacked the Universal Parks again, and had a very active morning.  With early admission, we made our way to the back of Universal's Islands of Adventure to Harry Potter's Hogsmeade village and Hogwarts School.  We got immediately into the line and the three girls got to ride on "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey."  Scott joined them for the line because it winds through different parts of Hogwarts, including Dumbledore's office.  This is probably the best pre-show presentations and the line was actually moving too fast for us to see it all.  Julie judged the ride itself to be better than the new one in Diagone Alley, and liked it as much as the first time they rode it three years ago.

After Harry Potter, we tore through quite a few more rides.  The lines were very short, and in at least one case the line for the regular ticket holders was actually shorter than the lines for the Express tickets, which made us feel smug.  We found that when the sign said "5 Minutes" for a wait, it was usually more like five minutes of walking through the winding queue areas than 5 minutes of standing.  All four of us rode on the Flght of the Hippogriff, a Harry Potter rollercoaster that gives you a glimpse of Buckbeak.  The three girls rode on the Jurassic Park River Adventure and Dudley Do Right's Ripsaw Falls.  Both are water rides and the latter gets you very wet.  We ended up buying Emma some flip-flops because her sneakers were soaked.  All four of us rode on the Amazing Adventures of Spirder-Man, where Scott and Julie counted at least four Stan Lee cameos.  We then went to Seuss Landing, where we all rode The Cat in the Hat ride and the High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride.  We had first seen all of these three years ago.  By then, it was approaching 11:00, and we went to Circus McGirkus for lunch and Dippin Dots.  

After lunch, we went back to Harry Potter to take the Hogwarts Express train back to "London."  As we hoped, the ride back had a different set of scenes for us to watch out the "window" as we passed since we were going in the opposite direction as last night's ride..   Since we were now back in Universal Studios, we took an opportunity to re-ride some attractions we enjoyed yesterday and take in a few that we missed.  We all rode the Men In Black ride again, and Julie and Emma scored the high scores this time.  Scott and the girls went on the Simpson's Krustyland ride once more, while Julie went to Moe's to get us some water and a table.  After a short break, Scott and Emma went to the gift shop by Schrek for Emma to get a dragon that she saw yesterday (and also ended up seeing a bit of the Blues Brothers' show), while Julie and Anna rode the Revenge of the Mummy.  We went back to Diagon Alley to visit the shops some more and take in many of the details that we might have missed yesterday.  By the end of that Emma was overheating and everyone else (with the possible exception of Julie) thought that a break at the hotel might be a good idea, so we made the trek back to the front of the park and caught a bus back to Cabana Bay to cool down and rest a bit.

Part 2-

     For as fast and furious as the morning was today, the evening was quite a bit quieter.  We all rested and cooled down, and a few people took naps, before we went to dinner again at the Bayliner Diner in our hotel.  We then went back to Islands of Adventure.  

     There were only a few rides left there that any of us had listed as ones we wanted to ride on, and one or two that were worth a second ride.  We went to the Marvel Comics area, where Scott, Anna and Emma rode the Storm Force Accelatron.  It's basically an X-Men themed tea cup ride.   The girls wanted to ride Popeye's Bilge-Rat Barges, a water ride.  Unfortunately, the ride was down when we got there.   The girls ddn't have anything else that they wanted to ride so we decided to wait and see if and when the ride got going again.  It was a while before the technicians got the rafts running again.  We watched them ride the first raft through to make sure all was clear.  Then the three girls rode that ride.  They also decided that they wanted to re-ride Dudley Do-Right's Rpsaw Falls, so they went on that again, and both rides got the three of them pretty wet.  By that point, there was lightning that could be seen in the skies around us and it was starting to sprinkle.  We made our way out to the bus and went back to the hotel to dry off and cool down.