Bonus Chapter 3: Obligatory Fact-Finding on Non-Harry Potter Attractions
To recap, we’d just finished lunch at the 3 Broomsticks. We’d managed to experience the Escape from Gringotts, the Hogwarts Express, Ollivander’s, and the Forbidden Journey as well as duck into a few shops. So we’d done just about everything you could do in the Wizarding World that didn’t require a 4-hour wait. Feeling satisfied with our progress, we took the Hogwarts Express back to Universal Studios to see what else the park had to offer.
I believe the decision to switch parks again was based solely on the wait times for rides shown on the app. At that moment in time, the waits all seemed to be lower in Universal Studios.
Once we emerged from King’s Cross Station, we took a left and headed over to the Men In Black: Alien Attack! ride. Remember that 5-year period in the 90’s when Will Smith was the biggest star on the planet and could do no wrong? That feels like ancient history now. I guess I’m dating myself. Anyway, the ride sounded fun, like a souped-up version of Buzz Lightyear, and more importantly, Drew would be able to go on with us. So that made it a fairly easy decision.
The original Men In Black holds up really well as a movie. I liked it when it first came out, and the oil-and-water chemistry of Smith and Tommy Lee Jones (an American treasure) is still great. Very entertaining. (The sequels…not so much.)
The ride is supposed to be for your training to become one of the Men (or Women) in Black. You ride around shooting different aliens, getting different points depending on how good your aim is. Some aliens require multiple hits before you get any points. Also, your ride vehicle may spin around occasionally if another group shoots the target on your vehicle, which is a nice touch. Another nice touch was that all 6 of us could fit into one ride vehicle. That’s a rarity.
We really had a lot of fun with it. Mostly, we were terrible, although I thought Dave and I acquitted ourselves well—we both ended up with something in the 96,000-point range, which I think was pretty good for our first try.
Ok, fine. Dave beat me. BARELY.
And we all forgot to hit the big bonus point button at the end. Whoops.
Drew absolutely LOVED this ride. He had a blast with it. And, I totally get it. You ride in a car, you spin around, you shoot things with a laser gun. What’s not to like? It’s good, solid fun.
Next we walked to Springfield (state undetermined). I was looking forward to seeing the Simpsons stuff. I’m a huge Simpsons fan. It might be the funniest TV comedy ever. I’m completely certain no show has more quotable lines. If you can watch the "Lisa the Vegetarian" episode and not laugh out loud at least a half-dozen times, I don't know if we can be friends. So I was hoping the theme park area did the show justice.
And for the most part, I think it did. There are lots of inside references all around. It’s cute if you’re a casual fan, and nicely done if you are a real fan of the show. We got in line for the ride and enjoyed the buildup in the queue—there are little short clips playing with an eye on poking fun as theme park experiences. This ride used to be the Back To The Future ride, and one of the little clips involves Homer taking over the experience from Doc Brown. It’s fun.
Once inside the building, there are a lot more funny advertisements to take in, several taking shots at Disney.
They were having some issues with the ride so we ended up waiting a little longer than we wanted, but we finally got through and got into the simulator. You can see how they repurposed the old Back to the Future ride for this one—the doors to the ride still open and swing up just like a DeLorean.
Universal is known for leaning heavily on motion simulators for many of its rides—this is the result of having limited real estate and trying to cram in as many attractions as possible. That’s a lot easier to do with simulators than with rides that actually have to travel somewhere. The Simpsons is one of the oldest simulators at the park…and, sadly, it shows.
The actual story is really fun, and there are lots of great gags and laughs during the ride itself. Unfortunately, the screen is very, very dim. And the projection is very blurry, and that creates a huge problem when your brain is trying to keep up with the action on the screen. So, despite some hard work on the part of Universal to capture the spirit of the Simpsons, we all exited the ride having bad headaches and not feeling our best. Stay away if motion sickness is a problem for you.
We all decided we needed to give ourselves a bit of a break after that one, so we looked for something that would be a tamer experience. And that’s easier said than done at Universal, but we finally settled on the E.T. ride. Surely that would be easy to handle!
Well, it was easy. And don’t call me Shirley.
The E.T. ride has been there forever (or at least since I was in college, which is almost the same thing). It’s a standard-issue dark ride where you get to ride a bike with E.T. in the basket, just like in the movie. You have to help him get to his home planet or something so he can help his friends heal their world with the power of love and better gardening or something along those lines. I dunno, I wasn’t really paying attention. The “hook” for the ride is that you give your name to the team member at the entrance, and he gives you a card that you turn in when you get on the bike, and E.T. will thank you personally at the end of the ride for your help.
We did notice a slight difference between Universal (of the past) and Disney in the queue. If you looked straight ahead, it was amazing. It looked like the forest from the beginning of the movie, really well done. And then we looked up at the ceiling and saw…stage lights. Took us right out of the illusion.
I first saw E.T. in the theater when I was in 3rd grade. It was the very first movie that ever made me cry. Not out of fear, but sadness. At the very end, I really didn’t want E.T. to leave. I wanted him to stay with Elliott forever so they could be friends. It was almost as if I had a subconscious need to prevent him from going back home, one that I couldn’t fully understand at the time.
Well, now I’ve been on the ride, and I finally understand. The first part of the ride is impressive for a dark ride. It’s almost ripped straight from the movie. You move through the woods, escaping policemen and scientists, and then take a glorious flight across the sky with the moon behind you. Great stuff. Then you travel through space to E.T.’s home planet, and…hoo boy, does this get weird in a hurry. You move through various scenes of aliens that I guess look related to E.T., including his cousins and friends Lumpy, Tinkle and Buttface. They all sing a version of the E.T. theme that sounds like it’s being played on 1,000 kazoos. And the scenes all look like they hired Tim Burton’s production designer and said, “Stop holding yourself back like in the movies…REALLY try and go over the top this time. Build the Peter Pan ride, but what they would see after they dropped acid.”
Anyway, at the end, E.T. said his goodbyes and thanks to every member of my family: Glenn, Alice, Ryan, Timothy, Marie, Joey, and Zeke.
That’s 0 for 6, E.T. Guess he was smoking whatever the production designer had.
Dave told me later that if we ever ride it again, he wants us all to give the same name, like “Andy”, and see if that works. Even if they mess up the assignments for the ride vehicle, it would still be hilarious for some other family.
It was about mid-afternoon now, and we felt like we’d done pretty well for our first day. Plus, we still had headaches from the Simpsons ride. We started making our way back to the entrance in order to go to the hotel and get ready for dinner. We did stop along they way to get Drew a Slytherin sweatshirt so he could match his siblings and their house attire.
Yes, Drew is a Slytherin. You can’t really be surprised by this.
As I mentioned before, the bus was right there waiting for us when we got back to the transportation hub. So we had that going for us, which was nice.
We got back to the hotel and retrieved our minivan. Everyone was getting pretty hungry, so it was time to head to dinner.
A word or two about our dinner plans: I really struggled trying to find places at Universal that really appealed to us. We’d eaten at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it, but at the same time it wasn’t a “must do” for us. From what I could read, there wasn’t much in the two theme parks that was worthy of a visit, and most of the places at Citywalk are chain restaurants. Not that I’m really against chains in particular, but there was nothing that made us say, “Wow, we should try that!” When I suggested various places to the family, the reaction was typically, “Whatever. I could probably find something to order.”
The closest I came was
Cowfish, which appeared to have some interesting burger combinations on the menu.
But then I was struck by a bolt of inspiration: we had a minivan. I was already paying for the rental, so why not put it to use? Why not head to Disney World for our dinners and get a little Disney fix while we’re so close? This plan was met with approximately 483 times more enthusiasm.
Since both Sarah and Drew had birthdays coming up soon, we let them choose where they wanted their “birthday” meals and then I went about making reservations.
And if you’re accusing us of being hopelessly addicted to Disney World, to the point where we’d use any excuse to spend a little time there…well, you’re not wrong.
Even though Sarah’s birthday is after Drew’s, we ended up doing her dinner choice first. We drove to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a night at Boma.
I’ve written about Boma before, so I won’t go into a ton of detail rehashing it. Suffice it to say that we first tried it a few years ago and it fast became one of our favorite dinners at WDW. Combine that with the fact that the Animal Kingdom Lodge is one of the most spectacular buildings on property AND we didn’t need a park ticket to enter, and it was easy to say yes to this one.
Julie is in love with their “fufu” dish, which is a simple combination of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. I usually just park myself by the carving table where they have the spiced beef strip loin. They also have a peanut-butter-rice dish that “slaps”, which my kids say is a good thing. And you can get POG juice to drink, always a good thing. Julie also loves their zebra domes for dessert (I think they’re just ok, but I have a keen interest in making Julie happy). Anyway, dinner was great. Sarah made an excellent choice.
Drew liked the rolls.
It doesn’t matter how young you are, theme park touring can really sap your energy.
We took our time wandering the lodge after dinner. This is such an amazing building. I love it there.
We went out back to walk along the path that goes a bit into the savanna. You get some nice views of the lobby from there.
We also wandered around the pool in order to find the small area by the fence in the back. Cast members are stationed there with night-vision goggles so you can see some of the animals wandering around. It’s a neat little perk that most people don’t know about. I assume you’re supposed to be a guest in order to take advantage, but nobody asked us for a Magic Band or room key. So we got to take a peek, and spotted some ankole cattle hanging around. It’s pretty neat.
We finally did the slow walk back to the minivan. Even if you’ve only spent a couple of hours there, it’s so hard to leave Disney property. My feet felt like anchors as we trudged through the parking lot. But we needed our rest. We needed to get up early so we could ride some motorbikes.
Coming Up Next: Rope Drop always works!
…..right?