Our last real day of excitement in Florida was on Friday, August 8, at Universal Studios.
The first stop for the day was “Terminator 2: 3D”. It was here that we realized that Universal totally kicks Disney’s butt at 3D movies. I’ve never seen “Terminator”, but this movie made me want to.
Okay, okay. I’m getting ahead of myself. Before going into the theatre, there was a nice long wait. Although, they had a line, rather than just a big waiting room, so you could sit down and wait and people wouldn’t trample over you. But it was still a much longer wait than we were expecting. Of course, we were young and naiive then, and didn’t know quite what it meant to go to Universal Studios.
After the line, we went into the-room-to-the-room, a custom which we had, by now, grown quite accustomed to. This room-to-the-room was apparently owned by Cyberdyne, the bad guys, and thus was all futuristic with big screens and stuff. My mom noticed a small platform/balcony up above and said that a “cast member” (or whatever the Universal equivalent is) would probably come out there for the introduction. Since it was such a long wait, we started trying to guess whether it was a guy or a girl, what they’d be wearing, yada yada. We decided it would be a girl, but if it was real life, it would be a guy. I then made some hilarious joke that likened my brother to a girl, but I forget the exact context. A girl, of course, came out, and showed us a video about how awesome SkyNet is and blah blah blah. She was rather annoying, but that was just her character, and she did it well. Unfortunately. Halfway through the video, the woman and the kid hack into it and warn us all that SkyNet is bad, but then the annoying chick comes back and fixes it, so all is well and we go into the next room.
The video, as mentioned, was pretty awesome. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there! They had actors playing the three main characters (and possibly others, I don’t remember) and they would alternately be running around the theatre or be on the screen (after jumping into it, of course). There was this one big silver spider-like creature that did the water spraying thing, except it was supposed to be like frozen or something, and the water actually seemed really cold. I wasn’t sure if it was intentionally or if it was just a subconscious thing. At the end of the show, something happened and the seats all moved really violently or dropped or something, but mine didn’t, and that was apparently the best part of the show. I thought it was still awesome anyway.
After that, we went next door to the “Horror Make-up Show”. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t what I did see. This show, again, was pretty awesome. Except, it was less of the awesome and more of the hilarious. I didn’t learn all that much about horror make-up, but I didn’t realize that until the show was over. They had two actors on the stage, and my only complaint about the show was that the one guy every so often went into the hyper Jenny-speaking mode and you couldn’t understand what he was saying. Otherwise, it was great.
They picked one person to be a volunteer (“no no no, you never pick someone who wants to be picked… someone who’s avoiding eye contact, someone who maybe thought this was a ride…”), a girl named Frannie at our show. They did various things to scare her, like shaking her hand with a fake hand that fell off, an arm popping out of a table, and cutting her arm with a retractable knife. She was a really great sport and screamed rather convincingly throughout.
At the beginning of the show, the make-up artist guy came in with a knife sticking out of his chest, pretending to die and asking audience members to help him, but no one would. Later on in the show, the dude started spraying the audience with “blood” (which appeared to just be plain old clear water), and took a particular liking to spraying the one lady who sat there and watched him die, refusing to give him mouth-to-mouth.
Also earlier in the show, the make-up artist showed us a curtain off to the side with some secret project behind it, but he said he would show us later. The other host eventually got curious and tried to peek behind the curtain, but an alarm went off. When the make-up artist asked what happened, the other host said that some little kid in the audience had thrown something at it. The make-up artist then goes to talk to the kid all menacingly-like and says “I don’t have to be nice to you, this ain’t Disney World”.
At the end of the show, he shows his project to us, but not before he attempts to get the other host to wear the “high-voltage vest… low-voltage vest”. The other host refuses and then they both wonder who they should get to wear it instead: “…Frannie!”. Frannie comes back up on stage and puts on the vest, which allows her to control Eddie, a big animatronic werewolf. Before she leaves, the make-up artists asks if she wants a picture with the monster, so she and the other host go and stand in front of the monster… which then comes to life and runs around the stage, eventually attacking the make-up artist. The end.
When we left the “Horror Make-Up Show”, we were horrified to step outside and see… it was raining. Well, at least it waited until the last day to rain, because they were calling for it all week. We quickly made our way to the nearest attraction we could find, “Shrek 4D”.
I don’t quite understand what it is with calling certain shows 3D and others 4D when they’re really all 4D, as I learned from Wikipedia. The water spraying and real life elements are what makes it 4D, and all the shows had that. Anyway…
The Shrek line up was very very long. It was also outside, but at least we were covered. Unfortunately, the rain made it quite cold, plus they had fans in the line-up area, which on any day previous would have been greatly appreciated, but were now rather a nuisance.
Finally, we got into “the room”, where a “cast member” and some animatronic pigs and the Gingerbread man gave us the back story to what was going on. Then we went in to see the movie, which I don’t remember at all, but I didn’t like it. It felt like they were just moving the seats and spraying us and whatnot just because they could, not because there was really a reason to in the film, so it was rather annoying and pointless.
Next we went to eat at the “International Food and Film Festival”, which was rather uneventful, then to the “Men in Black: Alien Attack” ride. We had to put any loose items into a locker before going on the ride, which kind of sucked, because at Disney, every fast-moving ride had little pouches in front or under your seat that you could put things in. It was free though, if you used it for under an hour or something. At first I was like “hey! this is cool!” because they opened the locker based on your fingerprint, but then afterwards I realized “…hey, now Universal has my fingerprint on file!” and my tinfoil hat came on. Too late.
This line-up was the longest yet. It didn’t help that I was freezing cold, despite the rain having finished long ago. It was now nice to leave the buildings and feel the Florida heat, as opposed to the other way around. The ride itself was pretty cool, but not worth the hour plus wait. You were in a car contraption that took you along a track where you would shoot monsters with a laser gun. It also kept track of your score, and I think in the end that my mom won, but only because she pushed the button at the end and it gave her like 100,000 points (plus her 10,000 she already had). I had 80,000 or so on my own, and my dad had a bit more than me. Each car held six people, so these two little boys came on our ride as well. I was expecting them to totally whip us — because hey, they’re little boys — but I felt kind of bad for them because they didn’t. Oh well. I never get to win (or at least do well) at games, so I was happy for me anyway.
Our whole reason for going to Universal was really “The Simpsons Ride”, but every time we went there, the wait time was 75 minutes or more, so we decided it would be best to go on other rides, then come back and try again. We went to “Disaster!” next, which, surprise surprise, had a super long line. We were all kind of miserable after the really long wait for “MIB”, so of course they had to cut the line right before us. And of course when they let us go in for the next group we had to move “all the way down” so we were the last people in the door, despite being the first in line for that group.
“Disaster!” was more of a show than a ride. We went into the-room-to-the-room-to-the-room-to-the-room where yet another loud annoying female “cast member” picked people from the audience to act in Frank Kincaid’s (aka Christopher Walken’s) new film. Then we went into the-room-to-the-room-to-the-room where Frank Kincaid himself spoke to us about his movie. This part was actually pretty cool, because they had a holographic Christopher Walken walkin’ on the stage along with the annoying girl who kept moving around where he had been and throwing things to him and making us think “how’d they do that?!”.
Then the-room-to-the-room was where they filmed the movie, which wasn’t all that exciting because I wasn’t in it. Annoying girl continued to be annoying, yada yada. And then we went to the room where we all boarded on a fake subway train where they filmed the final shot for the movie, and we were supposed to yell and scream and look frightened, but when you’re miserable, you don’t much want to. And then they showed us the completed trailer, with the actors and us all in it. It’s pretty cool that they’re able to do that “real-time editing” sort of thing, but the trailer itself wasn’t all that exciting. There was one bit that had the little boy from our show with The Rock in the trailer that was amusing, but I forget exactly what happened.
By now, we’d basically given up on the rest of the rides and headed for “The Simpsons Ride”. Something tells me the wait time was longer than it had ever been before, and we contemplated not going on it at all. “No,” I said, because I knew we’d regret it later. Of course, at that time, I had no idea what a 75-minute wait felt like: 750 minutes.
At the beginning, yeah, it was okay. They had television screens that showed footage from “The Simpsons” from various episodes that involved theme parks. There are surprisingly many of these. They also had new footage created just for the ride, most of which I can’t recall. There was one scene, however, that involved Professor Frink going back in time to make sure the Time Travel Institute would be built or something, but instead ended up causing “The Simpsons Ride” to be built instead. Most people would not find this funny at all, but since I am incredibly smarter than you, I did. You see, “The Simpsons Ride” was built where the “Back to the Future” ride used to be. Get it now? Ha ha ha ha. Oh yes. And Doc Brown was in the video and it was very amusing. Or it would have been, you know, had we not been miserable.
These monitors held my interest for a little while. That is, until they started repeating and I realized just how long the queue was. They hide it nice and good, don’t they? I think the footage went through a full two plus times before we finally got to the-room-to-the-room-to-the-room. Just before we go to that room, there was a Krusty sign that said something about “it’s halfway between a ripoff and highway robbery!”. We all laughed unenthused at this sign and its truthfulness.
We finally got into this first room, where we saw a short video, where I think they made some reference about it feeling like they were waiting for hours. So true, little Lisa, so true. And then we got to the next room where we watched another little truthful video.
And finally, the ride. Which was just another little room. You sit in a car contraption and then you are lifted up in front of a movie screen, that I suppose actually surrounds you. It was quite like Epcot’s “Soarin’” but with The Simpsons and much funnier and more exciting. You start off as if you’re on a roller coaster, and it actually does feel, pretty much… like a roller coaster. The car eventually goes off the tracks and you fly through the park and through Springfield and see various Simpsons characters.
One rather important character was missing, or at least extremely hard to find if he was there. Mr. Leonard was nowhere to be seen, which quite disappointed me, because I was planning on screaming out “Lenny!” and making the other riders wonder what possessed me to do so. And if I was super lucky, they might have even killed him, in which case I would utter “Not Lenny!”.
It was a really a quite good ride, but the waiting just kind of diminished its effect. Had Lenny been in it, you know, it would have been really good. But no Lenny + 75 minutes of my life gone = not happy.
As stated before, Universal totally wins at 4D movies, but Disney World is much better in terms of little things that make people happy. Universal cost more, there was much more waiting (and thus less time for rides), it was a helluva long walk back to the parking lot, and they didn’t have little pouches on your seats. Fast Pass at Disney was an amazing thing. At Universal, oh yeah, they had “Express” Passes… but that’ll set you back at least twenty dollars… per ride. I ain’t payin’ that, especially not after the aforementioned high park price. You’ve got enough of my money, thank you.
Oh yeah, and there was one more thing I forget to mention. “Animal Kingdom”? That was sweet. The animals were behind the fence. “Universal Studios?” Those damn tiny lizards were out walking around like they owned the place! Granted, we did take an empty path by the lake (stay far far away from there!), but damn it, those things freaked me the hell out! You know how easy it would be for one of them to just climb up your pant leg? Pretty damn easy! I think I may have found a creature to rival ducks.