Forget Mickey Mouse - this is THE Theme Park to visit in Orlando (Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (Orlando))

Member Name: janea57

Product:	Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (Orlando)
Date:	21/08/02 (248 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bright, colourful, and amazing attention to detail, The best rides in Orlando, Has the amazing Spiderman ride.

Disadvantages: Prepare to get very wet!!

We visited Orlando for a two week holiday in June 2002. I went with my husband and two sons - Alex, aged 9, who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Nicky, 8 who is mildly autistic.

Our visit to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure was at the end of our holiday - and when we were almost "theme-parked out".

However, we'd left the best till last. This was a wonderful park - one of the newest - and this was reflected in the technology and standard of the rides and whole layout of the park.

The best thing to do is to buy in advance a Four Park Orlando Flexticket for $170 for adults and $135 for children. This entitles you to unlimited access to Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, Wet'n'Wild and Sea World. A day ticket is $50 for adults and $41 for children.

The Universal parks aren't as busy as the various Disney resorts and therefore the queues are much shorter and your day is less stressed. For the more popular rides you can book an Express ticket, which allocates you a time when you can ride without queuing. You normally have a window of an hour, and can go through a special Express entrance and straight onto your ride.

They also offer a special babysitting area for couples who both want to ride on something which is too intense for the kids. You both queue up together, and one partner rides whilst the other looks after the kids, then as soon as they come off the other partner can ride straight away without having to queue.

As Nicky is registered disabled, we were able to get a special pass from Guest Services which meant we didn't have to queue. We could just head through the Express entrance or a disabled entrance. We felt a bit guilty as Nicky isn't visibly disabled, but queuing with two hyperactive children in temperatures in the 90's is no fun at all !!

The park is divided up into four main areas:

* Seuss
Landing
* The Lost Continent
* Jurassic Park
* Toon Lagoon
* Marvel Super Hero Island


When you have kids there is only one place to start - with the dinosaurs !!!

JURASSIC PARK

As you enter the Jurassic Park zone you go through a gateway very like the ones in the movie. The movie theme is played at you whilst you're in there too. The whole look and feel is of a prehistoric jungle with all the sound effects. We went straight to the big ride of this area - the Jurassic Park River Adventure.

We seemed to have developed a jinx during our stay in Orlando - many of the rides we went on would break down halfway through, or just as we were about to get on, and this was one of them.

You get into a boat and are taken around a river running through a jungle populated with "harmless" and very realistic dinosaurs such as the stegosaurus and parasaurolophus. Suddenly your boat is thrown off course and you are sent through a restricted area where they have been unloading some veloceraptors. To your left is a boat which has been attacked by said nasty creatures. This is when we broke down. We sat there for 10 minutes whilst a safely switch was reset. You are then hoisted up a steep slope through a warehouse until you reach the top - where it pitch black. Next you hurtle down, screaming, towards the jaws of a huge T-rex, and outside into the sun and into the splash zone.

It was a great ride - though I thought they should have let us go round again straight away to compensate for it breaking down. There is an area nearby where kids (and adults if you dare) can stand and get soaked as the cars plunge down the flume.

Onwards to the Triceratops Discovery Train. This was a very long and winding train through dinosaur feeding and research stations to a stable where a triceratops was kept. It was huge, very life-like and even breathed and moved realistically. My son got
to go in and feed it and stroke it, as it's skin felt real. But I don't think it was worth the 20 minute trek through the jungle in the mid-day sun.

Camp Jurassic was great fun. It was a vast adventure playground of things to climb, rope bridges to cross, dinosaur footprints to walk in and hear the noises they made, water cannon to drench people who unwittingly get in the way (yes, I fell for it!) and steamy amber mines to explore. My kids would happily have stayed all day there.

On then to the Jurassic Park Discovery Centre, which looks just like the place in the movie. Here you can look at dinosaur fossils and skeletons, hatch out dinosaur eggs, and take part in all sorts of interactive experiences.

Time to move on then to:

THE LOST CONTINENT

This had a sort of Atlantis/Greek Mythology feel which was reflected in the design of the buildings, including a huge Poseidon?s trident and a waterfall from the mouth of a giant god.

The main attraction is the Duelling Dragons Rollercoaster - two huge intertwined coasters representing the dragons of Fire and Ice. It claims to be the world's first inverted near-miss duelling rollercoaster. Whatever, it looked a bit intense for me. My husband said it was amazing and I may have gone on it if I could have travelled with him, but the boys were too short (and too scared) to ride, so whilst my husband rode it I opted to go with the boys to Poseidon's Fury.

This was an amazing adventure into the depths of the ocean. You are about to embark on a tour but your guide, the Professor, doesn?t turn up. He makes some sort of radio announcement telling you to turn back and not to go in - and is then cut off. Of course you ignore him, and his bumbling and incompetent Assistant takes you on the tour himself. You enter a dark chamber where the Professor has discovered a secret message which shouldn't be read aloud - but the Assistant promptly does s
o and the fury of the evil god is awakened. You then go through a fascinating tunnel of water which appears to defy all the laws of gravity - I couldn't work it out at all, and after visiting a couple of other rooms you open up a vast chamber where the Assistant awakens Poseidon from his slumbers with the aid of a special trident. He then battles it out with the bad guy using fireballs and water explosions and lots of loud noises. All your senses are assaulted but it is completely awe-inspiring. We enjoyed it so much we went back on it with my husband when he got off the coaster.

There was a small family coaster in this zone too - the Flying Unicorn, but it was pretty tame after some of the rides we'd been on over the past two weeks.

SEUSS LANDING

The Dr Seuss books are a much bigger phenomenon in the US than they are over here. We've read them but aren't exactly big fans. But people love them over there. This zone looks like a big pile of marshmallow Flumps - all pastel colours and twisted columns. It's fun to look at great if you have very small kids. We went on a giant sofa through the Cat In The Hat book and then got very wet at the If I Ran The Zoo play area. It was fun, but not really our cup of tea. There were better things to follow...


MARVEL SUPER HERO ISLAND

The first thing you see is the huge green Incredible Hulk Roller Coaster. I'd have loved to have ridden this but it was getting late and the queue was quite long. In the end my husband went on it just before the park closed. It is an amazing coaster which launches you off at high-speed with an acceleration from 0-40mph in 2 seconds! You go through water at one point too. It was voted the No1 Steel Roller Coaster by Discovery Channel viewers.

The whole zone is done out like the pages of the Marvel Comics in 1950's New York style - with huge 20 foot cut outs of all your favourite superheroes. My husban
d was in his element!

Doctor Doom's Fearfall is next - twin towers 200 feet high where you are hoisted up and dropped at incredible speed and then back for more of the same.

The highlight of the zone - and indeed the whole park, and maybe the whole fortnight was a new ride called The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. Words just don't do this ride justice. Unfortunately the curse of the Armstrongs hit us, and the ride didn't work properly the first time round. The 3D projections weren't working, and so we missed the whole point of the ride. Luckily we were able to go round again straight away.

You get into a car, wearing 3D glasses, and are whirled around New York, where the bad guy has stolen the Statue of Liberty and broken it up for scrap or ransom or whatever. The car is buffeted this way and that as you move around the streets of New York projected onto huge 30 foot high screens all around you. The car judders when Spiderman jumps onto it or when the baddies capture you and throw you off the top of a huge building - you are then plummeting down out of control with the windows passing by. Your brain is telling you it's real - you can see it and feel it. You know it's not really happening but it's very hard to convince your brain of the fact. It was a fantastic ride - and that ride alone justifies you travelling all the way to Florida !!

After all that excitement we moved on to the final zone of the day and time to GET WET!!

TOON LAGOON

As you enter this area you feel you?ve been transported to the pages of the Sunday Times Cartoon supplement. Everywhere is laid out like a comic strip - with huge cut outs of characters like Blondie and Dagwood, Popeye and Olive Oyl, Wimpy (yes - a hamburger restaurant!) and Dudley Do-Right. There are cartoon word bubbles for you to pose under.

It's a good idea to leave this zone till last as the rides here are WET!! You will g
et SOAKED! Drenched through! But they are such great fun you'll want to ride more than once. We were lucky - we were able to walk on without queuing - even without the disabled pass.

Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls boasts one of the steepest water drops in the world. And to make sure you get well and truly soaked you are bombarded with water left right and centre on your way to it. You also drop down a pretty steep flume in the dark before you get to the big one. By now you are pretty wet - but when you hit that big drop you get absolutely soaked to the skin. After dropping down you are projected up another slope and drop again! It's fast and exhilarating and great fun,

We followed this up with a raft ride - Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges. This ride gets you so wet they make you take your shoes off and stow them, with all your other belongings, in a waterproof compartment. It makes white water raft rides like those at Thorpe Park and Alton Towers seem like a leisurely float down the Thames. It's fast and furious and you find yourself almost submerged at times as huge waves of water engulf your raft. To make matters worse, other visitors are shooting water cannon at you from Popeye's ship the Olive Oyl.

After riding on the last two rides twice it was time to head home - but we were so soaked through that we had to buy new shorts and t-shirts before we could get into the car!

It was a fantastic day out, and certainly the best of all the theme parks. Well designed, all the zones were had amazing attention to detail, and there was something there to please all the family. It was unanimously agreed by the whole family that this was the best day of our holiday.

Summary: