On the way to Universal Studios

We have 5-day tickets to two parks: Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. The Universal Studios has mainly attractions based on visual effects. The funniest one was probably Shrek 4-D (4-D comes from 4 doors which lead to the theatre…). Kia was a bit scared for the loud sounds and the rain (or saliva) effects and kept her eyes and ears shut most of the time. After this experience she was not very eager to go to the other rides. With some extortion and bribery we coaxed her to go to most of the rides. Kia’s favourites were the Woody Woodpecker rollercoaster, which she took twice, Back to the Future, which was a 3-D movie with almost freely moving seats (car seats, that is), ET, which was just a trip around some moving puppets, Jaws, which was a plastic shark and some explosions, Fear Factor Live, where some members of the audience was doing stunts and blowing up stuff, and Animal Planet, where some trained animals were doing tricks. I was missing monkeys. They are the funniest animals. OK, there was one monkey wearing diapers and waving a bra. My kind of humour…
My favorite was Return of the Mummy. The name comes from the fact that I was crying Mami the whole time :-) The ride was short but excellent. First, the cart shot up accelerating. Normally, in rollercoasters, the first upward lift is slow. In this case the cart was shooting up the ramp and then a sudden drop. Computer graphics, water splashes and fire in a dark indoor rollercoaster. The best effect was the burning ceiling in one of the rooms. It looked similar than the educational films that show how a room sets on fire. You know, a flat fire over the whole ceiling. And this was real fire... Also Twister was excellent. They created an authentic feeling of a tornado indoors. There was rain, a real tornado and a burning gas stations within 5 meters of the spectators. Again, short, but excellent. The stormy sky was beamed onto a large screen and in the front you could see the gas station and a drive-in movie theater with a flying cow and flying neon signs.

In the daytime you would have to queue 30 minutes for the attractions but after 6 pm the queues were only 10 minutes.