March 16, 2014
Islands of Adventure
Following on our dry run of yesterday which culminated in a noon arrival at Disney, the house pulled it together and we gout ourselves to Universal Studios by shortly after 9:00. Contrary to our colour-coded schedule, we decided that Harry Potter should be our first ride, since it has no VIP Express line, so Islands of Adventure was the park of the day. Plans to “park hop” were also abandoned in the roller-coaster-fueled madness that is the Islands of Adventure theme park. It was a crazy, ride-packed, exhausting day, almost the total opposite of our day at Disney.
Cool guys lined up for Harry Potter.
First up, all 19 of us went on Harry Potter (a 75 min line up) and the day wasn’t looking promising. Riley was sick enough he was thinking leaving, or at least skipping all rides, the rest of the boys looked like zombies after staying up untill all hours to watch quiestionable you-tube videos and Taryn was terrified by the Harry Potter ride, made worse by the fact that the ride stopped for what seemed like several minutes near the end. But somehow, things turned around – Riley recovered with some Advil, Taryn received accolades of bravery from everyone includingi her brother and finishing a group ride seemed to perk everyone else up.
After that, frenzy! People dispersed in all directions and went on every ride possible until we met back up on the opposite side of the park at Jurassic Park after packing in 4-5 rides thanks to the Express passes which had the power to turn a 60 min wait time into 11 minutes. It was 1:00. Actually, it was about 1:17, which made us late to meet James for the Taryn swap, and he seemed a little unhappy about those 17 minutes! We swapped stories of rides, reorganized our groups and headed off again with plans to meet late afternoon although nobody could remember later if the meeting time was 4, 4:30 or 5. Eventually we settled on 4 so that we could go to a stunt show that was subsequently cancelled, so we decided on one last ride on Hulk before heading out. Taryn, Dave, Andi and I went to Spiderman instead, which had turned out to be Taryn’s favourite ride. This time around was her fourth time riding, and she was by now good buddies with the guy who stands at the entrance handing out 3D glasses.
The Universal Island of Adventure theme park turns out, as rumoured, to be pretty awesome! There were a few glithces – the pause on Harry Potter, another simulator pause on Spiderman and a shutdown of the Hulk just before the boys got their last ride in, but overall it was amazing.
With zero energy left to handle a restaurant dinner, we headed to the house for hot dogs and hamburgers. The kids all left the pool early without incident to watch a movie and the adults sat around on the patio and polished off the last of the red wine.
More sangria over here, please!
There were only a few minor incidents throughout the evening: When Dave D sloshed his sangria all over Andi’s white clothes after having a wee bit too much to drink. When Dave S and Risa lit the candle that Sofia fetched, except it wasn’t a candle, it was an electric light that gave off a mildly toxic smoke that we at first thought was bug repellent. When Andrew starting singing rugby songs to entice us all to drink more. When Dave D kept asking all of the women to make out. You know. Normal stuff.
Meltdowns: 0 (nothing major, let’s just say)
Breakdown count: 1 (Ongoing router problems)