Universal Studios Revisited

This past August, my family and I visited Universal Studios, along with its sister park, Islands of Adventure for a day during my vacation. And as I described in an earlier entry, the whirlwind nature of our visit (we had Express Passes to boot), coupled with the extremely hot weather, made me realize that we needed to plan this sort of thing out better in the future. And since we have fifteen-month passes to the place, the future came pretty soon. In fact, yesterday we spent a few hours down there. We only visited Universal Studios, saving Islands of Adventure for another time. We didn't purchase Express Passes, but found that, due to it being off-season in the park (Halloween just having ended), the lines weren't very long. Once we got inside, our first destination was Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, a "virtual"-type ride that gave the rider the sense that he or she was inside the action being portrayed on the screen in front. I had been on it in 2003, and it's still one of my favorite rides in the park. Next, we went over a couple of blocks and saw their Blues Brothers show. Of course, the original cast wasn't there, but the replacements were very good. The saxophonist was incredible, and the lady who played Aretha Franklin's character stole the show with her singing. Unfortunately, after the show, we found that my favorite ride in the park, Revenge of the Mummy, was shut down. So we went on to try out Men in Black, with its notorious locker system. Turns out that ride was shut down, too! On the way, I looked over and saw that their Earthquake ride was completely closed down, and my map that they provided no longer showed it as a ride. But their website still features it, even to the point of showing a short promotional video for it! Well, you might imagine that we were pretty disappointed in the ride closures, but we went on, trying out Jaws. The boat's driver did a good performance, and we enjoyed it. Then, we went on Woody's Nuthouse Coaster, a small, short roller coaster that resembles Wild Adventure's (in Valdosta, Georgia) Ant Farm coaster. After that, we tried out E.T. Adventure again and then headed on back home. We had decided that staying too long at a time in theme parks like this just ended up wearing us all out, and having set limits on the visit in advance, leaving was much easier. We'll be back, I'm sure, in a few weeks, and explore some areas we missed this time around. All in all, even with the ride closures, we had a pretty good time!